Eric,

I have some Tekkeon packs and was wondering about if I should use them instead of v-lock batteries. I'd be interested to see what sort of leads you come up with.

Dan

In case I didn't post it: Pin 1 Ground / Pin 4 DC + voltage. Pins 2 and 3 not used. This is pretty much the standard as far as I can tell for 4 pin XLR broadcast type connections.

Hi all:

FWIW, I finished the fabrication of our speed ring for the LED 600 yesterday. It is pretty great, works well with the small Chimera. I will shoot some stills of it to post here later tonight. The only downside is that my welding guy doesn't know how to TIG weld so we had to fabricate it from steel, rather than aluminum.

So I can now easily use a small Chimera with the LED 600 flood and spot. So far, it seems as if both lights function well, with the spot obviously having more throw through the Chimera but the flood filling up the softbox with a more even distribution of light.

Best,

Dan

FWIW, I finished the fabrication of our speed ring for the LED 600 yesterday. It is pretty great, works well with the small Chimera. I will shoot some stills of it to post here later tonight.
Wow. Can't wait to see this. I should be getting my LED 600 flood soon (it's in the post). Hadn't thought of putting a speed ring on it.

My lights just arrived.

The nylon case is quite nice and very handy.

I plugged in one of the lights and turned it on. Seemed a bit dimmer than what I expected. After a few minutes of pointing it around the room I noticed a 3/8" diameter rod extending out the bottom. I was wondering what it was and discovered it rotated -- the light also got brighter!

Duh!

I'll do a comparison between this light and the FloLight LED.

Just got back from chasing the FedEx truck with my lights. Idiot driver claimed "couldn't find my street." Fortunately, I noticed the "delivery exception" on FedEx tracking and could get on the phone. I was so ticked that I told the FedEx station clerk "This driver should learn to say Welcome To WalMart." Her response-- "Are you a WalMart location?"

Anyway... the box is here and when I calm down I'll open it!

In other news, I've ordered an extra cable for the Tekkeon and will make a custom Tekkeon to XLR cable.

Ned

Lights are both unpacked and here are some first impressions, echoing many of the other initial impressions users have posted on "both boards."

The carrying case alone is worth the price of admission. Well constructed, lots of pockets and even has a shoulder strap.

Construction of lights feels sturdy. Was able to support light both on a light-weight Lowel stand I had sitting around. Of course, felt more secure on a more robust light stand.

No perceptible greenish tinge. Just did a very simple set up of 2 lights and white balanced. EX-3 showed 5400K. Taped a 1/2CTO over one of the lights (I only seem to have one sheet) and color balanced again using only this light, showing 3100K.

I like the combination of the dimmers and the bank control.

Will obviously be conducting more extensive testing and hopefully will be able to put up against a Litepanels 1x1.

Initial impression is that this light was well worth the wait and represents tremendous value for the money.

Ned

Thanks for your initial thoughts Ned. I'll be interested to hear how they perform for you out in the field and what you'd change too. That's how we get better.

Tekkeon pin outs to create custom cable from Tekkeon 3450 to XLR--

Buy Tekkeon cable or use the small coiled cable which came with your unit. Tekkeon offers a longer, uncoiled cable for $7.95.

Cut off the 2-pole tip jack.

Red wire= +
White wire= -
Black wire= control

Solder Red to + of the 4 pin XLR female (I think + is pin 1 of the XLR but confirm that)
Solder White and Black to - pin of the XLR female (pin 2 I believe).

Pins 3&4 of XLR are not used.

I'll have my Tekkeon cable by the end of the week and will have a cable made (I'm sloppy with a soldering iron) and will report afterwards.

Ned Soltz

Tekkeon pin outs to create custom cable from Tekkeon 3450 to XLR--

Buy Tekkeon cable or use the small coiled cable which came with your unit. Tekkeon offers a longer, uncoiled cable for $7.95.

Cut off the 2-pole tip jack.

