Got my Microbeam today, and toyed around it with it a little bit. I haven't taken any footage yet. . .gotta wait til it's dark and there's someone else here for that, but I can tell you a little about it.

It measures about 5"x3, most of that (except a 1/4" on each side) is LED surface. It feels fairly solidly put together, comes with a swivelly gimbally thingy for your hot shoe mount (and also a screw if that mount is screw-in instead of slide-in)

Also comes with a selection of color correction gels and a little plastic folder to hold them. There's a "warming" gel (looks like it's equivalent to a 1/2 or 1/4 CTO, a "tungsten" (quotes indicate what they wrote on the gel) that I'm guessing is a full CTO, a "diffusion" (seems like Lee 251 or Opal. . .one of those thin ones that you can kinda see through), and a minus green. There's a slot directly in front of the LEDs that holds the gels. You just slip it in. There's no way to secure it on top, meaning if you turn the light upside down it'd just fall out, but I guess you could tape it in or something.

I don't know how much it weighs, but you definitely feel it with a battery on there (I'm using the big cannon battery right now, for an XL2).

That's what I got so far.

Ok, so I found out I'd be alone tonight, but decided to do these tests anyway, by myself. So I have a series of pictures with different filters on the light, and different white balance settings.

So, these were all taken with a Canon XL2 from about nine feet away, shutter 1/60, open to f1.6, no gain.

I took so long to edit that last post that now I can't! Hah!

So, again these were all taken with a Canon XL2, using my "low light settings" (low knee, normal gamma, black stretch, everything else should be factory presets) from about nine feet away (since the specs say 85 lux @ 9 feet, I wanted to test that), 30p, shutter 1/60, open to f1.6, no gain, light at full intensity (it has a dimmmer).

"Well, Josh that's a nice block of pictures, but I don't know what any of this means. And by the way, you look like a jackass."

Now, hold on, people; I'm going to explain what each pic is, and the silly faces are for your amusement. And cause no one ever posts tests with silly faces.



So, Top left is tungsten white balance preset, with nothing on the light. Top right is with the diffusion filter only on the light, tungsten white balance preset.

2nd Row (from the top) left is nothing on the light, but daylight white balance preset. 2nd row right is tungsten white balance preset, with the warming filter on the light.

3rd row left is tungsten white balance preset, with both the tungsten filter and the diffusion on the light.
3rd row right is a wideshot so you could see the spread of the light (and my cereal and wheat thins). This is from about 18-20 feet away, daylight preset

bottom pic is tungsten white balance preset with the tungsten filter only on the light.

I'm not too familiar with how the attachments work on this board, so sorry it's not more organized.


So what we see is that the raw color of the light in a tungsten environment is totally unacceptable (though we knew that), but that it's also not quite truly 5600K or else the daylight preset shots would look totally right instead of slightly weird. We also see that the tungsten filter WAY overcorrects, in my opinion, so you'll probably need to experiement and cut your own gels to find the best color correction, or fiddle with manual white balances (one thing I didn't do in these tests). However, the idea should be to match the light's color to the rest of your environment, so that your backgrounds don't look totally different from what the light is actually hitting.

Oh by the way, the slivers of light in the room behind me are from a tungsten source, so perhaps manual WB is the answer? I'm clocking out for tonight, so I guess we'll never know (until the other couple guys on this board that ordered one get theirs, that is).

Man. . .I shoulda tried the tungsten with the minus green. Oh well.

Okay, there were some things I didn't do in the first battery of tests, so with Patient Girlfriend Watching 30 Rock" as my subject, I did some different settings. All of these were shot at 30p, 1/60 shutter, from 3ft away or so. A note: all manual white balances are done WITHOUT any gels on the light, for better or worse.

