Genius products?

[Gene Sung]

Hi,

Are Genius products of high quality? I was thinking about picking up a Genius Fader ND, and was wondering what your experiences with their products are, and the fader in particular.

I have a Lightcraft workshop fader which is excellent, but I need a slightly larger size, and they ship from Hong Kong so it takes a long time to get here.

Thanks

 

[andrew00]

Firstly it's Genus not Genius heh.

I have the Fader ND bought from lightcraft, the Genus is I'd imagine just a rebranded version of the same product.

It's great, I'd say essential kit. It's small and light and you can take it with you anywhere and put on when you need it. Recently I had a shoot in a warehouse (some shots here if you're interested - http://vimeo.com/9340605 though I think it's just the performance bit at the start), I didn't want to shoot there but it was the band's job to find us a place and essentially they didn't managed to find a place lets say heh.

So we got the warehouse last minute and setup there, well I did it was just me heh. There were big windows on one wall so I set things up with them behind me and we erected some wooden boards to hold the lametta curtains I put up, and push some mesh in between with led's poking through and bin bags on the back of the mesh to darken it. Proper ghetto!

Even then the white of the warehouse wall was a presence so I basically had to light to hell the 'set' itself in order that, by contrast, the wall, where present, would not show up. The Fader ND was invaluable because I wanted to shoot at F4 and 1/50 so with all the lights I had added it would have been much much too bright at those settings. Cue the Fader darkening it and I got my shots.

One words of advice though, since the Fader is on a ring, this an easily move if touched so if you do get one, plan on noting down the setting on the Fader with each shot, or finding a way to tape it down or whatever.

Save you the hassle of messing with each shot to balance the exposure.