Horticultural HMIs

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Policar

Carbonite Member
You can get a 6500ºK 1000w, 8,800 foot candle (wow) horticultural HMI bulb with ballast, reflector, etc. which plugs into normal outlets for 200 dollars.

Huh? What am I missing? Should I go out and buy some? Seems like the answer to all my lighting woes... I don't really need to grow any plants but I do need to light some night exteriors pretty badly.
 
Policar,
Those ballasts are incredibly noisy; unshielded magnetic ballasts. The hum can easily be picked up by a mike if you're fairly close. Also, these lights put out a ton of UV which can damage your eyes. Always use a UV filter gel (Rosco makes a good one) in front of HMIs for your own (and your crew's) protection.
The reflectors are not optimized for film/vieo work so they won't be as efficient; much less punch than a light designed for the purpose.
Still...for $200 you might be able to work around the limitations.
Hope this helps.
Ken
the Screen Skins guy
 
I need HMIs for night exteriors using a 35mm adapter, and I figured I'd just have to load up a generator with a bunch of 1Ks and CTBs, but this is better than that. So long is the flicker's not unsuable, I may try this.

They also have tungsten balanced 400w HMIs for pretty cheap. That would be a nice alternative to a 2k maybe? (This is a strictly no-budget film.)
 
ttt.

Any ideas? I think I may get one just because my summer project has one big night exterior scene.
 
You can get compact flos for horticultural mogul fixtures (and edisons) from 55w up to the new 200w full spectrum 93+ CRI 5500k.

If you're reall interested I can point you to fixtures with 200 watt bulb, 8 foot cord and on off switch...a similar output to a kino or caselite 4 bank for about $225.
 
I would be very interested in that link, although the reason I'm particularly interested in using HMIs is because of the incredible amount of light they produce and I couldn't get that from flourescents. Are there any other cheap HMIs? Worklights perhaps? I really need a lot of light for some night scenes I'm going to shoot.
 
I tried one of these things out (400w). It's bright. I'd eyeball it as similar to 1000w tungsten and it produces much, much less heat. The light is not 5500k as I'd expected, but somewhere between 3200k and 5500k, much much closer to daylight, though. It does give out tons of UV light, unfortunately.

Even at 10:30am, it works okay to shape light in exterior close-ups from two feet away, but a reflector would probably work better just with less control. Still, during the late day I'm sure it would provide enough light to give the extra needed boost. I'm not sure how it would work as a key light for a night exterior, but I'm going to try that next. And it's loud but not awful. Definitely nothing like a generator and not too loud to record dialogue.
 
jimagine,
Where are those fixtures and globes available?

Thanks,
Ken
the Screen Skins guy
 
has anyone thought about putting one of these inside an aold broken down mole or b&m 2k fresnel?

I'm really thinking about it, how load are they? in my shot they would be a distance away, and in the forground there would be 2 running cars, well untill I blow one of them up, then there will be one running car.

Jason
 
Yes I already covered this recently in my blog:

Part 1: http://www.coollights.biz/wordpress/archives/31

Part 2: http://www.coollights.biz/wordpress/archives/33

Electrical Safety Guidelines: http://www.coollights.biz/wordpress/archives/34

Check those out and then get back with any questions.

I'm working on product development now for low cost metal halide fixtures -- pars and fresnels but we're not quite there yet. Hope to post some progress soon though. Maybe an entry in my VLOG showing the units in action.
 
Policar said:
Do not get one of the 65CRI horticultural lights for film use; the ballast is loud and the green spike egregious.
Click to expand...

There's some horticulture HID lights that "claim" high CRI and good color temps. Together with an electronic ballast, these work quite well for film/video use:

400W, 6500K 90CRI :
http://www.specialty-lights.com/901792.html

1000W, 5500K 92CRI:
http://www.specialty-lights.com/901796.html#details

I have the 1000W laying around here somewhere, but not tested yet....
 
>I really should do a side-by-side with our 1200W HMI light...

Now we're talking! Love to see the results of that.

-j
 
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