Yet another fluorescent lighting thread
 

So I am ready to drop some money on some fluorescent banks. I am far from an expert on lighting, but I know enough to be dangerous. I have read many post from Richard A among others on the Coollights and am sold. Based on others advise from this board I want to start with a pair of 6x55w banks for lighting white and green screens and build a kit from there with a 2x55 and 4x55 (I already have some "hard" lights). Unfortunately Coollights is out of the portables until the end of April and that does not work for me. I started searching around for other alternatives and found some Amvona banks that are very reasonable.

http://www.amvona.com/?page=shop/fly...roduct_id=3323

They are slightly bigger and heavier but about $250 less expensive than the Coollights, sorry Richard. The Amvona site does not give a big write-up on them so I am wondering if anyone has any experience with these light and can poke some hole in this purchase? I have made purchases from Amvona before and been pleased with their service and price/quality ratio. Given the nearly $500 savings and that I was going to have to eat PB&Js for a month or two to even afford the Cools this seems like a good deal. Maybe now I can even eat ham sandwiches.

You might want to check http://www.flolight.com . I was in the same boat, going to order from Richard but they weren't in stock, so I went to Flolights to order some similar ones and ended up getting the 500LEDs instead of flourescents. For lighting greenscreen, the fluorescents are better because they have a broader spread.

Thanks Bill. I like the LEDs. What are you lighting with them/it? How do they fit into your kit? I am going to go with the fluorescents to start and the flolights are still $170 more than the same thing at Amvona, so unless someone can talk me down I am jumping in...

What happens if 1 LED burns out, or breaks? Do several/all go out too?

The LEDs are supposed to last for 40,000 hours or something in that range, which is 4 times what fluorescents last. That's years. I shot for six years with 3 Lowel Caselight fluorescents and that set is still in use by others and no bulb has burned out yet, although people have dropped and broken one or two when switching between 3200 and 5600.

Also, each LED is a separate tiny light, so one can go out and not really affect anything.

I use them primarily for locating lighting of interviews, although I've done a 2-person studio shoot with them. The fluorescents are softer and broader than the LEDs, and when you are up fairly close with one, say within about 10 feet, in most cases you want to use diffusion gel. They are sort of halfway between a fluorescent and a fresnel--softer and not as much throw as a fresnel, more focused and harder with a little more throw than a fluorescent.

The downside for some people is that they are strictly 5600K, but I shoot mostly daylight because my camera looks better under daylight than tungsten (don't know why, just does; same for the DSR500 I used to shoot with).

These LEDs are much smaller, thinner and lighter than the equivalent fluorescents. I've used them with tungsten lights by gelling with CTO.

Florescent Lighting...
 

What do you think of this kit...
http://www.pclightingsystems.com/fl/3200%20kit.html

I am very pleased with Westcott's Spiderlites.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=112227

Thanks for the input.

Greg, the DayFlos look like a really good deal. Do you have one of the kits? 1400w per head seems like a lot. Especially when compared to the Wescott's 750w per head for a lot more money. I know Wescott is more-or-less a name-brand in lighting but that seems like a big discrepancy.

Peter, I have looked at the Wescotts before but they are a little out of my price range for now. I am still leaning toward the Amvonas for now for the screen lighting and maybe a DayFlos or two for key/fill in a few months. I hope they are what they say they are.

Here's what one comment on resellerratings.com says about Pacific Coast:
http://www.resellerratings.com/store...ystems#reviews

I came close to buying from them but was put off when I couldn't really get a straight answer.

I was skeptical at first but after reading the review I don't think I will purchase from them. That is REALLY cheap for 4200w of light. I have purchased from amvona before and they were fine to deal with.

Dave,

post back on this thread once you get the new lights. I would love to hear your first hand feed back on them. I have been eyeing the Coollights, but everytime I find the spare money to replace our light kits they are out of stock, so I go buy something else for our studio. I think the Coollights are a great product from what I have read, but if these work as well and are a lower cost I would certainly consider them too.

Thanks!

Bill

Thanks guys for updating everyone on my stock situation. Now a bit more "up-to-date" status from someone who actually knows the particulars might be in order after that!

The only portable I am out of stock on are the CL-655P. We have plenty of the following:

CL-255P
CL-255PMD
CL-455P
CL-455PMD

1 CL-655PMD left

And studio models:

CL-455
CL-455MD

I'm sure Amvona is a fine alternative and good luck with your purchases wherever they may be...

Has anyone seen CRI ratings on LEDs?

Bill,
I will update this post when my purchase(s) are made.

Richard,
After re-reading my post I can see where someone may take from it that you were out of "portables" and I apologize for that. I said that I was looking for the 655 and that you were out of the portables until the end of April, info garnered from your site. Sorry to anyone who mistook what I meant, I would edit the post if I could.