Red wire= +
White wire= -
Black wire= control

Solder Red to + of the 4 pin XLR female (I think + is pin 1 of the XLR but confirm that)
Solder White and Black to - pin of the XLR female (pin 2 I believe).

Pins 3&4 of XLR are not used.

I'll have my Tekkeon cable by the end of the week and will have a cable made (I'm sloppy with a soldering iron) and will report afterwards.

Ned Soltz

Very important: On our fixture, pin 1 is ground or DC - and pin 4 is DC +. Pins 2 and 3 unused.

Thanks, Richard

Then all who are making such a cable should not this.

Hence, ground and control from Tekkeon need to go to Pin 1. Positive to Pin 4.

Could someone that received their LED600 Flood lights do a side by side test with a 500W work light and post a few photos please?

Could someone that received their LED600 Flood lights do a side by side test with a 500W work light and post a few photos please?

You mean a 500-watt fluorescent worklight or tungsten?

Because the spectral qualities of the LED light aren't anything like that of a tungsten light. And the application for a daylight-balanced source is different from a tungsten source.

I might be able to write up a comparison of the CoolLight and a fluorescent worklight. I don't have a wall big enough to provide a photo of the quality of coverage, however.

Tungsten. I'm know they are very different lights however I'm currently using cheap tungsten 500W work-lights, I would just like to know if the LED600 would be worth the investment, the 5600k color temperature is also something I have been dreaming about. The comparison does not have to be very scientific, just light up a large room. I shoot mainly weddings so I need a light that will be able to handle a few meters in the chapel, lets face it my current cheapo light solution is no good so I guess anything would be better, the light quality of a 500W work lights is not wonderful either. I basically just want to see the light in action before I order, maybe your thoughts on a direct comparison between the two, I think a lot of tungsten work-light shooters has their eye on the LED600.

Not to hijack a thread, but for your purposes a tungsten light would be better. That's the predominant light in most chapels, unless the ones you work in are daylight balanced, and you'd want something to match.

For that kind of lighting I'd recommend a couple of Lowel Tota lights. Various lamps can be used, depending on how much light you need. They're compact and can cover a very wide area.

Many of the locations has more sunlight for this I require a balance light, sometimes we shoot outside. I basically need a decent fill light, my real question is will the LED600 light be up for such a challenge in terms of brightness? Being portable would also be a plus, I'm sure I could gel them in tungsten conditions. I know there is no such thing as an all purpose light however I would use them on a range of shoots from interviews to small corporates, music videos aswell.

Here's a spectral analysis of the Cool Lights LED compared to daylight.

The yellow line on both graphs is daylight. Full sun.

One graph has a blue line. That's the Cool Lights LED without any filtration. Note that it doesn't have a green spike that's common to a lot of fluorescent lights from 540 to 560 nanometers. From 515 to 585 nm the characteristics are pretty close to daylight.

Note how the longer wavelengths beyond 600 nanometers start to drop off. That's the red part of the spectrum.

If it's noticable in the footage (I haven't shot with it yet so can't say if it matters), white balancing a camera might compensate for the reduction of red in the light source. It might also be accomplished by increasing the red saturation in post. Video tends to saturate red quickly, so this probably won't be much of a problem for most cameras.

The other graph has a magenta line. This what the Cool Lights LED looks like with a 1/2 minus green filter in place (Lee 248). The range from 515 to 585 nm is a lot closer to daylight with a better match in the middle of that range. It also helps extend the lower end of the spectrum, beyond 600 nm, just a tiny bit.

Overall, the "look" of the light is cool, a bit cooler than the FloLight LED. But in terms of spectral qualities, both lights are very similar.

The third graph, with the green line, is a Kino Flo with 5500k lamps. Just for comparison. Note that it, too, is deficient in the longer wavelengths, but not until 660 nm. Based on this I would say the Cool Lights LED with a 1/2 minus green gel would be a fairly good combination with daylight Kino Flos.

The Cool Lights LED is brighter than the FloLight LED but I haven't measured exactly how much brighter. I'll probably do that tonight.

