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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 :)

Best Led Lighting Solutions

BradWright said:
I've use these to demo Veescope Live at the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro Users Group, just about every month for the last two years. The build quality isn't great. The are durable, but there weren't put together all that well. They insides contained rusty hardware. They could really use diffusion, as the beam angle is very narrow from LEDs in general. If there was a way of attaching a soft-box then many of the issues would go away. For the money, they are a pretty good deal when compared to Lite-panels.
Click to expand...

Thanks Brad. I put in my Coollights order last night :)
 
I have a certiain amount of experience with the Rosco LitePad DLs and can definitely vouch for them. I can't say how good the CRI is but for the time I spent shooting video narratives with them, nobody's ever commented about it. Otherwise, the size and power consumption of these units is simply fantastic. I've ran them on batteries with great success as well as a direct tap into car power. Light output has always been enough and that's with the DLs and not the HOs.

The pads are indeed splash proof (just watch the leads), but are also pretty hard to damage and easy to service. The only damage you can cause is either sever the leads or snap the panel in half. They can be stood upon as far as I know. I also feel their cost is very reasonable.

As for dimmability, I believe they are but you need a special ballast from Rosco.

Here's some pictures of a pre-rig we did for a short to illuminate the four passengers to be shot in a continuous shot, driving at night. Everything ended being routed straight pipe into a XLR12 distro box.

rlp01.jpg
rlp02.jpg
rlp03.jpg
 
Today i received my new Coollights CL-LED600 units and after testing them thoroughly for hours i can safely say it's probably the best LED light solution you can currently buy at this price point.

The units are very well build and you can understand straight away by handling them that a lot of thought went into them. They are lightweight, easy to setup and they have great bank-select and smooth (you must try!) dimming controls. I also loved the fact that i could use a RED BRICK to power them up and freely move them around without the need to plug them in somewhere.

Richard Andrewski has posted the photometrics for these units earlier so i will just say how the light *feels* to my eyes. It's soft similar to a Kinoflo Barfly and VERY VERY bright. I was expecting a light intensity similar to a 800W quartz but it exceeded that BY FAR. The light color is even everywhere with a very faint shift in the edge of the beam's fall-off (Spot unit). Just to give an idea of how faint it is, compared to the beam edge color shift of my litepanel minis, it is as if the Coolights have none.

One thing someone should be aware of before ordering is about the difference between the FLOOD and SPOT versions. I initially believed that the FLOOD unit would be softer, so since i love soft light i wanted to buy only a couple of those but then i decided to add a SPOT unit in the order just to give it try. It turned out that the SPOT unit has equally beautiful soft light with the only difference being the beam's angle and throw distance. Nice surprise there for me! I will have to add some SPOT units later.

So, i was very pleased with the whole Coolights experience. The CL-LED600 units are serious tools that could be used in any TV/FILM set or by any videographer. Richard has a special price offer for REDUSER.NET and if you are looking to get into LED lights i guess now is the time to do that.
 
Found a good industial handheld LED light with buildt in battery. On one changre the light last 6 h, and have 60 high power leds and cost $20 :)

led.jpg
 
Wooa! Where did you find these Janne?!? I've been trying to get hold of baselight fixtures from a finnish company, but never heard back from the reseller.. These looks pretty similar.
 
I have a couple of those lights, bought them at Clas Ohlson
 
I've been using one of those LED stick lights for a few years now.

Here's a trick. Wrap the stick with alternating clear, 1/2 CTO, and full CTO taped together in a single sleeve. You can change color temp just by twisting the sleeve.

I use mine a lot - just so handy for a little fill here and there, great for car interiors.
 
I'm selling (2) LEDz Brute 16's with inline dimmers for 50% off retail price by the way. These are great lights. RedUser discount is 35%. PM me if interested.

-shooter
 
Buzz about LED breakthroughs hitting the market. Advances in power and dramatic price decreases. I've heard from a couple of suppliers that this should be an interesting year but noone is giving any details.

Has anyone heard anything or is this speculative hype????
 
Hi Richard,

You say building a fixture with 1watt+ leds is 'super expensive'. Why is that? You buy these leds for about $10, right? And pre-made heatsinks and even dimmers have come out lately.

I'm not an expert, so I'm a bit out of line here. But the reason I'm posting is, that I really like your work and I'm really hoping you'll do a cheap led fixture with 1watt+ led lights. I tested the cool white versions of the 1 watt luxim version (6000k) and really liked the output and color balance. I'm just searching for someone doing a fixture with an output of, say, a 2k blonde. Preferable in the design that City Theatrical did (mixing cool whites with warm ones, in the color kinetics line: http://www.citytheatrical.com/)

What are the chances of something like that being build any time soon?
 
I just started using the Prompter People Flolight LED lights on a series that I am the Director of Photography on. I tested the ones that I had at about 6800 degrees K. with a 1/4 CTO that dropped to about 5000 so good for daylight. With a manual color balance, I found the images they produced to be quite good with out filtering. They have dimmers and are very robust. We were using around 5 of the 1000w equivalents and 3 500's. We are moving out entire shot to using these lights, with fresnels as accent lighting. If you want to see an example, please see http://www.exitstageleft.tv/ and watch episode 8.
 
I'm certain that I'm probably going to be in the minority here, but I was very disappointed with an LED light I bought (and immediately returned) recently. I could not deal with the multiple shadows inherent in LED lights (that don't have a diffuser up front. . .and the diffuser killed half the light output!). I vastly prefer the look of the little HMIs (like Arri's Arrisun 2, etc.).

Maybe someday someone will make an LED that doesn't have multiple shadows, but until that day comes, I definitely won't be using LEDs.

