Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Hive Lighting: Plasma Light Technology

Plasma lights may be the future of high intensity lighting.  All these lamps are based around a 280 watt peanut-size bulb of gas which get hit with microwaves and the gas turns to plasma.


These globes are daylight balanced, twice as efficient as HMI's, a CRI of 94, have a bulb life of 30,000 hours and are flicker-free since they operate at 450 million hertz.   You're going to be waiting a long time for cameras to catch up to that speed!




Hive Lighting has four basic plasma units starting with the Hornet Fresnel. Using the standard 280 watt plasma globe this fresnel is brighter than either a 575 HMI or a Tungsten 2K.


The 280w globe in the Wasp Plasma Par it's is equal to a 400 watt HMI Par and can be fitted with the usual lenses.


The Killer Plasma Maxi combines 2 Wasp Pars into one unit and two Killer Maxi's can be combined into a 2x2 array.  Put into a Spacelight bag and it's brighter than a 6000W tungsten Spacebag but drawing only 1,120 watts.


Finally, the Source Four Drone Retrofit Kit with same 280w plasma globe gives you the same output and throw of a 750W HPL.  And there's less heat, it's cheaper to power and the 30,000 hour bulb life means hang it today, replace the globe in the next decade.


Seriously, the company says although the globe will last 30,000 hours, they recommend replacing the bulb every 10,000 because of color shift.  Of course, car makers say you should change your oil every 3,000 miles so lets say you changed it after 15,000 hours.  If you burnt that globe 8 hours a day, seven days a week you wouldn't have to change it for over five years... and it still won't burn out for another five years.


AbleCine will be selling Hive lights,  they're just not saying yet how much this new technology is going to cost.
http://blog.abelcine.com/2012/04/19/nab-12-whats-new-with-hive-lighting/

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