Cool Light portable dimming flos?

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
Has anyone tried the Cool Light DIVA type lights? I mean the portable dimming units - the CL 655- 455 and 255 PMD units?

How do they compare to the Kinos?
Durable?

Do they make a remote dimmer for these?
That would be very very good. I love to ahve a remote for my backlights.
Makes adjusting for different interview subjects very fast.

- Lenny Levy
 
They haven't shipped them yet, so nobody knows much about them yet. I don't believe they have a remote dimmer like the kinos. Of course, they also have not been designed as a complete studio "system" like kinos. They are really meant for the field for interviews and such.

I'm going to get a 455 unit in march if you don't mind waiting until then for a review;)

Matthew
 
Deal breaker for me is that the eggcrates must be removed from fixture before barndoors can be closed all the way for transport. Crates will be the first things to break on location.
Also, dimmer will cause the color temp to shift. My Diva lights are dimmable and temp is supposed to remain constant but I notice shift toward magenta w/daylight( or is it tungsten?) tubes.
Richard of Cool lights told me all dimmable fluos shift color temp.
Of course, you can't beat the price.

chris li
 
Not out just quite yet so no one to review them.

Otherwise, there is no remote dimming capability. I didn't see that as an important feature for a location fixture and the idea was to make them economical. Remote dimming just adds more to the cost and most people aren't even convinced that they need dimming at all so the market for dimming is not as large as for bank selectable ones like our metal studio models and the new plastic ones.

We do have a special order capability now to provide DMX versions for a large enough customer but they will remain special order until we have more mainstream requests for this kind of model which has not been very much asked for.
 
Richard,

Is remote dimming a hard option to include?
For me it might be a reason to get Kinos at least for my backlights.

I do a lot of interview work and often without a gaffer present.
Often we set up for people who are not present till the last minute. The main variable is how bright the backlights are because they vary so much depending on people's hair or lack of it.

As you need to look at a monitor to set that level, its a pain for the DP to run to the light and adjust, then try to look at the monitor.
I've gotten in the habit of using dimmers next to the camera for tungstun chimeras backlights and its very fast and easy for me. I would love to switch to flos, but don't want to lose that convenience.

I'll admit thopugh I have never seen or worked with the Diva remote dimmer controls.

Re: most people don't need dimming at all - Wow that's the greatest thing about the DIVA's to me.

Lenny Levy
 
Lenilenapi said:
Richard,

Is remote dimming a hard option to include?
For me it might be a reason to get Kinos at least for my backlights.

I do a lot of interview work and often without a gaffer present.
Often we set up for people who are not present till the last minute. The main variable is how bright the backlights are because they vary so much depending on people's hair or lack of it.

As you need to look at a monitor to set that level, its a pain for the DP to run to the light and adjust, then try to look at the monitor.
I've gotten in the habit of using dimmers next to the camera for tungstun chimeras backlights and its very fast and easy for me. I would love to switch to flos, but don't want to lose that convenience.

I'll admit thopugh I have never seen or worked with the Diva remote dimmer controls.

Re: most people don't need dimming at all - Wow that's the greatest thing about the DIVA's to me.

Lenny Levy
Click to expand...

Well we sold several hundred fixtures this year and only maybe two or three requests in my inbox for dimming capability. We did it anyway because I did want to have that option. DMX is a very hard thing to include and adds another layer of complexity and also another thing to go wrong. There is a microprocessor and that makes it more fragile in my opinion. Its hard to find an existing cost effective solution and most engineers have to design their own purpose built controller / receiver for their fixtures. Haven't found a good OEM solution for that just yet.

Now that we have an entry level dimming product we'll see how it goes. Kind of gradually working our way up to DMX. Most people in my market won't be carrying around a DMX controller board to control the lights so it would be useless without our providing a compact remote controller.

Its important to note that all fluorescents shift color when dimmed past about 50% to 60%. This is one reason that the "Bank Select" users always say they love those models. If that unit was continuously dimmable beyond 50% they'd see shift too and wouldn't always be posting about how wonderful it was compared to a Diva. Its really a misconception there that the older, linear T12 tube is somehow superior to a T5 55w biax CFL tube. All fluorescents shift past 50% and not much we can do about it until someone invents a different flo tube design that doesn't have the problem.
 