This is a forum for information on lighting and I see no problem in informing other on my situation in purchasing lights in hopes of helping others in need. If that information informs others on your or anyone else's in-stock status so be it. it is not a knock on you or Coollights. If you had them in stock I would already own a pair and would not have had to seek out other alternatives. At the end of the day Coollights not having the lights in stock is a credit to your product.

No, its not very common right now. LEDs are in an early state and CRI has not yet been discovered as an important buying specification yet for most of the buying public for LEDs. Just as fluorescents had very little CRI information on them a few years ago too, but now practically everyone prints it as a spec.

I have purchased lighting from several sources, and also have made purchases from Amvona. Here is my take:

Amvona - very agressive pricing, high "shipping and handling". Depending on what you are buying the quality is or may be perfectly ok. Their stands use plastic for many parts. Overall ok - just know what you are buying and know their products are not built to commercial standards - and maybe you do not need that.

ImageWestTV - a little like Amvona but slightly higher overall quality. They sell Britek, which has some features I like.

Coollights - while some of the products lack the bells and whistles you may see elsewhere, I find the build quality to be superb. In fact recently someone was looking at a mixed lighting setup I had using some coollights and stands along with some Briteks on Amvona stands.... they commented that the non- coollight products looked like cheap knockoffs (specifically softbox and stand). The Coollight stands are all metal and nicely made.

My 2 cents FWIW. I'm a coollights fan.

I have to agree with the above post, the coollights flos are sweet!

5000k white LEDs are around 77CRI. Checkout this link at super bright leds-

http://www.superbrightleds.com/compE27.htm


They even have a Spectral Graph.

-John

Actually, you can find higher CRI from some sophisticated suppliers. That's the spectrum for the LEDs that particular supplier is selling. Others will have different specs. Its definitely not easy to find high quality / high lumen per watt LEDs though. Plus you can have small matching problems too within a batch.

Hehe, yeah and if you're in Sacramento, shipping is pretty much Overnight with "Ground" prices since we ship from Reno now.

That's not too bad I guess (average Delta_E of around 4) and they list some with CRI's over 80. What do users think about this?

Depends on the LEDs you get. The ones from Flolights are CRI 93. I haven't checked the color temperature yet to see if it really is 5600K, but I'll try to remember to do than on the next shoot.

Richard-

Can you use Chimera accessories with cetain LED lights? Its good to know you can get them in a higher CRI. The LED panels I used in the past looked nothing like electronic flash/HMI and lacked compatibility with Chimera parts.

-John

The 655 banks from Amvona have free ground shipping and handing.

My CFO (wife) just gave me a PO for the lights so I will be ordering them soon and will report on my findings.

fair enough. My purchases were on E-bay. I am not dissing Amvona... just stating my impressions.

All depends upon if they have a speedring that could fit around the fixture. I doubt it though. Most of the chimera stuff will be for tungsten/hmi type fixtures where theres a single hard light source that needs to be diffused. In the case of LEDs, you're often dealing with a panel of quite a few of them. It demands another type of paradigm I think. Some kind of diffusion panel that slides over the LEDs or shining into a frame of some sort to make it a much bigger source.

With 500 sources distributed over a couple of square feet (Flolights) would you even need a diffuser?

Fluorescent lights are softlights and you don't need diffusion. The LEDs from Flolights are a little harder and need some diffusion when used in close.

All depends upon the spot angle people choose when making an LED panel. I'm choosing 30 degree type LED spot for our panel so it will be quite a "beam" type fixture. 45 degree or greater would give you more of a soft output panel. I figured its better to make it a bit hard, give it some throw and then people can diffuse if they want to with accessories.

Wise choices Richard.
Gary

Yeah, I think so. Better to make it strong and you can water it down if need be.

We are looking at two models also, but both with 512 LEDs and two dimmers (each dimmer handling 256 or half the LEDs on the panel): 1 model all 512 daylight LEDs and another model with half daylight and half tungsten LEDs (256 each).

The two dimmers would allow you to turn on all daylight or all tungsten or both. In practice, you won't like mixing color temperatures so you wouldn't have both the colors on at once in most cases, but the idea is to make a simple panel that will allow either color temperature to be on and thus you can have either 256 LEDs as tungsten color or 256 LEDs as daylight without having to worry about gelling.

The all daylight version is for those that don't care about a tungsten version at all, need all the more output or don't mind gelling.

I look forward to what you'll come up with Richard.

Hi Richard

On the 24th I tried to make a purchase on your website. The site wanted to charge almost as much USPS shipping for a spare bulb as the whole kit cost to ship UPS. I used the email form on the website. Did not get a response and the bulb got $20 more expensive in the last two days.