All that's about what I'd expect. Good work Dean. Like we've been saying LEDs aren't full spectrum. Another way to put what Dean said, to make the LEDs mix more with other light sources and simulate full spectrum a bit more, they need a bit of minus green to do that. Pretty much all daylight 5mm LEDs will at this point.

This discussion is insanely helpful; I just got my CoolLights LED600 yesterday and will be doing some still and video tests with it today. Everyone's contributions here, especially Dean and Richard, are really informing how I'll approach using this unit in production. (Not sure yet, but the columns and rows of LEDs so far tend to create multiple, banded shadows (like a quantized gradient) when close to walls when the barn doors are used, so might need to throw some diffusion on the source in such cases.)

Sorry, I have to also join in the shout-out to Richard on a well-designed product. :-) The build and case both exceeded expectations, and the ease of use and flexibility of output levels is pretty great. Superb value for the money, in my opinion.

(Of course, re-watched "Fight Club" last night and was reveling in two hours of super-effective "incorrect" lighting techniques...and love how all the basement scenes were lit with $5 clamp lights...)

Posting this to "both lists" since there is often not overlap between the two.

Took lights today to my local supply dealer, Kennedys ENG in Euless (TX). We put the Coollight up against a LitePanels 1x1. It is not a totally accurate comparison since we first were just eyeballing the differences and secondly Kennedy's only had a 5600K spot.

Construction of the Coollights compares very favorably to the $1600 LitePanels. One thing we did notice when standing in front of the two lights is that the Coollight 5600K flood did have a slightly more greenish tinge than the LitePanels 5600K spot. We added a sheet of -1/2 green (as Richard had suggested in order to match the LED's with the fluos) and at least visually, the two appeared identical. So, I bought a couple of sheets of minus 1/2 green and will continue to test with and without the gels.

Since I've already concluded that 1/2CTO provides decent tungsten matching and I will possibly be using the magenta gels often, my first suggestion to Richard is to consider a filter holder of some sort.

But the few people who saw the product in the store really were impressed with the output.

I continue to be impressed....

Ned Soltz

I cut my gels so that they fit nicely in the slot between the Cool Lights and the barn doors. The clips holding the barn doors in place also retain the gels. Quite convenient.

Nice to know that the Cool Lights compare favorably to the Lite Panels. Considering what a 1/2 minus green gel costs, Richard's latest offering seems to be the best bang for the buck.

Just got my Cool lights LED600 yesterday, just in time for a small job, yay! Love to play with my new toys, er, I mean tools. I cannot say enough good things about it. Super flexible output levels, easy to set up, excellent build quality. I actually like that is a little greener than a normal light, I shoot under existing flouros alot, and I'm thinking maybe this will be a fairly good match to boost up a face. We'll see!

I've got a shoot coming up in a fast-food establishment where the overhead fluos will need to be kept on. It is, of course, an absolute lighting nightmare and fortunately it is only a pro-bono piece I'm shooting for the young owner of the place to go to the web (I believe in helping young entrepreneurs with great ideas and little money). I do plan to use the LED600's and will see whether I need that minus green. Meanwhile, I appreciate Dean's method of mounting the gels.

And I would say that most definitely these lights compare very favorably with Litepanels for almost 1/4 the price.

Ned

Thanks for all your comments, its well appreciated. Glad to hear there actually is a need for the green spike and it comes in handy sometimes ;-)

The barndoors work pretty much the way the barndoors work on our studio models and you can usually slip things behind the barndoors. For instance, I've been wanting to try some of those plastic prismatic diffusion sheets to see the effect. That should fit right behind the barndoors if the sheet is thin enough.

Hi Richard
I've just collected my LED600 from UK customs. USPS got it here very quickly and it's been with customs for 5 days. Not so bad.
It looks good but I can't try it out because it doesn't have a UK plug or an adaptor. It looks like a US plug except it's got three pins and I haven't seen that before.
I found a travel adaptor but that doesn't work.
I was really looking forward to trying it out.
Please let me know what I should do.
I am rubbish with anything electrical so don't ask me to do anything too complicated.

