Turn your old "hot light" Fresnel into a "cool" LED with Visionsmith ReLamp

[Zach Love]

Just saw Eric Naso's blog about taking out a halogen bulb from a classic Arri fresnel and upgrading it to a LED fresnel.

Bringing New Life To My ARRI 650 With LED ReLamp From VisionSmith. |

Direct link to manufacturer ReLamp System - Visionsmith

They're not cheap ($600), but look really cool. Has anyone seen these in action at a trade show? Or purchased some for their own use?

[Josh Bass]

I wonder in terms of output how these compare to some of the newer (and cheaper) LED fresnels there are constantly coming out? Which is the better deal in terms of price, output, CRI, etc.?

[Dan Brockett]

I've been contemplating these for months. There are some YouTube test videos that suggest that the Relamps DO NOT match the output levels of the original tungsten bulbs. But the test looks pretty informal and could even been performed with flawed methodology. I share you same thoughts too about how my Arri 650s with Relamps compare to something like Aputure COB 120D or the Nanguang CN-60F as far as weight, beam quality, versatility, etc.

It's a tough call, I still love my Arri lights but I rarely use them anymore, other than as an occasional hair or rim light as so much of my shooting is with LED now. It would be nice to put them back into rotation. The Relamps do allow dimming with external dimmers, you have to remove the reflector mirror from the Arri's interior in order to fit the Relamp. I hate to say this, but unless Visionsmith paid a lot of money for bulletproof patent with the attorneys to file against them selling in the U.S., I foresee Chinese knock offs of these soon at 1/2 or 1/3 of the price. Such a great idea but I think Visionsmith has priced their product too high to compete in the marketplace except perhaps with rental houses who own a lot of Arri tungsten instruments or Arri die hards. To relamp my Arri kit alone would cost almost $2,000.00, not sure if that is a good value versus spending the same $2,000.00 on more sizes of new LED fresnels and panels?

[Zach Love]

I'm sharing the same thoughts of Dan. The price of LED lights is getting cheaper year over year, I'm anticipating similar products in a year or two for much less.

[Rainer Listing]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

I foresee Chinese knock offs of these soon at 1/2 or 1/3 of the price.

I foresee even less. There's very little rewiring, and if you can buy a whole 50W LED worklight for $5 (e.g. https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...533059461.html) even $200 seems excessive. It could be a pretty easy DIY job -- A while ago I replaced the tungsten bulb in an Arri knockoff with a 30W LED overhead, intending just to use it as a cool (in the sense of impressing customers) office light, but works pretty well as a kick. Just remove the tungsten bulb and reflector (which you have to do anyway for the ReLamp), remove the tungsten socket, connect the wires and attach the LED overhead with screws to the reflector holder: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1490138197

[Dan Brockett]

I spoke with Erik Naso and he listed FC references and comparison between an Arri 650 with the tungsten bulb and the VisionSmith Relamp. There is a significant loss of power since you have to remove the reflector to fit in the Relamp. With LED Fresnels like the Nanguang CN-60f available for around $400.00 with significantly greater output, I would have a hard time justifying $600.00 to relamp each of my Arri 650s.

I feel that the Arri will be built better, will probably last longer and may have a slightly better fresnel lens, but greater power at 1/3 less money overrides those concerns. Realistically, the days of needing and expecting your lights to last 20 years like our Arris have is done. The technology is changing almost weekly so if you can get a solid three or four years out of Nanguang for $400.00, there will be something probably a lot better and more powerful hitting the market in a year or two.

Crazy times that the lighting paradigm has not become like the camera paradigm. New stuff available all of the time that is better, cheaper, lighter and more powerful.

[Josh Bass]

A more general question. . .with many of these lights being daylight only, or having cheaper versions that are daylight only. . .how much of a dealbreaker is that?

I mean, obviously bi-color/adjustable color is preferable because, duh, versatility, but in folks' experience, in everyday situations/shoots, how tough/time consuming is it, really, to put in a tungsten or other filter if necessary? And that's only if you're having to match to something else. . .in many situations you could go all daylight and WB to daylight so it's all good.

[Andrew Dean]

I'll weigh in on this. I'm a professional "indy" gaffer (I make my living lighting for guerilla/indy projects) which means i do 2-5 shoots a week in every lighting situation imaginable. (Today I lit a shaving gel commercial with professional rugby players in a high school locker room...)

I'll go on record as saying that I think bi-color is horrible. A bi-color fixture is 1/2 power at daylight and tungsten, and a horrible mush of colors with both colors on. The myth is that it is "super fast" to "dial in an exact match", but that's a load of scat for the following reasons:

1. Over the last 7 years I've had exactly ONE setting where we had an honest to god tungsten bulb. *EVERY* other "tungsten" bulb was an fluoro/led trying to approximate tungsten and failing. If you shoot with consumer fluoro/led without replacing them, then you are happy with low frequency flicker and disgusting CRI often times as low as 80. Why the hell would you choose a video light with half power because it makes it easier to use horrible gappy lights along with it? That's like buying a shotgun mic with terrible range because it enables you to use hear fridge and a/c hums extra clearly.

