robertwright
New member
maybe I can dissuade you all...having worked with b2pro for several years I have seen the best and worst of the equipment so let me focus on the negative since we all know the positive..
setup in not simple, the small umbrellas pop together relatively easily but the 220 and 330cm require some serious force to expand and unlike the broncolor there is no crank setup. Find a wall and push basically. Collapsing is even harder.
If you happen to put a little too much weight on the ribs of one of these puppies be prepared for breakage- the ribs are fragile at the connection points despite being made from carbon fibre- I've seen a few broken, (my fault sometimes) they shear off at that connection point to the collar. Big bucks replacing them.
Once you do get thing setup we haven't even started down the path of needing a gennie for the 2.5k hmi, (220 volt) - household only fires the 575 and 1.2k ballasts. Go into a location with bad power and you can spend lots of time chasing blown fuses, or running stingers around looking for good outlets.
Bulbs- they all age differently and depending on age the colour balance can can vary as much as 1500k and many points of green/magenta- bring your gels. For example, setup two or three umbrellas on a neutral grey wall and the colour temp difference will positively scream out at you-half of the wall will be yellow and the other half blue.
Did I mention efficiency? Unlike strobe where you can dial power up and down with HMI it is fixed by the ballast/bulb combo- as we all know the power needs can get ridiculous fast if you are lighting a large area in depth with HMI. I am routinely using 5 or 6 ballasts between 2.5 and 575k, a total wattage of about 6k+ and getting only f8 1/60 ISO 400 on the subject. I know that sounds crazy but you light a whole room with 20ft ceilings and black objects and call me back.
Of course I love the quality, the focusing, the hard/soft feeling, but really, with a 1 stop silk on the front of a 180cm umbrella is it really any different than an octa? I don't think so.
there are good reasons to use the briese and as we all move to combination film/motion capture it will just be more to the point but 90% of your work is usually accomplished with two or three lights at most, and that light is either hard, soft, or somewhere in-between. If it is soft then photons are generic once they leave the silk. Hard and hard/soft I'll grant you that focusing and collimation make huge differences, but it hard to beat a fresnel, and you don't need briese to use a fresnel.
forgot to mention your model- their eyes...they will not like you for using briese. Very hard to look into a 100cm silver umbrella with a 1.2k bulb blazing inside. You get real tears. Strobe is so much friendlier.
still want to pony up for the briese tax?:bugeyes::bugeyes:
setup in not simple, the small umbrellas pop together relatively easily but the 220 and 330cm require some serious force to expand and unlike the broncolor there is no crank setup. Find a wall and push basically. Collapsing is even harder.
If you happen to put a little too much weight on the ribs of one of these puppies be prepared for breakage- the ribs are fragile at the connection points despite being made from carbon fibre- I've seen a few broken, (my fault sometimes) they shear off at that connection point to the collar. Big bucks replacing them.
Once you do get thing setup we haven't even started down the path of needing a gennie for the 2.5k hmi, (220 volt) - household only fires the 575 and 1.2k ballasts. Go into a location with bad power and you can spend lots of time chasing blown fuses, or running stingers around looking for good outlets.
Bulbs- they all age differently and depending on age the colour balance can can vary as much as 1500k and many points of green/magenta- bring your gels. For example, setup two or three umbrellas on a neutral grey wall and the colour temp difference will positively scream out at you-half of the wall will be yellow and the other half blue.
Did I mention efficiency? Unlike strobe where you can dial power up and down with HMI it is fixed by the ballast/bulb combo- as we all know the power needs can get ridiculous fast if you are lighting a large area in depth with HMI. I am routinely using 5 or 6 ballasts between 2.5 and 575k, a total wattage of about 6k+ and getting only f8 1/60 ISO 400 on the subject. I know that sounds crazy but you light a whole room with 20ft ceilings and black objects and call me back.
Of course I love the quality, the focusing, the hard/soft feeling, but really, with a 1 stop silk on the front of a 180cm umbrella is it really any different than an octa? I don't think so.
there are good reasons to use the briese and as we all move to combination film/motion capture it will just be more to the point but 90% of your work is usually accomplished with two or three lights at most, and that light is either hard, soft, or somewhere in-between. If it is soft then photons are generic once they leave the silk. Hard and hard/soft I'll grant you that focusing and collimation make huge differences, but it hard to beat a fresnel, and you don't need briese to use a fresnel.
forgot to mention your model- their eyes...they will not like you for using briese. Very hard to look into a 100cm silver umbrella with a 1.2k bulb blazing inside. You get real tears. Strobe is so much friendlier.
still want to pony up for the briese tax?:bugeyes::bugeyes: