ABSTRACT
Specialty lighting equipment 18 BIG GUNS From its very beginning, motion pictures have used big lights. In the early days of motion pictures,
use of carbon arc lights allowed production to be moved indoors. At that time, film stocks were not
sensitive enough to produce an exposure at light levels much less than that of daylight. It is perhaps
ironic that even with today’s technology, the market still has a need for bigger and brighter lights.
Despite the fact that film emulsions and video sensors are 16 or 32 times more sensitive than they
were 75 years ago, we still have a need for lights that are an order of magnitude brighter than even
a carbon arc. As technology has advanced, filmmaker’s ambitions have expanded, too.
