$150 for a 575 HMI par?

Yeah that's all mentioned in this thread. You also need some electrical skills switching plugs and some of the downsides and limitations to be seen. I'm mostly comparing it to the old "$150" unit this thread was started on, and HR and CRI are the improvements which seem most interesting.
 
@myvz, although I don't have a color meter and judging by the eye. The color looks quite good, I can wk with this. I also own (4) Arri 1200 HMI pars complete. So considering the cost of this light including the extras. This can be good value, may just decide to pick up another one.
 
nyvz said:
Looks like this hot-restrike one comes with a bulb that is probably 6000k and 90-95CRI so it may not need any gels which is a big plus since my CTO and minusgreen gels keep burning up!
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Get a set of barn doors and clip across them. Gels will last all day. Put gels in the gel holder and they'll die fast. You can get barn doors for 25 bucks or so.
 
Are these things using a G22 base lamp, or what? They'd usually have to, for HR to work.

I tried hot-starting a GX9.5 MSR once, for giggles, and... no. Really no. Definitely no.
 
If you are talking about the Chroma-Q mentioned above, then yea it uses a G22 base MSR 575 HR lamp.

I went ahead and purchased one of these to add to my fleet of low cost lights.
 
David W. Jones said:
If you are talking about the Chroma-Q mentioned above, then yea it uses a G22 base MSR 575 HR lamp.

I went ahead and purchased one of these to add to my fleet of low cost lights.
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Probably where the hot restrike and color temp are coming from - the Enliten uses GX9.5, smaller bipin - same lamp base as the original tungsten 575, though they upgrade it with a pulse-rated base. MSR/MSD.

Good thing is, those globes can be found for $40 in the 6500-7200k range; to get them at 6000k gets up around $200.
 
nyvz said:
Yeah that's all mentioned in this thread. You also need some electrical skills switching plugs and some of the downsides and limitations to be seen. I'm mostly comparing it to the old "$150" unit this thread was started on, and HR and CRI are the improvements which seem most interesting.
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So, any consensus on the Chroma-Q ballast - if the ignitor is in the lamp housing: would it be simple to add, say, a powercon connector to the ballast and get it off the fixture - or are there giant capacitors and, I dunno, rabid man-eating sharks in the ballast or ignitor that make this a non-DIY project?
 
If I lived a couple of thousand miles nearer-by, I'd be waiting for one to arrive. I just don't want to pay another $150 in carriage and import fees.

So unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine. There's a picture of a used one (at four times the price!) on a UK website wherein the cable going to the lamp looks like a bit of conventional mains cable, which may be an indication that separation of ballast and head is possible.
 
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So been a while since I've checked on this and just wanted to see if anyone found away around the noise the Ballast makes. Looks like I may be doing a decent amount of short food spots in a bright daylight kitchen so a simple HMI book light could do a great job, otherwise I'll probably be using a few flourscent banks (or maybe a grid of CFL bulbs due to budget constraints)
 
Michael Carter said:
So, any consensus on the Chroma-Q ballast - if the ignitor is in the lamp housing: would it be simple to add, say, a powercon connector to the ballast and get it off the fixture - or are there giant capacitors and, I dunno, rabid man-eating sharks in the ballast or ignitor that make this a non-DIY project?
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I'll look it over when it arrives.

I'll also see if it can strike an 800w lamp.
 
Just received my Chroma-Q and I'm impressed. I threw on a 5-15 plug and a spare lens from my TMB par and plugged it in and did a quick test. Color temperature looks great, shot a colorchart and brought it into Adobe Camera RAW and it's pretty much spot on daylight. The display tells you how many hours the bulb has. Mine reads 516hrs which isn't bad for a 1000hr bulb. It also has a temperature readout and I can hear the fan speed go up as the temperature goes up. The fan is much more quiet than the TMB par (pre-mod) so far, but I'm waiting to see how loud it can get as it gets hotter. It's nice that I can click a button and run the bulb at 60% power which probably also limits heat and noise if necessary. I'm curious to see if I can stick a small battery powered fan on the vent to keep the thing cool and keep it from ever having to increase the fan speed/noise. It's currently running and is significantly quieter than my desktop computer that's also in the room. Seems like I should order another one and sell off my TMBs...

Hmm how to test for UV, maybe one of those cheap little sunburn UV testers?
 
