HMI / HID Lighting?

tverhaar

tverhaar

Active member
In the never ending quest for the "best" lighting, has anyone ever used (or reseaerched) these Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide lights?

http://alzovideo.com/alzo_800_hmi_cool_lite.htm

They seem like the best of both worlds - flo and tungsten - but are they "too good to be true" for the price?

Thanks in advance for shedding any light!! :smile:

TVH
 
tverhaar said:
In the never ending quest for the "best" lighting, has anyone ever used (or reseaerched) these Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide lights?

http://alzovideo.com/alzo_800_hmi_cool_lite.htm

They seem like the best of both worlds - flo and tungsten - but are they "too good to be true" for the price?

Thanks in advance for shedding any light!! :smile:

TVH
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Interesting. Yes I am wondering if it is possible to have decent quality at those prices for HMI.
 
shawneous said:
Come on guys, do a search for. Words like "Alzo" "HMI" and "HID" would have turned up this thread where we already discussed it (I bought one and talk about it)
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=74682&page=4

Then I posted a thread where I did some tests with my Alzo
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=86587
Click to expand...

What's wrong getting tired of answering the same thing over and over again?

What's wrong getting tired of answering the same thing over and over again?

What's wrong getting tired of answering the same thing over and over again?

What's wrong getting tired of answering the same thing over and over again?

What's wrong getting tired of answering the same thing over and over again?
 
tverhaar said:
In the never ending quest for the "best" lighting, has anyone ever used (or reseaerched) these Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide lights?

http://alzovideo.com/alzo_800_hmi_cool_lite.htm

They seem like the best of both worlds - flo and tungsten - but are they "too good to be true" for the price?

Thanks in advance for shedding any light!! :smile:

TVH
Click to expand...

You can also do a search for ceramic metal halide as there really is no difference between that and HMI. We've fallen pray to a lot of hype. My research on the subject is turning up some pretty cool stuff that we'll be making available some time later this year.
 
tverhaar, don't take it personal, I was just pointing out that you should search first, then I went the extra mile to go do your searching for you and link you to two applicable threads. So 'thanks Shawneous' would be a more appropriate response.

Miracom, I am very excited to learn where you go with everything you are up to.
 
shawneous said:
Come on guys, do a search for. Words like "Alzo" "HMI" and "HID" would have turned up this thread where we already discussed it (I bought one and talk about it)
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=74682&page=4

Then I posted a thread where I did some tests with my Alzo
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=86587
Click to expand...

Shaneous,

Have you tested the color accuracy against and Arri or other expensive HMI? Perhaps a frame grab from one of your lights and one from an Arri.
 
No, because while I have used those HMIs, I dont own one and am not going to rent one just to have fun. The advertisement of the Alzo being 5200-5300k is dead on. When you white-balance for 5600k then these lights look just a bit warm, which I personally like. I'd much rather have them be 5200k then be 6500k, which would look far too blue.
 
We're finding plenty of bulbs in the 5000, 5200 and 6000 and higher range with CRI's of 85 or above. It seems to be really hard to get them to make a 5600K for us because they don't want to buy the necessary supplies for a relatively small order. We'll have to make a really bigtime order to be able to get 5600K I guess but we're still looking. Also, we're seeing that the best bulbs are in G12 or G22 sockets and one other kind of package. Those with the mogul base are just huge--too large to fit in the kind of fresnels we think people will want to use.

Shawneous, we're thinking about a 150w and 575w fresnel right now and a 575w par (the par will be in a really cool looking package too, very unusual looking). I wonder if people will want a 1200w? When you get much bigger than that it starts to get harder to run off normal power anyway.
 
Amulet Man said:
What about something like this: http://www.prismaecat.lighting.philips.com/LightSite/Whirlwind.aspx?eca=LEPPLG&cpf=GBEPEN&stg=ACT&lan=EN&ecu=SPL|PHL|GX&cnt_key=XDMSRP++|PHL|871150020027345+++&t=3&tree=0&scr_md=1111&leftnav=1_1&nav=Null&loc=Null

Medium bipost, same as in many Arri/Altman fresnel fixtures to begin with, I think. Color temp is a little too blue (which I don't mind), and CRI is fair at 85. Ideal wattage for edison (1200w; bright but not going to blow a fuse.)

I've seen these for about $125.
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This is like what we're looking at now in 150w, 575 and 1200 too. Except with lower color temp in the 5000 range. 6500 to 7000 is more suitable for a spotlight. In fact I saw a Philips 1200w 6500K just on Friday in operation in a spotlight and let me tell you that's a lot of concentrated light. I'm hoping we can beat those Philips prices of $125 in what we'll offer and get as close to 5600K as we can. We may even offer a 3000K later if enough people want it. Any interest in a tungsten colored HMI?
 
