$150 for a 575 HMI par?

@jonliz

There's a slight buzz with the lamp that the light shipped with, but I'll report back after my Koto lamp comes in. It's quieter than my Alzo 3200s, so I regard it as a win so far.
 
QuickHitRecord said:
@jonliz

There's a slight buzz with the lamp that the light shipped with, but I'll report back after my Koto lamp comes in. It's quieter than my Alzo 3200s, so I regard it as a win so far.
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Oh really, had no idea that Alzos buzzed. I feel like I'm pretty tolerant of that kind of stuff but honestly this is my first HMI (purchase and use) so I'm probably just not used to it yet. Looking forward to hear how it goes, thanks man.
 
It may not be the lamps. I strongly suspect it's a characteristic of the drive waveform from the ballast - a square wave. Essentially it's behaving like a real movie ballast that's permanently stuck in "flicker free" mode. Arri ballasts do much the same in that mode. The upshot should be that is has reasonable flicker free performance up to fairly respectable frame rates.

All that said, some lamps do it more than others, depending how their internal metalwork is configured and how free it is to flap around in the breeze. Some of them appear to do it less after having been run in for a while, but I'm not really sure what the mechanism of that is. It may be worth allowing new lamps to age for a few tens of hours.

Ultimately this is likely to be about the worst problem they have. Otherwise it's a hot restart HMI for peanuts. Enjoy. I wish there were some in the UK at reasonable prices.
 
Regarding the Chroma-Q Daylight Par...

nyvz said:
It's nice that I can click a button and run the bulb at 60% power
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Can anyone walk me through this? I've read the manual, and I can toggle between High Power (LPF), Low Power (LPL), and Off (LPO). It does seem to dim to about 60% at Low Power, but I don't think that I can toggle back to High Power without passing Off mode. When I go to Off, I hear that sickening, crackling sound of a filament burning through (but it doesn't, because eventually the light does come back on), and then it seems that I can't bring it back to High Power for a few minutes. Anyone have this figured out?
 
It doesn't have a filament. It's an arc light. Are you just hearing the electrical discharge of the ignitor as it attempts to restart a hot lamp?

They should be hot restart and come back up fairly immediately.
 
That could be it. I figured that hot restrike allows me to turn the light off and then on again without a cool down period, and it seemed like that would apply to Low Power mode too. But maybe there are other rules.

You can probably tell that I haven't worked extensively with HMIs. Just a couple of old Desistis a few times. I'm learning as I go.
 
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Phil Rhodes said:
It may not be the lamps. I strongly suspect it's a characteristic of the drive waveform from the ballast - a square wave. Essentially it's behaving like a real movie ballast that's permanently stuck in "flicker free" mode. Arri ballasts do much the same in that mode. The upshot should be that is has reasonable flicker free performance up to fairly respectable frame rates.

All that said, some lamps do it more than others, depending how their internal metalwork is configured and how free it is to flap around in the breeze. Some of them appear to do it less after having been run in for a while, but I'm not really sure what the mechanism of that is. It may be worth allowing new lamps to age for a few tens of hours.

Ultimately this is likely to be about the worst problem they have. Otherwise it's a hot restart HMI for peanuts. Enjoy. I wish there were some in the UK at reasonable prices.
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Ah I see, that makes sense. I remember reading that now earlier in this thread. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to see if I can extend that cable from the ballast and get it a few feet away and reduce the buzz. I know how to discharge capacitors (I took a analog electronics course in college) so maybe I'll do that some day.

And also, I couldn't find anywhere in the manual where it describes what "Lhr" means. When I scroll through I get LPF, LPL, and LPO, but I also at some point get Lhr, which looks like it would mean Low hours but I don't know. Oh well.
 
jonliz said:
And also, I couldn't find anywhere in the manual where it describes what "Lhr" means. When I scroll through I get LPF, LPL, and LPO, but I also at some point get Lhr, which looks like it would mean Low hours but I don't know. Oh well.
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I think it's "Lamp Hours" (roughly the number of hours you have left on a given lamp).
 
Ah ok that makes sense. Yeah I scrolled through the settings and accidentally turned it off too, sucks that you have to scroll through LPO before getting back to LPF, freaks me out thinking I might pop a bulb since they're expensive. I'm just going to try and diffuse or bounce this thing. The feature is cool but probably works best as it was intended, hanging above cars at auto shows apparently. That's probably the best way to go back and forth between 60% and 100% via a dmx controller or something remote like that. I assume these weren't really designed to be operated by a person pressing the buttons on the ballast...even though there are buttons on the ballast. Maybe more a redundancy design, in case something else in line fails.
 
