Microbeam early impressions

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Charles Hurley]

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

[Charles Hurley]

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Michael Kirinovic]

Found this link with a different view

Prompter People, Inc MicroBeam 128 LED

[Steve Sobodos]

Originally Posted by Michael Kirinovic

Found this link with a different view

Prompter People, Inc MicroBeam 128 LED

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

[Steve Sobodos]

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Steve Sobodos]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Josh Tran]

Originally Posted by Steve Berg

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Steve Sobodos]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

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
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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Steve Berg]

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