My view on LED lights

[Nicholas de Kock]

Richard I believe that you designed an incredible product with your LED600's partly because I can afford them. I don't understand why companies like Litepanels are selling LED's for those ridiculous prices nor why anyone would be paying those prices. There is a line between usefulness vs price.

[Richard Andrewski]

Originally Posted by Nicholas de Kock

I don't understand why companies like Litepanels are selling LED's for those ridiculous prices nor why anyone would be paying those prices. There is a line between usefulness vs price.

The feeding frenzy there will end eventually, it always does. When the products arrive that are priced more attractively, if you take an open attitude that you can deal with another company other than "the establishment", then that helps speed the process of lowering prices along. Ironically, the attitude that you only deal with "established" companies helps retard the process and prolong the outlandish pricing. What you say doesn't count, what you actually do, does count. Those companies don't see any need to lower their price so they won't. They have customers at that price. They also have overhead, dealers to protect, etc. Smaller companies will lead the way there because they can. Customers that can buy from smaller companies will provide the missing link in completing the process of lowering prices.

I had some pictures and video commissioned for our website by a photographer/videographer friend in Canada, Robert Ruffo. Here's one taken outside during the day (not in full sunlight, in between a couple of buildings that shows the LED 600 being used as a daylight fill. Completely unretouched. 1/4 minus green on the panel. It shows what they're capable of and how convenient it can be to setup a shot like this. Both with and without the fill pictures included.

LEDs can be strong enough to use in some of these situations. Don't judge by what you can do with on-camera or overpriced "established" lighting. 7200 lux at 2 feet is not bad at all.

[Taky Cheung]

I have high hope for LED lights. Recently I bought some Comer on-camera LED lights at NAB. The outcome is exceptionally good. I'm happy with the result. They are color corrected at 4500K by default with filter color correct to 3200K. Totally useful.

More pics here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photon-ma...ed-lights.html

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Taky Cheung

I have high hope for LED lights. Recently I bought some Comer on-camera LED lights at NAB. The outcome is exceptionally good. I'm happy with the result. They are color corrected at 4500K by default with filter color correct to 3200K. Totally useful.

More pics here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photon-ma...ed-lights.html

Taky, while this light did help the picture, it produced a harsh spot on it.
I don't mean to bash you but I believe that you had the focus expander pulled down, which increases throw, but an unacceptable spotlight effect to this particular image.

I have the light that Comer copied (Sony HVL-LBP), and mainly use it with the diffuser pulled down for a real nice wide spread of light. I have used the focus expander on occasion like when shooting above from a balcony for a bridal party introduction, where I was second camera, and a spotlight effect worked fine for.
The venue was professionally lit, but dark, and the spot effect really helped the overall picture from above.

But for overall use, like what you have shown, I don't like the look, as it's too spotted in nature. I generally never shoot that far away form the action anyway, which is why the diffused light works fine for me in most instances.

I also supplement my light for a dance floor with2-3 remote controlled 75w lights, which add just enough light to give the picture the depth that it needs.

[Taky Cheung]

Michael,

that was intentional. The photographer was asking how bright could that go. So I use the focus spotlight mode to show. During the event, I didn't use the spotlight. The diffuser works great too. I can get some other photos from the photographers to upload later.

I have a feeling that Comer was actually the manufacturer behind building Sony's light. In NAB, comer's booth (a lot smaller) was right next to Sony. Anyway, there're some difference between the two. Sony light is 5600K while Comer is 4500K. Sony max output is 1200lux at 1 meter and Comer is 1800 lux at 1 meter distance. Now this, the sony light can only use Sony brand batteries. The Comer light can use generic brand.

For what I need (event videography), the Comer light works great. The dimmer is very useful too when I interview guests.

I put together a comparison video. You can take a look here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photon-ma...amera+shootout

make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page where the youtube links are the most updated.

Taky

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Taky Cheung

Michael,

That was intentional. The photographer was asking how bright could that go. So I use the focus spotlight mode to show. During the event, I didn't use the spotlight. The diffuser works great too. I can get some other photos from the photographers to upload later.

