Has anyone ever used. http://www.lightstar.net.cn/english/pro.htm

I've not. Web site looks interesting, but there is no indication of distribution outside of China that I could find.

Are there dealers? Costs?

Guys,

Can you talk a little bit about PAR lights and their advantages? I saw a British Crew light up a 60-meter radio dish at Stanford with I think was one 12,000 -watt par. Lit the whole thing. Amazing. From what I know, andhave seen, PARS (hmi/s?)also seemto work very well as a daylight fill. Love a short tutorial if you're in the mood. Thanks


Regards,

Jack Hubbard

PAR is for PARabolic Aluminum Reflector and is unrelated to the type of source. This simply means that your light will be coming out in a directed cone. HMI lights are sort of like a relative to the fluorescent (a type of arc light) and put out colors similar to daylight (~5500K). A 12,000W HMI PAR would be like a 40,000W tungsten and be incredibly bright since HMI is much more efficient than tungsten. I'd love to see something like that in action. HMI lights have a big ballast box to change the line voltage to the high arc voltage the light uses. If this big light you saw had a big box cabled to it near it's base, it was probably an HMI. It also probably cost more than a nice new car.

Small lights, big output, daylight balanced.

The usual application is for a mix with daylight. HMIs can have the output needed to compete with daylight. How do you get 3-point lighting in daylight? With HMIs. How do you fill from the camera in daylight? HMI. (or with a dichroic filter on tungsten, but HMI is brighter)


Of course they have other applications too, but that's how I've seen them used.

Has anyone ever used. http://www.lightstar.net.cn/english/pro.htm

Interesting, I've send them an email asking for distributors, prices etc. I'll keep you guys posted!

A note on pars. . .


The ones I've used (and I think this applies to all of them), you have an open faced light into which you slip different lenses. When the light is pure and unfiltered, no lens, that is, it's a very direct, bright, powerful beam with an extremely narrow "arc". You point it right at something, you'll have an insanely bright, very hard, conentrated light, with a very narrow spread. Not good for most applications. So you need some lenses.

I won't like, I've only used, on my own, the 1200w Pars, the silver bullets. The ones I worked with had a spot (fresnel), medium, and bug-eye (wide lens), which do just what they sound like, that is, change the arc/spread of the light. Of course, the wider the beam, the less concentrated it is, and therefore, gives less output to any one area where the light is hitting.

HMIs might also be considered if you're on a low/no budget deal, and trying to get the most of the an available 20A circuit.

Joker kit is pretty sweet. I forgot 'til just a second ago I used those too.

That's my thoughts.

Hi Gents,

Thanks for clearing this up. Very helpful information.

Marcus: The PAR light at the Stanford Dish had a huge ballast box, and Josh, it was insanely bright. I mean one light on a 60-meter dish. Looked like a Shuttle launch. Definitely in the new car price range, I'd Say...

Well, the 1200s are probably the largest (wattage-wise) you could safely use on a regular household circuit (although I've heard of people using 2500s off of bathroom or kitchen circuits, 'cause aren't those usually rated for 30A?). They're powerful, but they're not as powerful as you'd think. They're not magic. Once you start putting lenses in, they lose a lot of punch. In bright bright daylight, they'll do a little bit, but if you really want to make a difference you need a much more powerful light.

Has anyone ever used an automobile xenon beam as an alternative
for a day light source.

Not sure how we got from chinese lanterns to PARs, but...

PARs are self-contained units much like the "sealed-beam" automotive headlamps. They have the relector, light source, and lens all in one unit. There are tungsten PAR lamps which are very cheap and HMI PAR lamps which are expensive (just like all other HMI sources). The HMI PAR lamps are often used in smaller HMI units (up to 1200w) and they usually have clear lenses and a collection of other lenses that you can use in front of the PAR lamp. Tungsten PAR lamps are what are in the PAR Can fixtures (very common at concerts) often called rock-n-roll lights. PAR Cans, BTW, are usually really cheap, but don't have any ability to focus or control the light. The tungsten PARs have a fixed lens and you typically change the whole lamp to get a different lens pattern. There are several different sizes (diameters) of tungsten PARs, with the largest being about 8" and a 1Kw lamp. Mole, and several other manufacturers, make arrays of tungsten PARs. The Maxi-Brute is 9 1kw PAR lamps in an array. The largest of these that I've seen is 24 1kw PAR lamps in an array. They are insanely heavy, take huge amounts of juice, and make a ton of light.

The big HMIs are a different beast all together :-) They are very efficent (and very expensive). I was told that the 18,000 watt HMI unit that we were using used a globe that cost $7000 US to replace. But if you want something that looks like sunlight over a broad area, there's no substitute.

PARs are self-contained units much like the "sealed-beam" automotive headlamps. They have the relector, light source, and lens all in one unit.

Actually you're describing the "old style" PAR lamp. Marcus is correct in stating that PAR is simply an acronym for the REFLECTOR and doesn't really tell you anything else about the lamp. In recent years ETC has developed a line of PAR's which consist of independent dichroic glass reflectors which help dissipate the heat from the rear of the unit instead of the front. They use separate halogen lamps and, as John describes, come with a "kit" of varying lenses to control the beam spread.

They are more expensive than the sealed beam old-style PAR's you describe, but the versatility of converting between different beam patterns using a single instrument offsets the cost of inventorying a variety of different sealed PAR lamps.

Ralph! Read the beginning of the post and the title! :) Come to think of it, an HMI chinese lantern would be rather nice...

I really wish 1.2Kw HMI lights werent $7000. A light that bright, matched to daylight, that can run on a standard wall outlet would be so convenient.

