Rololights?

I don't remember seeing anyone here that's actually tried them in the last year and commented about it but let's see what pops up. It's an idea where you snap together some lights and can make whatever size you want and it's been around for at least two or three years...
 
Hi Stephen:

They have had them in stock over at FilmTools in Burbank for quite a while. Neat idea, waay overpriced IMHO. They have hardly sold any of them according to their salespeople when I ask about them.

Have never seen them used by anyone, pros or amateurs.

Dan
 
That's my take too. The whole snap together idea sounds great but in actual practice people just use what they've been using and that's fine. And the price is really up there too.
 
but how are the lights? I have been looking for the convenience and I have been dealing with the owner and marketing people so its not a price question, its more a practical use question, if you had them would you use them? or if they were the same price or cheaper would you buy them? They seem very practical in several ways, you can easily roll them, store them unpack them and they take some abuse which I am not found of doing to equipment but always glad when it can handle the occasional clumsy assistant. What would be a benefit to the design in your eyes if any? what would be a drawback? and what about the output? is it high or low by similar setup standards? coming from a still background its hard to know, everything seems like no light for me ;)
 
and richard what about your coolight 2 and 4 bulb portable units out yet? price? any f-stop at distance/speed/iso measurements? I am still interested. I am only looking at rololights since we had a long talk at the photoshow and I see them as competitively priced with some of the kino units at a very different form factor. Also I found a double flourescent ring with a 52 or 55w bulb/bulbs I would love to try to make a ring out of, any thoughts on doing a design like that yourself? I see the options as very slim, a 9500.00 led version and a not allowed to be sold in the US 4500.00 and 6500.00 version from gekko, or a no light 20w 1000.00 kino version. I assume a 50ish watt version should be at least a stop more usable light, and if it had a silver reflector behind it directional output it would be a combined hard/soft effect and more efficient than the kinos white reflector. Any thoughts?
 
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Stephen Eastwood said:
but how are the lights? I have been looking for the convenience and I have been dealing with the owner and marketing people so its not a price question, its more a practical use question, if you had them would you use them? or if they were the same price or cheaper would you buy them? They seem very practical in several ways, you can easily roll them, store them unpack them and they take some abuse which I am not found of doing to equipment but always glad when it can handle the occasional clumsy assistant. What would be a benefit to the design in your eyes if any? what would be a drawback? and what about the output? is it high or low by similar setup standards? coming from a still background its hard to know, everything seems like no light for me ;)
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The lights are fine but they have comparitively low output. I mean, a Kino tube is a Kino tube, all the light itself is doing is providing current to light up said tubes.

If I could get them cheap, I like the idea, but I would not use them as a main light in my kit. I already have two homemade Kino Diva 200s in my kit and I have done shoots with only those two lights. IMHO, Fluoros are nice but the quality of light from them in my situations (usually mixed light interviews on location) is not as good as I get from my tungsten instruments through a Chimera. The fluoros have less output, less wrap and the color temp is always a little cool to my eye. It is nice that they don't generate much heat but they are less controllable than a Chimera with an eggcrate.

You seem to already have your mind made up and heart set on obtaining these lights, why not get them? It's just like a camera or strobe system, what appeals to me may be junk to you and vice-versa.

There is nothing wrong with them, they are fine, just not the most bang for the buck or the most efficient setup in my mind. If all I had were the Rololights, I am sure I could manage and still make good looking images, I just would whine more!

Dan
 
Stephen Eastwood said:
and richard what about your coolight 2 and 4 bulb portable units out yet? price? any f-stop at distance/speed/iso measurements? I am still interested. I am only looking at rololights since we had a long talk at the photoshow and I see them as competitively priced with some of the kino units at a very different form factor. Also I found a double flourescent ring with a 52 or 55w bulb/bulbs I would love to try to make a ring out of, any thoughts on doing a design like that yourself? I see the options as very slim, a 9500.00 led version and a not allowed to be sold in the US 4500.00 and 6500.00 version from gekko, or a no light 20w 1000.00 kino version. I assume a 50ish watt version should be at least a stop more usable light, and if it had a silver reflector behind it directional output it would be a combined hard/soft effect and more efficient than the kinos white reflector. Any thoughts?
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Hi Stephen,

The product pages are up now so you can see prices there, but the actual products won't be shipping for another month or so.

http://www.coollights.biz/softlight-series-portable-models-c-25_32.html

I have thought a lot about ring lights and I have the same opinion about them that I have about on camera lighting in general. It has to be light in weight therefore the output will be limited somewhat no matter whether hmi, tungsten, LED or fluorescent. On camera lighting has its specialized uses but its not for everything. If you want more output you have to go to off camera lighting. In addition, just think of the ring lights as another type of specialty instrument for producing a certain effect in someones eyes. Other than that, why chose a ring light or any on-camera at all particularly if you don't have a big need to be portable?

