Group Buy: Budget CRI 95 LED Strip Lights

[Jamon Lewis]

These are a few samples from my daylight roll. These lights are really bright. I put 5 rows of 10 inch strips on a piece of foam bounce board. I wanted to put 7 or 8 but I ran out of connectors. I'm sure it's been said some where in this thread but your gonna want a lot of connectors/ connector kits. It's in a small Photo Flex SilverDome I used a bit of diffusion (about 5 layers of typical softbox diffusion) because I wanted the light real soft. With this set up from 5ft I got F1.6 @800 ISO which is pretty good for that much diffusion a small amount of LEDs (about 1/4 of 1 roll). A few shots of my really raw set up and a few shots of my lady, my trusty talent

*Note in the shot of my lady with the balloons I realized the fabric I used to diffuse had a caused the light to give off a slight blue hue to the eye that ended up with me having to notch some of the magenta out on the tint slider. The color may still look a bit off in the shot.



Here's a clip:

Shot at 800 ISO F1.4 processed at 500 ISO with a curve.

All in all I really love these lights, again they are really bright and a lovely quality. I can't imagine how bright the variable one will be.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Thanks for your posts guys! This has been a ton of work and it's really great to see you like them!

My tungsten and daylight strips came in yesterday, and I had a little time to play with them today. I wrapped a canister with 3m of tungsten, which seems to be safe for a 70w dtap, and made a rough test of a jem ball with a boom pole and medium pancake. It's probably a bit big and a touch heavy using the chimera, but the softness is nice. At 4' diagonally down I was reading 2.8/4 split at ISO 800. All shots taken at f4 iso 800.

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These are a few samples from my daylight roll. These lights are really bright. I put 5 rows of 10 inch strips on a piece of foam bounce board. I wanted to put 7 or 8 but I ran out of connectors. I'm sure it's been said some where in this thread but your gonna want a lot of connectors/ connector kits. It's in a small Photo Flex SilverDome I used a bit of diffusion (about 5 layers of typical softbox diffusion) because I wanted the light real soft. With this set up from 5ft I got F1.6 @800 ISO which is pretty good for that much diffusion a small amount of LEDs (about 1/4 of 1 roll). A few shots of my really raw set up and a few shots of my lady, my trusty talent

*Note in the shot of my lady with the balloons I realized the fabric I used to diffuse had a caused the light to give off a slight blue hue to the eye that ended up with me having to notch some of the magenta out on the tint slider. The color may still look a bit off in the shot.



Here's a clip:

Shot at 800 ISO F1.4 processed at 500 ISO with a curve.

https://vimeo.com/120554298

All in all I really love these lights, again they are really bright and a lovely quality. I can't imagine how bright the variable one will be.

Looks great, Jamon!

Brandon,

Can you sign me up for a second group buy? 1 Daylight, one Tungsten?

cheers

Mick

Added you! Please PM me your email!

Just noticed this thread today, please am in for another group buy

Added you! Please PM me your email as well!

 

[Manfred Lopez]

I've been away for a bit and kind of lost track of this group buy. What is the latest info on the delivery date of the new controllers?

 

[Brandon J.F.]

I've been away for a bit and kind of lost track of this group buy. What is the latest info on the delivery date of the new controllers?

The target is still mid-to-late March. The holidays are over in China in a couple days. They get 2 weeks off for New Year's (different calendar). I'm still finishing off the upgrade processing for everyone. I will be done soon.

 

[Antony Newman]

Image looks fabulous

AJ

<snip> a few shots of my lady, my trusty talent

 

[Jamon Lewis]

Thanks AJ

 

[Cristian Mihai]

Hello Brandon. Any news about variable controllers ? Have they arrived ?

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Hello Brandon. Any news about variable controllers ? Have they arrived ?

Look back 3 posts and you'll see the answer

The target is still mid-to-late March. The holidays are over in China in a couple days. They get 2 weeks off for New Year's (different calendar). I'm still finishing off the upgrade processing for everyone. I will be done soon.

The controller works with variable or fixed color temp strips.

 

[Cristian Mihai]

Thanks. Even if i am one of those who ordered many strips i might order even more.

 

[Peter Strietmann]

Working on a super light weight and thin LED Diva. Came in at under 2 pounds. 3/4" thick.

 

[Noah Posnick]

Nice. I was thinking of doing something similar when I get mine, but with maybe twice the amount of strips. What materials are you using and any thoughts about a mount to put it on a stand?

 

[Cristian Mihai]

Maybe a group buy later this year for housings ? Everyone proposes a design or more and will have a manufacturer produce them for us. Lets do it the right way ! This GB proved to be something to good to brake and want my leds and controllers in nice housing, smart, cheaper. What do you guys think about it ?

