Joker Alpha 1600 HMI

   K5600 has done it again. Creating two new HMI’s that are brighter, lighter and as always a cleaner light than an Arri or LTM’s 1200 HMI, which has heavier ballast even if it’s electronic.  K5600s’ Joker 1600 and Alpha 1600 both are 1600w lamp as well as having an even better ballast then the lower wattage Joker 800.  

Joker 1600 

            Starting with the Joker 1600 par, you would think it works just like any other Joker, but you would be wrong. Using the bare-bulb you will not see any hot spots, with that being said it’s ideal for space lights. The cardinal rule for HMIs and big sores is “never aim a fixture strait down." The Joker 1600 par along with the other Joker’s, you have the option of a Bug-lite, beamer, and the ZOOM Beamer. The ballasts that comes with the 1600 uses less wattage, it runs on 15amp/120 volt circuit as well as its dimmable. Along with being dimmable, the ballasts has a frequency option for high speed shooting.  

alpha 1600

            

          Now talking about K5600 Fresnel family, K5600 have added the Alpha 1600 to their family. It may not be the biggest or brightest in the family, but this should be the big competitor to the Arri and LTM HMI’s. The alpha 1600 is comparable to the 6000w used on the composite quarts reflectors. And again with the cardinal rule for lighting, especially, with a Fresnel you cant point the fixture straight down with out damaging the fixture. But not with the k5600 Alpha 1600, you can point it straight down with out damaging the fixture. The Alpha 1600 also includes a permanent piece of borosilicate that gives crisp and hard shadows. As well as it’s a compact and lightweight.

            Over all these two new revolutionary lights, it’s going to start pushing the limits for other lighting manufactures in the film and television industry.  To get more information from industry professionals for these lights check out. http://www.scribd.com/doc/73942274/k5600newslettersept2011.

Have fun with these new lights.

Film Set Lighting Apps

Straying away from my normal blog about film lighting, I am going to be talking about a useful app I found the other day called set Lighting by Enlightened Shenanigans. Set Lighting is an IPhone app that is meant for Director of photography’s, Gaffers, and anyone on the G & E teams. This app has a catalog of any and all Film lighting and electrical we use in the industry today.

        Set Lighting has it all; from looking up information on certain lighting fixtures from Kino to the new ARRI LED lights. If you thought you are intrigued just by that, you also have an area you can look up specs on a condor lift to a scissor lift.

         For all you new bees, say you see something on a truck and you don’t know what it is, simply open set Lighting on your IPhone and find what you are looking for. With pictures of the object your looking for or searching, you should have no problem finding them.

        Normally all lighting apps stop there, but not with set Lighting. You have cheat sheets for distro such as; amp chart, volt drop per 100 feet and max ampacity. It shows distro examples on how to lay out distro on a set. As well as teaching you how to tie knots. Not to mention set Lighting shows you jell swatches and tells you why you should use them.  I can go on and on about how setLighting can help you, but you would have to buy this app for your self. I feel the $9.99 price tag is a great price for this app. You will not find a better app anywhere else. All I can say is, I wish I had this app when I was a new Electric on set.    

ARRI L7-C

          I am really excited to report on the new ARRI L-Series LED light. I have always wanted to use an all in one Light. This New Focusable Fresnel has brought much needed efficiency to the Broadcast studios around the world. One of the biggest things you will notice is the cost savings more than anything with lamp replacements and maintenance.

           The L7-C LED source produces the equivalent of a 750W tungsten light while drawing only 220W for a savings of a whopping 75% over similar output tungsten lights. Low heat means lower AC bills in the studio. You can actually run 9 L7s off of a 20A, 110V outlet as opposed to two 1,000W or three 650W standard fixtures. The full-spectrum of the L7-C is fully tune-able, the white light can be adjusted for different skin tone. With the ability to adjust color tempter, plus and minis green (green and Magenta shift) it fits well with mixed-light environments especially in a news broadcast that have large windows that look out into the streets that changes threw out the day, you only need to change the color temp and not have to worry about adding jells. On top of all that you can also have color effects and create moods and feels in a broadcast environment. As well you are able to place certain lights for different talent or news anchors that has different skin tone and the L7 is the only LED light that can come the closest to real tungsten lamps in color tempter.  The L7 is fixable to 15deg to 50deg spot to flood and works just like the other Arri lights. The L7 comes in two colors, Silver and Black. 

With the $2500 Price tag I feel this is a great light in a broadcast or studio environment. The L7 is a light thats been a dream to lighting designers and directors for a long time. 

Great Job Arri. 

Happy Light.  

If you would like to know more Check out this Youtube clip from ARRI at NAB 2012 or click here.