Received the Tekkeon cable and successfully made a Tekkeon to XLR-4 plug. Powers the 600 without a problem.

Ned

So do you get about an hour like we thought?

Hi Richard
I've just collected my LED600 from UK customs. USPS got it here very quickly and it's been with customs for 5 days. Not so bad.
It looks good but I can't try it out because it doesn't have a UK plug or an adaptor. It looks like a US plug except it's got three pins and I haven't seen that before.
I found a travel adaptor but that doesn't work.
I was really looking forward to trying it out.
Please let me know what I should do.
I am rubbish with anything electrical so don't ask me to do anything too complicated.

The third pin is Ground. You really need a 3 prong american to UK plug adapter to do it correctly. You could also probably temporarily steal the power cord from your PC long enough to try them out as we use the IEC standard on our power supply--same one as used in desktop PCs around the world and on all our other fixtures too. This would tide you over till you can find a US to UK plug adapter that works with our 3 prong standard American plug.

So do you get about an hour like we thought?

Haven't timed it yet. But it's on the list of things to test.

Ned

You could also probably temporarily steal the power cord from your PC
Thanks, that does the job and it's now working. As everyone else has said the light seems well-built, robust and powerful and the bag is excellent. I like the way the LEDs are protected by the barn doors in transit. Can't wait to try it out for real.

I think I might have gotten a pair of the first regular shipping units last week.

They arrived a couple of days before I had a 4 day on-site corporate gig that included stuff like the traditional "cocktail party interviews of key associates" stuff.

Some sample stills pulled from the video are attached.

I ordered two of the spot units in 3200k. This is because a LOT of my big retail clients are re-lamping their stores to save on energy costs and they seem to be going to high efficiency modern overhead fluorescent lighting which seem to read out at about 3100k.

I told Daniel, my DP to take one of the new the LED 600s out and use it in place of an on-camera light to see what it could do.

Understand that he had about 3 minutes experience before going out - which consisted mostly of me showing him where the main switch and dimmer control was. He ran the unit off a Sony V-mount battery which easily lasted the whole shoot.

So the crew was Linda interviewing, Daniel shooting, and Chris who was primarily responsible for audio - but who ended up schlepping the light as well. We used a lightweight standard Arri kit stand since the unit isn't heavy. They reported that having a non-tethered lightweight light was a JOY.

Like most of these gigs, the sun was going down so both the intensity and color temperature was constantly shifting.

The first still grab is early with the 600 providing modest front fill and successfully fighting the late afternoon skylight behind her. The woman is VERY fair.

The next two frame grabs are later and later as the sun goes down. Chris kept cranking the intensity down (you can easily see the background level drop) and as promised the color temp hardly shifted as we dimmed the unit. (both guys were far less fair skinned than the first lady - so don't mistake the skin tones for the lighting. You're looking at pretty accurate pictures)

I'm a happy owner. Perfectly Portable. Well Built. Reasonably priced. Super convenient.

Yeah, and Richard's included soft cases are very cool - but I STILL think I'm maybe going to investigate a Pelican case that can can fit multiple heads, stands and accessories in something that's back of production truck friendly.

FWIW

Link to the frame grabs: http://www.gallery.me.com/davisbill#100037

HI, Bill!!!

Your MobileMe link doesn't work. Actually ends up taking me to a gallery on my own me.com account!

Ned

...Link to the frame grabs: MobileMe (http://www.me.com/gallery/#100037)
Now that's sumthin' - your service provider doesn't support internet explorer. And here I thought I was all cool n' stuff.

Hi Richard
I've just collected my LED600 from UK customs. USPS got it here very quickly and it's been with customs for 5 days. Not so bad.
It looks good but I can't try it out because it doesn't have a UK plug or an adaptor. It looks like a US plug except it's got three pins and I haven't seen that before.
I found a travel adaptor but that doesn't work.
I was really looking forward to trying it out.
Please let me know what I should do.
I am rubbish with anything electrical so don't ask me to do anything too complicated.

