New Coollights LED600 Arrived Today

[Ned Soltz]

Really looks great, Bill.

I love these lights.

Ned

[Eric Stemen]

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
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
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
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
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
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.

[Markus Bo]

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

[Richard Andrewski]

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.

[Markus Bo]

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

[Andrew Dean]

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).

[Richard Andrewski]

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.

[Dean Sensui]

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.

[Dan Brockett]

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

[Dean Sensui]

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.

[Richard Andrewski]

I too will be interested to hear how it does outdoors and whether you needed the minus green or not. Seems that Stewart, the guy that started this thread, in his review was using them outdoors and it seemed he didn't use the minus green. Normally for best results you would need to because daylight is full spectrum of course and the LEDs aren't.

[Jaadgy Akanni]

Hi Richard. How long does it take for an order placed today to get to New York City? I need some lights for this weekend. Thank you

[Richard Andrewski]

Hi Jaadgy,

Fedex Ground (the most commonly chosen method) is usually about 5 days or so to NYC from Reno, NV where we ship from. Of course faster methods are available but can get pretty high for the larger package sizes. You can go on our website and go through the checkout up to payment and you should see the shipping options and corresponding costs for each one.

[Dean Sensui]

Here's a frame grab from the cooking demo.

The room had a fair amount of daylight coming in through huge picture windows behind the camera. All indirect sunlight.

The Cool Lights were used to provide some "direction" to the lighting, placed on either side of the camera with 1/2 minus green gel.

This shot was color-corrected with Apple's Color. Some slight gradient added to the top and side margins to draw attention toward the center of the shot.

BTW: even though the LED lights are missing a lot of the spectrum with wavelengths longer than 600 nm, they still looked good to me. No weird highlights or shadows. And after we worked this site for four hours, we could pack up the lights right away without having to wait for them to cool off!

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attachmen...1&d=1236670206

[Richard Andrewski]

Are you in front of the camera or behind it Dean?