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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Cool Lights LED... AMAZING

Jay A. Kelley

Jay A. Kelley

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Early this week I got a set of Cool Light LED fixtures from Richard. Two floods and one spot. I'd like to share my impressions:

Being a smaller production company means my jobs are across the board. Being a father of two means my LIFE is across the board! With the addition of RED to my life, more music videos and higher end projects have come about, but my bread and butter is still corporate & EFP work, much like Gibby.

That said, a primary focus in my life is always a way to be lighter, quicker and smarter in my setups. Lighting is a central part of this. I had been following Richard's LED fixtures for quite some time, so I was intense to try them

Got them Monday and I had a shoot 3 hours later. It was a talking head with Green Screen. We took along two light kits in case Richard's stuff was not up to par. Happy to report, the LED's carried us through like champs. Let me explain:

I use a large 2'x4' Floresent fixture hung from a small grid for the Screen, and then turned to Richard's fixtures for talent. I began with usinig the two floods for key and a small litepanel for the hair/shoulder light. The light panel was too small to give good coverage so I switched it with Richard's spot. PERFECT.. Sharp, but not two sharp, fantastic coverage across the back of the talent. And the dimmer switch was excellent.

Let me talk a moment about the light: It is controld by 5 bank switches, and then a dimmer as well. Reason? Lot's I suppose, but here's the one I came up with in 10 min of working with them: There is a small color shift in the lights when you take them below 50% on the dimmer. Above that and they hold their color. So if you need to really tone down the light, you can kill a bank or two using the switches, and then tweak it to perfection using the dimmer with little or no color shift at all.

Now people who have not yet used LEDs will get hung up here. "COLOR SHIFT?!?! OH GOD... I DON'T KNOW!!".

First: Breath deep, calm down, and think happy thoughts.
Second: Remember you've been working with color shifts long before this.. Every time you dimmed your ARRI you went to the land of ORANGE and RED.
Third: The Richard's LED fixtures do not shift like that at all. It is very very small.

Bottom line: Do NOT let anyone tell you the color shift with LED lights is an issue.. It is not. (Not with Richard's anyway) And my client LOVED the way it looked.

Multiple shadows: Didn't see em. Checked and checked, not a thing. Nevertheless I did use a Lee 405 diffusion just in case. Also I liked what that gel does to the lights.

Power... Well I will be doing a show on these lights later this summer, but I can tell you that from 4 ft away, I had my SDX900 on a filter #2 and working a 5.6 on the lens... So there was power to spare. If I had it to do over again I would have moved the lights farther away. VERY POWERFUL.

Oh, and the way these lights come to you is first rate. Everything you need: Barn doors, Power supply, and a COOL black case for putting them in.

If you do talkinig heads, or need some lightweight lights you can use anywhere, these are WONDERFUL solutions. They will now be the central part of my kit. I have three, but intend to have 6 by the time it's over.

One more small thing: My client LOVED the fact that after 3 hours of shooting the room was just as cool as when we started. I ran the ENTIRE set on one circuit.

Amazing stuff... Buy 'em... You'll like 'em.

Jay
 
Link?
 
I have 4 units (2 spot, 2 flood) and only positive things to say about them!

I also have a LED1000 from prompter people but although it's more powerful i find the coollights much better in the way they are build.

Coollights? Absolutely recommended!!
 
I have 2 floods and a spot.

Love them.

Can't beat them for the price either.

I put 2 1/8 minus green gels in to bring them right to 5600k.
 
While I really like Richard's fluorescent fixtures (I have six of them in addition to a number of Kinos), I did not like his LEDs, which I'll admit, are incredibly well-made and a great value. But my complaint is basically just about LEDs in general. I could not deal with the remarkable number of distinct shadows that I found when shooting close. I'm staying 100% with fluorescents for soft and HMIs for hard for now.

Stephen
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
While I really like Richard's fluorescent fixtures (I have six of them in addition to a number of Kinos), I did not like his LEDs, which I'll admit, are incredibly well-made and a great value. But my complaint is basically just about LEDs in general. I could not deal with the remarkable number of distinct shadows that I found when shooting close. I'm staying 100% with fluorescents for soft and HMIs for hard for now.

Stephen
Click to expand...

Respectfully, I did not see this problem. But then I opted to use a Lee 405 gel which may have eleminated the problem you speak of.

I can say this, if you do not intend to have the lights closer than 3ft to you talent, then I can tell you for sure this was not an issue.

Any closer, use a light diffusion.. Problem solved

Jay
 
I haven't tried Richard's LED lights yet, but probably will soon.

I've found with the LightPanels and other similar sources with lots of LEDs, a diffusion filter like what Jay is using is almost a requirement. Even when the lEDs don't deliver multiple distinct shadow edges, I find the LEDs to be very harsh light and it helps to soften them up.

If you want multiple shadows or stepped-shadow-edges, look at the LED-Z lights. They're great lights and I own a few of them, but I'm not a real fan of the stepped edges without heavy diffusion and I don't care for the output pattern on some of them, like the Brute 16's.
 
With the LightPanels Micro diffusion is usually necessary for no other reason than people seem to hate having the thing blasting in their face. I suppose that's true of a lot of on camera lights, but LEDs seem to really tick people off when you shoot them bare.

Are there any deals going on for REDUSERs for these Cool Lights?
 
Jay nice work on the report. I have been eyeballing these lights myself. This is why I love Reduser. Everyone looking out for each other in that turbulent marketplace!
 
"Are there any deals going on for REDUSERs for these Cool Lights?"

from what i recall there was and it expired March 31, 2009
 
I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to use diffusion on an LED in the first place, as you lose a lot of lumens and throw. If you are looking for a softer light without the obnoxious shadows, just use a Kino, as it's got a vastly higher CRI (near perfection these days, versus 80ish if you are lucky in an LED), it is just as cool, it can assume virtually any color temperature (via either gels or mixing bulbs), and provides a much softer, much more beautiful and natural-looking light. In addition, they are incredibly easy to power with batteries. I didn't see ANY advantages to using an LED (except the ability to snap on a V-mount battery and go) and plenty of disadvantages. But again, as they say, YMMV.

Stephen
 
I have a Litepanels 1 x 1 4-light set, and I bought two of these because I needed more firepower. Richard improved on some of the Litepanels design elements (a carabiner and hook that takes the weight off the AC adapter, inexpensive V-lock or IDX battery mount for field use, and inexpensive rack mounting system that lets you double these up quickly, ultralight and portable carrying bags...).

These need to be gelled to match the Litepanels, but they're 1/3 the price.

And Richard is one of those outstanding customer service oriented vendors. One of my panels arrived DOA and he sent a replacement without even waiting on the return, the same day that I reported it -- and also made the return process a piece of cake. He is a pleasure to do business with.
 
The wonderful thing about lighting is that there's a lot of different ways to arrive at the end result, and it's that selection of instruments, the placement of those instruments, and the way the actors and scenery interact with them that allow artists/craftsman to create a look, a style. As we all know, it's subjective. Seems to me Richard at Cool Lights is offering decent bang for the buck, so I'd be happy to try these lights out to see what they can offer.

So, Jay and Stephen are both right. LED lighting offers a relatively new way of lighting, one that seems to be gaining popularity, but not for everyone's tastes - hence Stephen's perspective.

Anyway...
 
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