Kino Flo Diva or Flolight for talking head interviews???

N

Nicholas Natteau

Veteran
I just received my Panasonic AF100 with which I plan to shoot a number of indoor talking head interviews. I've narrowed down my selection to Kinoflo Diva Lite and Flolight. I just can't decide which company to go with.

For set up convenience, interviewee comfort, and crew safety, I'm looking to use lights that are strictly heat free. That's why, I'm looking very closely at Kino Flo or Flolight.

I notice though that Flolight's units are considerably cheaper than Kino Flo's but most people seem to be using Kino Flo Diva Lights. Has anyone here used Flolight? And if so, how do its lights compare to Kino Flo's Diva Lite 400s / 200s?

Thanks in advance for any advice regarding the ideal heat free lighting setup for indoor talking head interviews.
 
Diva Lite is the original. For rip-offs please consider coollights.biz, they sell portable and stationary flos. I have a portable 4-bank from them.
 
If one were to want a good rip-off Diva lite, what would one need to consider? There is obvious stuff like output equivalent power, CRI, but what else? Mounts, replacement bulbs, etc..???? Anyone?
 
I have both the Cool Lights and Flora kits (as seen in the above video). They are both great lights for use in different situations. The Cool Lights is much closer to 5600K while the Flora is a little warmer. The Flora's main advantage is it's high output. The Cool Lights fixture is 1x 200w bulb with an equivalent output of about 800w. The Flora light is 6x 65w bulbs with an equivalent output of around 1500w.

I would pick either over Kino Flos.
 
The Flolight customer service is the worst and I would not give them a dime.

Cool Lights, on the other hand has the best CS, and I always feel confident buying their products.
 
What type of customer service did you actually need from flolight. What was the issue and what did they "not" do?
 
As for the Coollights, I'm pleased with it, except for the gooseneck of the barndors. The stuff that is used for the gooseneck is way too loose.
 
NextWaveG said:
I have both the Cool Lights and Flora kits (as seen in the above video). They are both great lights for use in different situations. The Cool Lights is much closer to 5600K while the Flora is a little warmer. The Flora's main advantage is it's high output. The Cool Lights fixture is 1x 200w bulb with an equivalent output of about 800w. The Flora light is 6x 65w bulbs with an equivalent output of around 1500w.

I would pick either over Kino Flos.
Click to expand...


Hey Tony, were those the coollights or the flolights you showed in the video (chinese version)? And did you test them at 1/125 shutter speed to see if there was any banding, the green stripes..? Anything above 1/125 I dont really use for video.. And btw, the green stripes, that only applies to video right? Not photography...?
 
If it were me... and I was using the lights with a larger crew, or the lights were going to be used by others, such as renting them out, I would get a Diva kit. I have used them with great success in the past.
What I would do if I took care of my gear and didn't rent it out, I would get some well made Chinese Diva clones, in 6 x 55w, 4 x 55w, 2 x 55w biax with decent ballasts and a good cross section of tubes in both studio and daylight. I would then construct grids for each light and bundle them with minus green gels & diffusion. A set of heavy duty stands for each light, power strips, a few nice stingers, a milk crate or heavy duty hardware bag to hold your power cords and such, and still have enough left to get a couple of c-stands and a couple flags, and maybe a used Fresnel with what you saved.
 
I brought a set of the Alzo "diva knock offs ", mine are the bank select dimming version. I found out that they're not bad at all.
May pick up two more.
 
Never owned Kino's, mainly because of the cost;

There are more and more biax-tube chinese units around every season; Flolight, Alzo, Steve Kaiser (I believe), and eBay.

The flolights use a gooseneck instead of a traditional yoke; the cool lights are highly regarded, but their shipping policies are a little off - you can't even buy a small part from them without a $27 ship charge, or like $79 for a twin 55 biax flo. Supposedly if you call they'll do a better shipping deal... or if it's not a full moon their ship calculator is not insane... or something...

Is one twin-55 Biax from Kino worth two cool lights or four chinese deals? I don't know; I've been using some chinese units and I'm loving the light for video and stills - but it's the biax-style light I'm enjoying working with. If there's not major differences in ballasts, it comes down to weight and build quality.

I've seen something like 700 different takes on the "bunch-of-spirals-in-a-small-softbox". Softboxes IMHO are overrated and not much use except for tabletop product (read my rant here) or standard-everyday-interview lighting. I find twin & quad biax flo's with barndoors to be really very versatile. I've never missed dimmers on them, and you can get fairly hard to super soft light with very little effort or grip gear. Grab a $200 one and see what you think, basically you can't lose at that price.
 
Kino is of course fantastic, although I have never been a big fan of the biax lamps. They all seem to color shift very rapidly. That said, if you can't afford the Kino's BUY Richard's Cool lights. They are really the only viable alternative. Richard builds a quality product, is always available to answer your questions and stands behind his products. This is very rare in todays retail environment.
 
Michael,

I have done some business with Cool Lights and their shipping is top notch, especially their packaging which is absolutely first rate. My only beef is that they use FedX for everything and where I live, FedX really sucks.

Grant
 
Definitely would recommend you the coollight portables over those ALZOs you can see in the link. Weight may become an issue and the barndoors are 2 instead of 4 (like on divalites).
 
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