Anyone use ROCWING lighting (of Bicester, Oxfordshire) ?

I've come across them as they often come up in ebay or Amazon searches.

A look at the site says they sell a lot of the stuff I'd advise people against buying.
 
Just to add, they do have some other stuff that looks 'ok'.

What is it you're thinking of buying?
 
Box Brownie said:
An interesting product and services mix they offer "http://plovet.co.uk/about-us/"
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Nothing unusual in that. Inward-bound from China, there are a lot of small manufacturers who can't communicate in English and who don't understand our culture, so there's always room for agents to sell for them.
Outward bound, there's a huge demand for baby food in China - lots of babies and absolutely no trust in their own manufacturers, following a scandal where baby milk was adulterated with poisionous engredients.
 
Thanks everyone.

Phil V said:
What is it you're thinking of buying?
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Nothing actually. I was looking for some tech information about a reflector and for some reason this lot came up. Maybe Google assumed I was buying and related that to a physical region I sometimes do searches about?

I had a vague feeling I had heard of the name or something similar, wondered if it was the photo show or an old magazine ad, but seemingly not. Maybe there is a building materials supplier with a similar name as I was looking that up a while back. Anyway, I thought I would ask on here. Its location is relatively close to somewhere I often am, though I dont think there is a showroom.

Not much in the market for buying right now, just had a lot of welding done on the car so thats cleared out the account, though at some point will have to get a bag for transporting my studio strobes - thought I would take a look at some if I get to the Photo Show this year, which I hope to do. I dont have much experience with them or what features to look for. or avoid.


Thats sad what Garry says about the baby food history.
 
MidnightUK said:
Just had another glance at the site. What would things like this be used for?
https://rocwing.co.uk/collections/h...l-reflector-fit-bowens-s-type-dia-48x30cm-dep

Not seen them anywhere else.
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FK what that's for, that particular seller seems to list all sorts of oddities, many of which are mis-described.

There's info on the baby milk scandal here. Even though this was a long time ago now, there's enormous demand in China for baby milk from western manufacturers. The Chinese govn isn't keen on these imports, but they can't stop them all
 
I've got a few ROCwing bits, mainly stands but a couple of bowen mount modifiers too. All got through ebay and no complaints about the products or service i got from them and certainly value for money. Usual Chinese kit that many people slap a label on and sell on.
 
juggler said:
PMSL

This looks good value though.. if it works:

https://rocwing.co.uk/collections/h...color-card-background-effect-slide-fit-bowens
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It is pretty good value, and it does work, although the colour fringing is pretty terrible - but this can be mitigated in PP. But, as discussed in another thread, these focussing spotlights eat lighting power, so you need to punch a lot of power through them to end up with something usable.
It isn't an "optical snoolt with color card", it's a pretty basic focussing spotlight with a small selection of gobos and a few colour gels.
Most of their other products have equally amusing mis-descriptions:)
 
Garry Edwards said:
It is pretty good value, and it does work, although the colour fringing is pretty terrible - but this can be mitigated in PP. But, as discussed in another thread, these focussing spotlights eat lighting power, so you need to punch a lot of power through them to end up with something usable.
It isn't an "optical snoolt with color card", it's a pretty basic focussing spotlight with a small selection of gobos and a few colour gels.
Most of their other products have equally amusing mis-descriptions:)
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It's almost as if they got a load of stuff in and asked people to guess what it was for. Every reflector is a "spill kill" - except for the 120 degree wide angle, which probably is the closest they have to a spill kill...:-/

I have bought bits from them over the years - I like them most for wheels for your stands, and barn doors for small reflector dishes. They are ok - they stuff is cheap, but there's not a lot to go wrong with chunks of metal - not sure I'd buy a softbox from them. You also have to know what it is you are looking at before buying - because they don't :)

I looked at that spot projector too - it looks ok, but I couldn't figure out from the small picture what the gobo holder looks like. The diameter is much bigger than the Lightblaster, so it might make better use of the light from a studio head.
 
Scooter said:
It's almost as if they got a load of stuff in and asked people to guess what it was for. Every reflector is a "spill kill" - except for the 120 degree wide angle, which probably is the closest they have to a spill kill...:-/

I have bought bits from them over the years - I like them most for wheels for your stands, and barn doors for small reflector dishes. They are ok - they stuff is cheap, but there's not a lot to go wrong with chunks of metal - not sure I'd buy a softbox from them. You also have to know what it is you are looking at before buying - because they don't :)

I looked at that spot projector too - it looks ok, but I couldn't figure out from the small picture what the gobo holder looks like. The diameter is much bigger than the Lightblaster, so it might make better use of the light from a studio head.
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As you know, I haven't tried the Lightblaster, but it's obvious from the design that this one is much better suited to studio heads. And yes, their "wide angle reflector" is in fact a spill kill - but let's not judge them too harshly, after all Bowens describe their standard reflectors as "spill kills" :)

They don't in fact show the gobo holder, there's nothing to show really, it's just a pair of sort of guide rails rivetted in place at the front of the ventilated bit (which allows both heat and light to scatter) :)
 
Garry Edwards said:
As you know, I haven't tried the Lightblaster, but it's obvious from the design that this one is much better suited to studio heads. And yes, their "wide angle reflector" is in fact a spill kill - but let's not judge them too harshly, after all Bowens describe their standard reflectors as "spill kills" :)

They don't in fact show the gobo holder, there's nothing to show really, it's just a pair of sort of guide rails rivetted in place at the front of the ventilated bit (which allows both heat and light to scatter) :)
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I guess they are right - they do all kill light spill :P

Ah right - I thought the little silver thing on the left was for holding the rectangular gobos next to it. Aputure (makers of LED lights) just released a small Bowens fit Fresnel with the same problem - a free disco ball light-pattern in every shot! (ok you'll probably not see it directly unless you're shooting very wide)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aputure-Fr...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YJKHQSR9HGKRTTR6V420

It looks very like this one from NanGuang (except they've not drilled anywhere near the amount of holes in theirs).
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fresnel-l...034665?hash=item3f64cc0fe9:g:VpEAAOSwjXRXYBZM
 
Not specifically about the vendor but how does this work? It's a 45 degree reflector with 20, 40 and 60 degree grids but how does a 60 degree grid work on a 45 degree reflector?
 
The reflector itself is (claimed to be) 45 degrees. which means that the light is spread at an angle of 45 degrees.
The honeycombs (or grids as our American friends like to call them) are accessories that fit to the front of the reflector and restrict the spread of light further - so a 60 degree one (which would be pretty pointless) restricts the spread of light to 60 degrees, etc.

This page may explain it better - there used to be 360 shots that seem still not to have made it to the new website, but you should get the idea..
 
Thanks Garry. My initial thought was that a 60 degree honeycomb on a 45 degree reflector would be "pointless" but then wondered if I'd been making inaccurate assumptions in the past.
 
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