Top left - Half CTO on light, indoor wb, f2.8 Top right - half cto, manual wb, f3.4

2nd row left - nothing on light, manual wb, f3.2 2nd row right - quarter minus green, daylight wb, f3.2

3rd row left - screwed up and named it wrong, no idea! 3rd row right - quarter minus green, tungsten filter, indoor wb, f2.4

4th row left - quarter minus green, warming filter, day wb, f2.4 4th row right - warming, manual wb, 3.7

Sorry I didn't correct the aspect ratio on these stills.

So, you'll see I got pretty decent results with a manual white balance, and daylight using just the minus green, so if you're outside those might be useful. Also found out there are two minus greens that come with this light, a half and a quarter. They were stuck together when I first played with the filters. I think the half mg corrects TOO Much. . .gives it a purple cast, to my eye.

Some things I wish I'd tried this time around: quarter minus green and half CTO on an indoor WB, using the tungsten filter and THEN white balancing, using a half CTO and doing the same.

Ok, it was driving me nuts so I did a few more tests. "Patient Girlfriend Watching 30 Rock" does not live at Bass studios so you are stuck with me as model again. These were all done from about six feet away, open to f1.6, 30p, 1/60 shutter, (by the way, everything I've done has been on -3 gain--I haven't noted that anywhere).

I thought it might be nice to have a tungsten-ish source for reference in the background, so I left the lights on in the storage room/sleep quarters of Bass studios behind me. It's one of those lights that's attached to your ceiling fan, so whatever kinda bulbs those are. . .well, that's what you're seeing the light from. So you can see how other 3200K sources might change with the different white balances I used in these last tests. You can also see what the microbeam does on a pure white surface (those walls in the room with me are basically white). By the way, those walls (the white ones, not the ones in the other room) are about 18-20 feet from the light if you want an idea of how the exposure falls off over distance.


First off, that quarter minus green plus half CTO, with the indoor wB preset I mentioned before? Looks terrible, didn't bother to post a pic of it.

Ok so, left pic is half CTO on the light, manual white balance AFTER the cto was put on. Right pic is a half CTO AND a quarter minus green, manual white balance AFTER the CTO was put on, but BEFORE the minus green. I know that one's pretty complicated.

So, you can see that on the right, my face is a purplish color like I've been choking, but my arm looks okay. What's up with that? the white walls also have slightly purplish tinge. In the left pic, my face looks more natural but my arm's a little green, and the walls have a slightly green tinge. Now, I am a pasty fella always told he needs tan. Well you know what? I don't tan, I burn! The room behind me looks orange on this here computer montor, but on my NTSC monitor it looked like it looked to my eye.

So, I say with this light either of these two options is your best bet to match an indoor environment's lights (more than likely-if they don't have weird mercury lights or something). If you don't mind the slightly purple cast, go with the quarter minus green (or hey, you know what? See if you can dig up some 1/8. . .I think it exists.) If not, go with the no minus green. The half CTO appears to not cut out too much light, but makes a pretty big difference.

I just want to note, if you use half CTO, you'll have to buy it. . .this isn't one of the filters that comes with the light. Also, regarding sensitivity, the XL2 is rated at 320 ASA from what I've read.

Josh, thanks for taking your time reviewing Microbeam!

Thank you so much, Josh!

Vasco

Hey Josh, thanks for the review. Guess I'm now pretty confident and I'll just go with the Microbeam.

Glad I helped someone. I wanted to mention that after attaching and detaching this thing several times, I'm finding the hot shoe mount and i's connected parts to be quite a pain in the ass. Maybe it's an XL2 thing, but it's tough to tighten and loosen the ring against the hot shoe mount without a tool of some sort, and the light seems to turn/spin kinda easily at the at other ring, the part that tightens against the light itself. I'm sure there's an easy fix for these annoyances, but I wanted to let everyone know that (for me) they were there. The screw that tightens the gimbal seems to hold pretty well, however.

There are no real large pics on the Prompter People site, so here's a nice big pic of the actual light, you can see the gimbal/hot shoe piece.

Josh, that's a lot of information. Thanks for sharing it!

Great job Josh and thanks for all the info.