2. gels are not hard. you need 4 sheets of plastic. 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and full cto. Anybody who claims to be able to need more control than that is blowing smoke because of #1. All but 2 settings on a bicolor is a compromise and will *never* match perfectly with the weird gappy consumer lamp. It takes all of 2 seconds to clip a gel onto an led and 9/10 times the first one you think might be the amount of correction you need is exactly right.

3. The time you need tungsten is when you have a tungsten lighting setup. The time you need daylight is when you have sunlight in frame. In my experience, the sun is way WAY more commonly an issue and is way WAY brighter. A daylight led gelled orange is brighter than a bicolor turned to tungsten only, and a daylight led not gelled at all gives you TWICE the power with which to fight the brightness of the sun.

I constantly crave more daylight power. I never ever ever would be willing to trade half of that power in exchange for replacing my gel with a knob or for the ability to tweak my color to sorta match a horrible consumer light.

That's my 3c. If you live in a timewarp where real tungsten bulbs are in play, then my advice may not apply.

[Jim Feeley]

Andrew, I would have agreed with you a few years ago and I guess agree now...in some cases. Note that I'm neither a DP nor a gaffer, but some good DPs & gaffers that I regularly work with do use and like the Litepanels Astra Bi-Color LED light. Also note that I tend to work in documentary, corporate, and some commercial spots. We don't always have as much control over lighting conditions as we presumably would (like to have :-) ) in narrative stuff. Also, for me, a big job would usually be working out of a Sprinter grip truck... Just for yucks, often this one:
SPRINTER - Little Giant Lighting & Grip

So ANYWAY, the older Litepanels (and many current lower-cost) bi-color LEDs really were a bad compromise: Kinda weak output of both daylight and tungsten(ish). But the current Litepanels Astra bi-color is pretty nice; decent output and rendition, seems like you lose less than a stop compared to a just-daylight Astra (this is anecdotal scuttlebutt and might be off), and basically put out enough light to be useful in some situations. Interviews, commercials/spots shot in offices, homes, warehouses, etc where we're not allowed, don't want to, or don't have time to change bulbs in the house/office/etc...

And there is still some tungsten love in my circles at least. 3200K hasn't completely gone away for my world. The Astras bi-color are handy lights...but there're not all we use of course.

But bottom line: If you're thinking of getting a bi-color light, think how often you'd want/need tungsten or mixed K levels, and if the light you're considering has enough daylight output compared to a daylight-only version of the same light.

[Charles Papert]

Andrew, I may be mis-interpreting your post but it seems like you are suggesting that the reason for bi-color is to (attempt) to match other sources. For me it is more about the creative choice of how I opt to "land" any given source into a setup; along with size, angle, intensity and softness I will consider color temperature/cast. Certainly this can be achieved with gel, and in many instances I still use it (with any legacy unit that has a fixed color temp, such as tungsten, HMI and flo--yes, I'm still in a "time warp" I guess). But I do find the bicolor application to be much faster, and in my world, those seconds count. This becomes that much more relevant when the face of the instrument is inaccessible behind a control grid, or the unit is up in the air. In a DMX situation, it's a massive time savings to be able to adjust the color temp remotely.

Like any instrument, I'll select a head that is more powerful than my intended use for a given shot, so for a bicolor unit I'll think of it in terms of its output at the halfway position as the maximum, so no stress there.

Below is an example of the creative choice of color temp vs simply matching existing units--we shot this on stage, so lit from scratch, with at least three different color temps represented.

[Paul R Johnson]

It's simply far too expensive to make much of an impact, with entire LED Fresnels starting to creep in at less than this. I saw some at one of the UK shows and they're neat, well built and impressive - but my experience of LED so far is that reliability is far less than the 50,000 hours everyone was throwing around.

[Silas Barker]

Any word on the ARRI relamps?

Interested in them but I don't see much for reviews or anything or reliability of them. Like to see links to comparable LED Fresnels if anyone has any.

[Paul R Johnson]

and the price is STILL way too high. for $600 you could buy many complete LED fixtures, and the value of a second hand Arri 650 has dropped to less than the cost of one of these re-lamps. Isn't this like offering cheap new engines for cars, when the car is worth less than the new engine?

They also produce a totally different light from the tungsten lamp with the reflector - which blends well, has excellent beam edge softness and a 'nice' soft light. These new alternatives totally change the performance of what was an excellent tungsten source into an average LED one.