I just received mine from Richard too. I just cut the US plug out .. and replace it with a UK style 3 pin plug. Singapore is a former colony of UK - so you know :-). 2 minutes job. No sweat. The colour codes - green wire - earth, white - neutral, black - live.

One thing I would like to see is how well the 3200K version plays with other real 3200K tungsten lighting. I haven't had a chance to try that yet. The 3200K LEDs actually have a bit higher CRI so my theory is they should actually mix well with real tungsten.

The colour codes - green wire - earth, white - neutral, black - live.
Thanks TingSern. I've got lots of old computer power cables so I used one of those. Useful to know what the colour code is though. Maybe Richard W might want to include this with the light to save idiots like me from electrocuting themselves.

Its really impossible for us at this point to stock all the power cords or adapters for all the different types in the world. Thats why its far better to get that locally in your own country. A US to UK should be commonly available, no reason to do any wiring at all.

Its really impossible for us at this point to stock all the power cords or adapters for all the different types in the world. Thats why its far better to get that locally in your own country. A US to UK should be commonly available, no reason to do any wiring at all.
The computer power cord seems like the best solution to me. The trouble with adaptors is that they tend to get left in the plug socket.

Sorry guys. Post convention shoot brain deadness.

I revisited the above URL and trimmed the stuff that cut and paste added. Should work now.

(fingers crossed)

And Hi Ned!

Link works now. Very nice work Bill. Glad we could help out on that and similar future shoots.

Really looks great, Bill.

I love these lights.

Ned

Here's my comparison of the Cool Lights 5600k flood Vs Pelican PC9460B

Test settings.
I don't remember what light meter I used, but I took three readings at each interval to make sure my readings are acurate. The light meter was programed for:
ISO 100
24FPS

.......Cool Lights....................Pelican Two Lamps.....................Pelican One Lamp
1ft......f8.0....................................f8.0........................................f8.0
4'........f 2.8...................................f 2.8.......................................f 1.4
6'........f 2.0...................................f 2.0.......................................f 1.0
8'....... f 1.4...................................f 1.4.......................................f 0.7
10'.......f 1.0..................................f 1.0.......................................f 0.7
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-.-.dividing line.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12'.......f 1.0..................................f 0.7.......................................f 0.5
14'.......f 0.7..................................f 0.7.......................................f 0.5
16'.......f 0.7..................................f 0.7.......................................f 0.5
18'.......f 0.7..................................f 0.5.......................................f could not read
20'.......f 0.5..................................f 0.5.......................................f could not read
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-.-.dividing line-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-..--.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-.-..-.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
22'.......f 0.5..................................f 0.5.......................................f could not read
24'.......f 0.5..................................f 0.5.......................................f could not read

As you can see the Pelican and Cool Lights LED are virtually identical on paper.

Next I compared the color temperature with the links. I used an Olympus E-300 and locked the color temperature at 5300k