I have a feeling that Comer was actually the manufacturer behind building Sony's light. In NAB, comer's booth (a lot smaller) was right next to Sony. Anyway, there're some difference between the two. Sony light is 5600K while Comer is 4500K. Sony max output is 1200lux at 1 meter and Comer is 1800 lux at 1 meter distance. Now this, the sony light can only use Sony brand batteries. The Comer light can use generic brand.

For what I need (event videography), the Comer light works great. The dimmer is very useful too when I interview guests.

I put together a comparison video. You can take a look here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photon-ma...amera+shootout

make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page where the youtube links are the most updated.

Taky

Taky, I saw them when you originally posted them.
Good to know about the photographer asking you to see the brightness and you not really using it. From your other posts on this light, I didn't know that this was the situation as it was never mentioned.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against this light, and always applaud inexpensive versions of another product, especially when they have some slight improvements on them. I do mainly event work myself as well.

I like the fact that the light takes Sony and non-Sony batteries, as the Sony proprietary chip things always got my undies in a bunch. The new Sony light now comes with a 3200k adapter, but the cost is over $250 more than the Comer. No second guessing on my part of which I would get in the future.

I wasn't sure about the 3200k color balance gel being mounted on the diffuser itself and not being removable. But in most cases I would be using the diffuser indoors and not outdoors, so this makes sense to me. But it would be nice if Comer would have left the diffuser frosted and gave you the 3200k gel and adapter for it.

I currently modded my HVL light to take a 3200k gel for indoor use.

But like was already mentioned the light output gets cut when applied.

I have said this before that Zylight has the best LED option out there, but I can get 2-3 Comer lights for the cost of 1 Zylight. Also the Zylight eats batteries for lunch.

[Max Allen]

Originally Posted by Michael Liebergot

I also supplement my light for a dance floor with2-3 remote controlled 75w lights, which add just enough light to give the picture the depth that it needs.

Hi Michael,

I was curious which remote and lights you use for that application if you wouldn't mind sharing. Do you typically use stands or something else to rig? Ever get objections from anyone to setup the lights?

Thanks

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Max Allen

Hi Michael,

I was curious which remote and lights you use for that application if you wouldn't mind sharing. Do you typically use stands or something else to rig? Ever get objections from anyone to setup the lights?

Thanks

This is what I built. It from a company call Reception Light (The Wireless Wedding Reception Video Light - HOME)

I built my own light kit by using these parts.
Reception Light Kit

But I ordered the remote control units from Reception Light.

Instead of he small battery that Reception Light uses, I decided to use large Becor battery belts, which do two things. One they power the lights 75w bulbs at full blast for 4-5 hours. and Two, they add nice weight to the bottom of the light stand, which keeps the stands from getting knocked over, but are still light enough to move somewhere else when needed.

For my setup, I place two light setups on both sides of the dance floor, which usually usually means right next to both PA stacks by the DJ or band. I turn them on, by remote just before the intros, and turn them off during dinner, then back n for the remainder of the night.

You can see an example of how they look on my website in my Gallery (Video Gallery - LVProductions) simply click n the second clip "Caroah and Brandon" to view the trailer and how footage looks with 2 lights being used. In this example they were on opposite corners of the floor.

[Max Allen]

Well that's certainly a better look in the dance segments compared to the on-camera light newsy look. Battery power definitely better than AC for social events. Surprised to see someone put together a kit like that. What's the range on these remotes? Looks like RF. Do they need line of sight? I have some lowel pro-lights at 125w that I wonder if I could convert into such a kit. Thanks for the info!

[Nino Giannotti]

Out of all the good replies I’m still waiting to see the most important one, that’s about the quality of light. A successful career in this business will not depend on what’s happening outside the picture but within. No career will be made with the need to save batteries or by the speed and convenience of setting up lights. A successful career is not determined by the ability to get enough light to obtain an acceptable exposure. Success comes from the quality of light not from the quantity. And there’s no way on earth that a light with a 10 or 12” surface can provide us with any sort of quality. This is why anytime you see work done with Litepanels they have clusters of four to nine lights to form one large surface. Basically that’s one 2-foot square light (4 lights) that costs $12,000 or a 3-foot square light (9 lights) costs $27,000. By comparison I can shine a 1K Arri open face thru a 6x6 diffusion screen for less than $1,000 and get infinite better quality of light, and if I need more light I shine 2 or 3 1K Arri open face lights at about $400 per light.