I wonder if people will want a 1200w?
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1200w PAR would be the ideal fixture. HMI Fresnels are of limited value outdoors (unless they're 2.5k or above), and smaller than 575w is of very limited value too (unless it's a PAR). A low-cost fixture larger than 1200w doesn't make much sense because you start running into problems powering them. 1200w PAR is the sweet spot.

We may even offer a 3000K later if enough people want it. Any interest in a tungsten colored HMI?
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Would it be a simple lamp replacement? Or a whole new fixture? If it's a lamp then yes; if it means re-buying a whole new light fixture then probably not something to spend a lot of design/development effort on. I don't know how Arri's doing with their ceramic tungsten HMIs, but I would suspect that for the many starving indie filmmakers and new-to-the-business professionals out there, they'll just get regular quick easy cheap tungsten fixtures for their indoors needs. What we don't have now is a practical/good affordable PAR fixture, especially a 1200w with an affordable electronic ballast!

Open-face? Bah.
Fresnel? Meh.
Parabolic, with interchangeable lenses? Sold. :thumbsup:

For the color temp, could you add a permanent UV filter with something like a 1/4 CTO tint to it, to convert one of those slightly-off-temp bulbs into being more like 5600? Might be a quick and easy solution, and I think we're likely going to need UV filters in place at all times with these inexpensive bulbs, right? One good piece of glass that filters out UV, does minor color-temp correction, and provides shatter protection...
 
Maybe we can use this opportunity to do a bit of a show and tell.

Barry_Green said:
1200w PAR would be the ideal fixture. HMI Fresnels are of limited value outdoors (unless they're 2.5k or above), and smaller than 575w is of very limited value too (unless it's a PAR). A low-cost fixture larger than 1200w doesn't make much sense because you start running into problems powering them. 1200w PAR is the sweet spot.
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Yes when you're outside at night in the forest, a fresnel has limited value. I was thinking a 150w fresnel as a small pepper light might be interesting but maybe I'm wrong. Portable, small, can use with cookies and whatever for interviews, etc. The Dedolight hmi seems to be popular right--even at that obscene price. Wouldn't people want something like that if it was reasonably priced (something under $600)?

Personally I've banned tungsten from my life so when I need a fresnel it'll be metal halide in the future. See the first picture below of the "Kliegl Brothers" 1K guinea pig we used to convert to a 150w metal halide (haha -- the first fresnel I've used in two years). It's old and ugly but it works really well when you need a longer throw hard light. CRI is 80 and yes it takes decent pictures and video--no green tints. Ha! I can use cookie patterns on the wall again...

I wonder if there will be a market for people that want to make a low cost HMI fresnel with a ballast/bulb kit. Buy an old fresnel off ebay and this kit and put it together relatively inexpensively.

The problem as I see it with 1200w is the size of the ballast and availability of them. Also getting one to run on 120 volts may be quite a trick! Seems they're used to producing these ballasts in 220v even for US Market. I think that's a big problem if it has to run on 220v--most of us will only have 120v readily available for the types of things we're doing. It's a UL thing apparently. 575w no problem--we're finding those readily and some are suitable for our type work, but above that it starts getting more rare to find a good one that doesn't hum or whatever.

And I'm not too sure about dimming either right now. We can get dimmable switch settings in 50% 70% 90% and 100% but forget a continuous DMX dimming function without a lot more development. Knowledgeable people tell us to avoid the dimming for now because its not that perfected yet in metal halide.

As of this moment, for development purposes I only have electronic ballasts in 150w ones and a 575w on the way to arrive sometime next week. We have several 150w bulbs and some 575w and a 1200w lamp soon too.


Barry_Green said:
Would it be a simple lamp replacement? Or a whole new fixture? If it's a lamp then yes; if it means re-buying a whole new light fixture then probably not something to spend a lot of design/development effort on. I don't know how Arri's doing with their ceramic tungsten HMIs, but I would suspect that for the many starving indie filmmakers and new-to-the-business professionals out there, they'll just get regular quick easy cheap tungsten fixtures for their indoors needs. What we don't have now is a practical/good affordable PAR fixture, especially a 1200w with an affordable electronic ballast!
Click to expand...

Will be a simple replacement of bulb. Ballast doesn't care just like with fluorescent. That's why I was considering it. We have 3200K fluorescent bulbs now with our fixtures but most people are ordering the 5600K's. I think 3200K's day may be passing with the passing of tungsten fixtures. Personally, I really want a low cost HMI Fresnel to offer to the market but you are probably right. I guess it's hard to compete with a $199 blueline knockoff. People may not see the need to have a more efficient light.

