Sweet! Kino Flo to release $14 daylight and tungesten practical bulbs

Kino Flo 4 bank Divas and my Litepanel 1x1s are my favourite soft lights. They give off an exquisite light, especially the Kino Flo Divas.

With the advent of DSLRs and their low light sensitivity I have not stopped using my lights, I just use a lot more practicals than I used to. The problem is they often don’t look good or match the light you want. Kino Flo have legendary colour matched light and with the release of these practical bulbs which give off an equivalent of 100 watts of light whilst only drawing 27 watts of power means wonderful light practicals bulbs are finally in everyone’s budget and practically zero heat and especially if you are using Kino Flos these will be totally colour matched!

I am not sure where and when you will buy these from but I expect the usual suspects will sell them!

Thanks to Film and Digital Times for this info.

19 comments

  1. Yeah I’m excited about these bulbs, there only about $14.00 a bulb, but not dim-able 🙁
    And yes These will be color matched!!!
    This means your Kino lights will match COLOR WITH a regular prop/set lamp using these new Kino bulbs!!

    This is huge for getting your prop/set lighting correct 🙂

  2. That’s great news! I’ve been using a DIVA 400 for a while now and have had problems matching with other lights in the room. This should be a problem of the past now.

    thanks for posting!

  3. You can get the 5500K bulbs at home depot for $8. I have two in my kit. We just used the Promaster setup with four 85W bulbs in a softbox for ~$190. Ultra cheap and it works. Phil, if you’re interested in cheap (good) lighting check out my latest blog entry that talks about this.

  4. I didn’t notice any green tinges when white balanced to the key, which also has 5500K fluorescents. Maybe our differences in experience is brand specific. The “daylight” designation on products sold at hardware stores can often mean anywhere from 4500-5600K, so I never trust vendors opinion of daylight. The real question is where is Kino sourcing these bulbs from? Obviously they don’t make the bulbs themself.

  5. Hi Phil, Don`t you think that the 5D footage doensn`t look so good when lit only by fluorescent sources? I`ve had much better results when lighting with real tungsten lights. I found that the color reproduction (even if the fluorescent source is color matched) is lower when using flos…

  6. Glad to see Kino’s joining the dslr revolution. If you need a cfl with more light that will still fit in a standard Edison socket, there is one that puts out the equivalent of 200 watts at 5500K with 93+ CRI while only drawing 42 watts of power at Full Spectrum Solutions for $16, less if you buy in bulk.

    With three twin-socket adapters in a clamp-on light, to allow you to screw in four bulbs, you can have a fixture that puts out the equivalent of 800 watts of light with almost no heat that costs less than $90. Just make sure you check that the clamp-on light has the capacity to drive all 168 watts. Some of them are only rated for 100.

    http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/42w_power_compact_bulb_412_prd1.htm

  7. Can’t wait for these to come available!
    I was going crazy trying to figure out how to start my light setup on the cheap.

    By the way, I’m going to buy my first light meter really soon and have no idea where to start.
    Do I go analog and save money, or is it really worth it to go digital?
    An LCD screen is nice an all, but as long as the read is accurate I’m happy.

  8. Philip,

    Good heads up on a new solution, but take care not to break those little buggers. The case lights have the shatterproof casings, which is nice. Unfortunately the little CFL guys are more prone to shattering and releasing mercury vapor, which is not too kind to people nor the environment.

    I know because I broke one once, couldn’t get the tiny shards up, so I vacuumed, then read–to my dismay–that that’s the worst thing to do, as it vaporizes the mercury further and spreads it…the EPA actually recommends opening all your windows, leaving the room, then using tape to get the pieces up…que ridiculo, eh?

    So long as you exercise care, and recycle them when they’re spent, for the most part you should be cool. But I’m looking forward to the day when LEDs are as inexpensive as flourescents–and color matched. That’ll be the real deal.

    Hope your luck turns up soon with all the construction woes, (it will!), Cheers, JB

Leave a Reply