So, I pulled the trigger today on the following kit... I have taken a leap of faith into LED as I have not seen these in person just from what I have read and seen online. I will be shooting with an EX1 and RED I just hope I got the right setup... I will report back on an a two person interview I have coming up on Labor Day. I went with two Floods and one Spot with Soft Box. Since the 256 is out of stock right now my thought is being able to possibily use one of the other 600's as a back/side/hair via stratigic use of banks and or dimmer.... Any comments out there would be appreciated.

I am hoping this will be a good Interview and simialr small shoot setup for a long time for me and that I did not make a mistake going with the two floods and one spot instead of two spots and one flood. I am not a newbie to lighting but to LED's and all other lighting as always been provided for me, never my own kit.

May add a 256 sometime down the road and probably eventually add the battery mounts...but for now I can plug them in. I will say Richard's customer service is fantastic and makes me feel good about my purchase.


1 x CL-SPSB600 LED 600 Speed Softbox Kit (CL-SPSB600) = $99.00
1 x CL-LED600 600 LED Panel (CL-LED600) = $449.00
Battery Adaptation None
Fixture Options 5600K Spot
2 x CL-LED600 600 LED Panel (CL-LED600) = $898.00
Battery Adaptation None
Fixture Options 5600K Flood
3 x CL-LS4 Cool Lights Air Cushioned Portable Stand (CL-LS4) = $195.00

Just did a commercial shoot with one 600 spot with softbox and it really made a diffference in the final product. Think you'll be pretty happy with the purchase. (NOTE: the softbox fits EASILY over the outside of the frame of the light. I initially tried to pull the frame through the softbox which i think there's a dude that posted a neg comment on the Cool Lights site that mustve done the same thing. I fianally figured out it fit nicely around the frame and was easy to put on and take off)

Be glad when the 256ers are available again - I'd like to get a couple of them.

PS. I shot the commercial with the Belcor (sp) battery pack and everything worked great....

Good to know Harry! As I will probably do some commercial shoots as well. I was just torn between spots or floods... still not sure if I will need another spot?? LED's are totally new for me. Well, since we do not have a really clear video showing the real difference between flood and spot and both within a softbox, i will try and do so over the next two weeks to show the differences.

That will be helpful. I was told if I wanted to use the softbox which I did I needed to get the spot version.
Look forward to see your comparison video.

Hi Jason:

I have been shooting with the Cool Lights LEDs for over a year now. A few things I have discovered...

1. You definitely need the spot to work effectively with a softbox. The Floods output is just not high enough to use a softbox effectively.

2. You will always want to use the 1/2 minus green filter that comes with the light. I have done color testing and the 1/4 is not enough and if you don't use the minus green, you just have that nasty green spike you have to take care of in color correction.

3. The output is very stable and constant, not to mention the luxury of NOT worrying about tripping circuit breakers brings a whole new freedom to my shoots.

4. I don't like the look of the LEDs directly on talent in most cases. I always use a softbox or bounce the LEDs into a Flexfill.

5. The Bescor lead acid batteries work well. I shot a commercial with Edward James Olmos in a train station a few weeks ago, no power available and we were not allowed to use a generator either. I ran the LED 600 spot through my small Chimera from the Bescor battery and ran the LED 256 with a Sony camcorder battery, acting as a hair light. Director and client were both thrilled with the look I was able to give them with just these two lights and a Flexfill.

You will enjoy the lights, they are great tools and Richard provides first class after the sale service.

Cheers,

Dan

Thanks for the tips Dan... Especially the 1/2 minus green as it saves me some time of seeing which one worked better. I figured I would have to use one of them. I got one softbox for the Spot I ordered... I am just not sure if I iwll end up needing another spot. Well I will test this setup out and and see how it goes, I got a flexfill so will see how the LED's look direct and bounced. I will probably add a 256 when they are back in stock based on what others are sayin about it.

I too have the 600 Spot LED and just bought it to take with me to Africa.

I shot a commercial with it last week and it was great.

I'm very impressed with the build quality of the light.
It also comes with a great case.

I have the v-lock option for batteries and love that.

Dan,

What kind of Chimera are you using for the 600 light?