Barry_Green said:
Open-face? Bah.
Fresnel? Meh.
Parabolic, with interchangeable lenses? Sold. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

No open faces for us. These bulbs have been known to explode and while its rare I'll sleep better at night with safety glass on the front.

See enclosed pictures 2 and 3 for our current par package--really an attractive design! I love the unusual lens we found too but unfortunately we can't sell it because of ownership and patent issues. :violin: We've got another lens picked out. But you can interchange the lenses in this package and there are several available.


Right now, this par is running a 150w 5200K ceramic metal halide in 85 CRI. It's a damn bright 150w too with the mirror in there. We can get better than that CRI if we pay a bit more. This package cannot physically do a 1200w bulb which is a bit too big for it. I'm thinking a 575w is really the highest we can put in there (what a shame--i'll need to get a bigger package!). By the way, this lens is 6 1/2" in diameter. Lens diameter for a 1200w should be about 8 to 10" normally.

Barry_Green said:
For the color temp, could you add a permanent UV filter with something like a 1/4 CTO tint to it, to convert one of those slightly-off-temp bulbs into being more like 5600? Might be a quick and easy solution, and I think we're likely going to need UV filters in place at all times with these inexpensive bulbs, right? One good piece of glass that filters out UV, does minor color-temp correction, and provides shatter protection...
Click to expand...

Well what we've found is that many of these bulbs (see bulb picture) have an outer glass envelope which is the UV shield. But its probably a good idea to put a uv shield anyway in case we come up with a bulb in the future which doesn't have the protection envelope. That's a good idea to build the correction into the lens to balance it to 5600K--didn't think of that (haha) but it may be pretty expensive. The only reason I hesitate is it limits flexibility in what bulb you put in there. Put in a 1/4 CTO and your specifying a 6000K bulb, put in a 1/4 CTB and your specifying a 5200K bulb. What happens if they want to change to another one and the filter is built in?

If we had our choice of a 5200K or a 6000K bulb and just couldn't get the 5600K's which would be better? I'm leaning to the 6000K right now.
 

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Swawneous,

You have a 2k light? Any problems running that off of a regula household plug?

I was thinking about getting 2 of those 2k lights.
 
Gregg, if your talking about the Alzo HMI 2000 that's not a real 2000w. It draws 420w so no problem with household power. I think its very optimistic of them to say that it puts out 2400w of light for drawing only 420 watts. I think 1200w is more realistic as HMI metal halide is normally 3 to 1 over incandescent.

Barry and others, Had one other thought. What about a 1200w HMI Flood? I guess people prefer the par because of the mirrored parabolic reflector and lens and with a flood your just getting an OK reflector and no lens but maybe protection glass. But is an HMI flood interesting to anyone? I think those
 
miracom said:
Gregg, if your talking about the Alzo HMI 2000 that's not a real 2000w. It draws 420w so no problem with household power. I think its very optimistic of them to say that it puts out 2400w of light for drawing only 420 watts. I think 1200w is more realistic as HMI metal halide is normally 3 to 1 over incandescent.
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Ok, thanks. I have been renting some 1200w Arri and that is getting to be a waste of money so want to buy something fast. My only fear is that the lower CRI will be noticable.

I paid insane money for my Kinos (they clain a CRI of 96) and they make everything look great. Would using a CRI in the 80s be noticable at all?
This is the only issue in my holding back buying cheaper flo and HMI ligthing solutions.
 
Gregg said:
I paid insane money for my Kinos (they clain a CRI of 96) and they make everything look great. Would using a CRI in the 80s be noticable at all?
This is the only issue in my holding back buying cheaper flo and HMI ligthing solutions.
Click to expand...

Depends upon what work you're doing and how "critical" it is. Some people think so--I don't believe it will. I can't see any color difference between a CRI 80 and CRI 90 personally. I also think that if you can see the difference then the maker of the CRI 80 bulb was mis-reporting what the CRI was and it was really much lower. That's only 10% difference normally so it shouldn't matter that much or be so noticeable.

In any case CRI 90 is very obtainable now for much less than a Kino. Do you really believe there's a difference between 90 and 96? I can find all kinds of ceramic metal halide bulbs in the 85 to 95 range. Obviously you pay a bit more as you get to 95.

I think this whole issue reminds me of people that say they can hear the difference between 24 bit sound and 16 bit. I'm a really good sound engineer but I can't hear the difference.

Why don't you try out a test for yourself and report the results back here with photos or screen grabs? I've shown tests online recently with difference between 80 and 88 and no one commented whether they saw a difference.
 
man, i want to make me a 1200 Watt hmi fresnel. that would pump out what... maybe 3000 watts of daylight/?
 
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