For example, I found this really interesting: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?302623-High-wattage-low-cost-and-fast-setup

I wanted to try that but unless I had some way of making it a high frequency electric ballast setup then I would be wasting time. Again, it would also be nice to use high CRI blubs to get better color renditions.

@spacewig oh nice! I didn't think the bulbs had the ballast built in (figured it was apart of fixture). My job just got a whole lot easier. Something else that stuck me as interesting is that tubes put out more lumens vs bulbs. So basically the deal with fluorescents is surface area matters.

I believe that Kino-Flo ballasts run at twice the frequency of standard electronic ballasts and that reduces their on-camera flicker.

@BurnetRhoades thats a great idea I'll have to keep an eye out for some good setups. Anything in I should be looking at socket wise in particular?

Are the fast ballasts tough to find? If you going to go through the trouble of building a kino it would suck to not have it perform. Ill see if I can find something on the types they use.

Something like this with a softbox might be cool as long as the bulbs include the ballast.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Studio-Light-85w-x-4-bulb-Lamp-Fluorescent-Daylight-Photo-Video-Reflector-/110962170383?pt=UK_Photography_StudioEquipment_RL&hash=item19d5dc5a0f

http://www.bluemaxlighting.com/50w_umbrella_345_prd1.htm

@omnidecay The bulb option has the ballast built in. It's the tubes you have to source your ballast for.

One particularly lazy "bat strip" fixture that I built once was by taking a powerstrip and plugging the bulbs in via socket adapters you can get for cheap at Home Depot, etc. They're bulb sockets that plug into a standard outlet. Take two powerstrips done up like this and you've got the potential for a 1K+ depending on the bulbs used.

I had the powerstrips attached to a long dowel that I also got at Home Depot which was the perfect diameter to go in a C-stand.

The screw-in kind of flo bulb has the ballast inside of the plastic base of the bulb. The long tube flo bulbs do not. Those ballasts are in the light fixture and can be either magnetic or electronic. Magnetic ballasts will resonate with the frequency of the current for your country, 50 or 60Hz. Electronic ballasts can be anywhere from hundreds of Hertz to MHz+.

I built some homemade flo lights from Kino bulbs and dimming electronic ballasts. Cheaper than Kino or Cool lights but still pricey and hard to make. I rarely use the dimming less than halfway because the color of the bulb starts to change and I rarely use more than 2 of the 4 bulbs in the light at a time. More often than not, I'll gel/diffuse/scrim the light and just dim slightly for taste. Because of this, I'd say if you make your own, don't worry about dimmability.

Dimmers are too much trouble to worry about. Just make the banks switch-able and it's as good in practical terms. Has anyone tried the jumbo CF self-ballasted bulbs? I have a couple of big 85watt (advertised as 350watt incandescent-equivalent) from Eiko (5,000K). You can run them on standard medium bases and put them inside a china ball for a large daylight-balanced area filling soft source. I could imagine putting several together to create a big coffin box or other improvised lighting instrument.

I do want to mention, though, that one of the things I really love about Kino-Flo fixtures is that they really are designed well for use on set. I have some Kino-Flos and also two off-brand Diva-light-like fixtures. The off brand ones were a lot cheaper, but they are a PITA to use sometimes. The Diva is always easy. I think a lot of the extra cost of a genuine Kino-Flo goes into the usability features.

I use BlueMax bulbs, they are very high CRI, silent, and the mercury is glued into the bulb in case you drop one. The batch I have color temp measures 5200K but I think the temp may vary slightly from batch to batch, at least on the website the specs vary slightly from time to time. None of mine have stopped working so I have not tried a recent batch.

@BurnetRhoades - Filmtools has the big (30-inch dia.) china balls from Lindcraft. A few of these light a space well if you're going for that look. Making a book light from your big CF sources is also an option--or just bouncing or diffusing, instead of both.

To me, the louvers, etc. are nice with kino and worth it. I don't know how much @svart saved on his DIYs but that's probably a little too much McGyvering for me.

I do the same thing with letting the bulbs warm up on high first, whether I use Kino bulbs or Osram. I think it's just about the phospors warming up and it would probably happen eventually at a lower setting but it's better to run them on full for 2 minutes then dim down.

I built a bulb box too but it's kinda heavy. I bought a bunch of cheap plastic (low wattage only!!) screw-in (edison) bases and attached them to a board. I wired them together and placed a bunch of flo bulbs in them. It works fine but like I said, it's a bit heavy. Maybe I'll try one from the leftover corrugated plastic sheets I have.

I built my 4 bank flo for around 200$, which is about 1/4 the price of a kino brand dimming 4 bank light. While part of it was simply an exercise for the sake of doing it, the other part was knowing I could save money. It was a lot of work though and it still comes a little short of Kino build quality although it's holding up nicely.

Also, the cheap bulbs have a very heavy green cast to them no matter the color temp. They need heavy 1/4 "minus green" gelling to have more of a pure color and even then it was still hard to get them perfect because brands and batches seemed to have completely different results. I find that the Kino branded bulbs were much better in that regard while the other brand bulbs people use have varying degrees of green.