Advice purchasing HMI lights

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David Seow

Member
I want to invest in HMI lighting. My budget is around $10,000. My options so far are these:

-Buy used lights from this place http://www.secondwindstaging.com/ I have considered the LTM 1.2k for $4,500, a joker bug 400w for $3,500 and the 6k strand with magnetic ballast for $2,199.

-Buy two 1.2Ks and one 575w from cool lights.


Does anyone have any experience with secondwindstaging? Please let me know your opinions about buying used HMIs. Cool lights seems like a good option, problem is I don´t know of anybody using them and can´t seem to find any information or videos of them in use. The 5 minute wait for restrike is something I don´t like... but could overlook if the light is of good quality.

I don´t live in the US or anywhere near a rental house, so renting is out of the question for me.

Your thoughts and opinions will be greatly appreciated!
 
Just curious, if you don't live near a rental house or in the US. How are you planning to power these bigger HMI's? Do you have access to generators that will get you enough power?

I haven't dealt with these guys before, but all these lights seem like they would be fine purchases. The magnetic ballast and the 6k are just the ones that worry me the most...If you want to shoot things off speed at all you'll run into issues with the magnetic ballast, not to mention the fact that they're just much more of a pain in the butt than the electronic ones.

I'd rather have an LTM and a joker in my kit than the cool lights versions. A lot more versatile and much more widely accepted as the industry standard.
 
Thanks for the response Ryan! Most of the lights mentioned above, I believe would work fine on any 15 amp circuit. To use the 6k I guess a tie in (done by a professional electrician) would be needed, I'm pretty sure it's legal here.

When you say the magnetic ballast is a pain, do you mean because of the restricted shutter speeds? Or do they need some kind of regular maintenance or something like that?
 
RyanT said:
Just curious, if you don't live near a rental house or in the US. How are you planning to power these bigger HMI's? Do you have access to generators that will get you enough power?

I haven't dealt with these guys before, but all these lights seem like they would be fine purchases. The magnetic ballast and the 6k are just the ones that worry me the most...If you want to shoot things off speed at all you'll run into issues with the magnetic ballast, not to mention the fact that they're just much more of a pain in the butt than the electronic ones.

I'd rather have an LTM and a joker in my kit than the cool lights versions. A lot more versatile and much more widely accepted as the industry standard.
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1.2s can live off of 15amp circuits fine, in most cases. Unless your ballast hates you.

But I do agree, Cool lights are terrible and NOT a good investment. You might as well buy a beat up truck painted new from the 80s, because it will only last you (if lucky) a few months.
First time I work with one, ballast decides to flip out and destroy a bulb. Expensive bulb.

Now buying used and old HMIs is the same problem, but I'm sure SecondWind wouldnt sell equipment with hidden issues
 
I've moved this from Cinematography to Lighting. However, I've left the links as expiring re-directs for three days. I hope you get some great responses!
 
Ricky, thanks for the headsup with the cool lights.

Is there any test (besides switching them on) I could perform on the used HMIs before purchasing? Is there anything specific I should be on the lookout for?
 
RickyC said:
But I do agree, Cool lights are terrible and NOT a good investment. You might as well buy a beat up truck painted new from the 80s, because it will only last you (if lucky) a few months.
First time I work with one, ballast decides to flip out and destroy a bulb. Expensive bulb.
Click to expand...

Hi, sorry to hear of your experience. Whose Cool Lights HMI did you use, what model was it and when was this incident. Don't recall a report of a problem like this.
 
David Seow said:
-Buy two 1.2Ks and one 575w from cool lights.


Please let me know your opinions about buying used HMIs. Cool lights seems like a good option, problem is I don´t know of anybody using them and can´t seem to find any information or videos of them in use. The 5 minute wait for restrike is something I don´t like... but could overlook if the light is of good quality.
Click to expand...

We have two lines of metal halide fixtures. CDM (5 minute wait to restrike and that is a 70w and 150w unit) and HMI (traditional hot restart no wait to restrike, 575 and 1200w units).

