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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 :)

News from Cool Lights

Just wanted to give some first impressions for my CL1200 Bi-Color (Flood version).

Compared to my CL600+minus green units it looked more than x2 powerful. This is an unscientific impression but to my eye it looked like giving x3 more output. Very impressive.

The colour looked perfect white but when compared to a CL600+minus green it looked slightly cooler in hue. I think it's the higher CRI.

It's very light. Very easy to handle and very easy to set up the way you want. The barn doors are fantastic! Very well made.

The light is softer compared to the CL-600 due to the larger surface and the multiple shadow effect is almost non visible.

The different dimmers for each LED colour array are an interesting addition that offer some very creative options. I feel like i need to experiment a little more with that.

The digital camouflage bag looks better in person than it looked in the photo Richard posted. It's very easy to carry and has many pockets to store anything you can imagine. Better build quality compared to the CL-600 bug. I like it A LOT!

Overall a very good impression. If you are a fan of the CL600 you will find this unit better in every way. Certainly worth the higher (bi-colour) price. Highly recommended.

The only minus is that it opened my appetite for even more output! :D I can't help wondering now how the 2500 units are going to be!
 
I get 1 of mine 2 yesterday, and I play with it a few minutes. I totally agree with Miltos. I like the new junction between AC cable and the Led (the old one had sometime a bad contact), and the total weight is a very good surprise : less than 2x the weight of the 600.
I think you should always go with the bicolor version for a light kit. The bag could have been a little more big, to be able to carry 2x Led 1200 in a single bag (I always carry 2 PAR).
Today, my light kit is made of 2x PAR 600, and 2 jokerbug 400. I nearly always mix LED lights and HMI lights. I don't know yet if I will replace the PAR 600 with the PAR 1200 or take one of each.

So, keep the good job Richard, and thank you !


Olivier



Miltos Pilalitos said:
Just wanted to give some first impressions for my CL1200 Bi-Color (Flood version).

Compared to my CL600+minus green units it looked more than x2 powerful. This is an unscientific impression but to my eye it looked like giving x3 more output. Very impressive.

The colour looked perfect white but when compared to a CL600+minus green it looked slightly cooler in hue. I think it's the higher CRI.

It's very light. Very easy to handle and very easy to set up the way you want. The barn doors are fantastic! Very well made.

The light is softer compared to the CL-600 due to the larger surface and the multiple shadow effect is almost non visible.

The different dimmers for each LED colour array are an interesting addition that offer some very creative options. I feel like i need to experiment a little more with that.

The digital camouflage bag looks better in person than it looked in the photo Richard posted. It's very easy to carry and has many pockets to store anything you can imagine. Better build quality compared to the CL-600 bug. I like it A LOT!

Overall a very good impression. If you are a fan of the CL600 you will find this unit better in every way. Certainly worth the higher (bi-colour) price. Highly recommended.

The only minus is that it opened my appetite for even more output! :D I can't help wondering now how the 2500 units are going to be!
Click to expand...
 
RayFrisby said:
Dose anybody know how it connects to a traditional 4pin xlr battery or pack, does it require a certain type of cable and
do you have a link to what it looks like. Or where you can buy them.

Also I have a large external 4pin-xlr Cinepower Batter, is there a two into one cable that allows me to use 2 x 1200 lights from the one battery
or can this be done ?
Click to expand...

Thanks for your interest! I've been meaning to get around to announcing this.

We have an external battery cable that comes with the unit and you would need to adapt to that if you want to continue using the XLR. However, my feeling was that XLR connectors were really made for lower wattage products. That fits in fine with a lower wattage unit like the LED 600 for example. Not 100w or greater like some LED lights similar to the LED 1200. That's why we don't use the XLR connectors on that model or anything to do with it. Just a high grade military bayonet connector that can handle such wattage and even greater--both on the LED 1200 and the battery interface. If you wanted to try the XLR you would take our external battery connector that comes with the LED 1200 battery interface and replace the lug connectors on the one end with a male XLR connector of (hopefully) very good quality (if you don't want it to melt!). Then you'd hookup your standard female XLR to that.

Otherwise, the recommended and preferred way to hook to an external battery is to actually take our external battery cable and hook the lug side directly to the terminals of the battery in question, thus replacing the XLR or perhaps putting it in parallel with the XLR cable so you can continue to use that on other lower wattage items when not using it with an LED 1200.

In general, talking about batteries that are suitable for larger wattage lights like the 1200, I would say you would want to use 2 VLock or 2 AB type batteries of at least 140WH each or 1 external battery of at least 210WH. Its all about the sustained current draw that a battery can handle which is a not often quoted spec of batteries. The sustained current draw is generally half the WH rating of the battery (to be safe and assuming a well-constructed battery). So 70w would be a sustained current draw for a 140WH type. 2 of them are then necessary for a sustained draw of 100w or so to be safe. If the sustained current draw for the battery in question is under 100w then its not a good bet to use that battery and could put it in thermal shutdown.

As to whether a Cinepower could run two LED 1200s, it really depends upon the WH rating and sustained current draw considering you would need 200w sustained current draw to run 2 LED 1200s. That would be like a 400WH battery. Probably better to run it off 2 210WH (or so) batteries to be safer if you like the external types.

Hope this helps.
 
Of course its no problem to try it. I have tried some of that in the past though and this is why we went the route we did. The pins on our chosen connector are much larger and we use all 4 pins of our connector as well. I just don't like to see the connector heat up like that.

The problem is in a 4 pin XLR form factor, the pins are fairly small for use with 100w or greater of current. It works fairly well up to about 60 to 70w in fact. Resistance is your enemy in cables / connectors. You get resistance with small wires and/or small connector pins. Either one or both can act like a bottleneck making it more difficult for current to pass like it should and therefore heating up of connector and/or wires.

In other words, the more current you have going through a cable and connectors, the larger you need the entire pipeway to be both cable and connector pins. Resistance causes heating up. It would have been much better in my opinion if the standard for 4 pin XLRs had used 2 pins for ground and 2 pins for plus voltage instead of leaving two pins completely unused. That would have brought the resistance and therefore the heating up of a connector like this at 100w down by quite a bit. Instead you only have one small pin for ground (pin 1) and another single small pin for plus voltage (pin 4) so with even the best XLR, you'll still have a connector that's heating up more than it should at 100 watts because of the smaller bottleneck you have there at the connector itself, regardless of the size of cable used.
 
Sachtler builds the Reporter 100H with a XLR Connector and a 12V / 7Ah Battery, i used to have this light couple years ago, and i never had problems with connectors heating up.
Don´t know the specs of the XLR Connector but i think 100W / 12V should be quite "save".
 
I'm really close to buying Richards Coollights 1200w HMI with 2x 575w to compliment it. I can't see any reviews on his site and wondered if anyone has an experience with them?
It will be my first time out with HMI as I've been using Tungsten and Kinoflo for a decade so very excited about investing in these.
 
You're welcome Richard, I haven't tested my new HMI's in the field yet but they're really nicely made and I'm sure they'll peform! I'll review them here in the new year after a couple of shoots. Very excited about putting them into action.
 
Hi Richard.
I hope you're working on decent fresnel led projectors. Are you?
Cheers
 
These look really good... Anyone know how they stack up next to Kino 4x4's?
 
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