Cool Lights Tungsten fresnels... any opinions?

DaneCannon said:
Yeah, I recently received some of their quick release plates and lollipops for a DIY build. No matter how I screwed them together they wouldn't go in their receiver plate... luckily I ground down the offending screws to be plane with the countersink. Dremel = best $50 I've ever spent. However, for lollipops, there's really no other options. Kino doesn't even sell their mounting plate--you'd have to buy a whole fixture and THEN the mounting plate too.
Click to expand...

Interesting you brought this up. I beefed to Cool Lights about the crap QR plates on multiple issues, I hope this reinforces my comments to Richard. Once I did a bit of rework on the QR plates, I mounted a baby plate with a stud to to the QR plate. I abandoned the lollipop all together and now plug the stud into a grip head. This works really well, but took a little effort and cash. If you already have some grip heads, it will cost you about $25 for the QR plate from CL and another $12 for the baby plate like this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/67894-REG/Avenger_F805_F805_Baby_Wall_Plate.html

One more thing on the QR plates; on mine, the little knob that pulls the locking pin wasn't thread secured, so it could easily work loose. If it does, the whole locking pin could work loose and dis-inguage. If it did at a bad moment, you could crash the light = bad day. I adjusted the pin depth, and added a bit of lot-tite to the knob. Still I didn't feel I should have to do so much monkey time to make this right. This is very unlike Cool Lights in my experience.

Regards,
Grant
 
For a while, cool lights were the only game in town for Kino-style biax fixtures. The things have gotten so cheap and ubiquitous they're almost disposable fixtures (an exaggeration, but still...).

There's a chinese brand with tough metal yokes in duals and quads that seem to get imported in batches. I have several quads and duals and they've held up fantastically. I've been using the duals as sort of small strip-lights for stills. Really nice form-factor.
 
This thread is about a year old and someone bumped it. It was about our tungsten fresnels. Not really sure what that has to do with fluorescents or quick release hardware for fluorescent fixtures. Best not to confuse the thread with throwing it off topic since that's two completely different product lines.
 
Last edited:
Richard,

Over the last several years, I have been one of your strongest supporters at DVXuser based on my own experience with three lights and accessories; and for good reason, you have earned it. I own six Arri branded lights and purchased some CL products to fill out my kit and save a few bucks. So I know the difference, and I have endorsed CL as an alternative because of the value I received. One of the things that has been reassuring about CL products is that unlike many other Chinese products, you have been there for support, making you a middleman I want to have. Your business model works for us both. These threads take twists and turns, and this is where this one landed. It is unlike you to not address the issue at hand, and in this case, a dumb little QR bracket has bit you for the reasons mentioned. But you chose to sell it so CL is responsible for delivering a decent quality product, and in this case, it was a disappointment. We swapped a few emails in private on this exact QR plate topic when I purchased my QR brackets, so it isn't as if this issue is a blind-sided troll attack. I would be much more interested in hearing your response than a deflection of the issue with regards to the thread topic. If you prefer to hear this all over again in a new thread, fine. In this case, a mia-culpa and a promise for improvement would help you a lot more. Just calling this the way I see it and I still like CL.

Grant
 
Grant,

We have sent out many quick release kits both for old models which never had it as well as pre-installed on new models since the quick release was introduced. So far, only two people have said there was some issue with the quick release and they are both on this thread. No emails other than yours. If I saw a real problem or heard there were problems we would have addressed it but I don't see the issue. Any part added to a DIY unit or an older unit may require some DIY work to make it work if tolerances are off a bit between generations of fixtures, etc. That's the nature of DIY or installation in the field. When the quick release goes out from our place in a pre-installed unit, there are no issues with it because we've done the adaptation and installation ourselves. Not sure what else there is to say about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top