Now go out there and get some man on the street interviews :-)

Okay, at the request of folks in another thread, I did a few more shots to show the spread and reach at gain settings other than -3. These are all done on the XL2 with the same camera preset as the previous pics in this thread.

So, first we have three pics showing the spread on this thing. The first is from about five feet away, the second ten, the third 30-40, since I'm shooting upward at the side of that house (those are trees at the side). The first two are shot at -3 gain, 1/60 shutter, iris at f1.6, 30fps. The last spread pic is +6 gain 'cause I couldn't see much at -3.

The last three pics are inside my casa, and meant to show the "reach" of the light at +3 and +6 gain, since apparently a lot of guys shoot with those settings. These are all about 18-20 ft from the light/camera.

The darkest one is 30p, 1/60 shutter, +3 gain, manual wb through Half CTO and 1/4 Minus green, f1.6 .

The middle dark one is 30p 1/60 shutter, +6 gain, manual wb through Half CTO and 1/4 Minus green, f1.6 .

The brightest one is 30p, 1/30 shutter, +6 gain, manual wb through Half CTO and 1/4 Minus green, f1.6 .

There are great, thanks for taking the time to post these. The spread looks very uniform - no bad hot spot in the center. Also reach doesn't look too bad.

I think I'm going to order one of these.

No problem. Don't know why it didn't occur to me in my earlier battery of tests to white balance through the minus green and half CTO at the same time. . .seems to solve all the weird color issues at once. You know, like logic would DICTATE that it would. Though it does leave it a little cool compared to not using the minus green.

Can you tell me a little about the power for this unit. Looks like this uses the standard camera battery. Is there an adaptor? Any idea if you can use an adaptor and use AA battery like the Micolite? I feel like this migh be a better way to go as my HMC150 batterys are over 200 a pop. Someone told me this is the equivalent of a 100W light can you really light up a room/ bride at 15- 18 feet away?

Thanks,

they will custom build it to accept canon sony or panny camera batteries. also appears to have some other type of connection for power but i dont know what it is. as for brightness the stills should speak for themselves.

Hey Josh-
First of all thanks for the review. Do you have any idea how long these will run at full intensity with a canon bp 945 battery.

Thanks Again

Hey Steve-
According to the guys at Flolight the DC input power plug is a type H, 3.5mm OD by 1.35mm pin. If you look up adaptaplug at radio shack you would need the type h concector for an AA battery pack, that would ideally be made up of 8AA batteries is series to supply 12v.

I do not know. They run my XL2 for about 4 hours, so if you know the XL2's wattage, and the light's wattage, you could do some simple math. The light's wattage may be found on the prompter people site.

Found this link with a different view

Prompter People, Inc MicroBeam 128 LED (http://catalogs.infocommiq.com/AVCat/CTL1642/index.cfm?mlc_id=6434&pin_id=1642&prodid=462726)

Found this link with a different view

Prompter People, Inc MicroBeam 128 LED (http://catalogs.infocommiq.com/AVCat/CTL1642/index.cfm?mlc_id=6434&pin_id=1642&prodid=462726)

These photos must have been prototypes. I just received one I purchased, the photos are below:

Next I did a quick comparison between the Sony HVL-20DW2 20 watt incandescent light vs. the MicroBeam. The photos are not color corrected and were taken with my Nikon D90 in Auto white balance, manual 1/60, F3.5, ISO 1600, 17mm lense (26mm equal) about 10 foot away.

The MicroBeam was turned all the way up and shows un-filtered and with the included diffusion. The Sony had both 10 watt lights on showing no diffusion and with the StoFen diffuser. My goal here was to look at patterns/spread/hot spots.

The MicroBeam had much higher output than the Sony. The Sony had a real bad hot spot with no diffusion. The Microbeam was so much hotter without diffusion that the photo clipped in the center. This might be good as a spot light at some distance. The spread was barely acceptable with the included diffusion on the MicroBeam. With as much power this puts out, I will be using more diffusion.