Hi Shawn:

I had one of the first LED 600s in the U.S. so it was way before Richard introduced the softbox. So I created my own steel speed ring for the LED 600, I had a friend weld up a few versions so I could use my small Chimera Quartz Pro with it. Works like a charm, I used the Arri 1k open face speed ring as my template and fabricated from scratch using angle steel. Richard's setup is much lighter and cheaper but I like my Chimeras, I own six of them.

If I didn't own any Chimeras though, I would buy Richard's softbox, it is a great deal and the end result is going to be the same.

Dan

Thanks for the input Dan.

"The Bescor lead acid batteries work well. I shot a commercial with Edward James Olmos in a train station a few weeks ago, no power available and we were not allowed to use a generator either. I ran the LED 600 spot through my small Chimera from the Bescor battery and ran the LED 256 with a Sony camcorder battery, acting as a hair light. Director and client were both thrilled with the look I was able to give them with just these two lights and a Flexfill."

I was wondering if anyone has used the The Duracell Powerpack 300 - 450 - 600 kits as a power source? I think I saw the 300 at Walmart for around $40. If think is a viable option, you could have quite a lot of cheap power on hand.

Two issues with the Duracell. You would need to also purchase an adapter cord to go from its cigarette lighter plug to XLR DC 4 pin on the Cool lights. The Duracell 300 provides 12Ah of power, the Bescor lead acid that I have been using provides 18Ah of power. So the Duracell should power the ight okay but I have no idea about how long it will run it and how the power fall off is.

However, if you can buy it for $40.00, heck I would try it. That is cheap enough to experiment with. The Bescor I bought was a little over $100.00 and will power my LED 600 spot for close to 5 hours.

Dan

Hi Jason:



2. You will always want to use the 1/2 minus green filter that comes with the light. I have done color testing and the 1/4 is not enough and if you don't use the minus green, you just have that nasty green spike you have to take care of in color correction.

Cheers,

Dan

This is a good point.

What I did was buy some GAM 1/2 minus green gels and cut them to fit the lights permanently.

I just leave them in there for 5600K output.

If I need 3200K I drop in the hard Full CTO provided.

Otherwise, there's no way to fit two of the hard filters in there, just not enough room.

The LED600's worked excellent!!! I used one spot with softbox and the two floods with flexfill. I used a small Par 30 5600k fluorescent as a hairlight. The Talent loved that there was no heat at all and thought the look was perfect! I did use the 1/2 minus green in all three. I will say this worked perfect for a 1-2 person interview. I think If I were to shoot a larger scene say 5 people I would need some additional lights. I plan to get an LED256 and one more LED600 Spot with softbox very soon! That will work for prettty much any setup I will be doing on my own. Richard, top notch service and a great product!!! I will get you some demo footage to use soon!

Great, looking forward to seeing the vid Jason! I'm currently running a kit of various Lowel lights, and looking to switch to LED. Interviews is one of my most common situations. How did you set up in terms of key, fill etc.?

Tim, this one was a little different as we shot against a super white backdrop. Fashion stuff.... Anyway, I used the spot with softbox for the Key and used the floods for Fill and backlight to avoid shadows on the backdrop. Sometimes I would sub one of the floods for the flexfill and bounce light on talent. it was 1-2 person interviews....Most of the time I did use the LED's directly on the talent and I really like the look these lights provide... that mix between soft and hard is perfect for HD as it did not make skin imperfections stand out and even with flood light dirfectly on talent it looked good IMHO. The dimmers are very nice to have as well even though most of the time I used on full. I will not be able to post the footage I shot for these interviews but will be shooting some demo footage and will post it soon.

short commercial i shot with the 600 is here - it was the first use of the light and it made a great difference. used a softbox with no grid on the 600 spot.
YouTube - 9 to 5: The Musical - The Working Girls Cosmo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eeCo2f7WYQ)

So a quick question - I've never really noticed the green "spike" . If I use the softbox over the LED600 I wouldn't need the -1/2 green would I?

"The Green Spike" technically exists with or without softbox. I noticed it just ever so slightly when performing my tests... Some colleagues of mine do not see it at all. so depending on your scene and if any other light is present it may or may not make it more difficult to notice. I had my wife sit on the couch and only lit her face with LED600 as only light source and I could tell a difference with and without the 1/2 minus green filter in place. I have placed the 1/2 minus green filter in all three of my lights and will just leave them in place for most every shoot. You could really see the green spike in post with a scope without the filter....so the filter indeed makes a significant difference. My advice is to use it.

