Forgot the dang url: SADS Lights

Those www.naturallighting.com products look very interesting, even if a bit expensive.

Look at the Sunpro Supreme:

http://www.naturallighting.com/show_...product_id=371

Its high CRI/96 seems to indicate it's quite linear in light spectrum.

Their Sunpro portable box looks like a reasonable deal, though I never saw that 55w lamp it uses, and easy lamp resources are essential.

http://www.naturallighting.com/show_...product_id=370

The 36w Thinlite box looks like a better deal for $65:

http://www.thinlite.com/prod11.htm

But I don't think these are SADS lamps, are they? What do you mean by being "blue", Matt?

Carlos

Patrick, Yep, that's what I was talking about... I nearly ordered some of those light boxes a couple years ago... before I built my first "matt-o-flos"... I have mixed feelings about them... They aren't a bad deal considering the tubes are included... but they aren't a great deal for an DV guy either (for lack of versatility). The stand mounted light at $325 is a better deal... I'd love for somebody to buy one and report back to us. Something like that would be the closest competition to what I'm developing only because the price is halfway reasonable... and they are portable... so those two factors are worth something... but once you see what I'm doing... for around the same price... you'll understand my confidence.

Carlos, some of the light therapy lights actually have BLUE output... they cast visibly blue light. If it says daylight then I'm sure it's not one of those... All I'm saying is that if you choose a "SADS" light to convert to video use, you should be sure it's not one of the ones that uses blue LEDs or some other blue light. 5500-5600k won't be blue.

No big deal... I just wouldn't want somebody to accidentally buy one... since they may misinterpret my statement that a daylight flo would be good for SADS and *SOME* SADS lights would be good for location video.

Now I really want to see what you are doing! Any way to have a peeping advance of the matt-o-flos?

And yes, the stand mounted light, if the stand is included, seems like a good deal.


Well, they claim the bulbs are 10000K, which is indeed is a bit blue if compared or viewed against a 3000/3200K source. But if you are using it to fill a daylight interior with the window as main source it may do just fine. A clear yellow gel might take care of further corrections.

Carbon arcs also needed a straw coloured gel to use, and they were 6000K.

In any case I don't care for those bulbs, because those are not types you get from any place but them. The most commonly found are around 4000K.

BTW: I also think you can put a handle and a cover on the "window style" box I'm thinking of and make it a ready to go unit. Now how to control the light is the following problem, which would be how to hold a barndoor or egg-crate onto the box.




Carlos

Coming back with finished 36w
 

After another long gap in my attendance to this thread, here I am back with my finished fixture.

This time I brought my 36w Dulux fixture from Buenos Aires to make a few changes on it.

The unit is made in China, with the mainframe being painted aluminum and the extremes plastic. It carries an on-off switch and the electronic ballast is on the back.

There were two things that I wanted to improve on:

1) Replacing the ballast for a dual-voltage type, that would let me take it anywhere. This a very practical characteristic of Dulux lamps, as their voltage does not depend on the wall AC. The ballast feeds their power, so you can pick a ballast that can take both 110v and 220v. That's unusual in a film/video lighting unit.

2) Adding an AC terminal prong, as I was a using a cable socket which is not practical.

Both things were accomplished quite well.

The ballast replacement I found was a little thicker than the original, which was longer and thinner, but I didn't want to take more time looking for a smaller one. My concern was whether it would work or not. And it did. After a wrong first wiring it worked alright on the second try.

Doing the hole for the AC terminal was more troublesome. I had to use a Dremmel-style tool to do it. I decided to use a "computer-style" AC chassis prong, which is small, universal and you can even use a computer cable for the initial tests or even as carry-around cable.

As I said on my other mail, this unit is quite good, as you can even gaffer-tape it to anything. Even a string would hold it. And it stays completely cool all the time.

It's great for lighting faces and has no flickering.

I can shoot some pictures to show it here, if necessary. But it won't be much use if you can't find a similar fixture where you live. What I wanted to submit was the general concept for making a DIY unit you can use for film or video.


Carlos

Sorry to come late to this party.
Basically the best fluro tubes are made by Osram. Their Studioline stuff is made for video lighting. Please take care, the last set of numbers indicate the Rendition Index, should aim for 900, 950 is better, anything less than that is going to be hard to get a proper white balance. No domestic fluro will cut it in this respect. To get the RI so high they add more chemicals to the mix which costs more and slightly reduces light output, not what you want in a domestic / commercial tube.
Osram make matching HF ballasts, dimmable and non dimmable models are available. Don't waste your money on iron ballasts, a) you won't get any for the 4 pin tubes and b) you'll have flicker problems plus the tubes have a shorter life and produce less light.
For reflectors, use any backing and glue Lee Filters 273 onto it, works a treat.
The Chinese are now into this market. Most of them are using Osram tubes but with their own ballasts. some of the ballasts look OK and some are pretty bodgy jobs. Look inside the fitting and see if the ballasts are fully enclosed. Also be warned, a lot of the Chinese stuff isn't CE or C tick rated or UL rated either, could raise issues. The Osram ballasts are compliant. That may mean nothing but if something goes wrong....

Hola!!!

I am helping a friend to build two kinos each with 4 x 36W Osram Dulux "L" tubes (3200K, 2800 lux, T-5 shape, +80, 2G11 mount) totalling 288W of fluorescent power (22K lux) to light a small video studio for models video shots (DV PAL). I get the tubes in Buenos Aires at 9 USD each.

The design will result in a 18' x 10' case for the lamps and at the back we'll install the ballasts with another back panel for protection..

-I am considering wood (0,5' thick) or metal.
-Do you have pictures of your kino system? Did you have someone to do the metal case or you bought it?
-Do you have close-up pics of it along with the rig system you used to connected to the light tripod?
-Any ide for other compact tubes? (must be Osram or Philips in order to get the easily in Buenos Aires). Flick is not a problem since using PAL 50hz cameras and they'll use it always indoors so we opted for the 3200K because they give much more lux than cooler ones.

Thank you!
Luis

Argentina

Thought these links would be of some use:

http://www.goodmart.com/products/lig...ector_lens.htm

http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/...and-parts.aspx

http://www.lightinguniverse.com/inte...7&page=1&sort=

Slap a KinoFlo baby mount on one of those, spray paint it black, and you're good to go for about $100