Major problems:
I used two Rostronics soft boxes 600s + two 600s (without softbox) as key light, and two 1000s. I received them a few days prior and tested them for about an hour. We had a long session Saturday. It was an interview setup. A bulb in one softbox went out after about 6 hours. Then one of the 1000s made a "clank" noise. Turned out the bulb simply fell out and hit the glass! ??? A few hours later, the other 1000 did the same thing, except one of the posts the bulb attaches to, was completely melted and a ceramic piece broke. Then, an hour later, the other 1000 made the "clank" noise again, but this time, the metal post that holds in the bulb and powers it also melted. :-/ ( I suddenly had no 1000s!)
One person helping me was a film maker from Europe. He was initially real impressed with the lights. By the end, he didn't want to buy them anymore! I told him that I did "research" and that these came highly recommended.
I was very disappointed, to say the least.... I hadn't planned for that many failures, but we did make it through the shoot by being creative with the remaining lighting. We stopped using three cameras and could only shoot one talent, pretending to have both talking to each other. The light changed, of course, but, nothing that can't be fixed in post (I hope.)
It was important to me to impress this client, but oh well. The next day, ABC showed up to film a documentary on the making of our documentary. (ABC - Australia Broadcasting, not our ABC! They flew all the way from Australia to interview the author and shoot us editing the documentary!)
Still, after a few days all went well, luckily. Client is thrilled.
I talked to Tom and he says he's only seen this problem once before. He's sending two replacement 1000s.
I'm hoping that this was simply bad luck and remain hopeful. I'm going to test any new lights by keeping them on for about 12 hours, and turning them on/off every few hours. The problems always occured after turning them off, and after 15 minutes back on.
I hope people are posting their problems with these lights. They certainly aren't made at the level of quality of some more expensive lights and it was a b*tch gelling them. (I'll do a search and hopefully find posts that suggest third party scrims and gel holders.)
Tom is very amiable, and customer oriented. I hope I just had bad luck. Tom is sending me two replacements, so I'll test them thoroughly this time!
I still have faith in everyone elses enthusiasm for these lights, and the soft boxes gave a wonderful light. When they work, I'm impressed. Impressed enough to buy two HMI Dayphotos from Tom even after this problem.
-Jerry
I used two Rostronics soft boxes 600s + two 600s (without softbox) as key light, and two 1000s. I received them a few days prior and tested them for about an hour. We had a long session Saturday. It was an interview setup. A bulb in one softbox went out after about 6 hours. Then one of the 1000s made a "clank" noise. Turned out the bulb simply fell out and hit the glass! ??? A few hours later, the other 1000 did the same thing, except one of the posts the bulb attaches to, was completely melted and a ceramic piece broke. Then, an hour later, the other 1000 made the "clank" noise again, but this time, the metal post that holds in the bulb and powers it also melted. :-/ ( I suddenly had no 1000s!)
One person helping me was a film maker from Europe. He was initially real impressed with the lights. By the end, he didn't want to buy them anymore! I told him that I did "research" and that these came highly recommended.
I was very disappointed, to say the least.... I hadn't planned for that many failures, but we did make it through the shoot by being creative with the remaining lighting. We stopped using three cameras and could only shoot one talent, pretending to have both talking to each other. The light changed, of course, but, nothing that can't be fixed in post (I hope.)
It was important to me to impress this client, but oh well. The next day, ABC showed up to film a documentary on the making of our documentary. (ABC - Australia Broadcasting, not our ABC! They flew all the way from Australia to interview the author and shoot us editing the documentary!)
Still, after a few days all went well, luckily. Client is thrilled.
I talked to Tom and he says he's only seen this problem once before. He's sending two replacement 1000s.
I'm hoping that this was simply bad luck and remain hopeful. I'm going to test any new lights by keeping them on for about 12 hours, and turning them on/off every few hours. The problems always occured after turning them off, and after 15 minutes back on.
I hope people are posting their problems with these lights. They certainly aren't made at the level of quality of some more expensive lights and it was a b*tch gelling them. (I'll do a search and hopefully find posts that suggest third party scrims and gel holders.)
Tom is very amiable, and customer oriented. I hope I just had bad luck. Tom is sending me two replacements, so I'll test them thoroughly this time!
I still have faith in everyone elses enthusiasm for these lights, and the soft boxes gave a wonderful light. When they work, I'm impressed. Impressed enough to buy two HMI Dayphotos from Tom even after this problem.
-Jerry
