FloLight LED500 Light Review

DIGITALPOST said:
BTW.... I'm at NAB and just saw the flo lights 500. They are offering a new double size 1000 too.
Something concerns me. The color while stated to be 5600k, looks slightly green tinted to me.
Enough to notice right away. White balance would fix the off set, but it created an unpleasent looking flesh tone to the naked eye. There were no cameras set up to view the results. Has anyone else noticed this that have seen or have them?
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Well this could be a problem if you have other lights on the set. You can't balance to more than one color at a time very easily. Did you ask anybody there about the tint?
 
Yes it's a simple project box. There isn't much of a heat issue because each bulb is pretty heavy with the metal housing of each bulb. I recently used it as a hair/side light with 2 flouresent fixtures providing back light and a key. There are no color problems at all. Oh by the way, I don't use dimmers I use switching to control the excessive brightness.
 
Kelly Olsen said:
Well this could be a problem if you have other lights on the set. You can't balance to more than one color at a time very easily. Did you ask anybody there about the tint?
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Thanks for the reply. Yes.... I did mention and while one of the guys there did see the color tint, he claimed that there were metered at 56k by some users at NBC. I was able to add a light magenta gel to the demo light and it looks correctable. They were showing a new double size version < 1x1 > of the light as well with same green clor shift.
I also checked out LIGHTPANELS 1x1 version < at almost 3x the price. >
It is a dimmer version and when it was dialed down 1/2 way or less, it produced the same greenish offset but when up full looked correct.
 
DIGITALPOST said:
I also checked out LIGHTPANELS 1x1 version < at almost 3x the price. >
It is a dimmer version and when it was dialed down 1/2 way or less, it produced the same greenish offset but when up full looked correct.
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A very common problem with LEDs. Its so hard to find good LEDs with a high CRI but even harder to find some that don't shift in color when dimmed. Then again, fluorescents have their own issues when dimmed down past 50% or so too.
 
I saw the LED500 at the FloLight booth. Didn't like it as much as I expected to. For $200, I'll take four, but for $500 I dunno. It's pretty good, yes. But it's definitely green. The guys at the booth said "we tested it at 5600k" and I'm thinking "so? I didn't say it was blue or orange, I said it was green." Different axis. You could probably solve it if you permanently stuck in a sheet of half MinusGreen in there.

They had a plastic sheet of diffusion in the light. It really cut the output, but it did make it a little softer. Without that sheet the light is a little spotty, which is actually handy (you can always add diffusion, you can't un-diffuse a light!)

I think if Richard wants to import these for us at $200, I'd definitely take some. But it's like any of these cheap light solutions -- they all need some help. And the LED500 isn't going to be all that useful as a soft key light; it'd be best with a diffusion frame in front of it. But heck, at $200 it'd be great. MinusGreen is cheap...
 
Barry_Green said:
I saw the LED500 at the FloLight booth. Didn't like it as much as I expected to. For $200, I'll take four, but for $500 I dunno.
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Good to know Barry; you might have just saved me a few $$$. I think I'll hold off on some LED's till I see what Richard drums up for us...
 
I've included some grabs from a recent shoot using the LED to create some highlights. The LED is to the left and back at about 10 feet away. I only have 6 of the 11 lights on. The flo on the right is much softer.
Gary
 
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Gary, do you think you could pose some grabs "behind the scene" if you have some ?

I'm interested in some closer pictures of these LED panels. On Flolight site pictures are not so detailed.

I'll appreciate if you could post some closer pictures with 500 LED panel

Thanx!
 
What's the current implementation status of the project Richard? How many months to go? This is certainly the most interesting project going on in lighting for us. :)
 
muroshi said:
What's the current implementation status of the project Richard? How many months to go? This is certainly the most interesting project going on in lighting for us. :)
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Glad you are interested. I like to involve people in the beginning stages that way its like a double check of my own sensibilities and intuition on what makes a good product. As I often say, you can have two of the three criteria for a good product but never all three: fast, good and inexpensive. We're going for good and inexpensive but fast is another issue.

I just got the other panel back last week and hated the LEDs so we are on a search for a better, good and white LED. The dimmer also needed some more work.