We do have customers that have both types on this board, as far as I can tell, none have chimed in here yet and they may not frequent this forum every day.
 
RyanT said:
I'd rather have an LTM and a joker in my kit than the cool lights versions. A lot more versatile and much more widely accepted as the industry standard.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Which Cool Lights HMI did you use (70w, 150w, 575w, 1200w), whose was it (which actual person did you borrow it from), and what year when you were doing your comparison to the LTM or K5600 units?
 
David W. Jones said:
Many HMI's have an hour meter.
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I dont own any HMIs so I can't point out exactly what it is, but isn't the hour meter for the bulb? I've worked with some old hmis that only say a few hundred hours, but I may be wrong, it could be the whole life of it.


David Seow said:
Ricky, thanks for the headsup with the cool lights.

Is there any test (besides switching them on) I could perform on the used HMIs before purchasing? Is there anything specific I should be on the lookout for?
Click to expand...


Switch it on and leave it on for a while. You can also take it to the manufacturer (or someone that repairs HMIs) and have them give their opinion on it.
Some ballasts may also give off a sound, some older ones could be a simple humm though




@Coollights - Honestly your products would hit me (and a lot of other people more) if they were not Arri look-alikes. I can't take any company seriously that copies another one identically. In my honest opinion, if your HMIs would have a different design I may buy them. Maybe that one occasion was that one time, I've just heard bad mojo on them that they don't last very long. We had a 1200w HMI I think




RyanT said:
I'd rather have an LTM and a joker in my kit than the cool lights versions. A lot more versatile and much more widely accepted as the industry standard.
Click to expand...

Thats another thing, as Ryan mentioned. The industry standard. More rental opportunities, less bitching crew members and happier insurance companies


CoolLights, I don't mean to hate. Maybe I just have high standards, I DO look at Avenger grip equipment as a joke and still think steel track and tripods are awesome :)
 
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I'm not sure what "they don't last very long" means. We have a service department, if something goes wrong, people send it in for service. There are problems every day with other brands as well and they have service techs that fix those too. When you know of an actual incident, who's it was, when, etc., please let us know. We support all of our products and if someone doesn't contact us with a problem, we can't know about it nor can we fix it.

As far as "industry standard", Cool Lights were designed for owner operators and offered at a price they can afford. Therefore they were never designed for a rental market since rental market and owner operator are in direct conflict, I can see why many rental agencies and people that own grip trucks would be against something lower cost that allows someone to actually own rather than rent all the time. Rental markets are for items that are too expensive to purchase and specifically for people that don't want to own. Products priced for owner operators are a totally different market and empower people that don't want to rent to no longer do so.
 
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Cool Lights said:
Hi,

Which Cool Lights HMI did you use (70w, 150w, 575w, 1200w), whose was it (which actual person did you borrow it from), and what year when you were doing your comparison to the LTM or K5600 units?
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I haven't used your units, but this is speaking specifically about the joker unit in terms of its versatility. K5600 is the only HMI manufacturer I know of that has a bug-a-beam adapter for its 400 and 800 units, not to mention the soft tube, big eye fresnel, the bug ring with 20"/30" lantern, focal spot, and the multi bug.

These number of accessories makes the joker an amazing purchase. You can turn your 400 watt par unit into a kino like fixture, a daylight balanced ellipsoidal, a fresnel, and finally you can gang a bunch of them up together to increase your intensity. I really haven't seen a unit that can come close to that sort of versatility. I took a quick peak at the products on your website and I don't see anything that seems like it can do that much with one fixture.

In the end the sad thing is it's really not about the quality of your product. I wouldn't be surprised if your HMI's are great tough lights that get the job and then some, but people just want to see those big name brands, especially when it comes to rentals.
 
That's fine. I just delivered my opinion about owner operators vs. rental market. They're two competing philosophies and are not going to agree on much.

