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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

hyxyj HMI lights

I worked on a job with Chinese HMIs. They were kind of finicky, but overall not bad. For the price of these though, you could buy a used Arri or Desisti.

That being said, that was a few years ago, and I am very impressed with some of the quality coming out of China nowadays, so maybe give them a shot.

Nick
 
The only bad thing I've heard is you have to pay for sending it back for repairs. I would check out Cool Lights too. Richards a good guy and customer service is great. He sells his own Chinese manufactured ones but has a warehouse in US too.
 
I started looking at these discount HMI lamps. I even orederd one of these: http://www.alzovideo.com/selection_video_lights_hmi.htm But after experimenting with it I decided it was a bad idea. The Alzo lights are not UV shielded. I don't think you want to risk your eyes or anyone elses with a bunch of UV light. Do you know if the Chinese ARRI knockoffs are UV filtered?
 
I'd buy a used HMI from a major brand before I bought that Chinese copy. A used, major brand will cost you even less.

Stephen
 
Michael Winokur said:
I even orederd one of these: http://www.alzovideo.com/selection_video_lights_hmi.htm But after experimenting with it I decided it was a bad idea. The Alzo lights are not UV shielded.
Click to expand...

I've used these, and while they're somewhat annoying (non-hot-restrike, need lengthy "burn in" to get a decent color temperature, flickery and green until they warm up, etc.), I don't think they need any additional UV filtration to be safe.

From Alzo's website:

UVA Emission @ 1M = 0.1mw/cm2 (sunlight midday = 5-10mw/cm2)
UVB Emission @ 1M = less than 0.0003 uw/cm2
 
Great price on the Alzo's, but really, the CRI of 85 seems too low for consistent performance. Buy a used HMI, if HMI is what you really want. If you can't afford it, stick to renting, works best for me anyway. And no UV filter? that seems pretty dumb, don't really care how much they say it emits, HMI needs UV period
 
Thanks Bob Gundu for mentioning us! Cool Lights, a sponsor on this site since 2009, has been making, selling and supporting HMIs since 2008 so we have quite a bit of experience with it. Here's our 575 fresnel and 1200 par hot start units:

CLMF0575WB.jpg


CLMP1200WB.jpg


Here are the various models we carry:

http://www.coollights.biz/hardlight-fixture-series-metal-halide-c-28_29.html

We basically break the metal halide fixtures we sell down into two groups: CDM (cold start) and HMI (hot start).

CDM is a good budget fresnel with the main draw back being waiting for up to 5 minutes before you can restart it after turning it off. Something that's not hot start shouldn't really be called an HMI to be technically correct. That's why we refer to it as CDM which is the type of bulb it uses. We currently have a CDM 70w and 150w and hopefully a 400w in the near future. The 70w and 150w are functionally the equivalent in size and output of a 300w and 650w fresnel respectively.

Ones like those pictured above are real HMI units, use real HMI bulbs and have hot restart ballasts. Price difference between the two types is quite large as the hot restart ballasts are so much more sophisticated and ones like our 575/1200 used with those two above models are capable of running either a 575w or a 1200w head.

The OP said something about being "balanced". The bulb is what is balanced or not, the fixture has little or nothing to do with that. Our hot restart fixtures use Osram, Philips, G.E., basically any of the same ones used by pros with HMIs every day. Our smaller CDM fixtures use bulbs we have made in the 70w and 150w range and while they aren't as perfect as the Osram, GE or Philips HMI bulbs they also don't have anywhere near the same price tag either. Also unlike the more expensive bulbs, the CDM bulbs are available in 3000K and 5400K. The HMI bulbs are only available in 6000K at this time which is pretty much the standard for HMI bulbs.
 
Richard, you'll definitly hear from us soon. I'd never heard of you guys before but I'm really impressed with what I've seen so far on your website.

cheers

andreas
 
Erik Bien said:
I've used these, and while they're somewhat annoying (non-hot-restrike, need lengthy "burn in" to get a decent color temperature, flickery and green until they warm up, etc.), I don't think they need any additional UV filtration to be safe.

From Alzo's website:

UVA Emission @ 1M = 0.1mw/cm2 (sunlight midday = 5-10mw/cm2)
UVB Emission @ 1M = less than 0.0003 uw/cm2
Click to expand...

