Arri or Power Gems 1000Hz Ballast?

Grug

Grug

Veteran
Hi Guys,

I'm looking at picking up an M18 at the moment, and tossing up between grabbing it with either the Arri 1000Hz ballast, or the Power Gems 1000Hz ballast.

Being in Australia (well, technically I'm over in Bollywood at the moment, but I'll be home in a month), I haven't encountered the Power Gems gear before, so I'm a little wary of buying sight unseen. But it appears the Power Gems draws a little less amperage than the Arri, and it's also physically a bit smaller which could certainly help out for transport.

So I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how the two compare? With the quotes I have at the moment, there's a $500 premium for the Arri ballast. But I'm also conscious, that having everything Arri, might help with resale if things change and I need to sell the light down the line (though I honestly suspect you'd have to pry the M18 from my cold, dead hands because it's such a useful light, so maybe that's not a huge consideration, but an emergency one).

I'd certainly appreciate anyone's thoughts.

Cheers,

Mark
 
When I spent 4 years as an IATSE lighting tech on big 200 million dollar movies and tv shows I honestly probably saw an equal amount of both arri ballasts and power gems. Basically a lot of the big boy gaffers were using them.
 
Just saw this thread & text my Gaffer your question. He has multiple trucks & owns just about every Arri HMI.

His response, "Buy the Arri. I feel it all works better if it's all Arri".
 
rob norton said:
Mark does that mean you're going with the M18 over the hive 1000w?
Click to expand...

Yep. Presently the Australian distributor for Hive is being rather too greedy - so much so that the price for the wasp works out to $3000 more than an M18, even though the going rate should be $1500 odd dollars less (by US pricing). The 30% distributor tax is more than my wallet can bear, so I've ordered the M18 with the Power Gems ballast instead.

I'm not too fussed about it, the 1000w draw and variable colour temp of the Wasp would be great to have, but going back to switching out lenses and lack of brand recognition with producers would be less-so. It's the output I needed, so I'm just happy to be finally getting the M18 (I've been wanting to add one to my lighting kit for the better part of three years now!)
 
Hive has no real traction yet (here) so buyers need a pretty strong incentive to go against an industry standard, especially an Arri industry standard. There must be more to it re pricing!

M18s are fantastic, I'll be interested to check in on your PG ballast down the road.

I understand producers latching onto buzzwords/trends with cameras e.g. "RED" but how common is it for them to ask about lighting equipment?
 
Actually, it's funny you mention that. I think that with so many owner-ops of cameras these days, many producers are almost more familiar with lighting kit than than camera gack - because their DPs are simply bringing along the camera kit, but the producers are still (most of the time) having to line-item the lighting kit.

So they all seem to know that the M18 is the most output they can get on a regular household socket, they all know their kinos from their dedos, and the advantages of bi-colour, dimmable LEDs (of decent quality). Sure the obscure stuff will always remain known only to us lighting nerds, but buzzwords seem to work the same way for lighting as they do for cameras (as far as producers are concerned).

If I did get a Wasp 1000, I'd simply be listing it on my kit as a 2.5kw HMI PAR. Then, on-set, attempting to educate producers why it's so much cooler for them than a conventional 2.5kw PAR. That's the only way you can establish a knowledge base on this stuff with producers in my experience - give them a common frame of reference, then educate.
 
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