Coollights 1.2 HMI v Chinise knockoffs

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
Cool lights 1.2 HMI - $3600

Chinese knock offs (Steven's Ebay store) - $4000

Unless i'm missing something is there a reason why Richards lights are so much less expensive? I'm in the market for HMI lights (probably 2x 1.2) and i'm just starting to do my research.
 
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Everyone comes into the market at whatever price level they can for each product so its a question really without a simple answer. Our par is sold and serviced within the USA. Shipping by Fedex ground is not as expensive as shipping from China (or back to China if you have a service issue) would be.

As far as lenses go, we have a lens set of 3 available for our par, its a special order item available for $425. The standard wide, narrow and diffused types.
 
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Richard i'm looking for some reviews of your lights but they are not easy to find. If you do have any, would you mind sharing? Namely i'm looking to hear about how loud/quiet your heads and ballast are.
 
The ballast doesn't make any noise. Its of sufficient size that the heat sinks on the side take most of the work in heat management. There will be some head (bulb) noise on just about any high wattage electronic hmi ballast including ours and the other Chinese model you were talking about which is a different ballast than ours. The higher the wattage the more the noise. That's why many electronic ballasts now have the "flicker free", 50 and 60 hz settings. That's all pretty standard stuff even on more expensive brands like Arri.

HMI bulbs all came out in a time when no electronic ballasts existed so they weren't really built for high frequency drive. Just line frequency drive at 50/60 hz with a magnetic ballast. When electronic ballasts came along, they started to drive at higher frequencies and there can tend to be some resonances set up in bulb itself between the inner "burner" and the outer quartz jacket of the bulb. The higher the wattage/higher the frequency the higher the singing noise of the bulb.

"Flicker free" setting is effectively a high frequency drive of the bulb to avoid flicker issues. The 50 and 60 hz settings makes it more silent like a magnetic ballast. So you run in flicker free when you care most about unusual shutter speeds / frame rates and you run on 50 or 60 hz when you care most about sound recording close to the area of the par.

As far as reviews I am not aware of any but there is one customer posted in our gallery that sent us pictures of his using his pars recently and he allowed his website link to be put up there so anyone can contact him that has questions about the pars and their operation. He's had his for over two years now.
 
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