Litepanels on Extreme Home Makeover Show

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
The hit ABC show Extreme Makeover Home Edition has been here in Philly for the last week ripping down a house and building up another house in 5 days. Anyway there shooters were using the Litepanel LED lights on their cameras. Since they were shooting outdoors there was no need to have them on but I was curious to see how they would look turned on....Anybody on here have some or used them before? I noticed that have a SPOT and Fill. Which is the better choice? I would probably just use it for indoor sit down interviews.

I found this short demo video showcasing the lights online:

http://www.dvcreators.net/products/litepanel_movieframe.htm
 
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Shooter,

I just finished up shooting a doc in San Francisco with a Spot Litepanels. "Whoa", is all I can say. We powered it by using our camera batteries, and used it on and off camera. It was clamped to all sorts of stuff-- from mic stands to bed frames.

In the artists studio, we used it for a rim/ hair light a lot.

-a
 
Thats cool...I know they are pricey but I think overall its a good purchase...I am gonna go ahead and get one for now and maybe more later on. Your SPOT had a dimmer on it too right?
 
They all have built in dimmers.

Before the product was released one of their peeps use to visit me with their prototypes at Moviola. We lent them a variety of mounts so they could figure out the best solutions for their system.

When I was at Wexler I think I ordered about 40-50 2x light kits (1x spot, 1x flood). Even though it's a very well made product, there's a lot of parts, and it you treat them really poorly you can break 'em. People like Extreme Home, Fear Factor and Rockstar kept losing parts and destroying units- it seemed like it happened every day.

I.
 
http://www.litepanels.com/

from their web: "The compact Litepanels Mini fits easily on a camera, a stand, or elsewhere. Fully flicker-free, this unit offers output that is 3 times more efficient than a conventional tungsten camera light! Plus it's heat-free, and infinitely dimmable from 0 to 100%, with virtually no shift in color. Litepanels Mini comes in single or dual kits, packaged with virtually everything you will need. Litepanels Mini is available in 3200°K & 5600°K Spot or Flood version.The Mini Flood provides a 50 degree spread. The new Spot yields a 20 degree footprint"

I.
 
I have a two lite kit and I can say that these little lights are so practical it's not even funny. They are great accent lights for hair, background, and eye catchlights when used lower so they don't fill to much. They make great on camera fill lights. Especially great for cars. I personally went with dual floods because I found the spot version, well too spotty. The spot version gives you better throw for accent lights but for my purposes, on camera or inconspicuos fill was a priority. Make sure you check out the difference between the two in case you are thinking about getting the spot litepanels. One of my best purchases.
 
i've been in the market for an on camera light and would like to go LED; Litepanels just too expensive for me $800 (w/o rebate) not really been able to justify it. I've checked out Vidled - priced right - $300, Zylight - can't find pricing - not out yet - but like the color wheel (interesting I use to sell fiber optic lighting - funny how other companies haven't adobted that feature); IDX has a product out - priced right....ugh...decisions decisions :)
 
Love my litepanel

Love my litepanel

I have one litepanel spot with naga arm I use for lighting up our pre-dawn and evening hour scenes. Had it for 2 weeks. I have gone five hours of use 70-80% power with no sign of dead battery!!!

Also stellar for car int. shots. But useless as a fill in daylight. Still, I will never go halogen again.
 
So Travis,

for run and gun and sit down type interviews you would reccomend the spot over the flood? Both have dimmers though right? I thnk I am gonna have to find a local dealer that has some so I can play around with them to see which will work best for my needs.
 
Just got pricing on the Zylights:
$875 head only
$1025 ENG kit (includes noga arm, A/B power tap, accessory mount)
$950 DP kit (accessory mount, stud adaptor, AC adaptor)

...Even though this light has infinite color change, it is still way too expensive IMHO.

I'm personally gonna purchase two Vidleds, I'll get more value for my purpose (interviews, doc shooting).
 
Yea I remember when someone first posted something about the Zylight on here back in the first of the year they said the prices were gonna be better than the Litepanels LED lights and IMHO there just about close to the same as the Litepanels. Althought the Litepanels may be a little more expensive but I thought Zylight was going to be considerably cheaper in price. It only looks like a 1/4 if that of the size of the litepanel light too. I do like how you can "daisy chain" the lights together but one light by itself doesn't look like it puts out that much wattage. I could be wrong though.
 
the light panel prices have come way down from the first version they showed at the dv expo in nyc a couple years ago.

the mini size seems like something that would be super flexible.

the best thing to come out of the whole imovie, dv explosion is that gear prices will keep coming down.

whenever cutting edge becomes semi-commonplace the prices get wonderfully more affordable!

matthew
 
The zylight has twice the number of LEDs than litepanels, all in about one-inch square. It takes about four times the wattage (30W vs 7). I saw it at NAB and it was incredibly bright for its size. No lensing in front of the leds so the field is flat and even, almost 180-degrees wide. The wireless connection was seamless too, very cool.
 
I have one of the VIDLED daylight LED lights with the dimming option and I've been really impressed with it. I would be curious to see the two compared side by side... but man there's sure no comparison in price! The VIDLED came so well packed that it blew my mind... the front face of it was encased in a rubber-type material which ensures that the surface of each LED will be absolutely virgin perfect until you peel off the material. Then each component is in a kind of screw-down tube... I can't describe it well in words, but it's very trick... all together I was quite impressed. The first night I got this thing I just played around with it all night like a toy rather then a tool. There's a digital guage that indicates charge... and it's got an analog dial on it... digi-analog... really cool looking. Even the charger is slick... there's an LED on the charger that changes from red to orange to yellow to green to indicate the battery status. There's no denying that the light panels look nice, but this VIDLED was pretty inexpensive in comparison... and I'm excited to have such a portable on-cam light in my bag... there's no doubt that this thing will be saving shots that would have otherwise been lost.
 
I havent seen the Zylight in person just been reading up on it online. Are you sure that light has more LEDs than the lightpanel? It seems like the litepanel light is longer than the Zylight. I am going to look into the VIDLED pretty soon.
 
The Zylights aren't "bulb" type LEDs but their own design, which packs more elements into a smaller space:
http://www.zylight.com/tech.htm

Their head to head comparison is here:
http://www.zylight.com/photometrics.htm

I've not seen them in person so can't vouch for the accuracy of their claims, but on paper they do look impressive!

What I want to know is how controllable are they in terms of barn doors, grids, spill etc.?
 
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