Cool Lights CDM 150 Fresnels Updates

PaPa

PaPa

Major Contributor
Anyone know what's going on with these guys? Ordered them back in April expecting them to get more stock in late May, then changed to early June, now it has been updated again to late June... Was relying on them to arrive at a certain time for a large shoot coming up and was wondering if anyone else has news? Waiting for an e-mail back from Richard.

Not a rant, just curious to know whats going on. Have always had EXCELLENT service from that man. But all these push backs could really screw me.
 
Unfortunately this is a drawback we see with all guys trying to establish something out of their hobby. Finances are often limited to provide steady stock and delivery. Look at vidled and you know what I mean. If you order in the wrong time you still have to rely on established more expensive players. Sad but true.
 
PaPa:

Counting on ordered vaporware for a specific shoot? You should know better, you know the score. You are in the same boat as Tim Naylor with his RR matte box and countless others around here who buy something that isn't shipping yet. I only buy products that are already shipping. If it says, "shipping soon", why bother? All of the small manufacturers and some of the large ones make promises about delivery dates that they can't keep. Remember when Panasonic said that we could buy an HVX-200 in December of '05? How many actually did? Hardly anyone actually got their hands on one until Spring of '06. 16GB cards? Same thing.

In another thread, I was grilling Richard about when we can buy them and I think he said "maybe at the end of June or beginning of July"? Something about a container ship arriving here by then, as long as there are no delays.

Hope that they come through for you but better have a good plan B for your shoot.

Dan
 
I've been waiting on my 1200 HMI's to arrive and Richard told me that he is at the mercy of the cargo ship coming from China. Sometimes they evidently breakdown and take a couple of days to fix. If all goes well they should arrive to him in the third week of June. BTW, be patient. I waited for my RED for over a year and am now currently waiting on my RedRock Mattebox and Viewfactor Follow Focus. It sucks not to have equipment when you need it, but you can't count on anything being on time in the business world.

Matthew
 
puredrifting said:
PaPa:

Counting on ordered vaporware for a specific shoot? You should know better, you know the score. You are in the same boat as Tim Naylor with his RR matte box and countless others around here who buy something that isn't shipping yet. I only buy products that are already shipping. If it says, "shipping soon", why bother? All of the small manufacturers and some of the large ones make promises about delivery dates that they can't keep. Remember when Panasonic said that we could buy an HVX-200 in December of '05? How many actually did? Hardly anyone actually got their hands on one until Spring of '06. 16GB cards? Same thing.

In another thread, I was grilling Richard about when we can buy them and I think he said "maybe at the end of June or beginning of July"? Something about a container ship arriving here by then, as long as there are no delays.

Hope that they come through for you but better have a good plan B for your shoot.

Dan
Click to expand...

the difference is that this product is already in production and has been sold, they were just sold out and were supposed to get more by the first date, and then the date changed again and again. thats all.
 
When you do get word pass it along please, I am interested in picking some of these up for sure.

Hope it works out for you PaPa.
 
I did answer your email Jonathan.

This is far more than a hobby. I'll have a thousand fixtures of various kinds out there in customer hands by this fall which is not bad for a year and a half since we shipped the first one. This is not some guy in his basement making up a few fixtures of some kind here or there as there is demand. This is a full fledged manufacturing operation that operates off its own capital and is thus limited in the scope or size. Plus we are working in a domain which is a relatively small market. We do a hundred or several hundred of something at a time usually, not several thousand. We try to anticipate demand and we try to spread the capital effectively over all the products we're making and the new ones too. Sometimes it stretches a bit thin. Anyway, there are people using Cool Lights products in the USA, Canada, UK, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Africa, France, Norway, Finland, Romania, and perhaps others that I can't think of at the moment.

We know how to do this business and we know what it takes to keep the price low. You have to know that delays are part of the process. As the RED camera company is fond of saying "all dates subject to change, count on it." Its something any manufacturer can relate too. So, that is not just RED or us, as someone else mentioned, its every manufacturer. Manufacturers all discover more information during the process and that information may trigger changes that will make their overall offer better.