If I were doing an LED ring light, I would start out with a plastic speedring and attach a round fixture to that with a collection of either 1 to 3w LEDs or a bunch of the smaller ones. I would not expect however, in that small space I have to work with, to be able to put enough LEDs of whatever size, given their current performance level to equal even the output of one of the 55w ring flo tubes which will be in the range of 3000 to 3500 lumens depending upon the quality of the tubes, how high the CRI is (yes lumen output drops as CRI goes up) and the quality of the ballast driving the tube(s). Nor would I expect the product to be as cost effective as one based on a flo.

I recently showed a prototype version of my LED panel on DVXUser (early stage without a fixture housing) which I hope to offer in the $199 range and 25watts without a battery--battery options extra. I bring this up not to promote the panel but to show the ridiculousness of the price / performance ratio. It would take about 4 of these panels to equal a CL-255 in output. In addition, the light would be a different quality of light, not quite as soft as fluorescent. More like a spot. Thus, the price of the 4 panels would be in the $800 range + whatever special adapter hardware you need to bolt them all together and put them on a stand to make them usable. Is what you've got after all that really better than a fluorescent unit?

A CL-255 is $169 with tubes. A CL-255P (portable) is $275 with tubes, A CL-255PMD (dimmable portable) is $369 with tubes, etc. You see, so if you make the decision to go the LED route, it's more expensive no matter who's doing the panels, whether Richard or Litepanels. Why am I still going to do it? Because every one of these tools from an LED panel to a tungsten fresnel (for Dan and those that still like to use hot lights for certain things) to a fluorescent softlight, to a 1200w HMI has its place. No one tool will do all jobs most effectively when you consider all the parameters. We want to have a complete offering that covers all the lighting instruments that someone might want to have in their arsenal.

Use a ring light for what it's good for--highlights and eyelights, use a rololight or a Cool Lights softlight for a blanket lighting of a large area. Use an LED panel for when you need to be super portable and running off batteries, like when you're filming two people in a car at night. Or you're interviewing that expert on wildlife in the middle of the African jungle at night. But you won't use that panel much during the daytime outside or when light is streaming through the windows during an interview in an office. Use the 575w or 1200w HMI inside when you have an interview on the 20th floor of a building and it's not practical to ND the windows, or the 1200w outside on a sunny day, etc.

I know you've been looking for the perfect system for your studio for a long time but I think you'll eventually end up with more than one and if you want to stretch your dollar more across several systems, well that's what we're busy doing here in China is to allow people to do just that.
 
Richard what do you think of a 200w tungsten light output on a ring? more or less powerful in real world equivalent to a 55w flo? I ask because I am looking into a ring and found that the broncolor makes a ringflash with a 200w modeling light, it would be tungsten but I would look at it for my use (as foolish as it is to use a flash, I simply would not use it as a flash and have a back up ringflash should I ever need one) I am just not sure what a 55w flo would give in relation to 200w tungsten modeling lights and thought you may know.

And as for having multiple setups I already do, I have HMI's I have two seperate tungsten kits from 250lowels up to three 5k's and everything in between, and I have a few kino odds and ends, but I am now looking for options and variety and especially convenient small lightweight setups for various smaller setups.

But I still work on f-stops and iso speeds, given a shutter speed of 1/48-1/60th so I am always trying to figure out how much light things put out for my actual use, the coollights look great and I like the portable units just would love to know how much light to know if I have to go with the 4 bank or 4 of the 2 banks would work better for me.
 
One other question maybe you can help me with. I had picked up two of those ufo tent lights which are very cool versions of the miclight http://cgi.ebay.com/UFO-48-LED-Camp...yZ106987QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I lov ethem for a few things and having seen them as low as 1.99 and ordering them for 3.99 I was planning on getting 100-200 to make a few things, one being a background of lights, when approaching the dealer I had purchased from in CA, he responded the lights I had purchased for 3.99 if I wanted more he could easily supply with 200 for 6.99 each, so I am looking for another source. Would you happen to know any or be able to supply them? the color temp is not important so the cheap 48led 9000-12000k are all good, just need a bulk of them. Thought maybe you would know about them. Thanks for any info or help.
 
