KinoFlo
Making motion pictures demands two kinds of lighting â?? hard and soft. Here at Kino Flo Inc., we specialize in providing easily attainable soft light â?? similar to what youâ??d find when sunshine reflects off a white wall, or when a candle shines brightly through a paper lantern.
Before the advent of Kino Floâ??s movie-friendly fluorescents, getting soft lighting was complicated â?? and costly. To achieve it, DPâ??s had to bounce hard light off a large surface. Film crews were forced to use cutters, flags and scrims â?? and consume a lot of set space.
Enter the gaffer/best boy solution behind Kino Flo. In 1987, while working on the film Barfly, DP Robby Mueller was shooting in a cramped interior with a wide lens. He didnâ??t have the space to rig conventional set lighting. Frieder Hochheim (his gaffer) and Gary Swink (his best boy) came up with an answer. They established a base light with incandescent practicals and HMIs through windows. For fill and accent lighting, they constructed high-frequency fluorescent lights. By using remote ballasts, the fixtures were maneuverable enough to be taped to walls, hidden behind drapes and mounted behind the bar. Kino Flos were born.
The new, cool, energy efficient lights were a smash hit with cast and crew. They were used over the camera as key and eye lights. When they were moved off axis, they erased any boom arm shadow. Their ballasts were dead quiet and their light was flicker free. Unlike standard lamps, they didnâ??t create a greenish cast on film, and could be swapped out quickly for different sizes and colors. The understated, natural lighting lent a signature look to Muellerâ??s images. He received accolades from his peers and the movie continues to influence many cinematographers today.
Today, Kino Flo, Inc. designs our own line of ballasts, power supplies, fixtures and lamp specifications. Our True Match line of products contain more than 30 types of lighting systems. Kino Floâ??s custom made lamps mix seamlessly with daylight or tungsten lighting without filtration. They lend their unique look to the lighting of hundreds of well-known films, like Titanic, Seven, Sense and Sensibility and Men in Black. Visual effects lamps and designer color lamps grace the product lines as well. And our on-site rental facility guarantees that we stay in touch with the demands of production and the needs of our customers.
Kino Flo has worked for over a decade crafting unequaled soft lighting instruments for professional filmmakers. Kino Flo lighting has become a standard in major film markets throughout South America, the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. In addition, many of the features behind the success of our products make them ideal for video production, still photography and TV broadcast applications. We invite you to turn on a Kino Flo â?? and see the light.
Used Blinders
Blinders are incandescent or LED stage lights which are directed at a relatively low angle toward the audience or stage. Designed for stage flood lighting, these intensely bright lighting fixtures are technically PAR lights. PAR lights or Parabolic Aluminum Reflector lights are so-called because of the actual material they are composed of. They are of halogen nature, that is, in place of a light-emitting filament, they have a halogen capsule that gives off light. When electric current runs through the halogen gas, the resulting chemical reaction allows the capsule to emit phosphorescence or light.
Blinders normally have a parabolic-shaped aluminum base. The curve of the base is so designed to capture and directly focus emitted light. The aluminum construction is intensely-reflective and is intended to take the greatest amount of light possible and focus the captured light on a specific area.
The PAR lights in blinders are categorized according to beam and size. They have a bulb life of approximately 2,000 hours, with the higher watt levels going at around 500 watts or 0.5 kilowatts up to 1000 watts or one kilowatt. Their beam ranges are much wider to illuminate much broader areas.
The bulbs used in blinders give off a more white-colored light with higher color temperatures ranging from 3000 K (Kelvin) to 3200 K. They are classified as warm-colored lighting, in this case. These bulbs are also frequently sold with PAR specifications that are either PAR36 or PAR64. The number following PAR corresponds to the individual bulbâ??s diameter measured by the number of eighths of an inch. Thus, a PAR36 bulb is around 4.5 inches across, while a PAR64 bulb is exactly 8 inches across.
