DV Info Net - Comer color temp & durability testing

Just got my Comer 1800 yesterday and have to say I'm really impressed - the light output is great. I do believe the color temp rating is incorrect, but that's a good thing. They claim 4500k but if I use that setting on my 5D the light looks very blue - it looks much better in the 5200-5300k range, and mixes nicely with my Alzo CFLs which are rated at 5500k, so it makes for a nice 'daylight' balanced color.

I brought the light to a green screen shoot this morning to test it out. We had a Coollights LED600 set up as the key so I tried out the Comer as a fill - it's output was actually very close to that of the Coollight! I prefer the LED600 as the key just because it's light is a little more diffuse than the Comer (as you would expect due to the greater surface area), but I think 1 LED600 + 2 Comer 1800 would make a great lightweight & portable setup for 3-point interview lighting. I actually ended up using the Comer as an edge light this time - with the condenser lens in place it works really well for this, producing a nice hard edge without a lot of spill.

This is where the durability 'testing' part of the story comes in. The one part of the Comer I'm not wild about is the plastic hotshoe mount. I was using it with the umbrella adapter so I could mount it on a stand, and even fully tightened it wasn't particularly secure. With the light at ceiling height, probably ~9ft up, it slipped out of the hotshoe mount while I was adjusting it and crashed to the floor (had the 970 battery on it so it hit hard). One of the barn doors was mangled pretty badly, but otherwise there was no sign of the fall and it's still working flawlessly - a couple minutes with my leatherman and the barn door is back almost to original spec. So I will be looking for a solution to improve the hotshoe mount, but other than that I'd have to say the light is definitely pretty rugged.

Hopefully now that I've completed this durability test no one else will need to!