Stephen
 
Probably some of you will have read about this new gadget (probably expensive)
from Zylight, but I post it anyways:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New IS3 - Bigger & Brighter!


You've been asking for it, and we've been listening: Zylight will be unveiling
the new IS3 Intelligent Studio LED fixture at NAB2009.

The result of over two years of R&D the rugged and flexible IS3 is by far the
brightest, most advanced intelligent LED light available. Plus, the IS3's fully
adjustable output is over FOUR TIMES brighter than other LED lights in its class.

The IS3's built-in controls and sunlight readable digital displays allow easy
and precise control with no external control boxes to buy. And expanded
four-color mixing guarantees accurate color rendering and beautiful skin tones.

The IS3 features:

- Soft, wide, and BRIGHT output
- Fully adjustable range of Color Temperatures
- Fully adjustable +/- green Color Correction
- Full-color output for washes, highlights, green screen, and effects
- Built-in DMX with full-size XLR connectors
- Full wireless remote control via ZyLinkTM
- AC or battery powered

The IS3 is plenty big at 18" x 11" x 2" thick, so we've included features to
make setup easier too:

- Carry handle for easy portability
- Integral lollipop arm mount
- Built-in tie-down points for rigging
- Shock absorption for years of dependable use & abuse.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
I'm certain that I'm probably going to be in the minority here, but I was very disappointed with an LED light I bought (and immediately returned) recently. I could not deal with the multiple shadows inherent in LED lights (that don't have a diffuser up front. . .and the diffuser killed half the light output!). I vastly prefer the look of the little HMIs (like Arri's Arrisun 2, etc.).

Maybe someday someone will make an LED that doesn't have multiple shadows, but until that day comes, I definitely won't be using LEDs.

Stephen
Click to expand...

I can see the shadows with my Brute 9, but my coollights fixtures with it's 600 sources doesn't have noticeable individual shadows to my eye.
 
The effect of multiple shadows is worse the closer you are between light and subject. For the most part, people that are using lights like the LED 600, the flolights unit or other LED matrices and using them in real situations are having good results. The people that are liking LEDs very well are those that are approaching it with an open mind and not trying to use it in ways it wasn't meant to be used. Its not a replacement for everything and used in situations where it's best used (on the street, in a car, where power is at a premium, where you don't care about the single/multiple shadow issues) you'll love it.

When using to project a cookie on the wall for instance, while the LED matrices are harder than fluorescent in their output they do about as good a job as fluorescent does in cookie rendering which is not that good--shadows are vague and not well defined or "pixelated" as I call them. A good tungsten or metal halide/HMI fresnel will do that particular type of "one shadow" job better because they have only one single brilliant point light source in them. LEDs matrices are fine for many uses in key/fill and even a lot of rim or hair lighting.

People have been using all kinds of different diffusion ideas as well. Dan Brockett who regularly posts on DVXUser and DVInfo showed his softbox/speedring he came up with recently for the LED600 and he likes the results. We'll probably follow a similar design for our speedring accessory. DVXUser "topcat" preferred thin diffusion panels that you could put in behind the barndoors. Different approaches for different people and some will transmit more light than others or end up as a bigger source than others as well.

Dansteijnen posted a question in the "off topic" section and I answered that there also talking about this multiple shadow effect. He had seen an interesting single LED fixture and I talked in more detail there about this whole issue and why LEDs aren't best for when you need a single shadow.

As for the idea of a matrix of 1W leds, sure that will be more powerful, but you'll still have the possibility of the multiple shadows because of the multiple sources. What we really need is a low heat, high wattage LED that can have a good focusing lens applied to it. Low heat because we don't want to have to deal with the heat management in ways that will make the fixture ungainly and expensive.

That'll get you what you really want: the LED version of what you've been using all these years and with behaviors in the way it works like you're used to.

For now, we're going to stick with the matrix type fixtures whether they be 1w larger LEDs or the smaller 5mm ones like on the LED 600. You'll see larger and smaller units using the 5mm LED this year from us.

We will do a 1W fixture at some point as well but the heat management has to be done differently and is a bit more complex to integrate the dimmer/driver/battery electronics in not only a functional way, but also an attractive way. Those 1W LEDs get so much hotter so that has to be dealt with. People have to be able to look at it and say, "yes this is well thought out" and is a good value too, before they'll buy it. When you're gearing up to build hundreds at a time, a polished and well thought out design that's not only attractive to end customers but also easy and inexpensive to put together is mandatory and goes way beyond the 1 or 2 units you might build for yourself. Custom molds have to be made and those have to be paid for somehow--amortized into the products cost. The level of polish has to be much higher. There's already a proliferation of 1W to 5W type units out there, but they're just too expensive IMHO and they will all have the multiple shadow issue too.

We'll do the 1W type, but it just needs to be well thought out and done at a good cost for us so we can pass that on to everyone else like we do on our other products.
 
LED-Z Informercial shot on RED

LED-Z Informercial shot on RED

Hi I was apart of the LEDZ and I have to say they are pretty good for how tiny they are and convenient. We did a side by side with a Brute 16 and 200 W Joker. And the results were impressive. We had shot at 2.8/4 on the RED and at 10 ft from the subject. On either side of the subject was a joker at 10 feet her right side, and a Brute 16 by LEDz on her left. We overcranked the thing to 60fps. We still overexposed our subject though shooting at the 2.8/4.

Taking incident readings at the subject's respective shoulders. LEDz gave a reading of 8.3. The Joker was at an 11.1. So it was almost a full stop lower however, the convenience of LEDz versus a Joker is without words. We shot off the LEDz, during the comparison to prove we weren't augmenting with a different light. and then we almost did the same for the joker but realized we would have to "Restrike" the Joker so we just panned it off.

Look for the footage at NAB next week.
 
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