The big difference from conventional lighting manufacturers like Photoflex, Lowel, Chimera, etc. is that these companies were created by photographers for photographers. When at NAB you stop at any of these booths we talk photography, not engineering or the science and the physic of lighting. They listen to my needs and act. How they do it is not my concern. If it works I test it, buy it and endorse it.

Then there are the LED sales people at NAB, some 20sh kid just out of college or an engineer telling me what MY quality of light should be. The truth is that I have yet to see any quality work from the field done with LED lights. I don’t mean manufacturers created work; I mean bread and butter work crated by my peers day in and day out. This is the marketing areas that manufacturers of LED lights should concentrate, not fabricated but real work by real day to day professional, only then will the product have some sort of credibility.

Having said all these I’m shopping around for two LED lights because I can see some usefulness in them, also because if it’s new I must have it. The largest that I can find and priced to make sense is by the Prompter People, but they been backordered for months so I don’t think they are ready for market yet. You can be sure that once I get my hands on those I will test the different lights against each other and report the finding.

So unlike those salesmen at NAB tried to tell me, LED is an addition not a substitution. The trade off is lower quality for convenience, and that’s fully acceptable because on occasions convenience is more……convenient?

[Bill Pryor]

I've had three of the LED lights from The Prompter People (flolight.com) for a couple of years and shoot lots of interviews with them, which is why I bought them. There's no single type of light good for everything. I routinely use open face and fresnel quartz lights, the LEDs, a softbox with six 85 watt fluorescent lamps, and rent HMIs when they're required. The only comparison that's valid, i think, for LEDs is to compare them with equivalent fluorescents. You'll find that a 2-bulb fluorescent such as a Lowel Caselight 2 is broader and softer than an equivalent LED, like the Flolight 500LED. However, the LED has just a bit more throw. The fluorescent can be used is a nice soft key in very close, say around 5-10 feet away from the subject, but the LED in that close must be diffused, unless you're in a situation with lots of ambient light.

The big advantages of fluorescent and LED lights is they run cool and pull small amounts of power. They can also be run effectively off batteries. But, there are situations where fresnels are better, situations where open face tungstens are better, situations where HMIs are better, and there are situations where fluorescents are better than LEDs, and vice versa. It's futile to try to talk about one type of light taking over for others, it won't happen...you need the right light for the situation at hand.

[Max Allen]

Don't forget color rendition! The highest quality artificial light can not be attained with an LED no matter how big the light source, unless an LED manufacturer, not a lighting manufacturer, can recreate the laws of LED design and performance from the ground up. The spectrum of a white LED is tight and non-continuous with spikes, nowhere near the broader continuous spectrum of HMI and tungsten. To approach that, a huge number of multicolored LEDs would have to be used. This is costly to manufacture. RGB LEDs are an alternative but at a cost of increasing the frequency of spikes. Fluorescents like LEDs also are not full spectrum and filtering these lights for correction does not fill the gaps in the spectrum. With flourescents everyone has been wowed by light quality, which has overshadowed color rendition ability. The magic of LEDs is the size, power, heat and wow factor. Still if I had to build any LED package for a feature with ample budget it would be with the Arri system. Their understanding of the issues is at a higher level I find than the rest of the industry. Tunable white, one shadow, stabilizing algorithm, standardized gel dial in... and a CRI close to 100... this is the system that we will see break the barrier of LED usage into high level productions.

[Max Allen]

Also, do I even need to say how yes expensive the Arri will be. The amount of engineering that goes into an LED instrument on that level is a world apart from what goes into a tungsten 300/600/1000. I don't enjoy paying through the nose for overpriced gear as the next guy but I would think that's why an Arri HMI pocketpar 200 kit is $6000 for one light because of the engineering it took to let you carry an HMI in a little case and plug it into AC.

