Flolights kit tested

Michael Carter

Michael Carter

Veteran
So, I got a set of "Flolights" from their ebay store.

Units are dual 55watt daylight Biax tubes. The kit was three lights with carrying bags, three stands and a stand bag. I think $650 including shipping. Here's the kit shown at $550 - damn, it got cheaper??

Surprisingly, the bags and stands aren't throwaways. The stands are beefy, and the bags are adequately padded. They'd be fine for throwing this stuff in a car - packing a truck for a big shoot, they'll be great for sticking the lights in a case.

Lights themselves are pretty nice. Plastic housings, pebbled aluminum reflector/barn doors that close to cover the bulbs. Oddly they have a gooseneck instead of a swivel mount. thought I'd hate that, but the goosenecks are stiff and the lights are really light - I'm a freak about booms and grip, and they work fine for me. I got them in the 5500k setup - you can get 3200 as well.

The light is pretty nice. (see pic below). I stuck two of them on stands with no diffusion, aimed them right at the talent - I had the sun backlighting through a window, but the sun was high - only had hard light on the floor and the window frame, which blew out nicely. No color balance issues at all. The fastest and easiest "natural look" setup I've ever done.

Didn't test them with my meter, but they "feel" like 250-300 watts tungsten each. (It's hard to judge when the things aren't baking you, y'know?)

Cons? You may not like the gooseneck (it works though). The clips that hold the bulbs in are strange, and the diagram in the instructions makes no sense. I had to disconnect a lamp, slide it up and out, and then sussed it out.

Also, they came packed in sturdy, individual boxes, and then the whole kit was packed in one BIG box - full of peanuts. Come on, who uses peanuts any more? They're a mess, you can't really store them for re-use like bubble wrap or the "air pack" that Adorama and Amazon use. Really, peanuts piss me off, especially three bushels of the damn things. End rant.

Overall, I think they're a great deal and I'll likely get one of their four-lamp lights. I'm seeing a lot of similar lights hitting the market, so you may find something that suits you better - these are pretty cool.

Here's a shot from today:

1284505844.jpg
 
Thanks for the info on these! These look very promising. As I understand it, the kit comes with 3 2x55w fixtures, cases for all, AND 3 light stands? This is a smoking deal if so!

Do the lights have dimmers?
 
Hey guys - thought this thread had died - I haven't got email notifications for ages from DVXuser.

JasonA - no, they make dimmable models but they're significantly pricier; these being around a 300-400w equivalent, I don't know that they really need it - you could just toss a diffusion rag right over 'em and kill a stop or so, flag 'em, shut the barn doors down, whatever. If they were four-tube models, I'd definitely want at least a 2+2 switch setup, which is cheaper than dimmers anyway.

Bruce W - they need no gels; they looked great with a daylight setting; testing them with my camera's flourescent/green preset did look nice though - kind of like a straw gel, a look to me that had a "just right" warmth.

I swear each unit weighs like a pound and a half (though didn't weigh 'em). The fact that the soft-bags are actually useable, and the stands seem like they'll last - no brainer. (Though the stands do have that "spring-loaded" feature, something I think is a useless "make amateurs feel like there's more bells & whistles" bit of silliness)(None of my matthews or manfrotto stands "bounce" when you try to close them up). I generally stick fixtures on c-stands, but who EVER has enough stands for flags, cards, etc? (OK, my wife thinks I have enough stands!)
 
averan said:
the higher the CRI the less green cast the light will give.
Click to expand...

Not exactly. The color rendering index (CRI) is about how the colors in the scene are rendered due to the light put on them. Higher numbers mean better fidelity. But it doesn't mean that there aren't spikes in the color spectrum from the lights.

I've never seen a fluorescent light that didn't have at least a green spike. Most fluorescents have a big green spike, and a couple of lesser spikes in other colors. Typically the number of spikes in the spectrum is a reflection of the number of phosphors used in the bulb.

Normally fluorescent lighting for film/video requires the use of a minus green filter to decrease the effect of the green spike. Supposedly, the higher the CRI the less need for the green filter. The question I've had for years is -- how good is good enough? IOW, how good a fluorescent tube do you need before you can stop using minus green gels?

I have yet to find a definitive answer. So I keep looking and asking.
 
I've shot some limited times with various spiral flo's - I've found if there's some green, it's usually in the deeper falloff that's going to get crushed anyway. So many people grade for blue-green shadows nowadays that may not be a problem. On a set with lots of fill & midtones, you may not see it at all. If you're doing anything where you want a warm & bright look, I'd do some tests and decide if you need to shoot with a "flo" preset, manually white balance from a falloff area, or gel specific lights.

So far, with these and with the latest crop of high-CRI spirals and even a big mogul-base flo, I'm seeing good things. I'll be doing a music video soon where the color scheme will be kind of aqua in the shadows and non-skin mids, so I doubt I'll catch anything "off" in the units.
 
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