LEDs and Brightness

[Paul R Johnson]

Over the summer I've been getting rid of my tungsten lighting and moving to new LED kit and I'm starting to notice a few trends. We do lots of sound, lighting and video work pre-covid, so the store is full of unused LED events and theatre kit so it was comparatively easy to swap out the 650 and 1.2K Arris, the Redheads and Blondes for static and moving head LED kit. The RGBW heads matched the light output of the 1.2K Fresnels quite well, and on the white LEDs weren't as bad as I thought, CRI wise - a little spiky, but not a problem. The big problem was the damn fans - making them very difficult to use with lavs on the talent. Happy with the image quality of these (not as nice light as the Arri's, but good enough) - I bought some panels and just ordered a couple of the 55W Fresnel kits described here in another topic. The panels have arrived (70W ones) and the image quality is fine. I'm just surprised by the new light levels. It's happened to me before. My first experience of studio cameras was wrangling cables for LDK-5 Philips cameras in the 80s. Studio levels then were pretty bright to get the lenses stopped down to give decent DoF. eyeball burning if you looked at a 5 or 10K Fresnel. Since the 2000's we discovered we needed far less so my biggest Fresnels were 2K, and I've still got a few, but 1.2K seems to be the most useful size, but the 650W versions aren't really much dimmer. Now we've got even dimmer than that. My office looks out into the studio area, and the TV lights are not much different illuminance wise to the fluorescent work lights - which have two 65W tubes. The new lights I have ordered are 55W, so I'm expecting a good match with the 70W panels - but they're not really going to be bright.

Have we gone too low in level now?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Those 55w Boltzen I would consider baby lights and not very bright. Sure in a dark room they will be blindingly bright. But have day light coming in through a window, office ceiling lights that's can't be turned off, need to move the light 10+ feet away, or put any sort of diffusion, they're weak.

I got a Godox 150 that's 3x as bright but put on a deep parabolic and a gel it and it's ok to light one person close up.

[Paul R Johnson]

I just liked the small form factor and that swung me - I guess time will prove the sense of my choice! I suspect you're probably right Pete.

[Josh Bass]

Here in Houston Texas USA litepanels Astras are king for LEDs

[Paul R Johnson]

I'm pretty impressed with those lights - They're ideal for what I want, and they're blending well with the LED panels. They're not quite the same colour temp, but close enough and the flood/spot range is better than I hoped. I'm glad I bought them.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

I'm pretty impressed with those lights - They're ideal for what I want, and they're blending well with the LED panels. They're not quite the same colour temp, but close enough and the flood/spot range is better than I hoped. I'm glad I bought them.

Glad they worked out they're very useful.
I just used one for an interview the other day. After saying they weren't bright enough, I used it as a hair light and it was too bright. I had to set to 15% with the diffuser disc, and parchment paper clipped to the barn doors. But this was a dark room scenario with no external light.