Zylight
 

Here is a brief overview of the Zylight, Well worth the look and listen on the blog
@ http://web.mac.com/stevecahill/Steve...Blog/Blog.html


also a few more interviews with Lensbabies and Doug Jensen of Vortex Media..... Check it out.

Thanks so much Steve for sharing this!!!

I will be definately buying some of these! Probably three to start off with!

They all are on backorder right now. :( Hopefully they will be available soon.

What a fantastic little "big" light! Love the color features as well as the wireless networking! What a great time to be alive and into Video Production!

What a great piece!

The Zylight is fantastic. So much versatility. I shoot a lot of entertainment packages and interviews. You never know if you're going to be in Tungsten or HMI light so this has you covered and you don't need any light stealing gels to compensate.

Thanks for the video - it's the best demonstration I've seen of these yet. I would have liked to see some footage with the rest of your lighting turned off. I'm trying to get a feel for how appropriate these would be for simple interview setups - i.e could you use a few of these on their own for a traditional 3-point lighting setup?

I am taking the Zylight overseas next week and will have lots of run and gun interviews, so plenty of footage to show, which will become another blog.

I must say I was very impressed with it. I do not think one Zylight light is going to be enough, in my kit, knowing I have remote control via the bluetooth, I need the Zylight twins!

http://web.mac.com/stevecahill/Steve...Blog/Blog.html

So how much power does this thing offer compared to red heads or fresnels?

The Z90 outputs roughly the equivalent of a 90 watt incandescent lamp. Power consumption is 30 watts.

Thanks for info.. i hope the light they are announcing at NAB is something like 300W equivalent or even more. That would be really interesting light but i'm afraid that if the output goes up that much the price will be too high for me.

Control?
 

Hi Steve,

Is there any way, that you know of, to control the Zylight with a bluetooth device? (other than another Zylight) Like a smartphone application? This would be handy for on camera dimming, etc. by a lighting guy. Especially on Steadicam when you can't touch the light/camera during a shot.

They only showed me that the light can be contolled by another light, but that would be a great option. Maybe NAB will shed some light to that question?

Zylight effective range
 

About how far is the throw on the the Z90? Do you think the Z90 would be good for nightclub/stage shoots where the lights are all on stage and the house/audience lights are off or very dim?

Thanks!

The Z90 has some centre weighting to the beam compared to the Z50 so it's got good reach. You could easily light a table of people in the audience with one from under 20'. If you're up on the stage with the EX1 it'd give you plenty of usable fill. Probably the neatest thing is you can change the color to match the stage lighting so you'd be less objectionable.

I rented the z50 last week and noticed that the white settings only looked (semi) proper in the center of the coverage. There was a strange unnatural green tint on the outsides of the beam. Additionally, it didn't seem bright enough.

I wanted to buy one of these, but the light it throws seems really odd to me. Almost like a fluorescent.

I'm not sure if the Z90 is any different as I haven't tried one.

Zylight in a 3 point position
 

I have to shoot in a hospital with a JVC HD100. Now I wonder if I can use Zylights in a 3 point position (key-, fill-in, backlight etc).
Interview with physicians in an office (about 5x5meters) and some shots of a surgery.

Does anyone have experiance in this matter? Using Zylights only?
(The normal lamps are to hot and dangerous to use, I think)

I also wonder if the Zylight is not to blue-ish in the face. I would like to present warm (not ill-looking) faces.

Thank you,

Frits

Three Z90 Zylights would give you roughly the equivalent of 300 watts of tungsten light. That's no a huge amount of light compared to what lighting there may already be in those areas. In that situation they'd provide enough light to enhance whatever lighting there was but not to use as the only light source I would think.
Left on at full power for a while the surface of the Z90 does get warm but not hot enough to burn or ignite anything. Although only low voltage and low power the usual precautions when working around inflammable gases would still need to be observed.
You can easily warm up the output either by dialing down the colour temp or by selecting a gell number.