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Source 4 PAR's


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Hello all! It's been a long time since I've posted here. Excited to check back in and see how the forum has changed.

 

What are your experiences with ETC Source 4 PAR lights? I almost always rent lights, but recently I've been thinking to put a little kit together. I use Arri's and Kino's a lot for the types of things where I would want my own kit. I see that there are 575 and 750w versions as well as different reflector types etc. It also appears that you have to get a baby spud to attach it to a stand. They seem like a great light for bouncing or going through frames. Build quality is supposedly good, and the price is nice for the amount of light output.

 

Anyway, just hoping to hear some of your thoughts/opinions on the lights themselves and creative uses.

 

Cheers!

 

Chad

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello: I live in the next Ville west of you. You mentioned you were putting together a little kit. I like where you are going with the Arri's, the kinos and now perhaps a Source 4 par. This is one punchy bright light. The nice thing is that you can buy wide, medium, and narrow lamps that will do different beam spreads thus giving you some nice flexibility.

I sometimes use my ( ETCSF4) to puch into a white card to give me a hot soft key or fill. Recently i used one high on a triple riser stand geled in CTB to give me a nice moonlight backlight on a scene ouside around a fire.

 

As you build your kit you may also want to consider a few China lanterns, A ETC leko is starting to become popular again. The main thing is to own the lights that get you through 80% of the type of work you do. As long as you have good rental source available to you , rent the speciality stuff as you need it and own the stuff that you always use.

 

Best

 

David

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Source 4's are incredibly handy for the applications listed above, plus quite a bit more. As a bounce, they are tremendous in that you can quickly shape the beam to exactly fit the bounce without spill around it, maximizing the size of the source without causing spill. If you need to "bang" a source into a wall or header, same thing--quickly and easily cut without having to add flags.

 

Sometimes you need a small, controlled kiss of light and again, the self-cutting nature of the units is a great time-saver. For a wide master where one character is turned away from the key, I might pop in a little fill via Source 4 which will then get re-shaped and sweetened (hopefully!) when we go in to coverage.

 

I pick most of my standard package based on speed, due to the ever-accelerating schedules. Source 4's give a lot of bang for the buck in this department. I always have a squeezer inline, plus I make sure we have scrim that actually fits the filter holder (standard sizes require clipping which is ugly), plus a selection of diffusion and CTB ride in the scrim bag with the head in case I need to dim down enough that the color temp shift requires correction. I've been interested in trying out the LED version which avoids the latter phenomenon (and additionally, emulates it as an option which is pretty clever for integrating with the legacy version) but it's still a bit of an exotic beast while the original is so affordable.

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There is a little confusion here. Chad and David are talking about S4 PARs and Charles is referring to S4 ellipsoidals. Both are pretty versatile and economical. If you had to have one or the other, I'd go with the ellipsoidal because you have a lot more options, including the bug-a-beam adapter which allows you to put JokerBug HMIs through the body and lens in addition to the standard 575w or 750w tungsten HPL bulbs. I am also a big fan of the S4 ellipsoidal bounce that Charles touts. Then I would get a couple standard 1k PAR64 cans, which are super cheap. S4 PARs change beams by swapping lenses rather than lamps as in regular PAR cans, which is a PITA because they always get stuck in there. The only upside is that they are a little more compact than PAR cans. All lights mentioned accept either pipe clamps or TVMP adapters on their yokes. The TVMP adapters give you both baby receiver and junior stud for mounting on conventional stands/grip hardware.

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Oy vey. I didn't read the original post closely enough. Thanks for the clarification, Toby.

 

I do use the PAR 64 cans quite a bit, either in bounces or direct for a hot sunlight effect on a wall etc., but I don't use the Source 4 PARS, just the Leko. Thus when I call for a Source 4 it's always an ellipsoidal.

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