Colin Theys

Well, I have a bad habit of answering my own questions, but figured I'd leave the info in case someone stumbles across this later! Been doing some research and discovered that, in fact, Kino has only changed the labels on the lamps, not the actual lamp. More detail about this can be foudn in the lamp troubleshooting doc on kinoflo.com "Previous lamps carried industry standard descriptions relating to wattage. We originally maintained these descriptions since Kino Flo lamps can operate in industry standard architectural fixtures as well as Kino Flo’s systems. Lamps operate at higher wattages and with more light output in Kino Flo systems. To accurately reflect these true wattages on our systems we redefined the labels.... Some customers believe the new HO labeled lamps are brighter than previous models. The new lamps are brighter than old lamps due to the lumen depreciation of the older lamp. The formulation and construction have not changed. Only the label was changed. It’s still the same lamp." If anyone knows any quirks of the older ballasts or anything, let me know. Thanks, -Colin

Hi Everyone, I just picked up a pair of inexpensive old Kino Flos. They're in great shape, but the ballasts and bulbs appear to be old (they're 40w instead of the HO 75w). I was wondering if anybody here has experience with the old units and knows what to look out for vs. the new ones. I already noticed you can't turn the lights back on for 7 seconds after turning them off. The ballasts are BAL-400 and BAL-400s. I know they'll work, but if I replace the bulbs with HO bulbs, will they produce the higher output? I'd test, but don't have any bulbs around. Thanks everyone, -Colin

Hey, I'm afraid that we're going to have to end up painting, but I'm trying to find a way around it, not because we can't afford it, but because the existing place already looks so great. We're trying to create exactly what we've already got... but not so bright. If we painted, the walls would look new and we'd have to go through and mess them all up from scratch, while we have a beautiful array of stains, scratches, graffitti, burns, etc. already in place that I would love to keep if possible. Thanks, -Colin

Hey everyone, I'm going to be shooting a quick project in an abandoned old municipal building. It's got a great, decayed old look, but the walls were all painted white back in day and the rooms are a bit small to easily control spill well. All the white makes me unhappy. I'm trying to think of a way short of painting everything to make the walls darker without completely destroying the aged texture and I was wondering if anyone had any experience with such situations that might give me any new ideas. I was thinking of getting my hands on a paint sprayer and blasting everything with a thin coat of watered down dark paint or stain of some kind. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks, -Colin

Wow. Thanks for all the feedback. I'm glad (sort of) to hear I'm not alone in my encounters with the stubborn security types wanting to scan my precious film. I also think that a standard label could be useful, although it's nice to hear that UPS has such a thing already. Thanks, :) -Colin Theys

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think 5218 has less grain even when it's rated at 800, so the 800 seemed largely useless.

Hi all, I had to ship out film for a project I did last semester and when I brought it to the post office I asked how I could avoid getting the package x-rayed because it contained exposed film. She told me I could write "exposed film" on it, but that frankly that would probably just make them x-ray it more and that if I wrote "please do not x-ray" there was a chance it would get pulled and opened for a security check or something after being x-rayed. Everything came out fine, but I found this all very discouraging. Does anyone know of a better way to get film shipped without being xrayed? Is Fedex or UPS better about it than USPS? Thanks, -Colin

Sorry, I guess I didn't make that clear. i didn't mean to incrase capacity. I meant ganging them together so that you could easily dim one light while simultaneously 'undimming' another. :) Reading about all this stuff, I stumbled across this pretty decent page about how these dimmers work: http://home.howstuffworks.com/dimmer-switch1.htm Thanks, -Colin PS. I could see some 'interesting' situations developing from attempting to increase capacity by using multiple dimmers. hehe.

Thanks for the suggestions / tips. It had never occurred to me that the triacs would cause the lights to flicker. Buzz I can live with because we're probably shooting silent or close to it most of the time, but flicker is not so cool to say the least. I've seen home depot dimmers used on arri openface 650s and 300s, so maybe I can get away with lighting that shot completly with 650s and under and then gang together a few dimmers to ensure that the transition is smooth? I'll do some tests and see what I can get and if it doesn't work, I know a bunch of people in theater lighting professionally. Perhaps time to call in a favor. :) or better yet... I could raid the theater department.... hrmm... ;) Thanks, -Colin