Harry:

You definitely need to leave the 1/2 minus green filters in place all of the time, unless you don't mind having to color correct it out of every shoot.

Dan

I recently bought one of the Cool Lights LED fixtures- the LED600- and while I've not had a chance to use it extensively yet, I thought I'd give my views after a few hours shooting with it.

Up until recently, I'd been using a couple of old-school redheads as my primary lights. I've used Kinos and Dedos before when they were rented in, but didn't have the scratch to buy them (particularly the dedos). So when the redheads developed faults after a couple of years (that'll teach me for buying Chinese redheads from ebay!), I felt it was a good opportunity to expand my kit. It was this thread that pointed me in the direction of Cool Lights and their LED lamps. The idea of a low-wattage, low temperature, high relative output light appealed to me. Most of my work at the moment is small-scale drama (actor's showreels, shorts etc) and filming in small locations with air-con off and windows sealed for audio purposes is a nightmare with hotter lights. On a good day, I can lose a few pounds on set! Make-up runs on actors faces, tempers get short... you know the drill. So the LEDs appealed.

I ordered one and tried it out earlier this week on a pickup scene for a drama I've been working on. My first thoughts were that it's quite well-built and sturdy- it doesn't feel like a lot of the cheap stuff you can get on ebay- it feels like it's up to task. Barn doors are solid and stay where you want them- unlike my old redheads where I have to take a screwdriver to them every other shoot! The hinged mount at the bottom of the light looks a little flimsy, but in practice is quite stable. I think it's the fact that if you tilt it up or down it looks like it might topple (even though it doesn't), unlike with more traditional lights which have that U-shaped support bracket and the rotation occurs halfway down the head's length. There's a dimmer switch- which is actually really smooth without any visible stepping- and you have the option to turn off individual rows of LEDs although this is somewhat superfluous as a dimming method.

I bought the 5600k Flood version because it offered the most flexibility and when I tested it out it does come out more or less at that colour temperature. There is a slight green spike as others have noted, but depending on what you're shooting and if you're mixing light sources, you may not notice it too much in the final image. Handily, Cool Lights ship the light with a set of minus green acrylic filters which do a good job of cleaning that up. There's also a full CTO and a diffuser filter. The latter's quite useful because if you start closing the barn doors you eventually start to see a linear light pattern where the multiple sources in the housing are casting different shadows. The diffuser, while not perfect, goes some way to minimise that effect (although a bit of spun sorts it out completely). And that ability to turn off rows of LEDs I mentioned? That comes in handy here because if you barn door the light and turn off the rows that are covered, the pattern just doesn't appear anymore (although you do lose some light).

As a nice touch, it also comes with a shoulder-bag style soft case and a pack for the filters- handy if you're travelling light (no pun intended).

Overall, the LED600 performed admirably and I'll certainly replace my existing redheads in due course with LEDs like this one. It's a good piece of kit for the money and unlike the tat available on ebay it looks like it might last! If you can work round the green spike and the light pattern (which isn't difficult), there's a lot of plus points to these lights. I filmed for several hours inside and outside (in the rain, as it happened) and the light never got hot. I was able to pack the light up straight away rather than having to let it cool- a definite bonus if you're against the clock. One thing I would say to potential buyers though is make sure you've got a reasonably heavy duty light stand for it- while it's not heavy per se, it seems a little less stable high up than my other open face lights and a cheapo light stand might not be the wisest choice.

Also, if you're based outside the US like me, send Richard at Cool Lights an email because there may be a more cost-effective shipping method than what the website indicates.

I have the 56k 600's floods x 2 and the 56k 256's x 3 and love them.
I use theses lights all over Australia and they travel really well and so easy to setup. I would also advise using the 1/2 green minus most of the time. If I'm outside I don't bother with the 1/2 green but inside head shots with mixed lighting this is a must.

Cheers,

Can you use the 256 as a backlight, or is it too broad?

Hi mike,
I use the 256 all the time for for rim, hair lighting. It is a bit wide and I find it just fine for what I need.

The Cool Lights are so suited for what I'm achieving and highly recommend them.

Cheers

When will the 256s ever be in stock again?

Thanks guys for your reviews/comments. The LED 256 will be back in stock between the 20th and end of month.