Dr. Flolight (Or, How Can I Learn To Stop Worrying And Love the Kino)

M

mcbob

Veteran
So for some reason a client specified using a KinoFlo on a recent project (sure, ask why, but I don't have an answer)... I normally avoid them, because they're large, fragile, expensive, and (IMO) kind of 'blah' light wise. Seems there are so many more versatile, portable, durable, inexpensive methods to create a rich, large, soft source when necessary, with stuff as simple as collapsible silks and even something as simple as a halogen work light (or its 'professional' counterpart, the Lowel V-light).

Maybe I'm just low-rent and don't appreciate the finer things... but I've not been able to like what I get from this tool. They're incredibly popular, a doc interview and narrative staple. Surely I'm missing something.

If you use one, how to you use it effectively? Where is it best deployed?
 
I've been shooting with Kinos almost exclusively for key lights on anything I'm shooting that is daylight and doesn't require the punch of an HMI (through whatever).

Love em - normally have my gaffer throw some 250 on the doors. Saving grace when your indoors - no heat. Don't like them as much for tungsten and if I'm going to use them it's gota be the 2900K bulbs over the 3200K. I will salt and pepper them for mixed lighting situations though, they are pretty versatile at that.
 
I was a hold-out for a long time on Kino's. I finally bought some 5-6 years ago(a set of 400 Diva's and a set of Bar Fly's) and I started using them for everything and loved them. In the last year or two, I've started to just use them on "video" shoots(live shots, 60P, etc.), when I can and have moved back to tungsten on 24P shoots. Tungsten just renders skin tones better to my eye and as weird as it may sound, when I use kino's on 24p, it destroys the motion of 24, to me. Even in relatively low motion situations like sit-down interviews, it just starts to look like "video" to me.

So to summarize: I love them for "video", but try to avoid using them for 24P.
 
I work on very low end to fairly high end project (i mean budget wise), some with just a few people, some with huge crew, gaffer, etc.

i can tell you the kinos and other florescents in general are very popular and used very often, almost exclusively in the key light position.

To me, with some very tiny nitpicky differences that i dont think are worth quibbling over, a large soft source is a large soft source, and kinos are physically cooler and draw less power than tungstens inside chimeras. I would love to own divas myself, but cost and how often i use my lights makes it unfeasible.

If the OP doesnt like em, i hate to say it but its probably pilot error, not knowing how to flag them, or combine them if you like bigger keys, not diffusing them if you like softer keys, etc, cause i have seen many very nice images made with those lights. Nothing "unfilmic" about them...believe they got started in the 80s being used in feature films!

i will say that if youve been trying to light your images EXCLUSIVELY with kinos, thats probably the wrong way to go...you generally need a mix of soft/broad lights and hard/controllable sources...soft for talent (much of the time, of course depends on look youre going for) and hard for accents on background. Though sometimes of course you need a large/soft source to light a background too, just depends.
 
I spent a long time hating them. I still kinda do. But at the end of the day, you gotta face facts: They're popular and they're easy. And hell, they're right for a lot of jobs.

Would I prefer a full crew with a ton of tungsten or HMI's, and several rolls of gel? You bet your ass. But that's not always viable. If I'm doing a one-man-band set of interviews, I'm reaching for the kinoflos. You pop 'em up, point 'em at your subject and away you go.

It's funny, I actually would've loved to have kinos on a shoot that's coming up-- I still don't like them, but I can't explain it, they just feel right for the project. We'll be using a lot of natural light, indoors, very moody and underlit with a skeleton crew and I think a set of kinos (yeah, with a couple other lights to fill in the gaps) would be perfect to let the sun do its thing and get some fill on the faces where we need it.

The funny part is, we don't have the budget to rent... well, basically anything, so I'll be using my personal kit full of... tungsten lights.

I still tend to judge DP's a bit (I know I shouldn't) when I see their equipment list consist of kino's and nothing else, because they definitely have a connotation of "lighting for dummies"... but they're a unique tool, and they're right for some stuff.
 
I think it depends on why you like 'em or hate 'em vs tungsten. The only real difference SHOULD be color temp and maybe spectrum characteristics between the two. Everything else should be controllable through diffusion/gripping/size.
 
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