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nyvz said:
Just received my Chroma-Q and I'm impressed. I threw on a 5-15 plug and a spare lens from my TMB par and plugged it in and did a quick test. Color temperature looks great, shot a colorchart and brought it into Adobe Camera RAW and it's pretty much spot on daylight. The display tells you how many hours the bulb has. Mine reads 516hrs which isn't bad for a 1000hr bulb. It also has a temperature readout and I can hear the fan speed go up as the temperature goes up. The fan is much more quiet than the TMB par (pre-mod) so far, but I'm waiting to see how loud it can get as it gets hotter. It's nice that I can click a button and run the bulb at 60% power which probably also limits heat and noise if necessary. I'm curious to see if I can stick a small battery powered fan on the vent to keep the thing cool and keep it from ever having to increase the fan speed/noise. It's currently running and is significantly quieter than my desktop computer that's also in the room. Seems like I should order another one and sell off my TMBs...

Hmm how to test for UV, maybe one of those cheap little sunburn UV testers?
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I still feel an optimal solution is getting a 50' cable from the ballast - raises the question of igniter placement, space for a connector and so on.

Still unanswered - when powered down and disconnected, can someone poke around in a ballast and igniter without getting fried by residual power?
 
I wouldn't. Even an older ballast will tend to have a large power-factor correction capacitor, which may retain charge, and a modern one is essentially a switching power supply with the usual rectify-smooth topology forming the first stage. The "smooth" part of that will retain significant power at slightly more than mains voltage and is a significant hazard, even if the rest of it isn't (and it is).

As to the ignitors, I have no idea. Every one I've ever seen has been potted so I'm not really sure.

P
 
Gotcha. Though I suppose if the igniter is in the lamp housing, a brave soul could just cut into the ballast-to-fixture cable and stick some connectors on the existing cable.

Wear three layers of playtex dishwashing gloves and sunglasses, just in case!
 
Caps can be made safe by discharging them, we do it all the time.

I will look into it when mine arrives.

As a side I was outbid on a pair of S4 150w HID PARs while I was still asleep.

Really pissed me off!
 
Yes, I was withholding that advice on the basis that anyone competent to do it would know about it already :engel017:

The 150W conversion is pretty straightforward. I have three which were iron-ballast Chinese knockoffs, which I simply refit with electronic ballasts. They appear to be flicker free to lots of frames per second. The ballasts are very easy to find because they're used all over the place.
 
Amazon sells a little 150w electronic ballast that works really well with HID globes. This $50 globe has the best daylight rendering I've found in the DIY realm.

Not an amazing amount of light, but a nice little fresnel conversion for a hair light or wall wash. The bulb doesn't have a UV envelope, so needs to be behind glass, preferable UV glass and add a UV gel (and Phil can pipe in about that if he wants!)

In the 400-watt realm, there are some decent mogul solutions. Mogul bulbs are BIG, but you can put them in Photoflex Starlite fixtures and use Photoflex video softboxes. This is now my main interview kit - a 400 watt starlight with a medium box and a gird when needed, packs small, sets up fast - and a 3" fresnel with the globe and ballast mentioned above. This globe is cheap, 30,000 lumens and needs maybe 1/8 minus green (I just WB to it); and any of those extruded aluminum aquarium/grow ballasts will strike it (look for one without a fan; there's usually used ones on eBay for decent prices).

Note that some starlite fixtures - as far as I can tell - are an E39 mogul base; HID globes are E-40. So a tungsten globe can go in either one, a pulse-start bulb can only go in the bigger one. I have three starlights, but only two will accept the globes - I think newer ones will take either globe. Not sure why, but I assume more recent mogul sockets will take either size?
 
(and Phil can pipe in about that if he wants!)
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Mrgh! Fwzl, garh bloop bloop bloop!

I just used the normal commercial ballasts. They tend to be available used on ebay for very little, and having stripped a couple down it was my observation that they were quite well made. No two of the three I have are exactly the same type, but they all seem to behave similarly. I stuck with the G12 on the basis that's what was already in the PAR shells. Possibly the tiny HQI you cite could be used given a bit of engineering - even a plug-in adaptor. Better daylight would be nice, although I haven't tried the Cool Lights daylight quartz G12 lamps.

The holy grail is to find a giant unopened box of these, and be able to make basically-575-HMIs for next to nothing, with the aquarium ballasts. Many places advertise them, but I've phoned round and the product essentially no longer exists. But frankly, if the supply of $150 car-show PARs is constant, who cares.
 
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