Stephen Eastwood said:
Richard what do you think of a 200w tungsten light output on a ring? more or less powerful in real world equivalent to a 55w flo? I ask because I am looking into a ring and found that the broncolor makes a ringflash with a 200w modeling light, it would be tungsten but I would look at it for my use (as foolish as it is to use a flash, I simply would not use it as a flash and have a back up ringflash should I ever need one) I am just not sure what a 55w flo would give in relation to 200w tungsten modeling lights and thought you may know.

And as for having multiple setups I already do, I have HMI's I have two seperate tungsten kits from 250lowels up to three 5k's and everything in between, and I have a few kino odds and ends, but I am now looking for options and variety and especially convenient small lightweight setups for various smaller setups.

But I still work on f-stops and iso speeds, given a shutter speed of 1/48-1/60th so I am always trying to figure out how much light things put out for my actual use, the coollights look great and I like the portable units just would love to know how much light to know if I have to go with the 4 bank or 4 of the 2 banks would work better for me.
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You've been asking for the output readings for a while and I've been procrastinating. I just settled down to take them off of a 455P in Lux with my Sekonic L758Cine in Incident mode using our 5600K tubes. I hope lux will do for you. At 1 meter, its 3700 lux. At 2 meters its 1200 lux. At 3 meters its 370 lux. A 255P is what you'd expect at 1/2 the capacity of the 455P: 1800 lux at 1 meter, 600 lux at 2 meters and 180 lux at 3 meters. Our studio models are about the same readings given they use the same bulbs and ballasts. The only other relevant component thats different is the reflector between the two. Those readings are all taken with the non-dimming ballast versions. The dimming ballasts are just a bit less output as a dimming ballast is rarely as efficient as a non-dimming one in power factor. You can take a small percentage of about 10% off of each of the readings for use of the dimming models.

A 200w tungsten output modeling light would be roughly 4000 lumens if it was the best tungsten at 20lpw or 3000 with more average of 15 lpw. A 55w tube can also be between 3000 to 4000 lumens depending upon tube and ballast and a super reflector behind certainly wouldn't hurt either. I guess what would bother me about a solution like that would be more heat emanating from the fixture right down onto my lens.
 
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Stephen Eastwood said:
One other question maybe you can help me with. I had picked up two of those ufo tent lights which are very cool versions of the miclight http://cgi.ebay.com/UFO-48-LED-Camp...yZ106987QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I lov ethem for a few things and having seen them as low as 1.99 and ordering them for 3.99 I was planning on getting 100-200 to make a few things, one being a background of lights, when approaching the dealer I had purchased from in CA, he responded the lights I had purchased for 3.99 if I wanted more he could easily supply with 200 for 6.99 each, so I am looking for another source. Would you happen to know any or be able to supply them? the color temp is not important so the cheap 48led 9000-12000k are all good, just need a bulk of them. Thought maybe you would know about them. Thanks for any info or help.
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Stephen, do you like the kind with a hole in the middle or no hole at all? I've seen them both ways.
 
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Cool Lights said:
Richard, do you like the kind with a hole in the middle or no hole at all? I've seen them both ways.
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Thanks for that and yes I can figure out how much from lux finally. I guess I like the whole in the middle since it gives me an option of maybe mounting them to a piece of plexi and having a separate color coming through if I went that far on the designing of a backdrop, that could be a cool option.
 
Stephen Eastwood said:
Thanks for that and yes I can figure out how much from lux finally. I guess I like the whole in the middle since it gives me an option of maybe mounting them to a piece of plexi and having a separate color coming through if I went that far on the designing of a backdrop, that could be a cool option.
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Okay no problem. You can find a light just like that flolights miclight right here in China (those crazy Chinese will copy anything won't they?):

http://zyoe.en.alibaba.com/product/50217876/51901184/Others_/LED_Camping_Light.html

Made by the Ningbo Zhaoyang Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd. Phone number is 86-574-87781331 and they are 12 hours ahead of EST.

Amazing how similar they look isn't it? ;-) We can contact them if you like to see what 200 of them would be.
 
if you would that would be great, maybe check 100 and 200 price in case its different. I think they will make a very cool background for a few shots. interesting effects. And I think the 2 light portable banks are good I will get them when they are available. I would prefer to have 4 and me able to bank them or make them into a square than have two larger ones. Any major differences between the portable and studio models? I am definitely leaning toward the portable, most likely non dimming versions.
 
Major differences are weight and angle adjustment. 15 lbs for studio model / 6.6 lbs for portable. Studio model has yoke for angle adjustment and can only be horizontal orientation of tubes. Portable has lollipop swivel mount on the back which means it can mount at any angle plus horizontal or vertical. Non-dimming models are brighter and use bank select idea for dimming. The continuous dimming model is a bit less bright but you get the continuous dimming feature plus bank select on the dimming model.
 
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