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KINO-FLO WALL LIGHT


Marc Levy

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I love the Wall-O for it's large, soft source that's still somewhat directional. It emulates ambient window light very well and when you put a diffusion diaper over it (diffusing material that wraps the whole unit like, well a diaper) then the soft quality is lovely.

 

That said, it's a major pain to flag. It's very large and the only way to effectively control it is with very large flags at a distance, which is often impractical. The good news is that as all Kinos it has a dramatic dropoff, so you can put it fairly close to your subject and the light will be fairly weak by the time it reaches the background.

 

Also note that it's very large qand heavy. You can't simply put it on a C-stand like a 4x4.

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You use 1x4 blade flags as lensers, or clip black posterboard to the sides (or leave the eggcrate on). But for really cutting it, it's like trying to cut the softlight coming from a 4x4 frame of diffusion -- you have to start out with 4x4 floppies usually.

 

If you're going to try and make soft cuts in the light with large flags, it's a good idea to diffuse the light slightly so that the tubes blend into one source.

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i hope this is in some way helpful:

i always kind of felt like the entire reason for using a wall-o was because it gives you a cool, "wrappy" light, but at the same time, it doesn't spill all over your set/location like a softbox/silk would. meaning, flagging is less critical with a wall-o-lite then with, say, a medium chimera.

jk :ph34r:

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Another useful bonus to these units is speed; a friend who shoots a lot of low budget music videos uses them all the time; he'll use 3 or 4 bulbs in the unit for a shot, and when he needs to shoot at a higher frame rate and needs the extra light to maintain a consistent T-stop, he'll just pop on a few more bulbs.

 

I personally like it through a frame of 250 or lite gridcloth.

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  • 1 month later...

A mentioned a few post up from here. I too use 4x Floppies on C stands to tunnel light in the direction I want. A deep egg crate does work well in guiding the light but I would say it can steal some foot candles. I am using it on a shoot this weekend at a deserted fairground. I am Putting full CTB over it and crating and flagging it. It will be attached to a 50 foot Sky Crane and used for a moon source. The tests looked great. Not a lot of power either.

 

Have fun.

 

Toby Proctor

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You can indeed change the tubes -- they're standard 48", allowing you to put whatever flavor bulb in there you like.

 

One of the advantages of a multi-tube unit is the ability to mix up the type of bulbs, so you could quickly switch between or mix color temperatures by selecting which tubes to turn on.

 

The Image 80 is similar to the Wall-o-light, using 8 48" tubes instead of 10. Just slightly smaller and lighter weight, also with the self-contained ballast.

 

http://kinoflo.com/

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