 

[Andy Roberts]

Hi Brandon, sorry to bother you but I'm waiting on the upgraded controllers invoice as well. I'm not impatient. Just wanted to make sure I was on the list. Thanks for all your work on this. Do you get some free stuff for all your work or how can we compensate you for all the work?

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Working on a super light weight and thin LED Diva. Came in at under 2 pounds. 3/4" thick.

Nice Peter! Thanks for the pictures!

Maybe a group buy later this year for housings ? Everyone proposes a design or more and will have a manufacturer produce them for us. Lets do it the right way ! This GB proved to be something to good to brake and want my leds and controllers in nice housing, smart, cheaper. What do you guys think about it ?

Already moving on that

Hi Brandon, sorry to bother you but I'm waiting on the upgraded controllers invoice as well. I'm not impatient. Just wanted to make sure I was on the list. Thanks for all your work on this. Do you get some free stuff for all your work or how can we compensate you for all the work?

Sorry for the delay. You'll get it today. I'm getting some extras for my film, but really just spread the word and maybe something can grow out of all this.

 

[Michael Ou]

Thanks again Brandon! Love the lights! My head is bursting with many ideas and projects now. I unwound one spool and fired her up with a typical 12v car booster, simple and a thing of beauty! I have a few of these boosters laying around I'm just going to repurpose them for light duty now since I never had the need to use them to jump a car yet. Oh and they can power Dragons in a pinch too ( just don't over deplete them since they're lead acid)

 

[Alvise Tedesco]

Hi Brandon, sorry to bother you but I'm waiting on the upgraded controllers invoice as well. I'm not impatient. Just wanted to make sure I was on the list. Thanks for all your work on this. Do you get some free stuff for all your work or how can we compensate you for all the work?

Same here. Cheers

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Question for Brandon:

Based on some new information that is highlighted in another RU post and is here:

http://www.newsshooter.com

The LiteGear LiteRibbon is an example of awesome light quality as measured by this "new" standard (see the link) and see this list (http://www.gtc.org.uk/tlci-results/tlci-results-new-format.aspx). Given that, might we discern, given your source for these strips, that ours, too, are of equally high quality?

Thanks.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Thanks again Brandon! Love the lights! My head is bursting with many ideas and projects now. I unwound one spool and fired her up with a typical 12v car booster, simple and a thing of beauty! I have a few of these boosters laying around I'm just going to repurpose them for light duty now since I never had the need to use them to jump a car yet. Oh and they can power Dragons in a pinch too ( just don't over deplete them since they're lead acid)

Awesome! I told you guys that these lights are addicting. Great idea with the car boosters! So many options. I made another light rig last with an aluminum flash reflector I picked up at a local photography shop. Looks great, VERY bright, and I have it running off a V-mount (direct, no plate). It's going to be so useful.

Same here. Cheers

I'll get yours out today too. I'm going down the spreadsheet one-by-one, searching my email (gmail is totally not suited for this), and then either invoicing or emailing again (if no previous response). It's very time consuming, but very organized so it will save time later.

Question for Brandon:

Based on some new information that is highlighted in another RU post and is here:

http://www.newsshooter.com

The LiteGear LiteRibbon is an example of awesome light quality as measured by this "new" standard (see the link) and see this list (http://www.gtc.org.uk/tlci-results/tlci-results-new-format.aspx). Given that, might we discern, given your source for these strips, that ours, too, are of equally high quality?

Thanks.

Great list, Terry! I'm already working on getting a TLCI test done. I'm 100% confident our strips will do excellent on this test as well.

It's interesting how close the results in your list are to the CRI values I got with my Sekonic color spectrometer when testing Lite Ribbon strips:

When testing tungsten lite ribbon, the highest value I could get with my meter was CRI 92.5:

The highest value I have gotten for the tungsten strips in our group buy was CRI 98.6. I've done A/B tests with tungsten lite ribbon and, in my opinion, our group buy tungsten lights are better. Here's one of our tungsten strips:

The CRI values of our daylight strips, compared to lite ribbon's, are about equal in my tests. Both are top quality. The only noticeable difference is our strips are a little brighter. What's interesting about the test in your link is how far off the Lite Ribbon daylight color temp is. 7399k?? As I recall, in my tests, their strips were ~6200k.

As I've said before, I have never liked LED lighting. I've owned a few name brand panels and sold them all. I didn't like how skin looked at all. Our group buy strips are the first LED lights I have tested that I would use as a key light on talent. They are excellent.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Sweet, Brandon. This gets better all the time. I assume you will let all first round buyers know if/when you do this again. :thumbsup:

 

[Brandon J.F.]

Sweet, Brandon. This gets better all the time. I assume you will let all first round buyers know if/when you do this again. :thumbsup:

Absolutely. We will open up Round 2 as soon as I catch up on email/controller upgrades. I have a few cool surprises I am working on for Round 2