Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced LED movie light. Somebody mentioned a 160 Led product at a very cheap price but I can't remember who.
Yes, I've tested it and it's not good.
I'm busily developing a test metric for TV luminaires, and this one scores about 45 on a scale of 0~100. 100 is perfect, 0 is black. 90+ is so good you'd not bother to colour-correct in post. 75~90 is ok, but you'd want to do some colour correction, and you'd not manage to get it all right. 50~75 is mediocre, you'd manage to do some correction but not enough for a professional finish. below 50 is poor, you'd not manage to correct more than about one or two colours in a shot.
This is aimed at broadcast/professional use, where you'd expect to be able to colour match shots, in this case with different luminaires. If you're happy to shoot exclusively with this luminaire and accept the results, so be-it, but you'll get pretty nasty-looking reds and yellows.
I've yet to see any light panel using LEDs which returns a good score, except the Gekko Kelvin Lite and ARRI panels.
Use stuff like this for fill and effects, but not for key lighting.
How about the Rotolight. Not the brightest but the matched LEDs and Lee filters give fairly consistent colour temperatures. Should be good for close-in spot and infill.
Steve
Rotolight are IMO excellent lights, I have 2. They run for about 4 hours on 3 AA batteries. The filter set is very usefull, as are the colour filters. It can be mounted over the foam mic shield, or on to the camera shoe, with the optional Rotolight mount.
The cheap Chinese 112 LEND brick scores 46, Rotollight scores 36. I have 2 Rotolights but use them only for filling. The colouring from both is quite unnatural, reds and yellows are undersaturated and shifted a lot in hue, greens are hue shifted but in the other direction, very hard to correct.
I have a couple of these from this seller.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280694986762
They're cheap, cheerful,and the bracket assembly's badly made and the screws keep falling out. I love the fact they work with my NP-F9XX batteries (I only use the ones who've lost their InfoLithium minds!).
I have used them only for fills and kickers and odd things that needed lightening up, and haven't noticed anything odd about the colours they produce. But then I'm not producing broadcast work, and I haven't measured their spectrum. All I'm saying is that for non-critical work they do the job nicely.
Yes, I've tested it and it's not good.
But may I gently say that at the price and vs the competition it's spectacularly good. It's not the lamp for you if absolute colour accuracy and fidelity is high on your list, but at £42 delivered to your door it beats my old Sony 20DW2 hands down, and for a lot of very good reasons.
This lamp is a bargain. I keep it permanently on my desktop here for immediate use in the garage or attic, looking for the right cable on my hat-stand, for lighting anything and everything. It’s far too useful to leave in the camera bag and no home should be without one, and as such it gets the Tom Hardwick seal of approval. It’s a shame Canon batteries are not catered for, but running it on 6 rechargeable AA cells is an excellent option.
I liked:
1) The price. It’s £143 less than a certain Malvern dealer is charging for the same thing. It’s £198 cheaper than the Swit S-2000 I tested June 2009 and it’s a whopping £407 less than Sony’s 10 LED HVL-LBPA. These are eye-popping figures.
2) The evenness of light, with or without the diffuser.
3) The fact that the battery is integral – so no dangling wires to get in the way
4) The low power consumption, the cool running, the indestructibility of lamps with no delicate, vulnerable filaments
5) The overall size and weight.
6) The fact that you can power it with many different types of batteries.
I didn’t like
1) The fact that the filters / diffusers tend to slip out if the lamp is held upside down
2) The feeble adjustable foot. However much you tighten it, the lamp nods its head.
3) The difficulty of inserting the Sony battery
4) The colour temperature – it’s not as nice as over-run halogens in my view.
tom.
Tom. To which LED video light are you refering. I seem to recall something about a 160 LED light from amazon for less than £40 but I can't remember which one it was. Roy
The cheap Chinese 112 LEND brick scores 46, Rotollight scores 36. I have 2 Rotolights but use them only for filling. The colouring from both is quite unnatural, reds and yellows are undersaturated and shifted a lot in hue, greens are hue shifted but in the other direction, very hard to correct.
Are yours the latest model Alan ? I have an original and 2 of the second generation Rotolights. The latest are much brighter, completely different LEDs from the original model, and give very accurate results, even in auto WB
Rotolight - OK but not very sturdy internally. When carrying the camera (with the Rotolight in place) through the backstage area of the theatre at Bognor Regis to do cast interviews, it slipped off and several battery mountings broke.
Ray
Roy: 160LED Chinese light.
I've just bought the YN 160 (Yongnuo) Pro LED.
Might try it some stage at my wedding tomorrow.
The 160 LED version uses the same LEDs as the 112. I've tested both.
Like I said earlier on, my testing is aimed at revealing problems which will bedevil professional and broadcast shooting, when colour-matching is vital. For that market, there's no cheap lighting which works well. Like I also said, they're all fine for fill, effects, kicks and so on. The problems come when you rely on them for key lighting, and then want to colour-match shots. You'll find you can't do it.
Hi
There are two (at least) different manufacturers making 160 LEDs in China. The lamps give somewhat different outputs - according to YouTube test movies.
I bought the YN160 which is about 20% more powerful (+/-dimmer buttons) than the other Chinese one (CN-160) (which has a rotary knob dimmer switch).
Its output is very cold, and the supplied orange filter is very warm, so it needs a quarter tungsten gel to get an acceptable balance in mixed light situations.
The Yongnuo gives out a lot of light for its size/weight, an is an excellent unit if you are travelling on your own with all the kit. ;)
The ones I tested had no name or type number on them, presumably prototypes.
Just bear in mind that Stokes Law forbids a white LED with a reasonably smooth spectral output. What you get is a blue LED, with a layer of orange-yellow phosphor. The 'white' is the balance of these as two illuminants. But there's a hole in the spectrum at cyan, because Stokes Law says that a phosphor can't emit light in the same spectral band as the source that's pumping it. KinoFlo tubes have two phosphors, the balance of them produces a smoother spectral output, and they're pumped by different energy lines in the mercury vapour discharge. That's why they work and why they're good at it.
Mine's the CN160, rotary dimmer, diffuser, orange and pink filters supplied. The orange is ghastly, but I use the pink all the time and tweak colours in post if needs be. The foot's been improved from the 126LED version, and stays where it's tightened. My tests in a completely dark room show the coverage with and without the diffuser is almost identical, but the diffused panel is nicer for wedding guests to look at.
I note Alan's techie concerns but totally support Tom, in the right useage they are OK.
I have the same model as Tom (bought following his test of said device) and used it at a few weddings and I had no problem tweaking the colours in either Edius or CS5.5.
At the end of the day the customers we delighted with the end results and the cash saved over more expensive units is well worth the purchase for me and the work I use them for.