The only other comments I have is the dimmer knob is attached to the potentiometer just barely tight enough. When you get to either stop, high or low, the knob keeps turning. You can pull the knob off with little effort. Not a biggie, a little superglue will fix it.

Just keep in mind, according to your specs, you were shooting at ISO 1600. That is WAY more sensitive than most of these camcorders.

Also, regarding those pics of the blue light, the light can be ordered in either blue or black. Or it could when I made my phone order. I ordered black cause, who wants a blue light?

The diffusion that comes with the 'Beam does not look that heavy. A piece of 216 or 250 would probably do the trick.

Just keep in mind, according to your specs, you were shooting at ISO 1600. That is WAY more sensitive than most of these camcorders.

Also, regarding those pics of the blue light, the light can be ordered in either blue or black. Or it could when I made my phone order. I ordered black cause, who wants a blue light?

The diffusion that comes with the 'Beam does not look that heavy. A piece of 216 or 250 would probably do the trick.

I was not referring to the color in the other photos. Next to the switch is a gaping hole and the knob looks to be aluminum.

I aggree that I could have run a much lower ISO but I was looking for the pattern. I also agree that more diffusion is very easy.

Thanks again for your posts, it convinced me to get this light.

Ah. I thought you meant the color.

Anyway, listen, I want to ask you guys something that's been bugging me since I started this thread--

Why the concern over the beam spread? Do you guys do a lot of work where you shoot walls and don't have proper lighting?

When I think about a light like this, it's for those very run and gun events where you're not allowed to have "real" lights to light up a location, and so must rely on the least of two evils (an on-camera above-the-lens light that kinda looks like the news or Wild On, or no light at all).

I think of lighting folks with this who are around 10 ft or less from the camera, and unless they're against a wall, the pattern doesn't concern me too much. Unless you're shooting tons of really wide shots where you'd be able to see the whole spread of the beam?

As punchy as it is, it's not really useful for lighting things that aren't pretty close the cam, and that being the case, unless there's a wall right behind whatever you're shooting, the light'll probably fall off fast enough that you wouldn't see the beam spread anyway.

Guess I'm just wondering why all the concern with spread.

Can you tell me a little about the power for this unit. Looks like this uses the standard camera battery. Is there an adaptor? Any idea if you can use an adaptor and use AA battery like the Micolite? I feel like this migh be a better way to go as my HMC150 batterys are over 200 a pop. Someone told me this is the equivalent of a 100W light can you really light up a room/ bride at 15- 18 feet away?

Thanks,

Steve,

I too have an HMC150 with this light. The problem is that the battery mounts are slightly different on the HMC compared to say the DVX/HVX series. With that said the light comes with the mount that uses the DVX/HVX batteries. The HMC battery will not fit. That's the bad thing. The good thing is that you can get a generic branded DVX/HVX battery and that's the route I took. Got myself a supposedly "5500mah" battery for $38. Although big I was able to power the light for 3hrs and 40 minutes before it started to "flicker" at which time i shut it down. Not too shabby but I too wish there was an AA option. I have tons of those.

Lenmar has a good reputation on here, and from word of mouth, for making generic batteries to match the major camcorders, for about $40 apiece. Apparently some of the cheaper generics are prone to unreliability, exploding, not "reading" correctly (in terms of how much charge the battery has left) etc. I may get one of these Lenmars for mine.

Don't these camcorder batteries have more charge than AAs? AAs always seem so flimsy to me, like they're meant to be used once and thrown away. Obviously there are rechargeables, but for most of the things in my life I need AAs for, it just seems like it's not worth it to charge 'em.

Ah. I thought you meant the color.

Anyway, listen, I want to ask you guys something that's been bugging me since I started this thread--

Why the concern over the beam spread? Do you guys do a lot of work where you shoot walls and don't have proper lighting?

When I think about a light like this, it's for those very run and gun events where you're not allowed to have "real" lights to light up a location, and so must rely on the least of two evils (an on-camera above-the-lens light that kinda looks like the news or Wild On, or no light at all).

