puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi all:
It is finally finished. Below are some images I just took during my first round of real testing with the Cool Lights LED 600s through a small Chimera Quartz Pro softbox. I conceptualized the speedring based upon Richard's design for the included barndoors that come with the light.
Some notes about the speedring:
1. The best way for this speedring to be constructed would be out of cast aluminum like most of the Chimera speedrings are. We had to build ours from regular soft steel because my friend who welded this together for me is not yet trained on and doesn't have access to a TIG welder, needed to weld aluminum successfully. The ring is heavier than it needs to be but is totally workable with the light.
2. The good news is that the angle yoke that was selected to control the tilt of the LED 600 is fairly beefy and the light easily holds it's angle with a small Chimera and an egg crate. As many of you who own Arri lights are familiar with, having your Chimera sag and point down to the ground because the nylon yokes on the smaller Arri lights slips when a Chimera with or without an egg crate is a real drag. That will not be an issue with the LED 600. Works like a charm.
3. This speedring is the version 2.0. We discovered when we fabricated speedring version 1.0 that the angle, tension and spread of the steel rods on the Chimera require that the anchor points for where the rod tips plug in to must be at a certain angle, geometry and spread apart from each other. We had the tips of the Chimera rods going to the corners of the speedring so as to not block any of the LEDs on the fixture. Problem was the Chimera did not spread and hang right with the rods located at the corners of the speedring.
We took measurements on my Arri 1k speedring and used the same geometry and measurements on our ring. (Why reinvent the wheel?). The only way to have made the V1 speedring work correctly would have been to cut down the length of the Chimera rods down about 4" in length but then those rods would have only worked on the LED 600, I would not have been able to use the Chimera on any of my other twenty two lights. So we decided that we could live with blocking about 25 of the 600 5mm LEDs on the LED 600 with this design. If you think about it, light is not that linear either, with our rod extensions on the ring, we are probably only losing a few percent of output, it is negligible.
4. In tests so far, the speedring works superbly with the LED 600. Both the 5600k Flood and the 5600k Spot models seem to be usable with the Chimera. The Flood spreads out and fills the softbox more thouroughly but doesn't throw as far as the Spot. The Spot throws farther but is more of a hotspot in the Chimera and doesn't fill out the front diffuser panel as much. Since the apparent source size is smaller with the Spot, the thrown light is more specular but still overall, soft.
5. The speedring is made up of angle iron steel, cut and corner fused. The rod receptacles are actually bored out connector nuts with the bottom part left in to serve as stops for the rods.
Sometimes you just have to take things into your own hands when you want equipment to do things that it was not (yet) intended to do. I am betting that Richard will be able to easily get something like this machined or cast in China for a lot less effort than this one took. I personally think that a majority of LED users will want to use a softbox as the 5mm LEDs have a more specular look and feel than fluorescents or other soft lights. Chimeras kind of make everything better when I light, I really enjoy lighting with them.
The next step in my LED 600 process will be the addition of a battery belt to power the lights for walk and talks and for use in cars. I will also be configuring these lights as the basis of my new location travel interview kit. Still looking for some other small 5600k LED instruments to complement these lights. The thought is to use these two lights as my key and fill source, then use two or three other smaller LEDs as kicker/hairlights and one or two as BG sources to throw patterns and highlight objects. A full LED travel kit will be pretty sweet, small and light.
So far, I am very impressed with these lights, they are pretty amamzing, have much higher output than I thought that they would. The low CRI is not really a limiting factor so far since I intend to build the entire LED kit with instruments that will utilize the same low CRI 5mm LEDs, just in different size configurations.
Enjoy!
Dan
It is finally finished. Below are some images I just took during my first round of real testing with the Cool Lights LED 600s through a small Chimera Quartz Pro softbox. I conceptualized the speedring based upon Richard's design for the included barndoors that come with the light.
Some notes about the speedring:
1. The best way for this speedring to be constructed would be out of cast aluminum like most of the Chimera speedrings are. We had to build ours from regular soft steel because my friend who welded this together for me is not yet trained on and doesn't have access to a TIG welder, needed to weld aluminum successfully. The ring is heavier than it needs to be but is totally workable with the light.
2. The good news is that the angle yoke that was selected to control the tilt of the LED 600 is fairly beefy and the light easily holds it's angle with a small Chimera and an egg crate. As many of you who own Arri lights are familiar with, having your Chimera sag and point down to the ground because the nylon yokes on the smaller Arri lights slips when a Chimera with or without an egg crate is a real drag. That will not be an issue with the LED 600. Works like a charm.
3. This speedring is the version 2.0. We discovered when we fabricated speedring version 1.0 that the angle, tension and spread of the steel rods on the Chimera require that the anchor points for where the rod tips plug in to must be at a certain angle, geometry and spread apart from each other. We had the tips of the Chimera rods going to the corners of the speedring so as to not block any of the LEDs on the fixture. Problem was the Chimera did not spread and hang right with the rods located at the corners of the speedring.
We took measurements on my Arri 1k speedring and used the same geometry and measurements on our ring. (Why reinvent the wheel?). The only way to have made the V1 speedring work correctly would have been to cut down the length of the Chimera rods down about 4" in length but then those rods would have only worked on the LED 600, I would not have been able to use the Chimera on any of my other twenty two lights. So we decided that we could live with blocking about 25 of the 600 5mm LEDs on the LED 600 with this design. If you think about it, light is not that linear either, with our rod extensions on the ring, we are probably only losing a few percent of output, it is negligible.
4. In tests so far, the speedring works superbly with the LED 600. Both the 5600k Flood and the 5600k Spot models seem to be usable with the Chimera. The Flood spreads out and fills the softbox more thouroughly but doesn't throw as far as the Spot. The Spot throws farther but is more of a hotspot in the Chimera and doesn't fill out the front diffuser panel as much. Since the apparent source size is smaller with the Spot, the thrown light is more specular but still overall, soft.
5. The speedring is made up of angle iron steel, cut and corner fused. The rod receptacles are actually bored out connector nuts with the bottom part left in to serve as stops for the rods.
Sometimes you just have to take things into your own hands when you want equipment to do things that it was not (yet) intended to do. I am betting that Richard will be able to easily get something like this machined or cast in China for a lot less effort than this one took. I personally think that a majority of LED users will want to use a softbox as the 5mm LEDs have a more specular look and feel than fluorescents or other soft lights. Chimeras kind of make everything better when I light, I really enjoy lighting with them.
The next step in my LED 600 process will be the addition of a battery belt to power the lights for walk and talks and for use in cars. I will also be configuring these lights as the basis of my new location travel interview kit. Still looking for some other small 5600k LED instruments to complement these lights. The thought is to use these two lights as my key and fill source, then use two or three other smaller LEDs as kicker/hairlights and one or two as BG sources to throw patterns and highlight objects. A full LED travel kit will be pretty sweet, small and light.
So far, I am very impressed with these lights, they are pretty amamzing, have much higher output than I thought that they would. The low CRI is not really a limiting factor so far since I intend to build the entire LED kit with instruments that will utilize the same low CRI 5mm LEDs, just in different size configurations.
Enjoy!
Dan
