Help and Advice on Light Kit Purchase...

[NC17z]

Hi everyone,

The time has come for me to purchase lighting. I have a few projects coming up in 30 days that will require professional lighting. This will be an instructional video for Garment Creation (making your own blue jeans from a sewing pattern). It will be distributed with the garment pattern and used as a marketing tool on the web in order to hook the consumer. It may lead to additional pod casts.
I would also like to point out that I want this purchase to be the one that I hold onto for years to come. Like my tripod setup with casters. Don't want to have to make another one for several years or even decades. I may be stretching it a bit however, it doesn't hurt to try to get the best out of your purchases. I would like to spend $2000.00 to $2500.00.

One other question, related to this purchase, should I consider purchasing pieces one at a time in order to get more for my money? Like and Arri 650 here and a Arri 2K there... ?

I really think that Arri is the company that I want to go with. I hardly ever see them sale in our market place section. People tend to hold on to them.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance for any advise given.

 

[Cool Lights]

Just curious, will your entire video be lit with hard lighting like fresnels? If not, why not consider fluorescent fixtures for your soft lighting?

 

[NC17z]

I'm considering a Kino Flo setup for Cool Lighting. Another reason that I failed to mention is that I would like to shoot live performance music videos as well as instructional videos. I've been reading the some posts from Noah S. and Hirro and have found that they have used Arri, Mole, Kino Flo etc... These seem to be the industry standard for video and film lighting. I want to make this investment once and build on it as much as I can. Thank you very much for the reply. I am strongly considering 2 CL-255 for my package because I have heard nothing but great things about your products. I think that they would create decent fill and key to my set for the instructional video.

 

[Cool Lights]

*** EDITORIAL ***

I know a lot of people still throw around "Kino Flo" but you have to remember there is a certain amount of brand snobbery by some. Here's a real shocker too: there have been some ego problems in the movie/television business. Some "keeping up with the Joneses" type situations. It's more "cool" to walk onto a set with certain types of gear than with others. For sure, a metal studio type fixture is not as "cool" looking as a piece of corrugated plastic with special plastic extrusions and soft pipe around the edges. A studio fixture is a more somber affair that's mostly at home on a grid or a stand in the corner of a studio but certainly isn't shown off like the piece of plastic.

But lets get down to pure usability though and strip away any brand issues or surface issues. Perhaps in 1989 or even 1999 it was appropriate to use a kino and pay those kind of prices but today if you do it, its pure brand snobbery or worry about what people will think. When a magnetic ballast was all you had for the most part some solutions had to be arrived at to make flo use possible with video and film. Kino did that then. The distinction of why to use them is not always so clear today though. The problem is, many are still acting like its 1989. I can understand if they want to go on with brand snobbery but I can't understand when they start talking like a Kino solution is the only one with high CRI and non-flickering ballasts.

The arrival of T5 technology in the nineties changed a lot of things though and electronic ballasts today are at a great level of maturity. The rare earth phosphors used inside of high CRI tubes are available to all manufacturers if they want to use them. The advantages of using a kino flo today are not always clear to the person that thinks about it objectively and doesn't necessarily follow what everyone else is doing.

It's ultimately for you to decide why you buy gear and for what reasons and whether you can justify the higher price. There will always be the person that wants the Porsche, BMW or whatever just because they can pay for it and they feel its worth it. If you want the (as I call it) "piece of corrugated plastic with the protective edge extrusions, soft pipe hinged barndoors and metal hump on the back" then go for it and be happy with it. They created a sports car type analogy for portable fixtures with that product. That's the only clear advantage I see over a studio fixture like a Cool Lights unit though.

We'll have our own sports car later in the year though. Ours just won't have the metal hump...