$150 for a 575 HMI par?

nyvz said:
Yeah kinda seems crazy to spend time on 150w/400w retrofits or diys if real 575w HR units are $150...
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The bulk of my corporate interview gigs, the 575 would be pretty terrible though. Big bulky and hot light that would take a lot of rigging to get controllable soft light.

I'm finding the sweet spot for me is a biax quad with diffusion for darker environments with - yep - a DIY retrofit 150 3" fresnel; if it's a brighter office, a (retrofit-ish) 400 HID softbox. I use the 575 if it's, say, an office with big windows that have a nice view to hold and I have plenty of space.

After all these years, the quad biax is still crazy useful - diffusion pinned to the barn doors, you can get it right flat against a wall, no heat to speak of, and it's brighter that any of the less expensive LED panels; in fact, I could get 3 or 4 quads for the price of one panel with similar output. (One biax tube is about 3,000 lumens. Many affordable LED panels are less for the whole panel). Once there's an LED with similar output and price, I'll buy one, right now it seems it's a $1k outlay...

As much as I like the 400 softbox setup, the flo is much easier to get setup. Only talking a difference of a couple minutes, but sometimes that's a huge difference...

4 interviews in one day, every one had to have a different setting - quad biax, ripstop, manually white balanced through an 82A filter to eke up the warmth:

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They just took them to $410
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They're crazy. With renovation costs, it was a good deal at $150, plus shipping. At that price you may as well spring the trivial extra amount for the brand-new Chinese stuff. I'd have bought a pair already if they'd just been willing to answer questions about reflector condition.

And less lenses? I'll have no part of this silliness.

P
 
Phil Rhodes said:
They're crazy. With renovation costs, it was a good deal at $150, plus shipping. At that price you may as well spring the trivial extra amount for the brand-new Chinese stuff. I'd have bought a pair already if they'd just been willing to answer questions about reflector condition.

And less lenses? I'll have no part of this silliness.

P
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You'll get no argument from me on that one Phil
 
@ Micheal Carter, I totally agree with you on the baix fixtures. I've got like (12) of them in doubles and quads mostly the Alzo panel light ones. The only thing I had to do with the biax fixtures is switch out their reg. tubes for Kino tubes and finding a safe portable way to transport bulbs. Once you've got that figured out, you're good.
The light has good enough output, doesn't need a lot of power to operate and has a nice wrap around.
I now have (3) enlighten 575 and (2) Chroma Q 575 fixtures amongst other HMI's and I definitely wouldn't use those on an interview set such as you posted above. Nice grab, BTW.
Also, had these fixtures cost what they're now costing, I probably wouldn't of gotten them.
 
wow, glad I got them before the price hike, though it may have been my fault they increased the price as I just ordered a second one two days ago at the old price. I dunno, these are a no-brainer at $150 and certainly a tougher sell at $400 but I could still see that being justifiable. I have a feeling based on the listing that maybe whoever listed these didn't even know these are HMIs since $150 wouldn't be a bad price for a 575w tungsten source4 par with a bulb... It's still cheaper than any of the chinese HMIs and those are generally fresnels and could fail at any second given the quality of that build. These have been in use and while they have more wear they are tested and work through that time and wear. I'd expect a chinese $1k HMI fresnel to last about a year if it doesn't burn your location down first, and fresnels are far less efficient at putting light out and probably about twice as bulky. It's true you might have to spend up to $100 adding on the lenses, barndoors, stand adapter, and switching plugs etc, but frankly it's still not a bad deal given the light output and still coming in under the price of the cheapest junkiest chinese hmi, though I do wonder if anyone will buy them at that price considering the used bulb life and ballast noise is a bit of a questionmark still compared to the competition.

I agree biax fixtures are pretty handy for soft to very soft (diffused) studio light at a very low price, but I used to own some years ago that did the job but sold them and replaced them with LEDs that have way more flexibility at <1/4 the size. I'd consider using a big biax unit with tested bulbs for a fixed studio these days but I don't like them for location work anymore since LEDs generally do more in a smaller more durable package. I've always been a little wary of biax flos since the tungsten bulbs always seem to have green/magenta problem and the dimmers just make them pinker. Frankly the size of a biax unit you'd have to get to do something that equates to what a 575w HMI does would be bigger than my whole light kit. Then again I may be more space-conscious than some since I live in NYC. For the stuff you're doing, Michael, I usually just use a bicolor LED panel or two that fit in my camera bag and stands+softboxes that fit in my tripod bag, you can't do that with a biax light. Anything bigger and I might as well bring a 575w hmi and my 8x8' lite grid that by the way looks amazingly nice and soft folded into a 4x4'. And for fast doc work, a 575w hmi can be so easily hidden anywhere on the ground and bounced across the room with a medium or narrow lens, not something you can do with a biax.
 
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The problem is, if the reflectors are shot and you factor in a new lamp, you're basically just buying a ballast. The PAR shells go for practically nothing and a bad reflector effectively breaks the device because having them recoated costs more than they're worth.

And for $400 you can buy the brand new, reasonably quiet ballast I got.

And you aren't paying a lot of money to ship a potentially useless PAR shell.

As I say, they're crazy, and I would suspect the same of anyone willing to buy at that price. It absolutely stops making sense.

That said, I did find someone selling them in lots of 11 for $1800, so there's always the group buy option!

P
 
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I dunno, the one I got seems to have a perfectly fine reflector and a bulb that's still got half it's life left. Hopefully the second one will be the same. Might be worth replacing the fans though to get the quietest and coolest possible option. I imagine of all the parts the fan probably gets the most wear since it doesn't get replaced and it's a mechanical component that's constantly running even if the bulb is turned off from the ballast.

