Hi laurence,

I'm not sure how much you have left but there's a 2 light kit I saw at DVExpo West that was a 3 minute setup and it was HMI so it was not hot. I asked bulb life and was told 7000 hours. from a company called ALZO.

here's a link to the 2 light kit.

http://alzovideo.com/alzo_video_fastbox_2light_location_kit.htm

I'm looking at picking up that kit there too because it's supposed to be pretty decent for location stuff. (what a lot of my shooting is).

Dave

If you're wanting the coolest light possible, consider fluorescent lights. As much as I love the home-built stuff, if you're going for image, I would suggest buying fluoro lights in lieu of building. On a film, I don't care but there are corporate clients I won't use my $50 home built lights with just for sake of image, regardless of whether or not the look it identical at the end.

I've got an Arri kit and a Pepper kit but bought a small 3 light Britek open-face kit with softboxes for run and gun lighting. I throw in my 150 watt pepper and use that as my hair light and it's a really nice an inexpensive kit. The Britek 3 light kit with stands cost me $400. It's not Arri or Mole quality but it get's the job done. They are halogen lights so they're warmer but I've never had issues with them heating up a room that bad. You can take them down to 300 watts to if needed or up to the 600 maximum.

As much as I love HMI's I would personally suggest a Rifa light softbox as opposed to the cheaper HMI's with softbox.

cheno

The Alzo kit looks pretty neat. Is there any advantage to that type of HDMI bulb over regular fluorescents? Also, how is it with 24p and 30p?

Just be careful of the cheaper HMIs, some of the ballasts can be very noisy.
You can pickup some very cheap fluro lights off eBay if rolling your own doesn't appeal. I wouldn't say the build quality matches Arri but neither does the price and most of them look like the real deal. Given that they all use the same tubes (apart from Kino) the light coming out the front is the same.
If you do pickup a cheap Made in China kit of eBay that includes stands do spend some money on decent stands from Manfrotto or the like.

Bob.

So long as the light is using high frequency electronic ballasts you'll not have a problem. Iron ballasted fluro or HMI lights can cause you grief.

HMIs tend to be a bit bluer than fluros designed for video, 6000K compared to 5400K. Camera's WB will handle it.

Bob.

when I saw the Azlo's on I didn't hear anything from the ballasts and they were running 8 or ten of them all around me. ( just so you know this was at a smaller convention though so if there were very low levels of noise I might not have noticed them even though i was standing right next to them ).

I don't have personal experience with them though, however I won't ever use "normal" lights if I'm given the choice fro the simple fact that I can't stand the heat, ( I seem to get hives or soemthing when I'm getting too hot on my wrists etc... and it's TERRIBLE when you're trying to shoot and all you want to do is scratch your arms and wrists :) ).

Dave

There's also a 600 EX for a bit more that runs fluro's and is a 4 bulb with ballast to make it 1/4,1/2/, 3/4, and full ( just switches that turn off and on the bulbs, but would be fluro rather than HMI and have a little more adjustability ).

Dave

The dimmable fluros are the way to go for certain but that makes the ballasts more expensive. Switching banks is a cheaper solution used on most of the Asian units. Totally agree with you 110% about getting away from tungsten / halogen. Daylight lighting is the only way to go. I've had a shoot pretty well ruined, another one looking not so nice when daylight crept into a tungsten lit room, it's hard to wrangle the sun. On top of that most cameras natural CT is daylight so when you WB for tungsten you're effectively upping the gain in the blue channel and that's noisy enough already.

The HMIs you're laking about are probably OK noise wise but it's ALWAYS something to watch out for. There's a lot of lighting kit around made for stills work that is noisy, some are fan cooled, some use iron ballasts in a metal box that rattles something fierce.

If you use fluro lights that use the Osram single "D" tubes (Studioline or knockoffs) see if you can get egg crates for them. All those light can spill a lot of light. Mostly not a problem but haveing the crates to put on the front can come in handy. If you can't buy them with the lights easy enough to roll your own. Also in a marvel of dumb engineering a lot have reflective barn doors, gaff tape or balck paint will fix the problem or some cinefoil.

Bob.