Hi, I'm DPing a very cool little fairy tale project. The script calls for a very strange sense of time. One of the effects we were planning to use was to fade between different lighting setups during a single shot - ie transition from day to evening. We're students and doing this on a budget. :) Basically, my question is how serious the color temperature change will be if I jsut go to home depot and build myself a fader board with a few 1k faders so that we can fade between the two setups. I will of course shoot a test of this (even if only on video) before using it, however if anyone has any experience with this it woudl be helpful to know before I build the board. :) I've used faders on a shoot before, but it was black and white. Thanks, -Colin Theys

I'd say it's pretty safe to say I know the Arri mags very well. Well enough that we took it apart and fixed it today once we got the film out. I've been on a number of shoots SR cameras and know them pretty well. The connection between the pin driving the collapsible core and the rest of the mag was not properly connected inside the mag and promptly fell loose after enough film had been run onto it (more than we tested it with.) The mag was moving properly except for the take-up, which is why the film was being crammed into the take-up side without the spool turning. We used it today successfully, though it made a very disturbing noise for the first 50 feet or so... I don't want to name any names because I'm sure this was not typical, but (can you tell I'm mad at them?) some other evidence that they screwed up: 1. They didn't know how to operate the DAT (and neither did I,) so I couldn't test it there and sure enough when we got it back here and our sound guy looked at it, not only did the dat not work, but the mic didn't work at all with any equipment, including our replacement. 2. We called them and they told us they intentionally gave us the high speed mag. 3. They didn't have a few of the items we'd ordered (nearly a month in advance) and paid for. Simple things... like a mighty mole. 4. It took them 5 hours to prepare a simple list of equipment. 5. We asked them to put Tungsten bulbs in the kino-flo and though they're labled tungsten, they're definately not tungsten bulbs... they're not daylight either though... 6. The battery belt for the DAT doesn't hold a charge for more than a few takes. 7. They didn't give us the key to adjust the phase even though I asked specifically for it. 8. They had the camera set to super-16 when we had asked for standard. They said they would set it back when I insisted (the director is comitted,) but when I checked after they had "finished" the gate was still set for super 16. I asked why and they said "don't worry about it." Apparently they don't have the rail anymore. We made sure to shoot a frame for the printer, but it's not very professional if you ask me. Anyway, I could go on, but I'm just ranting. The moral of the story is that I was way too trusting when I picked up the equipment. I thought we had a very good relationship with the rental house. We used the same stuff from the same place last year and they were great, so I was pretty relaxed about checking stuff out. ie I didn't actually look to see that the guy was telling the truth when he said he had just put the key to change the shutter angle in the camera case. (he didn't) And, of course, every single thing I didn't specificaly check for was either broken or missing. Also, the people there were very nice and our guy in charge of ordering equipment has a good relationship with them, maybe even going to work for them next year, so I didn't think they'd screw us over. Shows how wrong I was... From now on I will inspect everything down to the last screw and paint chip, which I should have done this time of course. Oh well, for not inspecing thoroughly enough I must accept partial blame. Thanks for the help -One very disappointed DP Uh oh! I just shot a scene with the HS mag tonight with a 9.5 lens open to a 2. I hope it won't be too noticable... :/

Thanks Rik. We ended up having to use that mag today. We really got screwed over by the rental company. Our other (normal) mag ate the film because it stopped spooling on the takeup side after only 3 feet. grrr. The highspeed seemed to work fine, expect that it wouldn't record timecode. But I suppose that's alright, since the DAT and mic they gave us didn't work either! (the only thing I didn't test when we rented because nobody at the place knew how to run the DAT and the sound guy didn't come with me to pick up.) I sure hope it worked! :unsure: (pretty sure it did though.) Thanks again, -Colin PS. It'a alright if you put it in superspeed. You just can't go to plaid. :blink:

Hey, We just picked up a bunch of equipment for a film this weekend and the rental place was having some issues with understaffing and somehow we ended up with one of the wrong mags. :/ We're shooting with an Arri SR3 advanced and we got one normal mag and one high speed mag by accident. Does anyone know if we can use it with the normal camera? It seems pretty much the same except that it sayd HS Timecode on the side and the wheel moves a little more easily... We don't want to do any speed manipulation, shooting at 24fps. maybe one scene at 16, but we can use the other mag for that scene. Thanks if anyone know the answer. -Colin Theys