Isn't the whole setup a bit heavy?

You can also hang some sort of diffuser up front, like a "poor man Chimera".

If it's not too large you can try controlling this silk's soft lighting with an "egg-crate" style thing up front.

Heavy? It only ways about 1 1/2 pounds fully loaded with bulbs. You don't need a difuser, it's basically 9 open bulbs. There is no focus. The only reason I built the fence is to protect the bulbs and to keep the side ilumination from being offensive. They're very bright. The only thing I might do is try to cut down on the output. Oh and I will post some pics although if you go wo the website that's all there is to see. It says it weighs 6 pounds, it doesn't. The only thing I can figure is that's the weight of the 16 bulb configeration.
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Gary

Y'know, those Photodiox guys sell a cheap softbox for that spiral rig... think it's about 50 bucks.

Guys, I'm thinking as well of making my own spiral fluo lamps, but how do you guys work with the fact that those bulbs have a start up time of several minutes? Just wait, or are there other tricks?

You're peddling misinformation then, Richard. CRI that dips substantially below 85 or so makes a major difference in skin tone. As the CRI get lower, typically there is less red and a stronger green spike in flos and people begin to look pasty and sick. If you don't notice it in the video, I certainly do.

Yes, you can shoot with lower CRI -- but please don't tell folks it doesn't make any difference. Spell out what the difference is so they can make an informed decision.

It is not that hard to get affordable 85 + CRI tubes most places now. You don't have to get Kino or Osram studio tubes. Many daylight tubes have 90 CRI ratings and only cost a tiny bit more.

I think they do start up normally. I never heard of any of these ballasts that didn't turn on instantly.

What did hear is that some take a few minutes to get to a stable color. That is not my experience with them either. But that might happen.

You can turn them on before shooting starts, and tests or rehearsals would solve that. Even HMIs go through that.