Tannasgach
Wicked Witch

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Hey Tanna hows the planning coming?

Lol! Yeah, all you can see is the orange glow from the cfl's in the house. Ok I'm sorry, I lol'd at the wind chime. We've all had our moments though, believe me! My ex wife was a 7 year long "moment", so I couldn't critique anyone!

Yup, that's part of my plan for this year. I have quite a few sheets of 1/2" - 1" plywood that I have to do SOMETHING with pretty soon, because they are just beginning to dry rot. So, I'm going to run a 15 meter strip of white LED's, and one of my fog machines behind a plywood cut out of tombstones for a backdrop to give it a shadow cast (and hopefully make it appear as though the cemetery is larger than it actually is) through the fog.

I actually have a few of the CFL floodlights in my security lights around the outside of the house, and I have the same problem as you with a couple of them starting out very dim, then brightening up considerably over a minute or so. That's not normal, and just means they should be replaced. If yours are new-ish, and doing that... You should exchange them for different ones, because they are defective. I've never tried the dimmable versions myself, but I did test my T&L setup with a cool white CFL after I put it together, and it looked very good. But, it was one I'd just replaced and didn't care if I blew it. And blow, it did!

Color is really up to your particular tastes. I think blue looks best in a graveyard (I use blue there), and I enhance it with blacklights of both LED & Florescent types. But green looks pretty nice too (I use green LED's on my witches scene, with blacklights too). Personally, I like orange CFL bulbs inside the house proper.



Don't mind the flash, it washed out the rest of the color...but my camera makes really noisy low light pics. Note: Don't buy a Sony Cybershot for nighttime haunt photo's.

No problem sweetie! You know me, always glad to help Yep, your right on track. The CFL's are usually just a bare spiral bulb like you'd use in your table lamps. But they do come in a housing that looks like a regular flood light too, but I've only seen a couple of companies making them that way. FEIT has some of the floodlight type, and I'm fair certain that I saw them @ Amazon for about $10 or so each. They will work perfectly with those green lawn stakes. You may also want to use a couple of the spiral party bulb types in those clamp on type hoods too. They do a great job for tucking in behind tombstones to obscure them from direct view.

Kk, there are many good recommendations already there. If your looking for something like, say...SpiderRider's display with really good color saturation. His is entirely done with Compact Florescent's (and a white light or two). LED's are fine, but they are a little too pricey as I'm sure you noted, and they give a little more of a washed out look. Especially true with blue & red LED's. Which imho, tend's to kill the detail we work so hard to put into the props. Colored CFL's tend to obscure detail to a small extent too, but not nearly as badly. I honestly think that a combination of the two, would be the best combination.

3 point lighting techniques are really needed with either to pull the detail back out, and I think that's why SpiderRider's yard looks so magnificently detailed. His 3rd point (overhead light) is a white light on his entrance and that may be the key to the whole thing. My plan for this year is to experiment with using a combination of both CFL's & LED's and see what I can come up with. I'll definitely let you know what I come up with, and give you a preview so you can see if my plan works with what you have in mind.

I certainly can try Sorry to reply so late, I just walked in the door 20 minutes ago after having spent the weekend bumming around on the beach. Sans computers, phones, and such. Else I'd have already been there

Hey Tanna, Nixie just posted this.
http://www.halloweenforum.com/genera...-you-like.html