I think of lighting folks with this who are around 10 ft or less from the camera, and unless they're against a wall, the pattern doesn't concern me too much. Unless you're shooting tons of really wide shots where you'd be able to see the whole spread of the beam?

As punchy as it is, it's not really useful for lighting things that aren't pretty close the cam, and that being the case, unless there's a wall right behind whatever you're shooting, the light'll probably fall off fast enough that you wouldn't see the beam spread anyway.

Guess I'm just wondering why all the concern with spread.

Much of the time you are right but generally you want the light to cover the entire frame of video for flexability. A spot light that would only be good when zoomed in limits it utility. Examples in a wedding reception are:

Take a look at the video here: The Digital Video Information Network - View Single Post - Another Wedding Highlight (http://www.dvinfo.net//conf/showpost.php?p=992553&postcount=1)
At about 3:10 is the cake shot and you can see what I mean. The B&G are lit but the cake is not.

Toasts, sometimes the speaker is on one side, the DJ in the center and the bride & groom on the other. It's all I can do to get them in one shot with my wide angle adapter. Other times I can't get closer than 20 feet away or I block the view of too many guests.

Dancing, things get tight so I need to be very wide and it looks bad when the people on the left and right of the shot are much darker than in the center.

Wedding videographers are always fighting the facilities people that want to turn the lights off (not just down) for dancing.

I certainly understand what you're saying.

I guess I don't think of these types of events as places to get super wide shots, more like "get what you can given the parameters you have to work within." I guess my attitude is that if they wanted it to be perfect, they wouldn't have forced us into a situation where we have to use an on-cam light in the first place. It is not the responsibility of the magic camera man and his magic lights to turn an impossible situation into video gold. You can only do so much. You wanted the lights out, this is what you get. Maybe next time you get married you'll have the reception in a well-lit hall (which happens occasionally. . .I shot a reception in a room lit up by flos overhead!).

I know, I know. I'm wrong and the client is always right.

Sorry for the late reply, much thanks for the info.!

Just a reminder for those who wants to buy this light - price goes up after April 25th by $50. At the same moment there is new model coming out - 256 LED's unit (twice the size) for $560. I'm curious to see how this one will perform.

I see PrompterPeople is located in California.

Is there a source for the MicroBeam outside California?

I would not recommend this light, poor quality workmanship, the intensity control knob get stuck 3/4 of the way but if you keep turning it will go all the way but the brightness doesn't get any brighter, I called support and they said that is the way it is, there is lump on the plastic knob and I need to grind it down or send it back to them and they will fix it, also they advertised it as equivalent to 100watts, that is not true at all, maybe 35 watts top, also there is a very bad green tint that you have to use the 1/2 -green filter and if you want it to be 3200K you need to put the 3200K filter on it and by this time the ouput is way down, this company is bad, they want 25% restocking fees, so you guys should stay away from them. I'm telling it like it is, now if any of you still want this light, I'm selling it in the classified section.

I would not recommend this light, poor quality workmanship, the intensity control knob get stuck 3/4 of the way but if you keep turning it will go all the way but the brightness doesn't get any brighter, I called support and they said that is the way it is, there is lump on the plastic knob and I need to grind it down or send it back to them and they will fix it, also they advertised it as equivalent to 100watts, that is not true at all, maybe 35 watts top, also there is a very bad green tint that you have to use the 1/2 -green filter and if you want it to be 3200K you need to put the 3200K filter on it and by this time the ouput is way down, this company is bad, they want 25% restocking fees, so you guys should stay away from them. I'm telling it like it is, now if any of you still want this light, I'm selling it in the classified section.

You seriously need to work on your sales technique.

I don't really care about selling it now, I'm so pissed at this company, they suck, and they lie and don't stand behind their product, I'm thinking I will keep if as a back up.
BTW I was in sale for 15 years and always in the top 3 of my company. (-:

I don't really care about selling it now, I'm so pissed at this company, they suck, and they lie and don't stand behind their product, I'm thinking I will keep if as a back up.
BTW I was in sale for 15 years and always in the top 3 of my company. (-:

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel : )

I used my new Microbeam 128 with my DVX100 on Saturday for an evening wedding. All in all I was very pleased.

