Cool lights soft boxes? nice?

[NewYorkLion]

Ive been eyeing the coolights softboxes for a while now. Particularly the 650w version. I'm wondering if it would fit on either a tweenie or a pepper 650 and I'm also wondering how it performs in general. the price point is great, especially considering it comes with an eggcrate and speedring too. Anyone have any experience with it and care to compare it to a chimera? ( i know the price difference is huge, im just curious)

Colin

 

[floop]

I've owned and used a variety of soft boxes. Most of them suffer from the same issues: hard to assemble, fiddly, expensive.

The cool lights box is similar to britek and other cheap generic soft boxes. The bars are hard to flex into place, and can actually bend if you are too aggressive when you assemble/disassemble the box. The fabric of the box itself feels a bit thin and the clips to hold the baffle are fiddly. Without the internal baffle its a little bit hot in the middle and with it it loses more a bit more light than i'd hope.

If you were going to buy a softbox you planned to set up multiple times every day for years to come, then I reckon you should look at chimera or even photoflex.

On the other hand, the entire cool lights soft box WITH speedring AND grid! costs less than a replacement STORAGE BAG for a chimera softbox. You put it in that context and any of my above criticisms are completely moot. It softens the light and the grid controls spill. I was on a set recently with a photoflex a similar size without a grid and it never came out of the bog. The grid is gold.

Price out a chimera with speedring and grid. Then price out a photoflex with speedring and grid. The entire cool lights setup costs less than JUST a photoflex grid.

Check with richard. When i bought mine i got a discount on the box because i was buying a fixture at the same time. Not sure if he's still offering that deal, but if he is, jump on it. You get a heck of lot of bang for the buck.

Thats my 2c. holler if you want me to ramble more on the subject. heh.

 

[NewYorkLion]

Hey there floop,

thnks for the review. you sold me on it. I already own a few chimeras and photflexes, but i figured at that price, how bad could it be?