Portable light source.

[Gustavs Repse]

Hey.

I'd like to give some dimension to things/people I'm shooting. But i don't want to invest or get something that i have to carry around in my pickup truck and always look for a Electricity socket to get it working .

I shoot in night more than i do in day, and w/o any lighting the objects/people tend to look wherry flat.

I am looking for a portable/small and relatively cheep light source.

By portable i mean - something i can put in my backpack, and it should have a feature that i can run it on batteries or other portable energy source.

I'm looking into this right now "z96 LED light" that's 40 pounds +-

HDV-Z96 96 LED Light Fr EOS 5D II 7D 550D Lighting on eBay (end time 19-Nov-10 19:09:38 GMT)


If you have some recommendations please post them .


Edit: It looks like il have to choose mainly from Led lights.

[Galen Rath]

Gustavs, with the LED lights you will just have to buy something and see if it meets your needs as far as brightness, features, weight, & color. I have expensive LED lights (COMER 1800, far reach but heavy) and small cheap LED lights (SIMA, very light weight, not so long of a reach), and they all serve their purpose--, one light won't fit all situations. My latest interest is in this light (should be brighter than a SIMA, but lighter in weight than a COMER, is inexpensive, dimmable, and runs on ordinary batteries), to fill the gap.

Pro 160-LED Video Camcorder E8E for DV Lamp Light +Gift - eBay (item 230528833179 end time Oct-20-10 21:49:30 PDT)

[Mark Von Lanken]

I have the Comer 1800 and really like it. Dimmer, barn doors, diffusion door and they run on cheap Sony style batteries.

[Gustavs Repse]

These days have been bussy.

Thx guys.



Ill check the comer 1800 .

As for Galen's offer, almost took it a week ago, but had to postpone the purchase.

Will give it a second try now.

[Gustavs Repse]

The Comer 1800 costs 200 pounds + :) to much for me.


Bought the Pro160-Led . Thx for advice. Looks like ust what i need.

[Galen Rath]

I got the Pro160 LED today, am very happy with it so far (lighter and more compact than the Comer 1800 so I can use it where I can't use the Comer in some situations) bright, good even spread, completely dimmable, multiple battery options--five, 3 filters included. Noted the filters want to slightly rattle a little when moving around, may want to tape them or something, else I am sure the mic will pick up the noise.

[Tom Hardwick]

I really like my 160LED too. The extra filters are rubbish but the standard diffuser is fine and I have it permanently fixed in place. Such a useful lamp - for stills as well as movies and I have it on the desktop here to go looking in cupboards, in the attic and so on.

[Galen Rath]

Tom, what are you choosing for alternative filters? I agree what they sent look a little suspect.

[Ivan Gomez Villafane]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

Such a useful lamp - for stills as well as movies and I have it on the desktop here to go looking in cupboards, in the attic and so on.

Haha cool... why buy a flashlight when you can simply use your camera light? :D

I'm interested on the 160-link delight as well, it's really cheap. The 3200K filter is not good then? What would you chose to replace it? Can you stack two filters together (diffuser + 3200) or there isn't enough space?

[Tom Hardwick]

My 160 LED lamp differs from my 126 LED lamp in being brighter, a bit dearer but having a proper locking foot and having a really much nicer colour to the lamp. I'm not talking about colour temperature, just colour, and gone is the greenish tinge of the 126 lamp.

I've done a lot of tests and found that the diffusion of having so many LEDs is such that the supplied (colourless) diffuser does very little apart from make the lamp easier to look at (for the talent) and lose you a stop of light. You can also use the lamp in the portrait mode with impunity - it covers a 28mm lens pov pretty well either way up.

The orange and pink supplied filters are just for fun, not for anything serious. OK, you can colour balance your camera with either of them in place, but the background will take on a nasty complimentary colour, and they're best abandoned. Use the lamp indoors unfiltered (or with the colourless diffuser) and have your camera in its artificial light mode - that's my recommendation. It's much easier to warm in post than it is to cool, should you need to.

And no, you can't stack filters on the lamp, though as it runs so cool you could blu-tak them on top of one-another.

tom.

[Galen Rath]

Wow, I learned something important today! Thanks, Tom... "the scales fall from my eyes" sort of thing.

[Ivan Gomez Villafane]

There could be a thank you button besides each post, it would be easier and it wouldn't get in the way of the discussion.

Thank you Tom...

[Galen Rath]

That's a good suggestion, Ivan. I think posters need feedback from readers, for encouragement, without having hundreds of thank you's floating around. I recently saw one post that had no replies since August, but it was a helpful post--as it is that person was probably not encouraged to make another similar post. A "thanks" button would help in those situations.

[Gustavs Repse]

Good Idea. :)

[Chris Hurd]

And a "thank you" to the poster in this thread who brought
the Thanks suggestion to my attention. I'm all for anything
which cuts down on the meta-discourse and yet properly
acknowledges helpful posts. I'll definitely look into it.

Much appreciated,