This is why when I see a good deal I jump on it since they often don't last. Same thing happened with the OP hmis, the price went up after interest sparked. You're going to have a tough time talking me out of thinking I got an awesome deal given the alternative is >$1k or even >$4k and the bulb is worth half what I paid. At least these are also really simple, I can't imagine handing my gaffer an aquarium ballast or a strange diy mogul head and it not slowing things down not to mention getting it back in one piece... There is something to be said for an HR unit that you just plug in and it works and doesn't need gels or cold strikes or odd header/power cables.
 
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That's sort of the point. They're being very cagey about the reflectors, which is suspicious. While one might take the risk at 150, I certainly wouldn't at 400.

But yes, if probably have gone for it if I'd been more local. Or if they'd been more responsive!
 
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Phil Rhodes said:
The problem is, if the reflectors are shot and you factor in a new lamp, you're basically just buying a ballast. The PAR shells go for practically nothing and a bad reflector effectively breaks the device because having them recoated costs more than they're worth.
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Keep in mind - at least the versions I've seen - a new lamp holder has been fabricated to fit. The Enlitens use the same GX size globe but with a more robust holder, but the G12 models - are they just sawing a bigger hole in the par? Looks like you'd need some manufacturing/milling done to get the globes on these things. And the Chroma-Q lampholder has adjustment screws to center the globe, it's been thought out to some extent. I dunno that you can just stick a discharge globe in a par that easily?

For those who've taken the plunge, you can get an aftermarket knockoff par for about a hundred bucks with all 4 lenses. I have an MTB flexipar ($119 I think) and the lenses fit my source 4, could be from the same factory for all I know - and it's a great tungsten fixture for many uses. A lot of punch for the size and wattage, great to fill an 8x8 from across the room when doing tungsten. Individual lenses are on ebay often, but a full set for a hundred-ish with a fixture thrown in ain't a bad deal… used Source Four and the Altman knockoffs show up for $50 or $60 with lenses and doors, especially if you check the big theatrical and show clearance sites.
 
the G12 models - are they just sawing a bigger hole in the par?
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Not even that. A 150W G12-based CDM isn't physically much larger than a tungsten HPL (I suspect the envelope is actually smaller in diameter) and the HPL base is of similar dimensions to G12. The back cap casting may be slightly different, I don't know. I have at least one that was always a 150W CDM PAR, though, and I found that some commercially-available bulbs wouldn't fit it, so I had to open up the hole in the reflector by perhaps 1/16".

The cold-start MSRs tend to use a deeper back cap which is big enough to take a GX9.5 holder and the slightly longer MSR bulb. I'm slightly surprised that Enliten had to fabricate a whole back end for the thing for their MSR PAR, but that may have happened before the castings were widely available. I'm not sure if the deeper back cap castings are even compatible with real ETC PARs.

Naturally the hot-start rated G22 bases are much larger and require an entirely new back end. I built mine out of a section of aluminium extrusion.

The problem with these things is that the reflector is, of course, plated directly onto the rear section casting. Cost to have a Source Four PAR reflector replated is perhaps $100-150 (I checked). You can buy a used one for less than that, of course, but if the new custom back cap won't fit it... well, you've just basically bought a (used) ballast. Which might have been worth $150, but certainly isn't worth $400.

Even with real ETC PARs, not all the parts from different ones will fit together.

P
 
No review yet as I'm still waiting on the Chroma Q to arrive. It's just piss poor that something which is a 7 hour drive away is taking 20 days to get here. I will put a lot of thought into any future purchases I make from lightauction.
 
That's very odd since in the past 2 weeks I discovered these lights, ordered one, tested it, decided to order another, received that a few days ago... Granted the second one was 2 days late due to the snowstorm.
 
Well it showed up late yesterday. A short 20 days after purchase.
They shipped it with the lens in place and it cracked.
Also something inside rattling about, but I have a shoot and can't check it out yet.
I'll also have to install an Edison.

All in all this looks to have had a rough life.


Dave
 
Stuck record mode:

Be very careful about the type of lens you replace it with. Some Source Four PAR lenses are OK for UV-emitting lights. Some aren't. Real-world problems have occurred. Ultraviolet keratitis is extremely unpleasant.
 
Well I just got around to setting up my second one. This one came with a lens installed backwards... which is very odd. I also just got a UV tester I ordered and it would appear that my first Chroma-Q has a UV-protected bulb (CSR575/SE/HR http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ic_40460_csr575_se_hr_uv_c_lamp_575w_95v.html) but the second one is not UV protected, just a regular MSR575HR bulb. I guess I need to invest in some UV gels for the second light since at close range it easily maxes out my UV meter at the center of the beam. Then again I'd never use it directly or at such close range but it's probably worth it to be safe with UV filters.
 
Be careful, that sucker can quickly damage retinas and cause painful sunburns. The damage can happen a lot faster than you would expect and the effect can be delayed, meaning that you don't realize that you received too much exposure until some time later when you experience the aftermath. Not good.
 
As lamps are consumable items, and you have no way of knowing what is in one - normal or UV controlled, the filter is essential. They are rarely gel (because it melts), but dichroic glass.

I still cannot get my head around the idea that you would put a light source into a fixture that costs more than the fixture, and can die on you at any time! You can replace a cracked lens, or fix a bent bracket, or replace wiring - but a one piece led source that costs that much is just madness. It will take years to recoup on electricity savings, has no worth once it's in as a resale item. It also rarely outperforms the old source - so why are we going mad about them?
 
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