Household Fluorescents VS Kinos

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scar this armada

Active member
Cruising Walmart I found you can pick up a 2 foot 2 bank ballast for fluorescents for $12. I also found lamps with very high color index or what not for $9, they were even shatter proof so the had that plastic stuff around them like Kinos. I know they won't be flicker free, but besides that..... why would I'd pay $800 compared to $30? Thanks.
 
"why would I'd pay $800 compared to $30? "

Well, you can be more like $3-$400 with cool lights products;

I've played around with the DIY route to some extent - with shop-light type strips, you need to build something to support it, that is hopefully aim-able and will mount on a standard baby (c-stand) pin;

The ballasts can be trouble. I bought a 4' bank at HD; they said all their ballasts are now electronic. The one I bought flickers at higher frame rates (what you see is a slow fade in-and-out as the shutter aligns with the flicker - it doesn't look like "flickering", FYI). But seems fine at normal speeds.

The color of mine is very pretty, bought the higher-CRI daylight tubes. Built a plywood case for it, did luan barndoors, which work and stay in place, but it was a lot of work and the thing is HEAVY.

I think if you need a smaller kino-sized fixture, you likely can't go wrong with some of Richard Andrewski's stuff (cool-lights.biz I believe?) I'm still interested in DIY if I ever need something specialized, for instance I could see needing something with 6' tubes, and then there's music-video types of things where you use tubes as actual design elements in a shot.

But for anything other than dirt-cheap guerilla stuff, DIY flo's are a LOT of work to make useful on set... and the black-spray-paint-plywood look may not be the best thing to take to a paid gig. As far as your final, edited shot goes, photons are photos - if you can get good color and good control (for aiming, placement, diffusion and spill) it's certainly better than "no lights at all".
 
Before building DIY Kinos I´d rather go with chinaballs and CFL´s for cheapness sake.
Along with some blackwrap you can do all kinds of lighting styles and you don´t have to be very versatile to build them.
After that , if you´re in the US, I´d also say look at CoolLights...
 
Spartacus are you implying that I am not versatile? Haha. I run a few China balls already, I was just hoping for a little more throw from these. My real question was just what's the difference not really what was cheaper. I just don't understand what separates the 2? Like I said I know you deal with flicker, but really... is that it?
 
CRI can be a factor. You have to try a few tubes (or get a recommendation) to get something that gives you good colors.

That being said, I use a bunch of LOA 1055SS models that I got from Lowe's I don't know if they still sell them, but they are 4', double tube models that are super quiet. I use them for interviews and small indie film shoots all the time, along with some home-made CFL fixtures. The colors are pretty good, they were cheap (I had modify them to put on a stand), and they are light. They also fit 2 at a time in a hardshelll case for golf clubs for transport.


I've never used them at high frame rates though.
 
Size, build quality, weight, color temperature, CRI. All important factors. Sure you can rig something up yourself with off-the-shelve part but you're not gonna be able to get the same compact form factor in something like a Cool Light. The convenience is completely worth the extra expenses IMO.
 
scar this armada said:
Spartacus are you implying that I am not versatile? Haha. I run a few China balls already, I was just hoping for a little more throw from these. My real question was just what's the difference not really what was cheaper. I just don't understand what separates the 2? Like I said I know you deal with flicker, but really... is that it?
Click to expand...

I guess I was more refering to my own DIY skills...:happy:

But you can ask your question basically for every part of production equipment!
DIYing when time is at hand and money is short (or if you just enjoy it of course...), will always have it´s place.
But the only thing so far I know where the DIY version probably resembles the branded one 100% is the DIY IndieSlider.
For all the other parts, buying them and earning your money back by USING them, at least for me always made more sense.
One exeption to this rule so far was HMI and Kino Lights.
Richards changed this with the CoolLights.
Unfortunatetly, for Europeans it ain´t that convenient and cheap to get them as for US buyers. But that´s another story.
 
I needed to simulate bright diffuse sunlight coming in through a window, and built a massive 20x55W light out of cheap Chinese ballasts and Osram 954 tubes -- cost around $300 and took an afternoon to put together. Not very pretty, but man does that sucker ever pump out light -- almost 4.5kW tungsten equivalent of light and draws just over 1kW of current. I don't think anyone is making anything like this for under $3000.
 
scar this armada said:
but besides that..... why would I'd pay $800 compared to $30? Thanks.
Click to expand...

You're comparing a bare bulb and ballast to an enclosure, cabling and wiring, sockets, mountings to adapt to standard light stands as well as a high CRI / color temperature correct bulb and ballast that we know is flicker free. There's a lot more there than you're giving credit for and as anyone that's done it will tell you, it is a lot of work.

While you may not have to pay $800, there's a slight bit more difference than just between $30 and whatever you end up spending for the enclosure and mounting devices. And we still don't know the real CRI or color temperature of the bulb you chose, nor do we know if the ballast is flicker free.

Why not try it, document it then come back and show us what you did and what was the final price for everything with mountings to a standard light stand and also the results taken with videos using the finished light to see if it works well for the intended purpose.

Otherwise, a lot of DIY work has been done on this site so a search should turn up what others did, including me, to make such a fixture. Here's a notable link for instance:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=61114
 
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