Lightstar electronic 1200w hmi vs 20 year old magnetic ballast arri hmi

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David_Pritchard

Member
As the title suggests... if you could choose an old arri ballast and light, 1200w hmi, magnetic so will flicker sometimes or a newer but still used chinese lightstar ( I think by Ikan), flicker free. Same price, which would you go for?
 
Well I forgot about the idea of buying a chinese hmi... still debating if its ok to buy a 10-20 year old arri hmi? I'm leaning towards the aputure 300d now but not quite the power I need!
 
With some of the reports I’ve seen about the Chinese Arri tungsten knock-offs and the inferior wiring in a lot of them, there’s no way I’d risk it with something like an HMI. There are 30-40 year old Arri HMI’s still out there in service. About 10 years ago a friend of mine bought two 1200’s that were probably from the 70’s/80’s with mag ballasts from a guy. The only really bad thing, besides the heavy-ass mag ballasts, is that they use the old “sealed beam” style lamps(think old car headlights) that are very hard to find today. But a 10 year old Arri with a modern bi-post lamp would absolutely be a reliable purchase. Way more-so than a Chinese knock-off.

And you are running into the reality that is, that LED’s still aren’t there when trying to fully(equally) replace HMI’s. That’s the reason I still have my BronKobold 800’s for a lot of outdoor stuff(live shots, stand-ups, etc.). Most LED manufacturers GREATLY exaggerate the equivalence of their fixtures when comparing to HMI’s. And I’m being nice when I say that. Because they’re really just flat-out lying to everyone.
 
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Thanks cpreston, someone else also sent me that link. It's a little more than I'm happy to spend I think cause I can get taxed around 20-30 percent bringing it into Thailand! I'm near settling on sticking with my existing Arri Tungsten Fresnel set and buying a nice haze machine instead! Aputure are rumored to be bringing out a 600w led soon... so may wait for that!

P.s I spoke to an Arri expert/technician from mpsfilm.com who very kindly clarified everything. Basically they don't recommend anyone buys lights older than Arrisun models, as they are discontinued and you maybe cannot get the parts if they break down. So the light above is perfect...
 
Disappointingly, Usedlighting quoted me triple a normal shipping price to get the light to my location. Can't help but feel they're marking that up... I literally added 3 ballasts and lights and an 18kg smoke machine and it still cost less to ship by bhphoto with fedex who they quoted than just ordering the 1 light and ballast from them.
 
I bought two Arrisun 1200's from used lighting. They were well used, but perfectly operational.

They came on a pallet to a residential address without any warning from used lighting.
 
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