Arri Fresnel Relevance in 2018

[Stuart Brereton]

i don`t fancy arri too much anymore. there are many other lighting producers like powerlights.eu that make affordable ,professional products. Cheers

Dragos, you've been pushing this Powerlight website in just about every post you've made since you joined 2 days ago. Do you work for them? If you have some vested interest in pushing business their way, you should say so.

[Phil Rhodes]

I was wondering that,

[Yon Thomas]

@Dragos - Just curious, what makes Powerlight better than Arri? The fresnel selection on their website seems to be uncannily similar to Arri's line-up. Any insight?

[steve hyde]

Tungsten fresnels are fine, but everyone seems to ask for LED these days. I'm happy to work with either one. I have a set of Sola 4 LED fresnels. They don't get hot - won't melt the portabrace - won't blister paint on a ceiling bounce and can be found used for half the retail price. The 5600 daylight from the Sola 4 yields nice color on the C300MKII cameras I work with so I've come around to embrace the LED overall.

[Guy Holt]

Tungsten fresnels are fine, but everyone seems to ask for LED these days. I'm happy to work with either one. I have a set of Sola 4 LED fresnels. They don't get hot - won't melt the portabrace - won't blister paint on a ceiling bounce and can be found used for half the retail price. The 5600 daylight from the Sola 4 yields nice color on the C300MKII cameras I work with so I've come around to embrace the LED overall.

 

While definitely a step in the right direction, the Litepanel Sola fixtures still don’t compare to traditional Tungsten Fresnel fixtures IMHO. Litepanels claims the 39W Sola 4 has the output equivalent to a 125W HMI, but comparing the photometrics published on their website to those of an Arri 125W Compact Fresnel, the Arri has at full flood nearly nine times the output of the Sola 4 (81 FC at 10’ for the Arri vs. 9.5 FC at 10’ for the Sola 4). Litepanels doesn’t give CRI ratings for the Sola Fresnels on their website, but when asked they say the CRI is in the 80s – which is frankly rather anemic compared to the color rendering of Tungsten light with a CRI of 100. And, with a power factor of .6 the 39W Sola 4 head draws up to 65 Watts and generates a considerable amount of harmonic currents (a Power Factor Corrected HMI has a Power Factor of .98 and Tungsten lights have unity power factor.)

 

While the Sola 4 has an impressive spot to flood range (13 to 72 degrees), spot/flood capability is not the only characteristic that makes a Fresnel light what it is. Of equal importance is the ability to render clearly defined shadows and cuts, and unfortunately all the LED Fresnels I have seen don’t do it. The tungsten Fresnel is really a quite remarkable instrument. Their ability to render crisp shadows make them ideal for creating gobo effects like window or branch-a-loris patterns. And, the ability of Fresnels to render clearly defined cuts enables their light to be precisely cut to set pieces and talent.

 

Finally, Tungsten & HMI Fresnels have sufficient output that the crispness of their shadows or the hardness of their cuts can be varied by simply adding one of a variety of diffusion material to soften their output if desired. These are the characteristics of traditional tungsten Fresnels that make them extremely versatile, that the Sola "Fresnels" have not been able to emulate. As I said before, the tungsten Fresnel is really a quite remarkable instrument. For details about the mirror doubling that make traditional tungsten Fresnels a marvel of optical and mechanical engineering use this link: http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/emailnewsletter_generators.html#anchorHigh Output AC LEDs

 

Guy Holt, Gaffer, ScreenLight & Grip, Lighting Rentals & Sales in Boston