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Kino's as practicals


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For an upcoming shoot I want to mount several Kino's (bare bulbs) on a wall and use them as practicals. What wiring and sockets would I need for this?

 

You'd need the Kino ballast, head feaders, etc. - if these are 4' tubes, you can use the stuff from a 4' single bank Kino minus the fixture, just the end caps, harness wires, cables, etc. You still need to be going to a Kino ballast.

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Thanks for the reply David.

 

I should be more specific:

 

I'm renting several 4bank Kino and Single Tube units, with ballast and cables. I want to mount 8 bulbs all around the walls of a small laboratory. The bulbs will be positioned horizontally and spaced apart so I will need more slack in the breakouts than the head cable has to offer. On a shoot I worked the gaffer did something like this by running electric cable out of the feeder cables and then used some sort of fluorescent bulb "quick on" or "add a tap" to power the bulbs. I don't know the names of them and I can't find anything on filmtools or other cine websites when I dig around the electrical sections.

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Well if you find the right size of end caps, you can run kino flo tubes from practical fittings, using a standard mains supply with a Fluorescent starter (preferably as powerful a one as possible). The only thing to bare in mind is they won't necessarily be flicker free after this process, as they'll be running of mains (which I believe in the US is 60 hertz...?)

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Nothing special about the T-12 style tube end-caps or connectors in a Kino fixture. You could drive the tubes from a standard electronic, hi-frequency ballast, remotely mounted, but you might not get the same lumens out of the tube, as Kino overdrives them which compensates for the inefficiency of a full spectrum, hi-CRI tube.

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  • 8 years later...
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75W ballasts are available; you'd be looking for a ballast intended for 6-foot conventional tubes, which ought to drive a four-foot Kino at design power. It's also possible to wire some dual-36W ballasts to drive Kino tubes (or any tube, really) at double the usual power, which will put it roughly where a Kino ballast would drive it.

The Kino tubes are not being overdriven, specifically. It's just that their design power is essentially a notch up from conventional tubes of the same length. They have heavier electrodes to compensate.

It is important to get this right, for more reasons than just output. Underdriven fluorescent tubes (including Kino tubes) go purple; overdriven tubes go yellow, to a degree that will cause problems.

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