Strictly behind the camera. :-)

The photo includes: Margot Oshiro, our "field reporter" who caught the barracuda that gets cooked up. Dave Lancaster, the host for the "Reel Recipe" segment. Cindy Paliracio, our "anchor host". And Naoki, a gyotaku artist. He took Margot fishing, then printed the fish for her at his studio. Gyotaku is an old Japanese art where a fish is imprinted directly onto a sheet of paper. This was before cameras were invented, and allowed a fisherman to prove that he really did catch a fish that big.

Hi Dean:

Nice set and the lighting looks pretty good.

Just out of curiosity and going totally OT here but in California, we are always catching Barracuda but few eat them for fear of Ciguatera poisoning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera Is that not a concern in Hawaii? I have also dove all over the Caribbean and most places I have been, people avoid eating Barracuda, because of fear of getting the poisoning. It's a shame since their diet consist of nothing but high protein bait fish, I bet they would taste great.

Just curious because I have heard this beginning 35 years ago when I began fishing as a kid and also heard it all throughout my diving career, especially when I am with spearhunters and they are spearing fish.

My first official commercial dive video that I shot as a promo for a resort in Honduras, I had some great shots of me with the camera, face to face with a 6 foot Barracuda, just drifting, staring me down. Great shots on Hi-8. Those were the dropout filled days...

Dan

Dan...

The "set" is actually the SubZero/Wolf showroom in Honolulu. They're very nice about letting us film our cooking segments there.

There is a problem with ciguatera here, too. There's a testing kit that we demonstrated during the printing segment of the show. Naoki took a tiny amount of the meat and had his assistant check it. Cigua-Check Fish Poison Test Kit The meat tested "clean".

Someone recently told me that the risk is higher when certain conditions coincide: rain and runoff, followed by lots of bright sunlight. I'll have to follow up on that sometime.

Aha, a testing kit. I did not know that such a thing existed. Did you try some?

Dan

Hehe, hope that testing kit is reliable. Dean, sounds like you've taken up the tradition of Gyotaku with more modern technology now...

The test kit seems to work... so far.

Used it on three different barracuda caught in the same area and no one got sick. As I understand it, the kit uses a "go - no go" threshold. If you see any blue on the sample swab the fish is hot. If it's white, and there's a comparison patch just to make sure, it's not.

Anyone have an idea how this fixture compares to a Kino Flo Diva Light 400 (4-bulb)? I'm lighting a 15 x 15-ft chroma key wall. I'm planning to buy two Kino Flo Foto-Flo 400's studio lights (4 x 4-ft bulbs per fixture), and four Kino Flo Diva Light 400's.

I also would use the Diva lights for location shoots. But a two light kit with case weighs 65 lbs and I'm not thrilled about dragging two 65 lb cases around when the lightweight Cool Light CL-LED600's could possibly accomplish the same thing (plus save a TON of money).

Any advice would be appreciated. :)

Hi Mitchell:

I own two of the LED600s and two of my own homemade Diva 200s. I would advise using fluoros for green screen illumination over the LEDs. The reason being that the LEDs actually will somewhat show a lot of brighter and dimmer areas within their beam since the light is actually coming from 600 tiny 5mm bulbs vs. two or four 55 watt Biax tubes. The entire goal of lighting green screens are to achieve uniform illumination across the screen. The fluoros also have the advantage that they are softer and less specular than LEDs. This isn't to say that you couldn't use the LED600s for green screen, I have. But I feel that a fluoro is a better tool for this particular task.

The CoolLights fluoros are excellent, a much better value than the Kino Divas although the Kinos are really nice if you can afford them. I made my own a few years ago, but if I was buying today, I would have bought the CoolLights, they cost the same as the ones I built from scratch plus it took quite a few hours of my time too to construct them.

Enjoy,

Dan

Thanks Dan. We can afford the Diva's.......I think I'm still leaning toward getting them. They seem like the "safe route" for pro use. No?

Richard, I tried to place an order from Switzerland but your software doesn't let me select any shipping - it says Fedex is the only option, but I can't choose it and the next step makes a big error with "ERROR_NO_SHIPPING_SELECTED_SELECTED". Is it possible at all to order from abroad?

Hi Francois,

We just handle all international orders through email. Send me an email at info@coollights.biz about what you were wanting and we'll take care of it. Thanks for your interest.