Is combined shipping possible?

Thanks.

I already got back to you via email and I think your issue is solved now.

So here are my initial impressions with the Dynaphos fluorescent banks from Amvona.com.

ORDERING
Their web site isn't all that great. Maybe it is because I use Safari but navigating to look for what I needed was not as easy as other sites. For the products I was looking for (lights and stands) there isn't exactly a wealth of information. Ordering is relatively easy but tracking orders is next to impossible. I live in Maine and they are in Mass. so the free ground shipping is basically overnight, however it takes them about 2 days to put the order together and ship.

LIGHTS
The overall build quality of the lights is very good, better than I expected. The cases appear to be quite solid and are no more than 2 inches thick so they will be quite portable. The barn doors are plastic but the rest of the light is metal The bulbs are Osram Dulux L, as far as I know that is good. The lights come with a fabric diffuser, it is pretty cheap but does the job if you need it. I don't think it will be more than a few shoots before I either loose or destroy them. The only minor issue I have found is that you can only situate the lights vertically. I think the Coollights can be situated in any number of positions, vertical, horizontal, diagonal. I don't think at this point rotating the lights will be of much use to me so it is just an observation for those who might care. You can turn on/off individual light pairs. So on my 6x55w lights there are three switches (4 if you count the main power) to control the 6 bulbs. The lights setup fast. Plop them on the stands, plug 'em in, open the barn doors and turn them on. Pretty much idiot proof. I have only really had time to set up the 6x55w banks and test out the overall look on camera. As I said in a previous post, I am not a lighting expert, I know just enough to keep myself out of trouble. The light looked nice and even, had a good throw, overall I was impressed. So much so I just ordered 2 of the 4x55w banks to go along with 2 6x55w banks.

STANDS
After a lot of looking around at MANY stands I decided for the sake of ease I would just order the Amvona stands as well. They were inexpensive so worst case, I just upgraded my background stands. I bought two of these:

http://www.amvona.com/?page=shop/fly...roduct_id=3438

The things are bomb-proof. If they were not so tall they could be used as jack stands for a car. And for under $30 these have to be the best deal out there. It says they are rated to 13 lbs but I would trust them to about 25 +. This particular model is tall and not very compact. They are about 40 inches folded. I just ordered 4 of the shorter version:

http://www.amvona.com/?page=shop/fly...roduct_id=3442

I needed lights that weren't so hot and that set up/tore down and moved easily. I think for a total of $1318 it is not too bad of an investment for what I received . I have a shoot later this week where I will be moving the lights quite a bit so I will report back on their "real world" use.

Just back from 2 shoots and the lights worked great!! Didn't have a ton of space to shoot in on the first shoot so to be able to turn pairs of bulbs off to adjust the intensity was a big help. Not to mention not having to contend with the 2 big softboxes I normally use. I had a marketing crew standing behind me and they commented on how the light looked very nice on the person we were videoing. BTW, they did not know I was using new lights. The other shoot, I was helping a photographer friend with an interior shoot. The house had these massive 2+ story front windows with a view of a ski area. These lights did not stand a chance of balancing the exposure. The other rooms they were fine but the room with the windows was like staring at the sun. Overall, in relation to the lights, I would consider the shoots a success. Huge wattage hard lights is the only way I see to balance the inside/outside light in this case.

One issue I have been dealing with is finding a case that would fit the lights, not an easy task mind you. The 6x55w are 22"x28". I wanted a Pelican but I also really want to keep the $400 in my pocket too. Since I had not found a case for the lights yet I just laid them on top of my equipment in the back of my car. The roads are quite bumpy this time of year in Maine and the lights now look broken in. So after noticing this I went to Home Depot and bough a big Stanley Job Box for $60 then went to Walmat and bought one of those egg crate cushions for under your bed sheets, a little slicing and dicing and $80 later I have a fairly heavy-duty wheeled cart that holds the lights, wires, extensions and the shorter stands. I don't think the short stand will live there because of weight, but they fit. I think a snowboard bag is what I will use for the light stands.

Thanks for sharing your results!

thanks dave. they're attractively priced lights, and i'm glad they worked well for you. i have to say the company does come off just a little bit shady, tho.

http://www.photoflex.com/News___Even...ion/index.html

No doubt on the shady part. Like I said, they are easy for me because of proximity. If I had the extra money and could have waited for Coollights to have the 6x55w in stock I would have gone with them. I think their product is better than Amvona but I could not wait until May. The $$ savings was nice too.

Dave,

Do you have any idea what your new case weighs with the lights and foam?

Thanks!

Bill