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Can you put any type of fluorescent bulb in kino flos? I was shooting something inside a hospital and needed to match the light from the overheads. Unfortunately the tubes these fixtures take are four feet but much skinnier than kino tubes. Can you still use them? They don't clip in nicely but who cares?

Edited by madsen
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Can you put any type of fluorescent bulb in kino flos? I was shooting something inside a hospital and needed to match the light from the overheads. Unfortunately the tubes these fixtures take are four feet but much skinnier than kino tubes. Can you still use them? They don't clip in nicely but who cares?

Probably not your best bet, but you should of switched out the fluorescents at the hospital with the kino flo. I know that the kino's fit in those fixtures, but as of the other way around....never tried.

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The tubes in the hospital you are describing sound like T8 tubes. Kino tubes are T12. Aside from the fact that the pin spacing is shorter on T8's, there very likely could be an electrical danger with trying to adapt T8's into a Kino system. Don't try it, or at least consult an electrician before you do.

 

Fortunately, T8's and T12's come in the same coatings. So a cool white T12 is the same color as a cool white T8. Next time you're in this situation, you can just go get some T12 tubes that match the coating on the practicals and put them in your Kino fixtures.

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Matt, thanks for making the distiction between those two tubes for me. I did a little research, and for those of you who don't know T8s are much cheaper than T12s to use and buy. They also require different ballasts.

The ballasts that come with kino's car kit does however support both varieties.

 

Best

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Yes, T8's are cheaper and more efficient than T12's. They are actually being forced into use by a recent set of environmental laws. Problem for us is, all the cinema tubes are T12 or biax, so it can be a pain when you want to re-lamp practical T8 fixtures--- gotta use gel.

 

Actually, if anyone reading this knows of tungsten or daylight balance T8's (especially 4 ft), that would be great information to have. To my knowledge though, they don't seem to exist.

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Actually, if anyone reading this knows of tungsten or daylight balance T8's (especially 4 ft), that would be great information to have. To my knowledge though, they don't seem to exist.

Philips TLD950 have pretty good color rendering, they are 5300K. And TLD930 is 3200K, if I remember correctly. Of course they are not "cinema tubes", but I'd say they are good enough. Test, test :)

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Ive talked to Kino about this and they said that there is no relavant problem whatsoever. As they stated thats one of the reasons that the Kino system is an industry standard, it allows to you put any flourescent bulb in them. Of Course it isnt entirely secure, however, it does work and besides the tubes being slightly more warm to the touch they should be fine. You can also swap Kino tubes into normal fixtures to acheive either a pure tungsten or daylight effect. For a feautre that I worked on last summer I had to rig over 400 tungsten Kino tubes on a scissor lift in a gym...it was not fun.

Cheers,

Eric U.

http://www.ericulbrich.com

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Yes, T8's are cheaper and more efficient than T12's. They are actually being forced into use by a recent set of environmental laws. Problem for us is, all the cinema tubes are T12 or biax, so it can be a pain when you want to re-lamp practical T8 fixtures--- gotta use gel.

 

Actually, if anyone reading this knows of tungsten or daylight balance T8's (especially 4 ft), that would be great information to have. To my knowledge though, they don't seem to exist.

 

There is a company called Movie Tone that makes both 3200 and 5600 T-8 tubes in various sizes and by the way the pin configuration is the same as the T-12. The designer and owner of Movie Tone lights was originally involved with the company that made optima 32 tubes. They no longer exist so he started his own company and he knows quite a bit about our industry.

 

Regards,

 

Rick

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  • 1 month later...
i spoke to rock at t8 technology (lumapanel makers) they have alot of bulbs that are t8. their light runs off them. i'm doing a demo next week and will let you know what i find out.

 

Isn't that the company that Dave Devlin created? (Janus Kaminski's gaffer)

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regarding kino flo lighting systems and t-8 lamps:

 

kino flo 4bank, double and single select and dmx systems, and the kino flo 12v single dimming system, all operate t-8 as well as the standard t-12 styles. however, the lamp diameter is smaller on a t-8 than the t-12 lamps, so they don't fit very well in the lamp clips in our fixtures (they're loose), and the reflectors are inefficient. further, t-8 lamps manufactured for standard output do not display the color quality of lamps formulated to run on high output in a kino flo fixture, and the cathodes in standard t-8s do not last as long as high-output cathodes.

 

kino flo does manufacture t-8 lamps color balanced to daylight and tungsten for standard output operation in architectural fixtures.

 

 

scott stueckle

kino flo, inc.

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  • 4 months later...

Scott,

 

I've always heard that using location tubes (e.g., cool whites, warm whites, etc.) in kino fixtures causes an additional green spike do to the high frequency at which the kino ballasts run. Can you confirm this? It would be nice to have this issue settled once and for all by an expert.

 

Thomas Burns

Novice DP

Los Angeles

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I've always heard that using location tubes (e.g., cool whites, warm whites, etc.) in kino fixtures causes an additional green spike do to the high frequency at which the kino ballasts run. Can you confirm this? It would be nice to have this issue settled once and for all by an expert.

 

 

Thomas:

 

Kino Flo high output ballasts operate fluorescent lamps at a higher wattage than conventional ballasts, so cool-white and warm-white type lamps generally burn brighter than you would see in a normal architectural fixture. Therefore, they will display more green light at a given distance from the lamp, but it does not mean the color is a more saturated green than when running at lower output.

 

The "frequency" at which a ballast operates is not the same thing as a ballast's electrical current output, and frequency does not affect the photometrics or the color display of a fluorescent tube. The ballast frequency relates more to flicker issues.

 

Regards,

 

Scott C. Stueckle

Kino Flo, Inc.

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I've been using standard fluorescent tubes on kinoflo fixtures for a day, and I didn't notice anything unusual, although I don't have a thermocolorimeter and I'm shooting on video.

 

I guess what you need is a couple of kobold fixtures, which allows the use of standard T8 tubes (if I understand well) using kinoflo-like fixtures.

 

I don't know if they are available in USA, though.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Franz.

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