Phil Rhodes said:
Usually lamp hours would be expired, not remaining. Watch to see if it goes up!
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jonliz said:
Ah I see, that makes sense. I remember reading that now earlier in this thread. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to see if I can extend that cable from the ballast and get it a few feet away and reduce the buzz. I know how to discharge capacitors (I took a analog electronics course in college) so maybe I'll do that some day.

And also, I couldn't find anywhere in the manual where it describes what "Lhr" means. When I scroll through I get LPF, LPL, and LPO, but I also at some point get Lhr, which looks like it would mean Low hours but I don't know. Oh well.
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Are you sure it isn't LPr which means it's running on DMX rather than local control. Be careful with lamp hours on those bulbs. They usually start losing color temp after around 300 hours, and they do explode when pushed too long.
 
I have not used one of these things for years, but it strikes me that "LPF" might mean lamp frequency, and therefore adjusting it might possibly help quiet any buzz. Complete speculation, could be wrong, not responsible if you die or blow up the hemisphere.

P
 
jonliz said:
Ah ok that makes sense. Yeah I scrolled through the settings and accidentally turned it off too, sucks that you have to scroll through LPO before getting back to LPF,
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I haven't found that to be the case, just use the opposite up/down button to toggle between the two... I do always forget which order they go and half the time go the wrong way, but you can just cycle back and forth using the up and down buttons to get between LPF and LPL.

Also I had one of my units that was buzzing a lot more than the other and realized it changed when I put force on different parts of the head, so I adjusted the bulb position more careful to keep the bulb from making contact with the reflector and it significantly reduced the sound. There is still some slight buzzing from the bulb but now that it's not amplified by the reflector/chassis it's not audible from a few feet in front of the unit so it's not a concern anymore.

I do have an occasional problem where the variable fan voltage isn't enough when the unit hasn't been running that long and the fan doesn't turn on without a little push (blowing on it works). If I forget to blow on the fan to get it going when I strike the unit, sometimes the fan stays off until the unit gets too hot and increases the fan speed enough that the fan turns on and the difference between the fan off sound and the fan on high sound is a bit much, though not that bad a few feed away from talent on the other side of some diffusion... Guess I probably need a new fan with less friction from wear so it can crank on without needing a push or waiting until the unit gets too hot.
 
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Definitely sounds like a bad fan. I'd replace it as a matter of priority - if it fails altogether, as it inevitably has to at some point, it could destroy the ballast.
 
has anyone found a way to mitigate the UV issue? Id pick up a few of the Enlitens if I weren't afraid of burning someone's eyeballs out or giving them 3rd degree burns.
 
I've been quite happy with my UV-Control bulbs, seems to solve the issue for me... Not sure if enlitens use the same type of bulb though.
 
which fixture are you using?

The chroma q? If so, do you have issues with the integrated ballast? They're harder to find and more expensive. Is this a reasonable price?

https://prg-proshop.com/products/item/202

If so, it doesn't appear to come with the actual source four tube to hold gels/gobos/etc . Would any source four tube work for that? I see a lot of those tubes have bean angle widths on them. Do you have to get the specific tube for each lens that you get (wide,narrow,etc) ? Do the tubes have the shutters that source 4s are known for?

Lots of questions! Haha thanks in advance
 
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Yeah I have two chroma-q's. I don't mind the ballast being on the yoke, it can be nice to just be able to plug it in without having to hook up header cables and ballast and store all the parts separately.

That seems like a reasonable price, I mean for the output it's hard to beat at such a price, and mine didn't come with lenses if I recall. Not so into that white color though...

These are not lekos if that's what you mean. I'm not sure if you can turn these into lekos but it'd take more than just a lens tube I'm sure.
 
Ah I see, makes sense of course. So the UV bulbs do the job? Nobody has had any problems with them?

Earlier in the thread I've seen people saying the chroma qs ballast was extremely noisy. Did you replace the fans?
 
I think the noise has more to do with them being in a sort of permanent state of 'flicker free' mode. I've sort of learned to just live with it. And I have one of the UV-Block bulbs, no issues, except it seems to not be as bright as the non-uv block bulb. Could be the reflector though. I have three Chroma-Q lights, and I plugged two in right next to each other, same lenses, one with the UV-Block bulb and the other with the non-UV block (and slightly older) bulb. Non-Uv was noticibly brigher, no matter how much I messed with the three adjustement screws. Could be the actual fixture or reflector though, who knows.

In any case these are awesome lights for what they are. If you live in the United States, try contacting Revolution Lighting in Glenn falls NY. You can negotiate with them sometimes (I did). The one in the link you posted will end up costing about $380 after shipping (I emailed them for a quote already). If they have any Chroma-Q still around ( they had about 11 last time I checked), you can probably snag them for under $300 including shipping.
 
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