ColorTemp.jpg picture by bmxky - Photobucket (http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd268/bmxky/?action=view&current=ColorTemp.jpg)
This is probably the most useful test. This shows the diffrence in color between the Pelican and the Cool Lights fixture. I was told the Pelican has a color temp of 6000k but I haven't found anything to back this up on Pelicans site or BH photos site.
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TestSetUp.jpg picture by bmxky - Photobucket (http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd268/bmxky/?action=view&current=TestSetUp.jpg)
This is probably the second most interesting picture. Just a cool picture showing how the two lights look in comparison on fixtures.
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CoolLights.jpg picture by bmxky - Photobucket (http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd268/bmxky/?action=view&current=CoolLights.jpg)
This is a picture of WKYU's studio with The LED Cool Light iluminating it shot with locked off settings of: 14mm, 1/10sec, f3.5, ISO 400, WB 5300K...an interesting note: the tape measure you see on the floor is all the way extended and goes out to about 25 feet.
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Pelican2X.jpg picture by bmxky - Photobucket (http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd268/bmxky/?action=view&current=Pelican2X.jpg)
Same locked off settings but this is the Pelican light with both fixture on full power.
Just to clarify. You may notice less shadows behind the TV in this shot. The Pelican fixture was just to the right of the tape measure and the Cool Lights fixture was just to the left of the tape measure.
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Pelican1X.jpg picture by bmxky - Photobucket (http://s225.photobucket.com/albums/dd268/bmxky/?action=view&current=Pelican1X.jpg)
Last Photo. You can see how much weaker the Pelican looks with only one fixture turned on.
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This test was not really scientific as you have probably figured out. I should have put both lights against a black background to really show the color difference when shooting straight into the light. Also I ran the Pelican off of the battery pack(which I don't know how fully charged it was) and the Cool Lights LED was run off of wall power. Knowing this information I think it is fairly safe to assume that both of these lights put off about the same amount of light, but accomplish this in different ways. The Pelican light uses 24 one watt LEDs per lamp and the Cool Lights uses 600 lower power LEDs(I assume the Cool Lights set up uses 600 LEDs since that is the name of the light).
Both lights use the same amount of power, and provide very similar if not equal output.
If cost and weight were not an issue I really couldn't recomend one over the other...however since both of these are an issue to most people, myself included, I would say the Cool Lights LED is the winner. That is, unless you need a water resistant setup or need a more blue light, in which case the Pelican would be the winner.
As I mentioned in this thread before everything has trade offs.

A general question: Actually I work with tungsten-lights and I also would like to mix them with the 600. What do you recommend: 5600 or 3200? The tungsten-ones I adapt with filters and so do I have to do with the LEDs but which one would be the best. The threads I read show that the majority is buying 5600.

Thanks

Markus

Yes there is a trend toward 5600K / daylight from what I see in my experience helping people out.

A lot of it depends upon the legacy of existing equipment people have or work with on a regular basis. If they work with tungsten lighting a lot, they may tend to choose 3200K for fluorescent, LEDs and CDM. Another group will get bulbs of both color temperatures so they have the versatility of switching out as necessary. Still another group of people that have no existing fixtures will tend to buy 5600K only. You don't have that luxury with most LED fixtures as of this time--they're fixed either at 3200K or 5600K until some more advances come along that allow us to switch between the two electronically with the same fixture.

Hi Richard,

thanks for your information though I don`t see my choise made easier. But well, that´s the price to pay as an early adaptor ;-)

May it be possible that you don`t send to Spain. I wasn`t able to choose shipping.

Thanks
Markus

Richard shipped my lights to New Zealand, so i'm sure that Spain wont be a problem. (Aside from all the rain on the transport planes).

We do ship to Spain. That's easy compared to New Zealand ;-).

Its just that we ask to do all those international transactions by hand so there aren't any mistakes on shipping quotes and the correct shipping vendor is chosen too. Its just not that reliable to do international shipping in an automated environment--so many variables. So I always have people contact me at info@coollights.biz for shipping quotes elsewhere.

I chose daylight LED lights -- It provides a good fill under daylight conditions.

I can always gel for 3200 k. Usually situations that require the lower color temp are indoors, and I can get away with using lights of lower intensity. So losing some of the output with a CTO gel isn't as detrimental as when I have to use a CTB with a tungsten instrument in daylight.

Dean:

Are you going to have your panels out on the boats? Have you used them in daylight outdoors for fill situations yet? Would love hear your experience and see some stills or footage if you have. I have only used mine for interiors so far but have an upcoming gig with actors running in and out of cars and trains that I may try these for.

Thanks,

Dan Brockett

Dan...

The lights won't go on the boats. They're going to be used to shoot our cooking segments and other studio-type features.

I just shot a cooking segment last week and can post a still frame later today. This location has a huge window through which you can see open sky. Once the sun goes high the window becomes a huge softbox but it doesn't have much directional characteristics.

The Cool Lights provide a bit of direction to the light that already exists.

And for the EX1 users out there, it seems the "red blacks" aren't a problem in this situation.