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LED vs. Fluorescent Lighting

Jason Honeycutt

Jason Honeycutt

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Right now, my favorite all-around rental light is the KinoFlo Divas... however, I'd like to buy a couple lights for myself so I don't have to keep renting and I hate the idea of buying so many bulbs and then swapping them out per color temp. Has anyone used LED lights in general? I've demoed a couple in-store and they seem to have a similar output but I've never tried them on a real shoot.

I was considering something like this;

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/855124-REG/Ikan_IB500_IB500_Dual_Color_LED.html

...since it has built in dimmers, adjustable color temps, built-in barn doors. I'm super curious if anyone's tried LED lights out, especially with their REDs. Any flicker...?

Thanks for any info.


Here is a YouTube demo video I found;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEM8uiM9Kng
 
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LED based sources produce harder light than kinos and fluorescent based lighting. Whenever you have an LED source, unless it has a very high CRI rating (ive used LED's with 93 CRI) they are prone to a green or majenta spike, especially when shooting with a sensor like MX. Flourescents can also cause this problem, but in my experience, not nearly as much.

Also, whenever you have color changing leds, you will loose half your leds for tungsten and the other half for daylight, most LEDs on the market are like this. So a 500 LED panel is only 250 daylight, 250 tungsten.

Kinos are industry standard and will stand the test of time.
 
Chris McKechnie said:
LED based sources produce harder light than kinos and fluorescent based lighting. Whenever you have an LED source, unless it has a very high CRI rating (ive used LED's with 93 CRI) they are prone to a green or majenta spike, especially when shooting with a sensor like MX. Flourescents can also cause this problem, but in my experience, not nearly as much.

Also, whenever you have color changing leds, you will loose half your leds for tungsten and the other half for daylight, most LEDs on the market are like this. So a 500 LED panel is only 250 daylight, 250 tungsten.

Kinos are industry standard and will stand the test of time.
Click to expand...

Great tips about the 250/250... didn't know about that. It seems it'd be better to just get the full 500 and gel it, instead of losing half of your potential light.

I definitely would always use Kinos as my first choice on more professional shoots but I'm kinda leaning toward LEDs for 'home' or personal stuff, just because of the cost.
 
Jason Honeycutt said:
Great tips about the 250/250... didn't know about that. It seems it'd be better to just get the full 500 and gel it, instead of losing half of your potential light.

I definitely would always use Kinos as my first choice on more professional shoots but I'm kinda leaning toward LEDs for 'home' or personal stuff, just because of the cost.
Click to expand...

Well, when you gel it you are going to lose something around a stop of light anyway. So, it's pretty much the same. The single color lights do tend to be less expensive, though.

The lights to watch for are the new phosphor lights from PRG, now Cineo.
 
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Just me personally, I never liked Kino's, I still don't. In a daylight situation I would always use an HMI through a frame if I had the room, or just let the windows go cool and key with tungsten and put practicals in the frame. I always felt that kinos gave weird skin tones, and that because they didn't have any punch, they had to be right on top of the subject which made it feel lit when the subject moved due to the source being so close.

I used to have my day light kit be 2 1200's and 2 575s plus all the normal stuff. Now I carry one 1200 and 3 LEDs. I think HMI's and LEDs match better than HMI's and kinos, and they are smaller and lighter.

I can see using Kinos if you have a bunch of overhead flouros to deal with and match, but other han that, I am not a fan. I realize I am in the minority here, but that's fine with me.

Nick
 
Nick Gardner said:
Just me personally, I never liked Kino's, I still don't. In a daylight situation I would always use an HMI through a frame if I had the room, or just let the windows go cool and key with tungsten and put practicals in the frame. I always felt that kinos gave weird skin tones, and that because they didn't have any punch, they had to be right on top of the subject which made it feel lit when the subject moved due to the source being so close.

I used to have my day light kit be 2 1200's and 2 575s plus all the normal stuff. Now I carry one 1200 and 3 LEDs. I think HMI's and LEDs match better than HMI's and kinos, and they are smaller and lighter.

I can see using Kinos if you have a bunch of overhead flouros to deal with and match, but other han that, I am not a fan. I realize I am in the minority here, but that's fine with me.

Nick
Click to expand...

A lot of the interiors in Zero Dark Thirty were augmented with LED's (with the primary source being an HMI).

So maybe your way is starting to catch on.
 
