Interview lighting-affordable Kino Flo alternatives

[Todd Terry]

Sorry to say, Bob (because I’m actually a fan of some ALZO products), but I wouldn’t recommend the HID lights they sell at all.

I actually bought one of their smaller HID setups a year or two ago (just a ballast/bulb combo). I didn’t care about the blub… I actually bought it just to get the ballast for a “real” small 150w HMI head that I have, since their ballast/bulb combo was actually cheaper than buying a a real HMI ballast alone (and the combo works fine, by the way).

Of course though, I did fire up the globe just out of curiosity. Uggh. Of course, it’s nowhere near a “real” HMI… the HID globe is basically just a big industrial type screw-in blub. Its output is nowhere nearly as bright as an equivalent-wattage HMI instrument, the color is ghastly (very green), I think the CRI is pretty darn low (at least it looked that way to my eyeballs), and I’m not sure it is UV shielded in any way, even though they appear to sell it in open-faced instruments. I can’t prove it was leaking UV, but after just a couple minutes with it on in the studio my eyeballs started having that familiar burn you feel with UV leaks. That was the first of two times I turned it on. The second time was right after that, just to confirm that it wasn’t hot re-strike (it isn’t), but took a wait of about 15-20 minutes before it would strike again.

Also, the ballast I have did crap out pretty soon… but to their credit ALZO did quickly send me another one, which is still going strong with the HMI.

I wouldn’t recommend any setup though that uses the HID lamps.

Other ALZO products seem pretty good, though.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com