I always say, you can have any 2 of the 3 criteria for products: good, fast or inexpensive. You can never have all 3. We may have certain products ready to go (like the fresnels which have been ready for quite some time) but they may have to wait on another product which isn't ready for various reasons. To keep prices low we ship them all together and by sea which is about the only relatively economical way to ship long distance that's left. Its just the way it has to be done and it is a slow process. And you don't get a tracking number and delivery to your door at the end of the process so its nothing at all like express. If I shipped the fresnels by themselves by air cargo to make it faster, it could increase the price dramatically, then what was the point of the exercise? If I shipped them by themselves even at sea to try to get them there quicker it could increase the price as well.

The idea was to lower the price of a daylight, HMI-like fresnel and we are doing all the things we need to do in order to do that. They are coming, they were here before, they'll be here again. Its not vaporware, there are quite a few out there already. I don't know what else to tell you. It's true though that if you don't move fast you may miss out until the next manufacturing cycle for a particular product that you really wanted. This is because we don't overlap production well at this time to make sure we don't run out of supply. If we were a one product company we could do that much better I guess; but we're trying to cover all the advanced, superior energy leverage lighting technologies that you all are demanding today in the areas of flo, metal halide and soon LEDs.
 
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w00t Amen! Got your e-mail Rich. Just hope i can get them as soon as humanly possible or we're gunna have to money up for more alternatives.

Thanks again! Can't wait to have these guys at the door.
 
UPDATE: June 26, 2008. The CDM 150 fresnels went out today to all that pre-ordered and are available to all who were waiting for stock. No vaporware.
 
Cool Lights said:
UPDATE: June 26, 2008. The CDM 150 fresnels went out today to all that pre-ordered and are available to all who were waiting for stock. No vaporware.
Click to expand...

I officially rescind my labeling of Cool Lights CDM-150s as vaporware ;-)

I will order some as soon as I get back from my trip to NY. Do you have enough supply that you anticipate having stock for a few weeks at least?

Thanks for the update Richard.

Dan
 
Have a great trip. I'm back in the states in Reno now overseeing things. On stock, no problem, we got 4 times the amount we had in the first order. Should last a while.
 
Quick question Richard:
I'm considering a couple of the CDMs for my lighting package.
I recall one of your posts equating the out put of the CDM-150 to a 650w tungsten unit. In the tests you posted recently, the CDM output was about half the footcandle reading of the 650 at the same distance on flood (same color temperature, I presume).
Am I mis-reading the results or is the CDM just not as punchy as originally thought?
Ken
the Screen Skins guy
 
Yes I probably should re-check my results on that as I realized that later. I showed the 650w as 675 fc at 3 feet and the 150w CDM as 492 at 3 feet. Doesn't seem right somehow.
 
Where have you been? Haven't seen you around much. You must be really getting the most (or more than me anyway) out of your RED.

Anyway, for you (in Oregon) its practically overnight (by Ground) since we're in Reno. I imagine realistically two days though.

Another update. We should have a low cost speedring for these fresnels in the fall. My target is 34.00. It will work with our 24x24 softbox and probably could work with yours too (but we have no realistic way to test all the different softbox models out there).

Speedring150-1Cm.jpg
 
Cool Lights said:
Where have you been? Haven't seen you around much. You must be really getting the most (or more than me anyway) out of your RED.

Anyway, for you (in Oregon) its practically overnight (by Ground) since we're in Reno. I imagine realistically two days though.

Another update. We should have a low cost speedring for these fresnels in the fall. My target is 34.00. It will work with our 24x24 softbox and probably could work with yours too (but we have no realistic way to test all the different softbox models out there).

Speedring150-1Cm.jpg
Click to expand...

I've been slam busy for the last four months shooting two short films and attending NAB. The first short is still in post but the second one was 'Aetas' for the timefest. Its up, you should check it out.

This is excellent timing, I'll have some money later next week and would love to get a couple of these! Where are you at on the 575s?

On your speedring, will it be standard chimera size? Though I guess I could just get your softboxes and skip chimera altogether.
 
I think it should work with the chimera softbox, but the problem is all these things really need to be tested to be very sure. 575s are still in an early stage at this point and I probably won't do anything on the inexpensive version before the end of the year. We may market a $1599 version though in the fall using our 575/1200 ballast--the same one we use on the 1200w par.
 
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