Led flashlights as a cheap alternative to expensive LED panels/fresnels?

P

PeterR

New member
I was researching LED fresnel lights as a hard light source option when I came across an article about using LED flashlights for filming. They're quite cheap, give off lots of light, small, strong, and are wireless/battery powered. For

For example, this one has 6500 lumens, it's only $200, it's the size of a soda can, it's waterproof and wireless (battery operated): http://www.amazon.com/ThruNite-TN36-CW-Flashlight-Batteries/dp/B00QILPHCG/?tag=reactual-20

What's not to like here? I mean why spend a fortune on led fresnels when you have these options?
 
There is no mention of the CRI and the colour temperature is cool white which may not be the same from light to light. It may not be full spectrum response. These are made for brightness to power ratio as the primary concern whereas lights for cinematography are more concerned with light quality and consistency. The colour temperature may shift at different power settings. That said cheap LEDs are not very good either so it may well be usable(ish).

It also doesn't say 6500 lumens where. What is it at 1in? 3ft? 6ft? 9ft? 12ft? LED falls off a lot quicker than other light sources.

As important (perhaps more important IMHO) than the light quality are the light control features that are missing. The Fresnel lens itself for a start which grants greater directionality of the light (resulting is a harder and more controllable source) as well as focus control and barn doors for shaping. Possibly a dimmer.
 
PeterR said:
I was researching LED fresnel lights as a hard light source option when I came across an article about using LED flashlights for filming. They're quite cheap, give off lots of light, small, strong, and are wireless/battery powered. For

For example, this one has 6500 lumens, it's only $200, it's the size of a soda can, it's waterproof and wireless (battery operated): http://www.amazon.com/ThruNite-TN36-CW-Flashlight-Batteries/dp/B00QILPHCG/?tag=reactual-20

What's not to like here? I mean why spend a fortune on led fresnels when you have these options?
Click to expand...

I'm a wee bit frugal, so I don't consider a $200 flashlight "quite cheap". But let's play this game. Key, fill, backlight, background light. That's 4 flashlights for a total of $800. And you are still going to need light stands and some way to mount these flashlights to the stands. In my book that $800 would buy some nice controllable used lighting instruments ready to be mounted to your stands.
 
$800 would buy some cheap be workable halogen with stands, might only get three lights for that price, but might get 4.
 
They can work as backlights and for special effects. I had a long conversation about this with a friend of mine about the difference between brightness and intensity: they're intense, they're not bright. They're only a few watts - or at most a few tens of watts - each. Those watts tend to come out in a very defined beam, which subjectively looks dazzling, but there's not really much there.

That's not to say they aren't useful, especally for tabletops and the like. I shot this using mainly flashlights and some (very) cheap LED for the toplight, taking advantage of the coloured LED driver modules for the flashlights. The actual colour quality of white-emitting LED flashlights ranges from terrible to awful via bad and nasty, generally in some sort of shade of cyan, but hey, sometimes that's what you're after.

People do make high intensity discharge flashlights in the 35-watt range, too.

P
 
Very nice work Phil. Did you use a lazy susan or a motorized turntable?

Phil Rhodes said:
They can work as backlights and for special effects. I had a long conversation about this with a friend of mine about the difference between brightness and intensity: they're intense, they're not bright. They're only a few watts - or at most a few tens of watts - each. Those watts tend to come out in a very defined beam, which subjectively looks dazzling, but there's not really much there.

That's not to say they aren't useful, especally for tabletops and the like. I shot this using mainly flashlights and some (very) cheap LED for the toplight, taking advantage of the coloured LED driver modules for the flashlights. The actual colour quality of white-emitting LED flashlights ranges from terrible to awful via bad and nasty, generally in some sort of shade of cyan, but hey, sometimes that's what you're after.

People do make high intensity discharge flashlights in the 35-watt range, too.

P
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top