Your experience and or samples of things you lit using the Quasar Science T8s?

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
I am picking up a few of these next week and am looking for ideas about creative ways to light with these. Whatcha got?
 
We've used the cross fade bare tubes as keys and hairs, fill, to wash a solid white background and as practicles/part of set design. Earlier this year for some of the CFP National Championship interviews in the 'ole boring hotel conference room we suspended four 4' tubes from the ceiling behind the trophy for the wide slider shot. When I get on my laptop, I'll post a pic.

Also, check out the grids from Honeycrate. I just picked up a few from them. Would have come in handy a few months ago when we were lighting with them and needed a little spill control. They strap right to the tubes.
 
Ohh grids, that sounds super cool. Yes, post some stills when you have time, would love to see how you are using them.
 
The Honeycrates look great. I often rent Quasars in single fixture Kino shells just so I can use grids, & if I owned linear LEDs I’d pickup the Honeycrates.
 
Run&Gun said:
Stumbled across these after the gear show in Atlanta a few months ago on one of the sites like Cinema 5D.
https://honeycrates.com/collections/led-light-fixtures/products/q20c-50º-1-3-fits-quasar-2-crossfade



Just a screen shot when we were DL'ing cards. These were a friends tubes. I bought mine after this shoot.
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These look so useful. Unfortunately I am starting with just the QS T8 tubes and it appears that they don't make one for the T8s, just the Crossfades and Rainbows. I think the T8s are much smaller diameter. Oh well, if I like them, I may buy some more Quasars including the Crossfades.
 
puredrifting said:
These look so useful. Unfortunately I am starting with just the QS T8 tubes and it appears that they don't make one for the T8s, just the Crossfades and Rainbows. I think the T8s are much smaller diameter. Oh well, if I like them, I may buy some more Quasars including the Crossfades.
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And a heads up, they are working on a new version of the crossfades with a built-in controller like the rainbow tubes, so you can also control dimming from the tube, instead of having to have an off-board dimmer. And they're adding control for plus/minus green and lighting effects, as well as changing to the Neutrik locking barrel connector that the rainbows have(and Gemini's). I may sell mine after the new ones come out. On-board dimming and the new power connector are huge, in my opinion, for streamlining the set-up with them. I've never liked the power cables with the current versions.

https://www.quasarscience.com/products/xmd-linear-lled?variant=19916044468282
 
What hardware does anyone use for quasar 4 foot tubes? Is the Matthews myway system any good?

The marketing pictures show the tubes mounted in the center of the plate. Is it strong enough to mount a 4 foot tube at one end instead of the middle? Eg for arming out on a c-stand.
 
Built-in Controllers will be a great feature. Have tried (rentals) about every type of dimmer, & seems they all can induce flickering that’s visible to the naked eye. When this happens I’ll often resort to covering the tubes with diffusion, or in a pinch, white paper tape, to knock the output down below what the dimmer facilitates.
 
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rob norton said:
What hardware does anyone use for quasar 4 foot tubes? Is the Matthews myway system any good?

The marketing pictures show the tubes mounted in the center of the plate. Is it strong enough to mount a 4 foot tube at one end instead of the middle? Eg for arming out on a c-stand.
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I have a bunch of the Matthews MQ mounts.
https://matthewsgrip.myshopify.com/collections/showcase/products/the-mq-mount

mq-mount_420114_web.jpg

Bern Caughey said:
Built-in Controllers will be a great feature. Have tried (rentals) about every type of dimmer, & seems they all can induce flickering that’s visible to the naked eye. When this happens I’ll often resort to covering the tubes with diffusion, or in a pinch, white paper tape, to knock the output down below what the dimmer facilitates.
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I've had good luck with off-the-shelf, self-contained/pre-built Lutron LED lamp dimmers, available at most Lowe's or Home Depot's. They were on the recommended list of dimmers from Quasar. Can't find the model number, right now, but they look just like this:
*Edit* I think this is it:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Lutron-Credenza-100-watt-Single-pole-Black-Compatible-with-LED-Dimmer/4462387
black-lutron-dimmers-tt-300nlh-bl-64_1000.jpg
 
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rob norton said:
What hardware does anyone use for quasar 4 foot tubes? Is the Matthews myway system any good?

The marketing pictures show the tubes mounted in the center of the plate. Is it strong enough to mount a 4 foot tube at one end instead of the middle? Eg for arming out on a c-stand.
Click to expand...

Four foot tubes clamped at the ends and armed out on c-stands. Would have loved to have had the grids for this. Normally we light it with more controllable lights/softboxes, but I kind of just wanted to see if we could do it with these. Turned out ok. If I would have been able to control the spill, it would have been pretty close to our normal set-up. The set-up is three cams with two covering the talent and subject from the front/side with a cam dead center in the rear a la mystery science theater 3000 that shows subjects watching the screen, so the lights have to be in position to clear the rear shot and if they're mounted high, they have to be above the shot, but below the ceiling mounted projector.
IMG_1505.JPG
 
puredrifting said:
Are they keyed with just the Quasar in that shot or is there another key source that's not visible?
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Keyed with two 4' quasars in the front(hard to see the second one on the left, but you can see it as the bright spot shinning through the edge of the left cameras mattebox and it's on the c-stand running up behind the white board) and hair is one 4' in the back.

Like I said earlier, I would have liked to have had the grids for more control for this. I need to pull them out and play around and see what kind of control I will really be able to get with them. They just came in a few weeks ago and I haven't had a chance to shoot with them, yet.
 
I recently picked up three of the 2' T8 tubes. They're fantastic and I can't wait to pick up some 4' ones down the road. I made a couple El-cheapo mounts using the Impact Wall Plates with hardware store T8 holders screwed through each corner...The clips I'm using now aren't exactly durable so I leave the lamps in them. Here I used all three as the only lights on the interview and they worked out great! (No BTS though)

T8_Interview.jpg


It'll be interesting to see about mounting a series of 4' ones down a 4x4 frame...
 
So, after lunch today I ran by storage and grabbed a Quasar tube and a Honeycrate to give it a quick glance to see just how much control/cut you get. I didn't take any pictures to post, but lets just say that they work really WELL. And you can still use the Matthews MQ mounts with the Honeycrates on them.
 
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