review: kelvin epos 300 – worth the price of admission?

You saw the beauty shots in the intro, this light is GORGEOUS.

 

The all-aluminum construction isn’t just for show though. The exterior shell of the head unit acts as a heat sink. This gives it better heat dissipation, which allows for lower fan speeds and less noise overall.

 

The locking clamp for the yoke of the head arrived with a little bit of a wiggle in it, but here’s the really neat thing. Rather than hide all the bolts internally like Aputure did with all of  their lights, 300, 600, and 1200 series, Kelvin placed theirs in an accessible manner. Meaning, I was able to just take out an Allen key and tighten the clamp back up on the EPOS 300. Despite really tugging on it again to, ya know, try to break it but not, but try for you guys, it didn’t re-loosen during my few months with it. A hidden feature about the disc brake is that it’s even got an angle angle measuring system laser etched into it.

 

The unit comes with a cord holder on the side of the yoke. I found this handy since the unit comes with a 20’ header cable or something. It reached the top of my mombo with ease at least, and that length is also great for when you need to boom this unit in. I appreciate that an extended cable is included and wasn’t an overpriced accessory like some companies are doing.

 

Speaking of cords, one thing I would like to see an improvement on is the quality of the connection between head unit and ballast. It’s just a standard 4-pin connection like on the Aputure 300d. I would like to see something beefier because I’m always worried about these little pins getting bent.

 

Moving down the yoke, the base of it can be used either as a junior or baby pin depending on the situation. There’s also a hole drilled through the pin in case you want to mount the light perpendicular to how it normally goes on a baby pin.

 

Kelvin even placed a threaded knob holder on the side of the yoke for when the head is placed in a junior receiver. I wouldn’t leave the knob there during storage though, because the unit is laid on that side during transport and I’d be nervous about crossing the threads.

 

I love the brightness of the bowens mount release tab, but the placement is a little frustrating. You’ll see later that some other brands modifier’s can be slightly difficult to remove.

 

The last neat feature of the head unit is how kelvin decided to blend the output of the leds. There is a magnetic ring around the COB, where either an included or separately purchased diffuser can be attached. If maximum output is necessary, the unit can be used without these diffusers to gain nearly a half a stop.

 

The EPOS 300 comes with the “D90”, which the output seems to be tuned using. You can also purchase a separate dome diffuser, which widens the spread of the beam to beyond 180 degrees to fill lanterns or space lamps. And these diffusers actually DO have an effect on the spread of the beam angle as you can see in these three images.

 

Moving on from the head, let’s talk about this eye-catching ballast.

 

First, the wonkiest part of the entire build is how the ballast attaches to a stand. It has this pop-out knob on the side that inserts into a mafer clamp.

 

Two things about this bugged me: first, no matter how hard you tighten down the mafer, the ballast freely rotates with gravity. The second is that you really need to crank on the mafer clamp to make sure the ballast isn’t loose either. I know they had to cut corners somewhere to keep costs down, but with how secure all the other brands are in their attachment styles, this one really sticks out as being off. I guess the advantage is pretty much everyone has an extra mafer on the truck in case the clamp gets left behind.

 

Here’s a design question every team is trying to figure out: how do you have a ballast that stands upright, has two v-mounts on it, and has cords that don’t stick out as a hazard, all without being a chonky beast? Nobody seems to have figured that out, every manufacturer makes a sacrifice somewhere. For the Kelvin EPOS 300, the power cord sticks out towards set and could potentially be snagged by someone walking by.

 

Otherwise the two v-mount battery slots that are enabled by this wire placement are great when you need to run this unit off battery power. One nice thing is that the transition between AC and battery power is flicker free. I do wish the battery indicator wasn’t just an icon but displayed an approximate amount of time that the unit could run off the battery at the current intensity level.

 

Don’t tell Kelvin but I reaaaaaally tried ripping this plastic handle off this ballast. Couldn’t get it to budge, and it also tucks out of the way when in use.

 

Lastly, let’s talk about the most distinguishing feature on the ballast. This ginormous touch screen with three knob control. I love the having a separate knob for each variable in CCT and HSI mode, rather than using one toggle wheel to try to make it work, it made tuning in the right setting a hassle free experience every time. And the huge screen that’s angled upwards made it easy to see what I was doing. It’s also dimmable in case the spill of it is affecting the scene.