I see you work for "Northern California's largest lighting and grip rental house" according to your blog. If you still work there you should probably disclose that and that your company sells both LTM and K5600 products as well otherwise, its a conflict of interest if you don't announce it. That makes your company a competitor with ours. You should also say you've never seen our product as well rather than leave a kind of hint that you might have seen it, tested it, contrasted it with other lighting.
 
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Sure, disclosing that I work there is not a bad idea and I should have been a bit more clear as to what I was getting at.

However, in the end I don't need to see or touch your product to tell you that the versatility of the joker bug is unparalleled by any other unit available on the market. I don't think it really comes down to much more than that.

Edit:
Just as an aside. 90%-95% of my income comes from my freelance work. Not to mention I have a small rental business of my own that is also in competition with the shop that I work at. Also the sales portion of the shop is a pretty small portion of their business and I don't recieve any compensation for any sales. So, if any of this is being disclosed, I should just let you all know the interest that is in conflict here is pretty minimal.
 
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Well, to be honest I really didn´t expect this to be so controversial...

I have to say I´m still kind of undecided, second hand equipment has left me good and bad experiences so it´s really a 50/50 gamble.

As for Cool Lights, I really wish there was more information out there to be able to judge. I really admire a small business that tries to compete with big brands. I know $3,600.00 is a low price compared to the big names... but I still consider it a fair amount of cash to invest blindfolded in something. I would really encourage you (Cool Lights) to encourage your customers to make video reviews or something like it. This would give potential customers more confidence when deciding to make a purchase.
 
i am a customer of cool lights and have purchased a range of Richards lights. and have been more than happy with them and his customer service
he gets back to you in hours if you have problems and goes out of his way to answer you.

i think it only fair if you have a problem with his gear to be specific and give him a chance to respond.
not make vague allegations disparaging his gear on a public forum..

cheers
 
David Seow said:
As for Cool Lights, I really wish there was more information out there to be able to judge. I really admire a small business that tries to compete with big brands. I know $3,600.00 is a low price compared to the big names... but I still consider it a fair amount of cash to invest blindfolded in something. I would really encourage you (Cool Lights) to encourage your customers to make video reviews or something like it. This would give potential customers more confidence when deciding to make a purchase.
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On the one hand, we haven't had to market the HMIs, they have sold themselves. So from our point of view, it hasn't been an issue. If they weren't moving then we'd have had to do something long ago. We have been selling them now since 2008. We have a lot of those 575s and 1200s out there now. We're just about to run out of this batch of 575s and 1200s. I think many of them are bought because they know someone that has one and they saw it in action.

On the other hand, from the point of view of people that don't know anyone that owns these products, I'd love to have some videos and have encouraged some of the 575 and 1200w owners to do so. Unfortunately, most want to be paid to do it. Cool Lights has a firm policy that we don't pay for reviews or videos. The reasons for this policy are numerous including what should be obvious conflicts of interest. We don't want that kind of energy between us and customers where we have to pay them to give good opinions. Any reviews you see by our real customers are completely spontaneous like this recent thread where someone was talking about the LED 600 used in filming scenes in a cave:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?81328-Cave-filming-lighting

I don't particularly pretend to understand why we have so many people that buy products in the $400 range and they love to give these kinds of videos, reviews, BTS photos, etc. Then you have a $3600 product, that by all opinions of these customers, are very happy with. Perhaps the very fact that they do have the budget for such lighting means they are too busy making money (to be able to afford such budgets), to do anything other than what makes them money. Sooner or later someone will answer the call and provide a great video and would also love some more BTS stills for the gallery.

As far as the value of reviews go, this thread shows very well what the value is, or lack thereof, of reviews given the anonymity of the Internet.
 
I use the Cool Lights CDM units and am very pleased with both, the quality of the light fixture and the Light Quality. Very good units.

The only complaint that I have about them is the lack of US stock on some units that lasts for months and months... have been waiting for the CDM 150 to be instock since close to the first of the year and finally, earlier this week gave in and ordered a unit to be shipped in from China and pay the extra shipping fees.

Richard, I really wish you were better able to control stock levels in the US.
 
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