Are all flo's prone to the dreaded green spike?

C

Chipgreen

Member
I'm new here but I've been making some careful purchasing decisions based on your great advice. Among my first buys was to create an interview lighting kit. For now, I figured I'd buy enough to conduct a one person interview, which is what I mostly do at the moment. Mostly chest up. I also wanted to travel light so ended up buying two CoolLights 2-bank flo's for key and fill duty. But as soon as I got them I saw that they had a pretty noticeable green cast. My friend's agree so it's not just me. I also custom balanced off some other lighting panels I have including a Stellar ring light, which looks to have quite a good CRI, and a small Litepanels LED. Not the most even comparison but it's what I have and the CoolLights definitely have a green cast that can be corrected with a 1/8th or possibly a 1/4. My question is whether this is normal or not for Coollights? Or Flo's in general? Some people on the forum mentioned that Diva's always require a 1/8th minus green. Could it be that I have a defective unit? I just wanted to make sure that I'm not overreacting since so many people here endorse the brand. Thanks for you help and look forward to contributing to the community where I can.
 
My understanding was always that real Kinoflos didn't have the spike or very minor and pretty much everything else does (which is one reason real Kinos are so expensive).
 
gonzo_entertainment said:
My understanding was always that real Kinoflos didn't have the spike or very minor and pretty much everything else does (which is one reason real Kinos are so expensive).
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We are talking about the bulbs? The fixtures have nothing to do with it. Just buy kino bulbs if its true.
 
Chipgreen said:
My question is whether this is normal or not for Coollights? Or Flo's in general?
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Fluorescents, HMIs, and LEDs are all variations on discharge lamps. And they all have a green spike in their spectrums, among other spikes. These can be more or less controlled -- I've got a fluorescent tube with seven phosphors that I used to use for color correction of still photography. That tube is the closest I've seen to a fully controlled fluorescent tube; it has a CRI of 98 if the literature is to be believed. All I know for sure (lacking the instrumentation) is that it's a darn good match to daylight at certain times of day.

That said, it's perfectly normal to use 1/8 and 1/4 minus green gels on fluorescents. So no, I doubt you have a defective unit. And the green spike will probably calm down a bit as the tubes age.
 
True Match lamps...

True Match lamps...

KinoFlo True Match lamps are what you want. We also have the very popular MovieTone in standard sizes that will work in T8 and T12 fixtures.

The True Match lamps have very small, narrow spike at about 540nm, but you do not need minus-green on these. The daylight 5500 lamps have the best performance, from a smoothness of curve CRI standpoint. 100 CRI is the target at any given color temperature and you cannot get higher than 93 - 95 at this point.

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Thanks for the replies. I do like the lights and the build. Seems to be a good deal for the price. I was just surprised that the green was more noticeable than others had led on. A single 1/8 minus is no big deal, really. I could just leave it on. A bit about me is that I'm coming from still photography so not used to using continuous lighting. I've mostly used strobes while on the go, doing mostly events. But I'm starting to do more video interviews. I also have a few fresnels (small Arri and two Moles) that I got from a friend but I'm still trying to figure those out and how to use them. The flos seem so much easier to deal with in nearly every way for what I do. Of course, I'd prefer to tweak as little as possible in post.

I'm also more of a sound guy so can offer all of you some help there since I'm still a video noob. I've been cycling through digital recorders and have found the best recorder yet with amazing pre's. Roland R-26. Only problem there is that it doesn't have locking XLR. I almost returned it for that and might sell it if I have problems down the line. I know unrelated to the original post but just putting it out there if anybody has any questions. My last recorder was a big Marantz deck which was a bit cumbersome to carry around. I also had one of the earlier palm sized Tascam's which was not so good. My friends have H4s which don't seem to work very well at all with dynamic mics. Of course, that's another threat right there.
 
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gonzo_entertainment said:
That's what I said. The real Kino Flo (bulbs) have minimal spike.
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If I remember correctly, and someone please correct me if I am mistaken... But The Kino Flo biax tubes look a little more magenta then most tubes, because Kino Flo uses special ballasts which are overdriven to help compensate for this fact which tends to react much in the same way as a non Kino Flow ballast light combo looking more green when temperatures start to rise in a normal 55w biax tube. Using Kino Flow tubes in Non-Kino Flow ballast setups with dimming past 1 stop, and they will get real magenta looking. Non dimmed and the magenta shouldn't look that way on camera. Many times I have mixed Kino's with other tubes in a multi tube setup.
 
I haven't noticed any difference in magenta of the Kino Flo tubes between a Diva and my DeSisti. I haven't tested them side-by-side, but I'm not sure if the Kino Flo ballasts are different from any other high frequency ballast. The only time I noticed them to be less magenta was in one instance when we had a sheet of 251 covering the entire face of a parazip. The heat got trapped in there and the tubes were clearly outputting more blue/green.
 
I borrowed a set of daylight Kino tubes from a friend of a friend who has two Divas and they do improve the CoolLight color quite noticeably. It's still not the same but you wouldn't notice it in most case so can mix lighting pretty easily. I guess that's the answer after all.
 
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