Jimmy Gilmore

Dana Dolly works well, easy to transport, fairly fast to set up, and can handle a pretty heavy camera setup 45 - 50 lbs. Works better than anything else I've seen in it's price range. Not sure that I'd fly a jib off it though. It's basically a hi-hat with skateboard wheels and would flop over with an unbalanced load. My only experience with Kessler products has been mixed. Been fine for DSLR work but not for cinema cameras and lenses.

It's not nearly as precise, versatile or cool looking but I have a 8 ft Westcott parabolic that costs about $100 bucks and makes a beautiful soft key. Comes in white and silver I believe. Easts lots of light. I regularly bounce multiple sources into it.

Thanks for the detailed response. A lot of really great info.

Looks like no one is going to answer your question so I'll get the ball rolling here. Caveat, I'm not a DP - I'm a writer/director and unfortunately too often the producer too. In my experience, either the DP owns his own lenses and is familiar with them or they're rented. The rental house will prep the camera and lens set so they work perfectly together. I'm not sure where you live but if you wander into say Panavision in Hollywood you'll see a bunch of techs with cameras on benches lined up with charts on walls. They test the lenses to make sure the focus marks match up to the actual focus distance, that the exposure is where it should be and that there are no obvious problems with the image quality. They also run the cameras through a series of tests to make sure you won't have any problems on set. If you're really interested in how this all works I'd suggest visiting a local camera rental house. Most of the ones I've done business with over the years are staffed by some pretty damn friendly and helpful people. Your success is their success. Camera prep isn't really a DPs job. I certainly would not pay one their day rate to screw around with back focus. But I don't work in the land of big budget features and the process may be quite different that world.

If you have control over the environment, best option is to remove the bulbs and put what you want in so everything matches. When you go into a store or office with lots of fluorescent bulbs, look carefully and you'll see that they're all different colors. But some DPs do really fun stuff with them with the right material. Check out Chungking Express. FWIW. It's inefficient to gel from tungsten to whatever the color temp the fluorescent is. You're looking at full CTB + a quarter and or a half green. A kino with mixed tubes (3200 and 5600) and a quarter or half green would get you in the neighborhood. And flag anything ambient that is going to directly hit faces/skin tones. That's how I would work.

Super Clamp would do the trick if you don't have a lot of accessories and a light lens. I'm not sure of the pound rating but it should work fine maybe with a ball head holding the camera.