Buyer Intel - Photoflex Constellation3

[brombones]

This is probably not a great intro post for myself. I've been lurking for a while. I'm an amateur wet plate photographer in CO and have been here many times to read about lenses and other large format topics. Anyways, I was kind of halfheartedly looking around at lighting for interior wet plate on Denver Craigslist today, and came across this ad:

http://denver.craigslist.org/pho/4965036881.html

I'm not even going to pretend that I know anything about interior lighting for photography (although I have an idea of what I need for wet plate). But I can do math, and this looks like a steal. Those Coolstar 150 bulbs are like $125 each. The lighting unit is still for sale on at least one website for $275. The silverdome is like $100. The stand has got to be worth a few bucks. It's evidently all new, and the guy/gal is asking $300, and it looks like this has been sitting on craigs for a month. He should have posted it in a place like this instead of craigslist.

What I do know is that this will not work for me. I need a different kelvin fluorescent bulb, and that's the only reason I would buy this as a large amount of fluorescent light would be the major draw for me. I strongly debated with myself whether or not I should try to make him an offer anyways and try to make out like a bandit by parting it out, but I've decided against it.

I don't know him/her. I haven't seen it in person (this is on the other side of town from me). I don't know if he'll ship (maybe not since it's on craigs). Just thought I'd post this here in case anyone needs something like this and thinks it's a steal.

 

[John Koehrer]

The ad has been up for a little bit and it's worth only what you'll pay for it. Make him an offer you think is reasonable, but shipping has gotten relatively expensive and it's going to be two/three oversize boxes & that's additional money.
I wouldn't break it up, there's not a real hot market for new, unused(?) bulbs
You can get accurate rates at usps.com but need size & weight of the stuff.

IMO dealing with shipping stands is a PITA because of the length of the stand and having to build-a-box.
The rest is easy peasy.

 

[M Carter]

I'm not a wet plate expert, but read an article where a guy did a wet plate fashion shoot - he used several Profoto heads/packs cranked up to 2500 ws, took 2 pops (as I recall), and a 2K tungsten for fill. That... is a buttload of light.

I didn't see the color temp for the CFLs, but he does have the tungsten lamps - though turning all 3 on would blow a breaker pretty quickly (that's close to 30 amps!)

The softbox is decent, they'll take a lot of heat - but a medium isn't that great for people - I have a small, which I use as an open faced light for bounce or diffusion (I use it with a 400 HID daylight setup in a Starlite).

I do a lot of video, and the CFLs were, umm... a phase. Never happy with the big spirals for color. Kinos and Chinese biax flo's (kino knockoffs), I've had much better luck with.