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Max Allen

Well that's certainly a better look in the dance segments compared to the on-camera light newsy look. Battery power definitely better than AC for social events. Surprised to see someone put together a kit like that. What's the range on these remotes? Looks like RF. Do they need line of sight? I have some lowel pro-lights at 125w that I wonder if I could convert into such a kit. Thanks for the info!

The remotes don't need line of sight to work. I have turned on/off the lights while in another room. Not sure about the range though.

The remotes should work with your Lowel lights, as the remote control pack simply is connected between the battery and the light itself. I don't know about 125w for a social event though.

I find that 50-75w is enough to give ample light, which enables me to shoot at around 6-9db with my FX1's. This is enough to give light to the dance floor and not alter the mood of the room, or interfere with the DJs' light show.

The goal of this type of lighting is to give lift to the overall image, so you get nice backlight as well as foreground light. This gives the image a nice depth of field that doesn't scream deer in the headlights.

You can give it a try, but it might be overkill for a social event. The setup is very easy to put together and the only real key is the remote control. It only takes me 5-10 minutes to setup.
Any light it that runs on DC battery pack power should work. But unfortunately my Sony HVL-LBP light couldn't work, since the battery is attached to the light, there wasn't a way to wire the light to take the remote.

[Barry J. Weckesser]

Originally Posted by Michael Liebergot

Taky, I saw them when you originally posted them.
Good to know about the photographer asking you to see the brightness and you not really using it. From your other posts on this light, I didn't know that this was the situation as it was never mentioned.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against this light, and always applaud inexpensive versions of another product, especially when they have some slight improvements on them. I do mainly event work myself as well.

I like the fact that the light takes Sony and non-Sony batteries, as the Sony proprietary chip things always got my undies in a bunch. The new Sony light now comes with a 3200k adapter, but the cost is over $250 more than the Comer. No second guessing on my part of which I would get in the future.

I wasn't sure about the 3200k color balance gel being mounted on the diffuser itself and not being removable. But in most cases I would be using the diffuser indoors and not outdoors, so this makes sense to me. But it would be nice if Comer would have left the diffuser frosted and gave you the 3200k gel and adapter for it.

I currently modded my HVL light to take a 3200k gel for indoor use.

But like was already mentioned the light output gets cut when applied.

I have said this before that Zylight has the best LED option out there, but I can get 2-3 Comer lights for the cost of 1 Zylight. Also the Zylight eats batteries for lunch.

Michael - I just got my Comer 1800 from Taky today and it is certainly more than a "slight improvement" - the light output compared with the Sony is incredible. I just got through with my own test of the Sony HVL-LBP against the Comer LBPS 1800 and there is no contest. I used the Sony PMW-EX1 with settings of 4200 for white balance, F 1.9 and -3db Gain, 1/60 shutter in a small room with a bookcase in the corner and white shutters on a window to the side of that and tested the lights 6' and 9' from the corner (no other lights in room and window was shuttered - i.e. total darkness) - the difference between the two lights is literally night and day (pun intended). In addition to light output (I really didn't totally believe Comer's photometric charts before - that has changed), there is a large difference with the "spot" lens - i.e. much larger spot than the Sony and of course a lot brighter (I was getting a lot of zebras off the white shutters - my zebra is set at 90). When using the 3200 gel diffuser the light output goes down but is still excellent and if one uses the diffuser and the spot lens at the same time the "spot" becomes more of a flood and the light output is almost up there with the output from the non-diffused, non-"spotted" light. I also like the 4500K color of the Comer compared with the Sony 5500K. With mixed indoor lighting with Tungsten as well as light from windows - this should fill the bill quite nicely. I have done similar tests with the Litepanels Mini and the new Litepanels MicroPro and the Comer totally blows them out of the water.

By the way - I don't think this is a copy of the Sony - every little detail down to the smallest screw is the same as the Sony except for the on/off switch and LED readout of the battery charge level. I can only assume that Comer is the original manufacturer of the Sony light and have finally decided to "build a better mousetrap" on their own.

IMHO, even if this were the same price or even a bit more expensive than the Sony, I still think it would be a better deal.