I used to love the Kino's, and in fact also used 4 of them for our "Carly" Fashion Film, and it used ot be true that LED's were harder light then Fluorescents, when used without filtering, or a type of Chimera soft box, however it is no longer the case, especially so with the latest and certainly in my opinion the most advanced LED's in the market, which I have the pleasure to be testing right now, and if I love them as I think I will a RU Group buy will be forthcoming for sure.

This are the strongest, brightest, best built, LED fixtures I have come across and I have used them about all of them in one time or an other, in fact they are so bright that by law they had ot install a fail safe as to not allow the lED's not to turn on without their protective Filter screen, which BTW it makes the same filtered soft light as a Fluorescent, but exponentially stronger, so for me with this type of LED's its absolutely NO more Fluorescents, ever!!

The fact that they are some also very strong Fresnels in to market and coming in to, this will allow to eliminate the need to use any type of small Tungsten or HMI fresnels too, which for me its great!
 
Would love to see a 3 and 4 light set in travel cases for the RU Group Buy, Ketch. Been looking for a good set of LEDs and I trust your judgement greatly, thanks for testing them out and letting us know.
 
Mike Van Laanen said:
Would love to see a 3 and 4 light set in travel cases for the RU Group Buy, Ketch. Been looking for a good set of LEDs and I trust your judgement greatly, thanks for testing them out and letting us know.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your vote of confidence Mike, my goal will be to get no less then 15% discount for this units as they are not the cheapest out there, but buying the very best never does, wi'll see in the possibility of a 3 light kit.

Any ways, I should have the first videos and frame grabs with some BYS stuff by early March, at which tie I'll also organize a group buy starting a new thread if the lights perform as expected.
 
In my experience you shouldn't change the colour of LED with gels, especially not the single-colour fixtures. You're messing around with a discontinuous spectum, and it can do absolutely horrible things depending exactly where the filter's cutoffs fall on the spectrum relative to the peaks and to the filter pass bands of the camera.

RED colour science is pretty robust against werid-ass colour shifts but you're still likely to find it causes problems especially if you are balancing against other sources.

It isn't even just a normal magenta/green shift, there are whole chunks of the spectrum missing so you might fight the cyans go weirdly flat and dark, for example. It is prone to make skin tones look like zombies.

On dSLRs and older video cameras you can get truly ghastly results that are hard to bring back in post because the wavelengths of light were just plain missing at shoot time- you can't bring back what wasn't there. Good for a walking dead movie, not so good for the beauty shots of your leading lady.

Bi-color LEDs are a better option if you're definitely going to need to balance both daylight and tungsten. An even better option yet are the multi-colour panels like Gekko Kelvintiles (I have a stack of these as my primary soft light source: http://www.gekkolite.com/index.php?...ng+kits+for+location/product/gekko_kelvintile ) or the new Arri L7-C which I've not tested yet but which I'm very interested in (http://www.arri.com/l-series/performance.html).

These panels use several different colours of LED (6 in the case of the Gekkos) which fill in the gaps in each other's spectral emission curves, resulting in a spiky but significantly closer to continuous spectrum.

The big benefit is that you can control the brightness of each of the six LED sets independently, to fine tune the colour or to produce party gel lighting out of a single fixture. (You can dial in Kelvin colour temp and +/- green as well of course).

The drawback is that the resulting light is pretty dim by comparision with a cheap panel packed with bright single colour LED's. So I use three or four of the Kelvintiles as my key light, makes for a brighter and more extended soft source.

In my experience these new multi-colour LED sources give better colour rendition than fluorescents, and have the huge advantage that you can run them off a V-mount battery for an hour or more on location. No wires, no power, no generator. (This is either a killer advantage or a feature you'll never need to use, of course, depending on where you shoot!)

Cheers, Hywel
 
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Hywel, which particular Bi colours LED's are you referring too?

Ketch, I'm also potential very interested in a group LED buy if you organise one, though I'm not too cashed up. Thanks for your efforts.

Best

Lliam
 
Lliam, I borrowed a set of bi-color LED to test and I'm afraid I don't remember the exact make. A relatively cheap Chinese manufactured one, anyway. They were significantly better than the Datavision single colour panels I had, but not a patch on the gorgeousness of the Gekko Kelvintiles which is why I went for the Gekkos when I bought.

Cheers, Hywel.
 
Sounds like you're talking about the TruColorHS?

KETCH ROSSi said:
I used to love the Kino's, and in fact also used 4 of them for our "Carly" Fashion Film, and it used ot be true that LED's were harder light then Fluorescents, when used without filtering, or a type of Chimera soft box, however it is no longer the case, especially so with the latest and certainly in my opinion the most advanced LED's in the market, which I have the pleasure to be testing right now, and if I love them as I think I will a RU Group buy will be forthcoming for sure.

