Lighting systems by American manufacturer K 5600 have not been widely represented in Canada up until now, but that’s about to change if Toronto equipment sales, rental and service house Cinequip has anything to say about it. At a recent film gear demonstration, John Ferguson of Cinequip introduced new products from the company out of North Hollywood, California.

K 5600 began by marketing a system called ‘the Joker,’ an HMI Par light which uses a highly polished parabolic reflector to enable a high percentage of the emitted light to be projected toward the front diverging lens. The company selected a 400 msr lamp to build its Joker 400 fixture around, because, as Ferguson explains, ‘It’s much smaller than the typical 575W lamp, however, the shorter arc size on the bulb pulls you back towards the same sort of output you would get from a 575W bulb.’

K 5600 boasts the Joker 400 is the most powerful unit of its size: its output is comparable to a 1500/2000 quartz fixture, yet it draws on merely 5.5 amps of power. It has an incredibly high spot-to-flood ratio (80:1), far more than comparable fixtures like Fresnels or open faces, although the Joker does not give as smooth a beam pattern. It is best used with diffusion materials, and for bouncing in daylight interiors, and its compactness makes it good for car interiors as well.

Jokers have been a part of lighting packages for feature films, tv magazines (perfect for two-camera interviews), and industrial films.

K 5600 likes to think small. ‘They’re into the guerrilla filmmaking most of you people are into,’ Ferguson told the room of cameramen. ‘They like to have a very small fixture and a small [overall] package that can be toured around easily and effectively.’

The Joker 400 kit fits into a small white packing case, which, loaded, weighs 33 pounds, or 15 kilograms. The ballast is quiet and small, and therefore easily hidden, and can be plugged into any circuit without fear of overloading.

An optional accessory to the Joker 400 is the Slimverter 400, an inverter which provides a cost-efficient alternative to a dc electronic ballast. It will run the system on a battery pack of two 30V NiCad batteries for 45 minutes, making the Joker 400 the largest battery-powered hmi on the market.

Similarly, the Slimverter 200 operates the 200 hmi system, and an inverter called the Slabverter will power a 200W Joker ballast using two Anton Bauer Propac batteries, which are commonly used in video shooting. Thus battery belts are not needed with the Slabverter, which will run the system for 23 minutes.

K 5600 soon found its customers trying to use the Joker inside Chimera Lightbanks, or ‘soft boxes,’ in an effort to provide the soft lighting pattern especially popular for interviews, but the Par configuration of the lamp meant the light was shooting mostly out the front of the box, instead of reflecting off the sides of the box’s interior for an even fill light.

As a result, the company developed the ‘Bug-Lite,’ an open fixture far more compatible with Lightbanks and Lanterns, in that it provides a smooth pattern with no hot spot.

The Bug-Lite comes in a 200W lamp system (comparable to a 750/1000W quartz fixture, and drawing on only three amps) as well as a 400W system, and their open configuration allows them to be run in any position – upside down or sideways, if desired.

There are no optics to these lamps, which enables the reflective inside of Lightbanks to collect the maximum amount of light from them and fill the front screen evenly. The fixtures are light enough to be mounted on a camera (usable as an eye light), or hung from the end of a boom arm.

Bug-Lites run off the same power and cable system as the Joker – 110V or 240V or 30V with the Slimverter – so the two systems function smoothly together, although this of course requires the purchase of two separate lights.

So K 5600 came up with an economical solution – ‘Joker-Bug’ lights, which come in 125W and 200W packages that can function as Bug-Lites, and then by simply attaching a Beamer accessory into the Bug-Lite housing, the fixture is transformed to the Par configuration of Jokers, for more directional lighting. (With the advent of this two-in-one system, the Joker 200 light has been discontinued.)

There are four lenses (super wide, wide, medium, and Fresnel frost) and a barndoor accessory to help control the beam pattern from 5 degrees to 65 degrees in the par mode. A frosted safety glass beaker, which is included, once attached, will diffuse the intense 5mm arc from the lamp.

As its systems became increasingly popular for interviews, K 5600, at the request of the CNN Network, set about refining a fixture specifically for news coverage. The result is the Joker News 200, which, as with the Joker-Bug system, can be used as an open fixture, and then, as Ferguson describes, ‘A beamer, which they call their `News Beamer,’ can be attached to focus the light better, although it’s a very minimal spot-to-flood ratio [3:1]. You can also put a 3200-degree beaker onto it, turning [the hmi unit] into a semi-tungsten fixture. With a 4 amp/hour 30V belt battery, the fixture will run for about 26 minutes.’

The Joker News 200’s durable aluminum lamp housing allows the unit to withstand the rigors of frequent travel and setup. The lamp can be ignited and reignited immediately, thanks to a very fast restrike lamp starter, and the system’s very basic optics result in the bare minimum of setup time.

One of the most useful accessories to the Joker light system is the Softube, a long, lightweight (3.5 pound, or 1.6 kilo) cylindrical attachment that can be placed on the front of the Joker 400 to form a soft and even tube-like light source.

The optical principle is simple – the Softube has a mirror on the front end of it that bounces the light back to distribute it around as evenly as possible. The compactness of this soft source makes it practical, for example, as window reinforcement or daylight fill for a vehicle setup, such as inside a bus. The Softube is quickly and easily attached and offers high output yet low heat, and they are remarkably durable, as was illustrated by a Cinequip customer in Montreal who had many 575W lamps in inventory, and decided to try the Softube with them.

‘People said the Softube would melt with such a powerful lamp, but they’ve withstood 16 weeks of feature shooting so far,’ Ferguson maintains.

K 5600 lights are a good choice for professional-level shooting when the required system must be mobile, rugged, quick to set up and fire up, and versatile, which is especially true of the Joker-Bug, which combines the benefits of both of K 5600’s flagship fixtures. A Joker 200 kit, including Slimverter, retails in the $7,000 to $8,000 range, whereas the Joker 400 is priced at $9,000.