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Generic HMI 575 Fresnel on Ebay - thoughts?

Mitch Martinez

Mitch Martinez

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i really would be skeptical about it, especially if you can't try it before hand. Arri has made it's name in the lighting industry for years, you see the name stamped on it and you instantly know it's grade and quality. A generic knockoff might end up being a thousand dollar useless brick. Might have a lot of flicker issues, might not even keep proper color temperature. Ever see really run down HMI's? Was on set once with 4 hmi's all lighting the scene and each one at a different color temp cause they weren't maintained well over the years.

I'd look into maybe some LED solutions, Lite Panel has a similar solution for a little under 3 grand I believe. Some things are really worth the money, and remember having your own HMI can pay for itself in the end. I have a friend who fixed up two panavision HMI's, a 1.2 and a 2.5 and rents them out for 50/75 bux a day, and they go out every day...
 
It has a fan, so you'd have to determine if you can live with that, and of course you'd have to send it back to China to get it fixed if there was an issue. The connector is indeed not up to the task of handling several thousand volt pulses during startup. I wouldn't use that connector. Since the ballast has a fan, you'd want a longer head to ballast cable but it doesn't look like it comes with one.

We've looked at selling units like this in the past and gave up on it because of the fan alone. Unless you can keep the ignitor in the head (its not in the head in this unit) you are limited on head to ballast cable length so that's a catch-22. Also they don't mention if this unit is hot restart or cold start, I'd bet probably cold start so its similar to our CDM line where you have to wait 5m before relighting after your turn it off.

This is a far more stable and pro and silent solution and that's why we sell and warrant it:

http://www.coollights.biz/clmf0575-cool-lights-fresnel-p-64.html

It's hot restart as well. Some members of this site have this fixture and love it.
 
Does it come with an American (any?) electrical safety certificate?
If not, are you willing to pay to get it inspected/approved?
If you won't, will you tell your productions insurance underwriters you don't have one...?
If there is a "problem" on set are your bags packed and passport current...?

Things to consider. I've had to put out serious fires on sets/locations even when things where legitimate.
Shit happens. Cover your ass. You live in a litiginous country.

That being said, at 1000$ I'd like to check one out pronto.
 
The buyer of this auction admitted that the ballast is pretty loud and that he doesn't recommend this light for real production but rather for students and such...
Cool lights is your best bet indeed, especially when it comes to made in china products. I have several cool lights products and for the most part they are good quality (except for some plastic parts that probably should be metal instead.... IMHO)
 
Zak, the price difference in this case between that unit and ours is mostly accounted for by the fact that ours drives a 575w or 1200w head and that unit on Ebay only would drive a 575w alone, no capability for other wattages. It really does add quite a bit to the ballast to do that.

When we sold a "semi-pro" ballast (as I called it) during a beta test we did in early 2008, we sold it for around $799 but the final price (after beta) was going to be $1000. We decided not to go ahead with that lesser cost semi pro ballast as most were negative on the fan even with the longer cord. We also used a much more reliable head to ballast connector and all those units are still running except for one. It did make for a smaller and less complex unit though if you can include a fan. Also being 575w only helps too with less complexity and smaller size.

The plastic parts being referred to by Maz are the stand adapters on the smaller wattage units. The 575w and higher has a metal stand adapter.
 
Stick with CoolLights. ask any user here and you will find none who have regretted purchasing from them, but many who regret trying to be penny wise and pound foolish dealing with random ebay sellers.
 
You can't go wrong with Cool lights. I highly recommend them! We will be purchasing the 575 and 1200 from cool lights in a few weeks actually.
Quick question Richard, are your ballasts PFC electronic ballasts? No big deal if they're not, we just need to know how to plan properly with our generators...

Thanks!
 
Thanks for your comments Rob and Maz. Yes we recognized that trend coming and retooled the 575/1200 quite a while back and now its PFC. That was the only one that wasn't though before. All the other ballasts from flo to CDM are already and have always been PFC.
 
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