High powered Led COB vs high powered Led hard panel/brute type

S

SpaceCowboy

New member
Howdy ya'all

building out a lighting package for myself.
I'd like at least one high powered fixture.

What would be your pick?
A high powered COB or a high powered hard panel / brute (led)?

COB wise I'm looking at Nanlite 500.
Advantages I see are the
Versatility, with the mount.
Access to various shapes and sizes of softboxes.
Lightweight.

Hard panel wise a fixture more or less similar to the Lighstar Luxed 4 but a bit smaller and a bit more lightweight.
Advantages
Bi color
It's more or less like a brute light.


I used the Lightstar on a shoot, was really heavy, but loved the light that comes out of it.
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Howdy ya'all

building out a lighting package for myself.
I'd like at least one high powered fixture.

What would be your pick?
A high powered COB or a high powered hard panel / brute (led)?

COB wise I'm looking at Nanlite 500.
Advantages I see are the
Versatility, with the mount.
Access to various shapes and sizes of softboxes.
Lightweight.

Hard panel wise a fixture more or less similar to the Lighstar Luxed 4 but a bit smaller and a bit more lightweight.
Advantages
Bi color
It's more or less like a brute light.


I used the Lightstar on a shoot, was really heavy, but loved the light that comes out of it.
Click to expand...

I love my Forza 500. And like you said you can make it hard or soft light. What I also like about the Forza 500 is, when I use it for interviews, I can turn fan completely off and still have plenty of power for my key light. As far as Hard Panel you could check out Litepanels Gemini 1 x 1 RGBWW LED Hard Panel. To soften that you could also go for DOP choice Snap Bag. Don't know if they make a Octobox for it or not. Good luck with building your lighting kit.

Here is what I have as a lighting kit: One Forza 500, Two Forza 300b,Two Aputure p300c Nova's, Two Godox TL60 tube lights, Six Aputure b7c bulbs, soft boxes for all the lights, Two Fresnel's for the Forza's along with some smaller pocket lights. I use my lights for video along with some photography.
 
Here's where it's time for me to chime in with my short spiel. Take it with the appropriate grain of salt in knowing that I am the head of US Sales for Prolycht, manufacturer of the Orion 300 FS. Also please note that I wouldn't be doing that jo or posting here if I didn't believe in the product.

A spotlight can always be softened or shaped. A panel light cannot be made more focused and good luck on ever shaping it. There is a distinct lack of versatility to a panel.

A single color (monocolor) or bi-color light is limited. If you wish to change the color of a monocolor lamp then it means gels, which eats up time, money, and output. If you wish to adjust the color of a bi-color light then you have the limited range of warm to cool and most of them drift off the black body curve into magenta as you mix the two colors of LED.

An RGBACL lamp such as the Orion 300 FS spotlight is fully color-tunable. It has no white LEDs, cool or warm, instead dividing the color spectrum into zones to be filled by its red, green, blue, amber, cyan, and lime LEDs. As each LED only needs to color a relatively limited range it does so with great accuracy and efficiency. When shifting from warm to cool -- a color temperature range we are able to expand to 2000K-20,000K -- there is zero deviation from the black body curve, but if you need to mix with other light sources we offer a green/magenta offset control for perfect matching. Because we have extreme control of color the Orion 300 FS also has around 350 gel equivalents matching Rosco & Lee filters built in. No more time hanging gels, no more expense of carrying around a jelly roll, and the output is far higher than placing gels over a light. In fact the Orion 300 FS's output is almost always higher than the equivalent wattage bi-color because those lights just dim between their warm or cool emitters, turning off half of them at either end of the dimming range. All of our emitters are always on unless you're going for some extreme saturated color effect, we just balance the strength between them.

The color quality is better, the color range is greater, the adjustability faster & more accurate, and the relative output higher. What's not to love?

I believe that color-tunable lighting is the inevitable future. One because it simply performs better, rendering a more accurate quality of light across the color spectrum. But from a business standpoint I also think it is inevitable because once clients see that you can instantly switch it to any color needed without having to pull out gels and that you can even use our free app with its built in color picker to match daylight or any other source with a tap on your cell phone, well that will be it. There will be an expectation that you will be able to do that and if you can't then they'll hire someone else next time.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Here's where it's time for me to chime in with my short spiel. Take it with the appropriate grain of salt in knowing that I am the head of US Sales for Prolycht, manufacturer of the Orion 300 FS. Also please note that I wouldn't be doing that jo or posting here if I didn't believe in the product.

A spotlight can always be softened or shaped. A panel light cannot be made more focused and good luck on ever shaping it. There is a distinct lack of versatility to a panel.

A single color (monocolor) or bi-color light is limited. If you wish to change the color of a monocolor lamp then it means gels, which eats up time, money, and output. If you wish to adjust the color of a bi-color light then you have the limited range of warm to cool and most of them drift off the black body curve into magenta as you mix the two colors of LED.