Laurence,

check out www.coollights.biz as well. He does HMI's, fluoro and tungsten lighting. There are reason's why good HMI's cost what they do - not to mention the cost of most HMI bulbs (youch)

Also, like Bob said, Fluoro or Softlight, eggcrates are really a must to control the light output. I had some made for my Briteks but most of the higher end softboxes and fluoros have that option - well worth it.

cheno

This site is one of the best I have seen about lighting techniques:

EFP Lighting

David

Laurence,

If the Alzo lights are good enough for the next President of the United States..........

We lit all our presidential candidate interviews with the ALZO "FASTBOX" HMI 2 LIGHT LOCATION KIT that goes for $692.

Because we used an oval table shooting from both sides, we used a three light setup with a front light plus a left rear and a right rear light.

Check out our website and click on any of the interviews.

David
www.EventVideoTeam.com

Wow that's quite a plug. I was watching the clips and I like that it was a blend of natural light and light from the kit. I saw no color temperature discrepancies or anything of that sort.

The "FASTBOX" kit only has two lights. Did you use the same light for the third light as well?

How is the build quality of the kit?

Is it pretty fast to set up?

How about start-up time and cool-down time?

Excellent interviews by the way. So refreshing to hear in depth answers rather than the typical "bumper sticker one liners" that everyone else seems to be doing.

We added a third identical light, and a the light boom they sell in a second light bag. In both purchases we asked for ten foot stands for a small added cost. We used the boom to hang a shotgun mike over the candidate as a standby safety in case of trouble during the shoot with the lavaliers.

The stands are the best I have seen. The softbox is good quality and fast to setup. The lampholder, softbox adapter are also of good quality but very light, which I like.

Set up is fast. Start-up is 15-20 minutes for stable light.. Cool down is quick as these units throw virtually no heat which is a huge factor in the small room we were in. Lights up first and on, down last after cameras and sound.

The lights are 5300K. The room had its own flourescents that we left on. We closed the venetion blinds. We did white balance in the room as well as shot color bar and greyscale charts which we never used. The 140 watt power consumption for 800 effective watts of light is great.

Glad you enjoyed the clips. What was great about the interviews was the length of answers, and follow up questions because we had an hour for each candidate. No editing for length. Our only editing was for Hillary who had a couple coughing fits we cut out. But she was a trooper and wanted to continue the interview both times. They are the longest candidate interviews I am aware of.

David
www.EventVideoTeam.com

I believe you have sold me on this kit. Do you think one two light kit would be sufficient for most interviews?

Absolutely. One as key and the other for rear highlight..

David
www.EventVideoTeam.com

http://www.prokit.co.uk/product.php?id=153I use a 2 light system - this is the fill light [/link]-PLUS 2 sets of reflectors. The Rifa is quick setup, but is tungsten. However by the time I have stowed my other kit it is cool! This company is also - can't find it on their web - does have a cold-floro version of it. My next buy. Being a one-man-band I definitely support the use of a dimmer on at least ONE of the light systems - or some way to adjust back the levels. Daylight is best, tungsten+Daylight is a pain and I have had to use large slabs of day filters on my tungstens to come right. Be very careful with "cast" background shadows. I like to bounce light about. Your new 1/3" chip will be very forgiving.

<edit> That IS the Floro. I will be asking if I can floro the one I have. I bet I can't!!! Always, great simple quick forgiving light.

You can convert them to fluro.

Bob.

DSC - "The lights are 5300K. The room had its own flourescents that we left on. We closed the venetion blinds."

Excellent - I am doing something right then! Not quite your "presidential" league, just finished an architects meeting with daylight on 3 sides and mixed floro and tungstens burning inside.

I liked your setup and take-down procedure.

Really? I don't need to buy some exorbitant conversion kit? Why are they marketing these as "EX" something then? There is no hint I can swap-n-go? But then again . . .

Do the Alzo lights have any flickering problems at 30p or 24p?

Edit: OK, I found the answer: They have an ultra-fast electronic ballast with no flickering at any video frame rates.

Hey Grazie,

If you're talking about the ALZO lights, I think the biggest difference is probably that the EX series can run 4 bulbs, 3 bulbs, 2 bulbs, or just one bulb. So they have a way of reducing the brightness, and they've also got a hard case for them ( plus you can buy clip on barndoors for it if you want ).

Dave

Nope, the Rifa. It is being marketed as a Rifa "eX" - very confusing!