Previously I used a PAGlight C6 with a 30w bulb. A quick test in the house with the lights off showed that the Microbeam was a touch brighter. I agree with the other comment it's about the equivalent of 35w. To confirm that I compared with my 50w halogen job and that was way brighter.

What I really like about this light is its portability and stamina. When using my Paglight I had to charge up and lug around 5 heavy batteries to last an a full event. Not to mention having one hanging off my shoulder all night and changing them every 90 minutes or so.

My Microbeam has the Panasonic battery mount and one Hanel 3600mAh battery lasted me all night (switching off when not using and occasionally dimming from full brightness).

I did do a test at home running the light on full brightness with a fully charged battery and it lasted for 3.5 hours.

For the event I used only the diffusion filter. Any colour tint hasnt shown up in the footage, I did manual white balances, one at the church and one at the reception.

I live in Brazil and my order went through Prompter People's Latin American rep. Had no issues whatsoever and all of my queries where answered quickly. A very good service in my opinion, I shall be buying another soon I hope, maybe the 256 version.

I'm certainly biased 'cause I have one, but I think it's silly to compare these lights to some of the things people have been comparing them to.

Obviously there are more powerful, nicer lights out there. But if you want a sun gun (or similar), you need an AB battery setup on your camera, or you have to lug around a shoulder battery. If you want a more powerful or correctly colored LED, you're going to spend way more than $300ish.

After researching all the lower cost options, it was either something like a $40 bescor with shoulder mounted brick, a rig that lasts for 80 minutes on a charge, or one of the lower cost LED options. So microbeam won. Maybe that new LP light is better, who knows? It wasn't out at the time.

Seems like in this price range, the "beam" or something close is the best compromise.

I recently got a Microbeam. I think it is excellent for my use. The batery mount, the dimmer, etc.

I don't use it on camera, but as fill light, accent, etc. It is quick and easy for situations where otherwise you probably wouldn't use anything.

do you guys have any problem with the battery, I'm using a Canon bp-950G and it won't work. any recommendation. I need this for this weekend. It work fine with the Elipz adapter

FloLight MicroBeam :: Digital Juice (http://www.digitaljuice.com/products/products.asp?pid=1081)

great deal going on here.I wonder if the green tint is still there?

It better be. Otherwise I want a trade in.

Wikipedia says that an incandecent light bulb of 100 watts is roughly 1700 lumens. So think twice when someone rates an led of 100 watt equivalent but only shells out 250 lumens ???

The light casts a soft circular spot. It needs a diffuse filter but that will also lower the overall light intensity output.

But the 256 LEDs are pretty powerful even with the gel i guess.

I checked their spec. At 3feet it is measured at 1321 lux. That is at it's default 5600K color temperature and before diffusion filter is applied. 5600K is useless in indoor shooting as objects will become blue. Read here in my blog Color Temperature | L.A. Color Blog (http://lacolorshop.com/blog/view.asp?id=42). Lower the color temperature and then apply the diffuse filter will make the light even less bright.

Compared to the Comer 1800 LED light, it is 1800 lux at 1 meter (about 3 feet) already in 4500K color temperature and diffused. It throws a wide spread without casting a soft circular spots in the scene. It makes the video looks like home-made video when panning with a circular spots on.

Hey guys, I'm willing to get one or two of these lights and I just saw, they updated the specs of the MicroBeam 128.

The light is now supposed to be brighter as the lux value improved from 686 to 746 lux at 3 feet distance (and so on...).

I couldn't find any information regarding that upgrade. So I'm either blind or they didn't bother filling us in on it. Any clues?

Cheers from Germany

/edit: Product page: http://www.flolight.com/microbeam-128.html
And a direct link to the specs: http://www.flolight.com/graphics/microbeamchart.gif