I bought three of the 800's from videolighting.com hoping they'd be a super cheap option for daylight balanced lights. They're the same fixtures as Alzo, just without the Alzo name slapped on them. Definitely wouldn't recommend them.

After standing near them for 10-15 minutes or so when they were on, I started getting a little light headed and dizzy. I thought it was imagining it but the same thing happened to my girlfriend. And they had an odd smell. I don't know if it was the UV or what but I returned them right away. You get what you pay for as usual. Not to mention, they're not quiet. A fan kicks in when you turn on full power on the 800's and there's no way to get rid of it so they're pretty useless.

I haven't bought them yet but I think Cool Lights is the best options for cost vs. quality.
 
Hey, Richard. It was great meeting you at Jason's party at NAB.

We'll be reworking our lighting kit this Summer, too, to go all HMI. Question: If your CL-MF0575 is the "equivalent of a 2400w tungsten fresnel," then what would be the next HMI model down from there for smaller interview setups? Your CDM 150 seems much less light, so it seems I'm asking for an HMI equivalent of something in the 1K range. Any suggestions? We'd prefer to stick with the true HMI as it seems we could match easier than balancing with the CDMs...unless I'm over thinking how different those bulbs are. Thoughts?

Thx!

Kevin
 
Hi Kevin,

Really enjoyed finally meeting many of you after all these years.

The model you are asking for would have been a CDM 250--about equivalent of a 1000w fresnel. I definitely considered that a while back at the same time we were evaluating and debugging a 400w unit. When I am choosing what we will sell I evaluate it from many angles, including "does this make sense from an output to dollars standpoint." The main issue I saw was that there is a huge jump in cost up from something like a 150w to the 250w then a tiny jump from 250w to 400w--I'm talking about the ballasts here and their complexity level / size. Bulbs get more expensive too in that jump up. In that size increase from 150w (to say 250w for example), you have a new kind of bulb. Not really like the simpler CDM 70w or 150w bulbs, but something much closer to HMI quality without the hot start capability. I still call it CDM for simplicity sake though so people will know its not quite HMI (hot restart) class.

I was then thinking about whether it made sense to have the 250w at all (or did it make sense to have both the 250w and the 400w since they were so close in price). All that thought process left me with leaving the 250w out of our product mix since the 400w gives so much more for just a little more in price. What I'm saying is, if there had been another significant difference in price between the 250 and 400, then yes it would have made sense to make a CDM 250 and 400 product.

The whole thought process I go through makes things take a while, because I do wait till I get this general feeling that most all angles are covered and it "makes sense" from several standpoints, including cost. That's why I have so far rejected the LEP (Light Emitting Plasma) technology. We have had that in to evaluate and potentially make a product but it just doesn't work for me yet and therefore I don't think it would work for most of our customers. When I compare it's light output for example to our CDM 150 ($459) you basically have half the output at say 1m from the LEP unit I was evaluating. And yet if we made a product out of that, it would price out somewhere in the same range as our HMI 575w fresnel. On top of that the unit I was evaluating was drawing about 280w. So I couldn't quite justify it in my mind how this unit would use almost double the 150w but only put out half as much light. Its just not that efficient to get that more fuller spectrum. Yes it probably is a better quality of light but is it really a 4 to 5 times cost differential "better" than the CDM 150 bulb? I had to say no on that. Any product where you can offer maybe 70% of the features for 1/4 the price of something else is a winner no matter how you look at it so that just reconfirms why we sell the CDM line.

I am going to stay in touch with LEP technology and hopefully the price will drop and efficiency will increase as well. Its best to remember though that if you put a plasma display and an LED display beside each other, the LED display comes out better for at least energy efficiency if not in some other categories as well. Same with using these technologies for lighting. LED overall will win out when efficiency and battery use count and LEDs are definitely getting better all the time in terms of spectral output as well. You'll see some new LEDs later this year from us that are so much better than the 1st generation in terms of quality of light that it really is gratifying to see that possible now and happening fairly quickly too.
 
I think this days we can seriously consider using LED fixtures - I'm not buying any tungsten or daylight fixtures anymore. As long as LED fixture has CRI >85 no problem with using it right away. And "more blue" is good for MX sensor :)

From other side - nothing can beat HMI fixtures - they are stil the best.
 
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