We had similar issues last year that tied us up in getting the MF0150 CDM 150 fresnel ready on time. We waited and had a better product because of the wait. So, with a little patience and determination, we'll do it again. We just keep our eyes clearly focused on the goal and ignore all the things we see along the way that tell us its impossible or too much trouble and we know we'll arrive at a good ending eventually.

Barry mentioned that $500 is overpriced for the Lishuai / Flolights panel. I have to agree. The cost to output ratio is just too far off to make it anything other than an overpriced novelty. That's why I do hope to get the price down on the 500 version to be reasonable enough to consider for some uses.
 
I hope you'll find those LEDs, what's with the housing?

Can you find out what led-z, vidled or zylight uses in their products? The vidleds have good quality white from what I heard so far.

If you can make something like the "500" for $200.00 I would buy two and possibly one big light like their "1000" and forget about fluros. I guess this would cover my needs for softlights.
 
Videogrip this is not the 500 light. This is a light I made using CREE leds posted earlier. I just thought you guys might be interested in how powerful led's can be even at 10 or so feet away.
Gary
 
muroshi said:
If you can make something like the "500" for $200.00 I would buy two and possibly one big light like their "1000" and forget about fluros. I guess this would cover my needs for softlights.
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Not by themselves they won't. The LED lights aren't very soft at all. They're rather harsh. You'll still need something like a softbox or a bounce board or a big diffusion frame if you want to turn these lights into softlights.
 
muroshi said:
Yes, I know. Maybe Richard can integrate such a diffusor in his product or sell it independently.
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Yes, that's the idea. A slide in adapter along the edge for things like that or gels. And some kind of prismatic diffusor panel to go in there. The nice thing about the prismatic diffusion panels (or cracked ice is another kind) is that they don't cut so much light and they have more of what I would call a smoothing action.

But, as MattinSTL mentioned we don't want to lock heat in there so there needs to be a venting system too along the edge of the slide in to keep from having a heat buildup, because heat is the real enemy of LEDs. Some great ideas like that have come out of this thread.

As always, one of our visions for this project is to make something that Barry Green will say "Eh, its not too bad" about it at the end. We know when we get that we really have something and its the equivalent of everyone else saying "Wow! Thats an incredible value and just what I really needed." Barry is a tough customer and if you can please him then you will have what everyone was looking for. :laugh:
 
muroshi said:
I hope you'll find those LEDs, what's with the housing?

Can you find out what led-z, vidled or zylight uses in their products? The vidleds have good quality white from what I heard so far.

If you can make something like the "500" for $200.00 I would buy two and possibly one big light like their "1000" and forget about fluros. I guess this would cover my needs for softlights.
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We will find. The housing will probably be metal in the first version and a plastic version later if there are enough requests for it. Hopefully though, the metal version will be light enough that people will find that adequate to their needs. On the LEDs that the others use, I doubt it would be so easy. Its really tough to find out where LEDs are made.

As far as covering peoples needs, as we've said before, this is a very specialized light and for use in some small situations. You won't be using LEDs (for instance) to light a green screen for a long time as its just too expensive and fluorescent can do that so much better and cost effectively covering a much wider area for less money. If you're not doing green screen and just lighting individual subjects in small settings with other light like daylight controlled then the LED panels will do fine for you.
 
Richard:

Could you suggest one of your products that would be a solid, versatile tool for lighting green screen and interview subjects as a key/softlight?

One that is somewhat portable, but versatile enough to work in this shooting environment.

And also one that is currently available?

thank you
 
CL-455P is the most portable model and largest we have available now. Should cover a fairly large area but as always it depends upon how large the green screen is, how much of it will be visible on camera. Might require two units to cover the screen if a large area. Then you'd need another CL-255P or CL-455P for lighting the subject(s).
 
Cool Lights said:
I just got the other panel back last week and hated the LEDs so we are on a search for a better, good and white LED. The dimmer also needed some more work.....

.....We just keep our eyes clearly focused on the goal and ignore all the things we see along the way that tell us its impossible or too much trouble and we know we'll arrive at a good ending eventually.
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A perfect example of the care Richard takes in his products. Other companies would have said "close enough" and put a product out (and it looks like that is what happened with the other LED light we have been talking about).

While it hurts to wait for them, his products always are the better for it.
 
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