This are the strongest, brightest, best built, LED fixtures I have come across and I have used them about all of them in one time or an other, in fact they are so bright that by law they had ot install a fail safe as to not allow the lED's not to turn on without their protective Filter screen, which BTW it makes the same filtered soft light as a Fluorescent, but exponentially stronger, so for me with this type of LED's its absolutely NO more Fluorescents, ever!!

The fact that they are some also very strong Fresnels in to market and coming in to, this will allow to eliminate the need to use any type of small Tungsten or HMI fresnels too, which for me its great!
Click to expand...
 
Bob Gundu said:
Sounds like you're talking about the TruColorHS?
Click to expand...

No, this are better, have a higher RCI to 92++ @5600 pure white, compact 11x8.5 inner panel, and can also operate with a 90 watt-hour V-Lock battery, but let me stop here, till I make my full assessment of it and return to you guys on beginning of march with it, but you'll also be seen this at NAB, of course the price will be much higher then a group buy should I do one.
 
Choice of lights depends on your projects and style. There is always going to be need or want for a different fixture to obtain a desired look.
Then comes all of the gear to shape the light...

Based on the type of work I normally do, I tend to be in the camp of HMI's first - supplemented by fluorescents and then LED's. But another job may reverse the order.

Since the sensor technology continues to advance (referring to sensitivity and DR), I've found myself leaving the 1.2 HMI's at home recently.

What I start with:
ARRI 200 and 400 HMI PAR's (the 400 with the lighthouse & shutter)
ARRI 125 and 200 HMI Fresnels
ARRI 125 Pocket PAR w/ light tube

ARRI Studio Cool 2 & 4
Various Kino's

LED's: Rent or borrow as needed

Next to be added to the collection: the Trucolor HS that Bob referred to. Excellent product (Note: not affected by the LP patent court case - blue LED's are used to excite the remote phosphor that produces the light). And now strongly considering some LED fresnels - all daylight balanced...


Comment directed to the OP: Consider some fixtures that have more options to control the lighting - pretty much all fluorescents and LED's paint a broad brushstroke. To define the visual presence within the scene, you want to be able to add a splash of light or subtract to create a negative luminance space. Fresnels and PAR's are a good start - shaping the output from an LED panel, not so much.
 
Hey Brian, while I agree with most of what you said, there is choices for sure for each DoP, but I strongly disagree with the fact that you can't shape LED's as you desire, as I in fact can put any Gaffer at work with either one and block any spills off any and every light I have at my disposal, even so LED's for me are the absolute fist choice and HMI's only to be used when I can't have the trow power form the LED's.

But definitely never a question of which light I can shape better as I'll do what I want with any light and so would any Gaffer working with me thru my directives as DoP, times are changing fast, and new LED's coming to market are offering ever better choices, thanks to progress... ;)
 
We need links. So you can't balance them out with filtration, huh? I haven't tried, but I kind of assumed (hoped) that you could. One thing I've noticed (and disliked) was that there's no clear way to establish output. Even using lux-distance/fall-off info doesn't seem to be accurate with (cheap) LEDs, so you'd end up having to move everything closer just to get the proper output. Why can't a 1k be a 1k.

It's so frustrating because of how mobile they are -- battery powered panels that last like 4 hours and don't require a generator and can be set up basically anyway, is such a hot concept. Maybe RED should spend a bit of time giving Dragon an "LED" mode or something?

Has anyone shot LEDs on film? Do they still look like butt there (even after correction)?
 
Just ordered a F&V K400S Bi-Color LED Studio. Having second thoughts as the Gekko Kelvin tile variable colour LED can be had for $250 more and puts out more light. Anybody used both lights? Is the Gekko worth the extra money?




[h=1][/h]
 
A comparison of colour rendition:

Kino Flo:
http://www.cineolighting.com/node/25

One colour light panel (Litepanels Tungsten):
http://www.cineolighting.com/node/26

Gekko KelvinTile:
http://www.cineolighting.com/node/20

This reflects my real-world shooting experience with the Gekkos too. Not 100% exactly the same as tungsten, but a whole lot better than many of the alternatives, especially on Caucasian skin tones which is where I make all my money :-)

The tests were done by Cineo I guess, who also have a horse in the race with their TruColor lights. I've not seen these anywhere yet- has anyone tried them?


Cheers, Hywel.
 
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