An RGBACL lamp such as the Orion 300 FS spotlight is fully color-tunable. It has no white LEDs, cool or warm, instead dividing the color spectrum into zones to be filled by its red, green, blue, amber, cyan, and lime LEDs. As each LED only needs to color a relatively limited range it does so with great accuracy and efficiency. When shifting from warm to cool -- a color temperature range we are able to expand to 2000K-20,000K -- there is zero deviation from the black body curve, but if you need to mix with other light sources we offer a green/magenta offset control for perfect matching. Because we have extreme control of color the Orion 300 FS also has around 350 gel equivalents matching Rosco & Lee filters built in. No more time hanging gels, no more expense of carrying around a jelly roll, and the output is far higher than placing gels over a light. In fact the Orion 300 FS's output is almost always higher than the equivalent wattage bi-color because those lights just dim between their warm or cool emitters, turning off half of them at either end of the dimming range. All of our emitters are always on unless you're going for some extreme saturated color effect, we just balance the strength between them.

The color quality is better, the color range is greater, the adjustability faster & more accurate, and the relative output higher. What's not to love?

I believe that color-tunable lighting is the inevitable future. One because it simply performs better, rendering a more accurate quality of light across the color spectrum. But from a business standpoint I also think it is inevitable because once clients see that you can instantly switch it to any color needed without having to pull out gels and that you can even use our free app with its built in color picker to match daylight or any other source with a tap on your cell phone, well that will be it. There will be an expectation that you will be able to do that and if you can't then they'll hire someone else next time.
Click to expand...

I have been looking at the Orion 300 to add to my kit. You guys also make a great spot light attachment. I had already bought my Forza's before I had heard of the Orion 300. I want to get one or two to have a nice full color COB to go with my Nova's.
 
Thanks for chiming in.

I see a bit of confusion. I understand most panels are soft.
But I'm talking about a hard panel and not a soft panel.

For instance, the Creamsource Vortex is a hard panel. (Not in my budget though)
Also the Lighstar Luxed I mentioned is a hard panel.

In tungsten version, you could say fresnel/open face vs brute light.

Mitch Gross
I do like the Orion 300, however it's quite a bit out of my budget (located in EU)
By the way, don't forget Prolycht sells panels too :p


I saw some interesting fixtures.
Does anybody have any experience with any of these?

Pixapro ECHO600 (Hard panel/Brute type) (this one or a high powered cob)
https://www.essentialphoto.co.uk/product/echo600-600w-bi-colour-led-fresnel-spotlight/

Rollei Soluna 500 Pro
https://www.rollei.com/collections/soluna-serie/products/soluna-500-pro-28134

Rollei Soluna 300
https://www.rollei.com/collections/soluna-serie/products/soluna-300-led-dauerlicht-28210

Rayzr MC200 / MC120 (I know this is not a hard panel)
https://www.rayzrlight.com/mc-panel

Intellytech Litecloth LC-160 RGBWW 2.0 (they have a dealer in EU) (I know this is not a hard panel)
https://www.intellytechusa.com/collections/lc-160rgbww-2-0
 
When I say a hard source I mean a point source. A hard panel is still a large surface that is difficult if not impossible to shape with flags. Depending on the panel and subject distance it can cast multiple shadows. often in a grid-like pattern. You can't use them for a common effect like a shaft of light through a window to simulate a sunbeam.
 
I understand and agree with you, but partially.
The lightstar luxed, or a brute light can be used to create shafts of light.

But it's clear most would go for a COB it seems :)

If anybody has any experience with the fixtures beneath, please let me know!


Pixapro ECHO600 (Hard panel/Brute type) (this one or a high powered cob)
https://www.essentialphoto.co.uk/pro...nel-spotlight/

Rollei Soluna 500 Pro
https://www.rollei.com/collections/s...-500-pro-28134

Rollei Soluna 300
https://www.rollei.com/collections/s...uerlicht-28210

Rayzr MC200 / MC120 (I know this is not a hard panel)
https://www.rayzrlight.com/mc-panel

Intellytech Litecloth LC-160 RGBWW 2.0 (they have a dealer in EU) (I know this is not a hard panel)
https://www.intellytechusa.com/colle...c-160rgbww-2-0
 
We've really mangled lighting terminology. Unless the rules have changed - panels are soft, including that creamsource - despite them calling it a hard punch light? Hard lighting we all knew created shadows, and the shadows are the point, really. Hard sources create shadows, soft sources fill them. Any multiple LED Lightsource cannot produce these shadows. That creamsource can be made softer, but could you hold up your hand and get a single bird, or rabbit from the shadows your hand casts? Multiple sources create multiple shadows.

LEDs with one point for the light to escape are hard sources. multiple sources are softer. BIG light emitting areas like on spacelights are the softest.

In my book panel=soft. We can argue about how soft, but it is not hard, if hard means creating one shadow. If we put a cluster of 4 point source lights together, that's not soft - its 4 hards each with a different shadow.

