par38 cdm lighting

E

ExpensiveHobby

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For a hard daylight-ish source, you either spend a lot of money or lose a ton of light to gels. The closest thing to a reasonable price seems to be coollights fresnels, and even those start at ~$400, not counting really high shipping costs. Soft light is nicely covered by fluorescents, but hard is tough to find.

So in looking at 1000bulbs.com, they have a par38 100 watt 4000k cri 92 philips cdm bulb, uv protected and in 15 and 25 degree spreads.

Has anyone tried attaching a ballast to a par38 can and using one of those? I figure with an $80 ballast, a $40 bulb, a $20 par can, and some pretty simple wiring, that could actually work.

If anyone has tried this, how even is the light coming out of those things? If not, I'll probably try it myself just to find out.
 
I have one of alzo's "800" daylight HIDs. Great little light for the money, and definitely up there with my 750 tungsten Fresnels. Under $300 I believe. I will get a couple more at some point.

In fact, they sell a bulb & ballast combo - I just finished gutting a 6" fresnel to adapt to that setup.

Your deal is certainly cheaper - the ballast/bulb from Alzo is about $180 - but I have no clue about ballasts for stuff like this - any pointers/links for idiot-guide-level stuff?
 
1000bulbs sells ballasts too... I was looking at the 100w pulse-start ballasts they list. They have documentation links on the site for each one of the ballasts.

The wiring looks fairly straight-forward. I think I will just drill holes and attach the ballast to the back of a par38 can to keep from having wires stretching between the can and ballast when moving the light... but that probably means I'll also have to attach a heat sink. I won't know until I get the stuff delivered and see what is getting hot, and what the effect of different light orientations is.

What is the cri on those alzo bulbs? I can't see that anywhere on their site (which I suppose is not a good sign...)
 
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CRI is kinda overrated and isn't a "magic solution" to knowing light quality. The question is really "how does the light look", and I've found it to be very nice. Hasn't struck me as overly cool or warm, and I'm not seeing any spikes. To date I've only used the Alzo for still product photos, with cameras set to daylight - but I find that a much more demanding use than video, and it's been fine. Not the massive output of my Speedotron strobes, but I'm usually set up for video and I'm enjoying not having to break out the Speedo gear as often (and not having to mess with a radio synch as well). I've shot some apparel on and off figure and also a cool portrait (ended up doing the portrait as B&W, but I opened the Raw files in color and didn't touch the color temp settings).

I think it's a no brainer for the $$ and I like that there's a dedicated grid as well (I like grids, esp. for product stills). Heat seems comparable to a 300 watt tungsten, output looks around 750 watts.

It's under $300 for an open face - Richard's Cool Light Fresnel I assume is similar, much more costly and I'm not excited about a 3" fresnel, at that level of output I think 6 - 8" lenses are more useful - I have a 6" ready to go, but the Alzo stuff is $180 or so to do that, I'll poke around the site you mentioned, bought plenty of globes from them. The Alzo rig does have plug n' play going for it, and the fact you can use it as a practical in a house lamp or rig up some cool china/pancake solutions. Seems like a couple of those ballast/bulb combos would be freakishly handy to have in the kit.

(EDIT: In calling the Cool Light fresnel "similar", I mean in being a cold-start HID light with about the same output as the Alzo - you do get a fresnel lens with the cool light and a more industry standard gel/barndor slot - on the other hand, as I recall, it's like a 3" or so lens, where something a little wider seems more useful to me - you can always snoot a 6" down...)
 
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