Mini Review Of The Coollights CL-655 Unit
 

I bought two of these babies and I'm extremely happy with my purchase:

1) The lights are indeed cool. You can place them right in front of your talent with no problems whatsoever. At most, you'll need a small fan to keep your talent happy between takes - but not because of the lights.

2) The lights are indeed soft out of the box. No further diffusion is required if all you care about is getting soft, even, 'natural' light.

3) The lights are very bright indeed. With tho of these 330W flo light fixtures in my possession, my days of shooting grainy indoor videos are definitely over. I use a NV-GS500 and I only need one light to escape the gain region.

4) Each 6 light fixture has 3 levels of intensity, which I think is more than enough for most purposes. If I need to slightly reduce the brightness of a fixture, I can just move it back a few feet. No dimming, no problem.

5) The studio version of the unit is really heavy. For me, it is an advantage security-wise (if you know what I mean). However, you should definitely get the portable version if you're not going to be using it in a studio.

6) The Coollights rolling light-stand is built to support that weight.

7) The quality of the light is impressive. Compared to daylight in my area, it has a barely detectable green tint which goes away when I white balance properly instead of just using the camera's "daylight" preset.

8) Each fixture came with an extra bulb. That was a nice touch.

9) The customer support is excellent. You can just send Richard a PM.

10) The price was right. I would buy it again and again and again.

Hope this helps anyone who is considering a purchase.

Thanks for sharing.

Hi Seun,

Thanks for the review on the 655s. So what are you going to shoot with this now? I seem to remember something about a comedy?

It was meant to be a sitcom, but that didn't pan out. I'll be using it for anything I'm shooting in the future, starting with a couple of short films (for experience).