I probably will also get the selectable ones after reading this. Are there any statistics about the output if the subject stands x meters away and you increase two banks and so on?

What is more sold? Your 4 banks or 6 banks?
 
Lenilenapi said:
Pardon my ignorance , but what deaxarcly is meant by DMX? What I'm thinking about isn't a full fledged dimmer board, but just something like the $70 dimmer extension that you can get with a KinoFlo:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/352176-REG/Kino_Flo_DIM_5_Remote_Dimmer_for_Diva_Lite.html

Would that be difficult to include in the unit? Even just a plug that would work with a Diva dimmer perhaps?
Click to expand...

Well here's the thing. We don't know for sure the internal workings of that remote and they seem to leave that imagination. My guess is that this is a simple one channel DMX controller that hooks into the existing DMX receiver on the Diva. This is becoming very common with the dmx type fixtures to have a remote 1 channel controller like this. Now, is it possible to produce a purpose-built remote that just ties directly into our dimmable ballast and doesn't use DMX? Absolutely. We have thought about that before.

I'd love to have it infrared controlled rather than by some kind of tether. Just hooking up an infrared translator to the dimming ballast in parallel with the dimming pot sort of thing. The quick and dirty solution would be to find a potentiometer that's resistance level could be controlled by infrared remote. I haven't seen that existing anywhere so would probably need to develop it.
 
muroshi said:
I probably will also get the selectable ones after reading this. Are there any statistics about the output if the subject stands x meters away and you increase two banks and so on?

What is more sold? Your 4 banks or 6 banks?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I'll be running tests with a light meter soon so I can (finally) post some charts on the site for the various fixtures to show their output. I did run a test a while back for someone but can't find the results or remember where I posted it. All I remember is that the 455P had very similar output or a bit better than the Diva.
 
Richard, would you be willing to share what ballast you are using in your dimming Cool Lights? Also are you using a custom DMX controller or are you using a premade solution?

Thanks,
JohnMC
 
Do the Diva lights have DMX built in?

Richard, Why don't you buy a Diva external dimmer and take it apart. Maybe its not so hard to add to your light. They're only about $70.

Remote infrared is nice, but I don't mind a tether - just want to get to those backlights easily.
 
Yes, they do have DMX and that never made much sense to me for a location fixture. Like I said, it just adds extra cost for something like 90% of the people that buy and won't ever use. For fixed positions on a grid, in a studio DMX makes a lot of sense and we will have that solution at some point in the future. In this day and age, I think most customers would like infrared or blue tooth type solutions. I usually prefer to try not to copy things but rather to improve them and infrared / wireless would be a great improvement to all this.
 
JohnMC said:
Richard, would you be willing to share what ballast you are using in your dimming Cool Lights? Also are you using a custom DMX controller or are you using a premade solution?

Thanks,
JohnMC
Click to expand...

Its a ballast we found in China and is not available in the USA yet except through us. So you wouldn't know it or find it elsewhere. We don't use a DMX controller at all, we just hook up to the ballast with a dimmer potentiometer to keep costs as low as possible and keep points of failure down as well. DMX is something for the future and will be another sub-series under the studio fixtures.
 
muroshi said:
If you use them as a fill-light. What size of a room would you say could you light with a 6-bank?
Click to expand...

This is pretty hard to quantify but lets just say its very bright and covers quite a big area. Most will feel that a 6x55 is too much for what they're doing and will operate with one or two of the banks most of the time. The 6x55 mode is for when you really have a fairly large area to fill (a talk show / discussion among 3 or 4 people for instance and the people are spread out pretty well). Like most fluorescents or all types of softlights though, the drop off is pretty steep as you get farther away. It's also not going to replace an HMI outside unless its at night and you're really pretty close to your subjects. Now you know why we're moving into the HMI area. There's some things you still need a good hard light with a long throw for.
 
No I wouldn't say that. 7m x 7m is about 22 x 22 feet which is a fairly good area so the 655 is right for that. Most people that are travelling with portable kits are often going to locations that are much smaller. Thus a 655 is too big for most of the situations they are encountering. I would say that 2 655's would do some pretty good coverage on a 7m x 7m area. You may find thought that depending upon your background, you may need some independent background lighting with hard lights for the best definition and elimination of shadows from the foreground lighting.
 
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