Some love for mag ballasts.

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
We all love the latest and greatest but sometimes it's what old, heavy and proven that ACTUALLY works. I have all my HMI with electronic ballasts but bring mag ballasts (HEAVY and no love from the crew!) as back up. ON recent humid and warm shoot (95 degrees in NYC) my electronic ballasts even though kept in the shade were giving out on me. My mag ballasts came to the rescue - hot and still working.
 
I have two HMIs with mag ballasts. Nothing beats them for pure tonnage and old timey reliability. Love given!
 
What kind of electronic ballasts do you have? The new Arri ones are quite reliable, so much so that I've never even seen a magnetic backup for them on a truck. FWIW, I can think of one instance using them last July in 90+ degree weather and they gave us no issues.
 
That's great that you have a solid reliable back-up. I have two Bron-Kobold 800 HMI's and one of my guys has two older 1200 Arri's with mag ballasts. I trust my stuff to fire. I hold my breath when we strike his. He usually brings both when only one is needed, because there have been many times when only one set of the 1200's will work. And yeah, the weight thing... I think one of his ballasts weighs as much as one of my whole 800 kits.
 
I got LTMs.
On recent shoot in Kansas in warm weather (warm NOT hot), K5600 ballasts were giving out on us (that's what you get when all you got is passive cooling), though even with a fan as is the case with LTMs they simply get too hot. The mag ballasts were burning hot - i can't imagine what that kind of temperature would do to fragile electronics.

Run&Gun, something has to be super weird with your set-up. Maybe it's your header, maybe something in the head. Maybe one of the small wires inside the ballast is loose (happened to me once - I opened the ballast and poked around). If you open oit you will see how super simple the MB are in comparison to EB - there is really very little to go wrong in there.
 
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