Cheap HMI (I know, I know)

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Did this with the new bulb. This was me playing around, looking for things to do since I don't have a shoot for a couple weeks. I shot this in pitch black night with just the 1.2kw HMI pointing in the two windows. Absolutely freaking love this light. Have run it probably for about 3 or 4 hours with the new bulb so far. Still no issues. The real test will be my shoot in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime I've been working on a video review of the unit, will have it out once I have a bit more experience with it, but so far I'm in love with this lamp/ballast!
 
Looks great. I'd really like a PAR version but they aren't as cheap for some reason.


I'm glad you took a gamble on it, I thought you would like it... er, um... the price especially.

Let there be light!
 
starcentral said:
Looks great. I'd really like a PAR version but they aren't as cheap for some reason.


I'm glad you took a gamble on it, I thought you would like it... er, um... the price especially.

Let there be light!
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Yeah, I was thinking I'd like to get one too but I might just get another one of these $1000 fresnels :) The ballast is a little noisy and probably the more expensive ones would be quieter, but it's nothing that can be fixed by putting it in another room. Another thing I love is that $1,000 version uses powercon cables to drive the head, they're much much cheaper than whatever kind of cable is used for the more expensive version/official Arri cables.
 
My ballast is the fancy one with frequency control and is dimmable, it makes little to no noise but the supplied bulb squealed pretty good until I replaced it with brand name high quality one.

I may go for a couple of 1.2k's next.
 
starcentral said:
My ballast is the fancy one with frequency control and is dimmable, it makes little to no noise but the supplied bulb squealed pretty good until I replaced it with brand name high quality one.

I may go for a couple of 1.2k's next.
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Must be nice, mine makes an annoying high pitched electrical whine. Oddly enough, my bulb was pretty silent until it cracked :P Granted it's not apples to apples because you both have a lower power ballast and it's higher end. I can't recommend the 1.2k enough, the power is wonderful, you can do so much with it.
 
Hey everyone, I have a quick question. Since I don't have a way to compare to an Arri or other high end unit, I'd like to figure out how good the numbers are on my Chinese HMI.

1200 watts full brightness: around 12.5 amps average at around 1040 watts average. AC at the outlet is running at 122ish volts, give or take (60hz, obviously).

According to the calculations, shouldn't I only be drawing around 10-11 amps? I should certainly not be drawing 12.5 at only 1000 watts. Is this normal? Do operations in the ballast (this one has a few fans) account for the additional amperage?
 
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