So, got some reply's on my questions, here they are:

For the European market:

We would like to inform you that we are a Sino-Germany Joint Venture in China; the Germany party
is BAVARIA lighting, in charge of Euro Market; and our side in charge of producing and Asia market;
so if you are intersted in our production please kindly contact our Germany party as follow details:


BAVARIA Lighting GmbH & Co.KG
Linderhofstr. 14
D-83064 Raubling
Fon +49 8035 96 89 46
Fax +49 8035 96 89 39
eMail info@bavaria-lighting.com
http www.bavaria-lighting.com


For the USA:

We would like to sell to US market in near future, but the approval for our production
in US market is a big problem for us. So if any person in US want to use our products
not care the UL approval ; they can buy the items directly from us.
We can give them the special price by the ordered quantity.

And the German site is DOWN! Go figure...

SO Underwriters Laboratories has not put the seal of approval on them. Wonder why. Wiring is probably sub standard. You're talking a LOT of amps, so it's possible their wiring isn't up to US code, or they don't have a circuit breaker. Something like that.

But I'd like to know what their price range is, and what it would take to get them up to grade. I suspect you'd have to import in mass to get the price break.

I've send an email to the German guys regarding prices. I'll keep you guys posted!

SO Underwriters Laboratories has not put the seal of approval on them. Wonder why.

There may not be any problem with the fixtures, but the manufacturer may not be willing to go through the full UL qualification process which I gather is very time-consuming and expensive. This is why so many consumer electronics products use external "bricks" for power. That way they can use an existing UL-approved power supply and skip the approval process on the device itself since it doesn't plug directly into a wall outlet.

A little OT, but amusing anyway. Was recently talking to a theatrical lighting designer who did a big production in China at the "Great Hall of the People" (or whatever). She said they had to allow a full afternoon for the fire dept to test their entire lighting rig. All the pipes had to be lowered to the floor and each instrument was examined and tested with temperature probes to insure they were within specs; she'd never seen anything like it before! So if these HMI fixtures are used in China they might actually exceed our own US specs...

Got a reply to pricing on the 200W HMI, roughly USD 1,500 for a full kit.
Interestingly these lights can be run off battery, the battery goes for just under USD 1000, that may include a charger. No info as yet on how long the battery will run the light.
The design looks very similar to the Joker Bug from K5600. but way cheaper.

That's a very good price! Looking forward to some hands one experience if possible. Don't need it right away but maybe if I do I'll ride down to Germany to test out.

Hmm. Reading too much too fast I guess. I was thinking about something like the Joker Bug setup that lets you use an HMI fixture in a Chinese latern. Apologies. At least the thread holds together better :-)

As for the PAR terminology, it may be "old style", but the intergrated lamp/reflector/lens design is still very much alive and well. If you can separate the lamp and the reflector and the lens, then I sort of want to call it something else. Maybe it is just symatics.
I'm sure that ETC is going after the traditional PAR can with their swapable lens design, but their naming convention is a little confusing to me. I haven't seen their "PAR" show up much in film lighting but maybe they will. They seem to be pretty efficient instruments. The Source Four, meanwhile (the ellipsoidal one), is the Xerox of the ellipsoidal world. People say Source Four instead of ellipsoidal. Carrying that name into their can design seems confusing.

Dear People

What about an automobile xenon as a day light source. It should work.
1 Its colour temp. is over 5000k
2 It comes in sealed PAR unit
3 It has a portable small balast
4 One could run it out of a car battery or out of a cars engine.
5 getting someone to seat in front of the cars xenon beam
and shoot some test should not cost an arm and a leg.

my 2 cents

Alexandre

Alexandre:

I've tried this already, as a matter of fact. Here are the problems:

1) Many automotive Xenon or Metal Halide lamps burn at 10,000k. That would be fine, save for the fact that you'll lose about half of the lamp's output trying to bring the color temp back down to 5600k (with 1 + 1/2 CTO)

2) While the ballasts are electronic, they're not flicker-free and produce quite a bit of noise. I've shot tests with the DVX100 in 24p and it's not pretty...

3) Low wattage. 30 to 125W. Good for an eyelight I suppose, but losing half of your already insignificant punch to color correction is a bummer.

That said, I'm looking into building a daylight maxi brute-type fixture with automotive bulbs. Could be very useful if you're looking to add a little ambient light to an exterior location...

Henry

but I would check out www.k5600.com

all you need is ballast problems and your screwed

plus see if the chinese are still using Magnetic ballast..

it that what i am looking for.. Magnetic.. correct me dv team

they are unrelyable and no one uses them anymore.

electronic ballast very important should you need repair

mole Digi Light hmi also nice

r

I don't think any of the major brands use magnetic ballasts anymore, but there are certainly a lot of them still in use, especially at lower budget rental places. They are very heavy, inefficient, and often noisy along with some flicker problems but they do work. It's still an excellent point to check out, however, since magnetic ballasts are cheaper to manufacture than electronic ones, and the ballast is a significant portion of the cost in an HMI.

Many of their kits have Chimera Lanterns.

The lights K5600 make are great. Some AC capability as well.

r

As far as I know these are more reliable than electronic ones, there's almost nothing in them to fail. But they are heavier. Still used in cinema projectors, weight doesn't really matter in this case. Flicker level should the same, HMIs run on DC, around 80V. For lower power HMIs electronic ballasts are pretty much standard fare but over 10KW, I think you'll find mostly magnetic ballasts. I don't know if electronic ballasts are any quieter either, once the power level goes up they can get pretty noisy and it's pretty high frequency noise, they're also more likely to produce interference due to the fast rise times in the high current switching circuits.

The Chinese HMIs we've been talking about do use electronic ballasts.