Anyone ran across these Flo's

R

Robert Double

Active member
I was just in the midst of piecing together my first kit based mainly on the britek kit when I ran across these Flo's.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Digital-Film...541893788QQcategoryZ30088QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Anyone ever heard, or used them? I would be planning on using them indoors so I would probably look at changing the tubes or using CTO.

As part of a starter kit I am looking at getting Britek G-300 w/barn&soft, GY-650 w/barn&soft, and was also looking at getting a 2nd GY-650/RS-1000 w/barn&soft. But now I am thinking maybe these flo's might be more versatile? Any thoughts?

Robert
 
wellll...the light you are looking at is 230V - so if you are in the U.S. you better make sure you have the right voltage - plus shipping from Australia is VERY expensive and slow. I would rather have a few lights to move around than one large and possibly heavy fixture.
 
For that price you could get a 6 lamp bank that is already ready for US use from this place.

http://www.flolight.com/flo1400.htm

The lamps they supply are 86 CRI and 5000K but perhaps you could talk them into cutting a deal for a fixture with no lamps and buy your own tubes from b&h or somewhere like that.
 
Well I actually live down-under :) where the the postage is slow... haha

so does that change your opinion on the value... it's $499.00 AUD which is about $360USD.
 
I have no idea what quality level to expect from those lights, but if they're well-built, then yes that's quite a bargain. They look to employ a somewhat similar design to a Lowel CaseLite 4, although that one you pointed out looks like it's yoked to only work in "portrait" mode... which isn't necessarily bad, we usually use the CaseLites in "portrait" mode because that's the way the barn doors work most efficiently.

A CaseLite 4 is about $900 without tubes, so $360 would be quite a cost savings. They're different though -- a CaseLite 4 is designed for portability, where these obviously aren't.

Fitz pointed you towards a good link too -- FloLight is from Prompter People, and I've got nothing but good things to say about those guys. Haven't used their lights, but their prompters rock.
 
I think they "look" like a good buy. It would of been nice to speak to someone who has tried them out. For $360.00 it's a bargain if they live up to there description :) In two minds whether to take the risk....

The rest of my kit will consist mainly of tungsten so I will probably either change the tubes to 3200K (if that is possible) or add some CTO gel. Anyone know how much light is lost by using a CTO gel on a flo?
 
If you can only afford one set of tubes, get the daylight tubes and gel 'em with CTO. CTO costs you about 2/3 of one stop, so less than half. 4 55w tubes put out a pretty decent amount of light (we frequently use the CaseLite 4's with only one tube active).

When you need high output is when you're shooting to match daylight, so the daylight tubes will be best for that. When you're shooting tungsten you don't usually need a full 4-bank's worth of output, so the CTO drops it down to somewhere around 3 tubes worth of power, which is still plenty.
 
I didn't see an answer from previous posters but, are the flolights any good? They are incredibly low priced (compared to Divas) and I would really like to know if there are any DVXers out there that have used them yet?

Andrew Hamilton
 
I haven't heard of anyone around here that uses the Flolight fixtures, but they look like they're mainly for studio use. I think a pair would really rock for lighting a greenscreen, but I'm not sure I'd want to lug them around in the field. Also, from my experience with my Diva 400, I'd be looking at fixtures with 2-4 biax tubes because they're lighter and easier to deal with. A 4-biax tube fixtures kicks out quite a bit of light.
 
Um... no... one full stop would be half the light output. A one-stop filter cuts the light output in half. So 2/3 of one stop would be cutting the light output by less than 1/2 (meaning, the light still being output is more than half as bright as the unfiltered light).

Maybe I said it wrong. Let me try it this way: using a CTO filter, you'll still get about 60% as much brightness as the unfiltered light.
 
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