Why have we muddied the water by manufacturers calling panels hard? Not even hard-ish, if you switch off every LED except one, it's not hard. Maybe 6, at a distance might look a bit harder, but we're misuing tried and well understood terminology. If you had one of the tubular softlights from the 70s-90s with asymetric reflector, you got soft, and your Fresnel gave you hard, but nice soft edges, or you used a source 4 style source with a lens and had ultra sharp, and gobos. Nobody ever called a 1.25 or 2.5K tubular softlight hard - ever!
 
paulears said:
We've really mangled lighting terminology. Unless the rules have changed - panels are soft, including that creamsource - despite them calling it a hard punch light? Hard lighting we all knew created shadows, and the shadows are the point, really. Hard sources create shadows, soft sources fill them. Any multiple LED Lightsource cannot produce these shadows. That creamsource can be made softer, but could you hold up your hand and get a single bird, or rabbit from the shadows your hand casts? Multiple sources create multiple shadows.

LEDs with one point for the light to escape are hard sources. multiple sources are softer. BIG light emitting areas like on spacelights are the softest.

In my book panel=soft. We can argue about how soft, but it is not hard, if hard means creating one shadow. If we put a cluster of 4 point source lights together, that's not soft - its 4 hards each with a different shadow.

Why have we muddied the water by manufacturers calling panels hard? Not even hard-ish, if you switch off every LED except one, it's not hard. Maybe 6, at a distance might look a bit harder, but we're misuing tried and well understood terminology. If you had one of the tubular softlights from the 70s-90s with asymetric reflector, you got soft, and your Fresnel gave you hard, but nice soft edges, or you used a source 4 style source with a lens and had ultra sharp, and gobos. Nobody ever called a 1.25 or 2.5K tubular softlight hard - ever!
Click to expand...

totally agreed.
 
SpaceCowboy said:
COB wise I'm looking at Nanlite 500.
Advantages I see are the
Versatility, with the mount.
Access to various shapes and sizes of softboxes.
Lightweight.
Click to expand...

Nalite 500 vs Aputure 600D, I have been finding that despite the advantages of the Aputure and the better build quality, Nanlite seems to work with a wider set of Bowens modifiers, and the size and weight of the Forza 500 head is almost nothing. Great for rigging and booming, or tucking into tight ceilings. When the 600D came out, I almost thought I was too impatient in getting the Forza. Now, every time I see the 600D, I shudder at the thought of working with that weight and the stands and extra backs for counter weights. the difference in weight on a boom arm, and losing a few inches from the ceiling, or setting up and array, it all starts to add up. However, if I were a feature gaffer and working more than 100days a year, and needed something to punch through windows, I'd go Aputure or HMI. but might still have some Forza 500's for interiors. Smaller and lighter than Aputure 300 and has more luminosity to pump up through diffusion

sorry, side thought there.


But everything else, the paulears pretty much nailed.


Panels are great. Shallow diffusion goes a long way in saving space. Try shooting an interview in a 12x12 room with an Aputure Light Dome... ouch.


Lights are a rabbit hole, and like lenses for cameras, there is never a perfect light. You want sharp and clean and soft and warm all at the same time and cheap but rents well. That lens doesn't exist.

If you are on a budget, always a tough choice. The Forza 500 is great, but the COB is exposed, and I have had bugs crawl in and burn marks on the light element. Hasn't failed yet, but I have to be really careful when shooting outside at night. But otherwise, it is sort of the perfect do it all light. The catch? You end up spending as much in modifiers as you do on the light. This modifier does this, and that one does that. If you are able to work with the sun and time of day, you may only ever need a bicolor or RGB panel. But if you want to create your own source, no matter where you are, then go with power, and few panels generate that much light. The ones that do, seem to be expensive and heavy.


alright, peace
 
I wondered if it was me, out of touch with the 'new' methods, but I just completed a shoot for a dancer and I tried the 'new' techniques and they were so boring, and worse, formless. The dancer stuff I've done for years and for traditional ballet and leotard stuff, a waist high side light is really useful because it puts light into places normally in shadow. Adding a conventional key light (a Fresnel with COB source) pulled the dancer away from the white background - when she was wearing black and pink tights and footwear. I get the impression that the modern way is to light for camera positions anywhere, rather than rig for certain angles. Now, shadows are consider bad, or worse, mistakes!
 
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A panel light is an array of emitters. Sometimes those individual emitters or clusters of emitters have lenses on them to make them more directional. This makes the light more "punchy" but it is not a hard light, any more than an old nine-light or tungsten pars was a hard light. For you young-uns, a 9-light was basically nine sealed-beam car headlights and you could swap out the bulbs to change the lensing (for instance a VNF bulb was Very Narrow Field). The 9 bulbs were on a three vertical struts which could be rotated horizontally slightly to expand or narrow the angle of light. A 9-light could be used as a hard light but it would cast 9 shadows.

Some panel lights have diffusion built in, some have diffusion pop on & off. With diffusion it is a soft source. Without it is a harder source with greater directionality, but I guess it's up to you if you really want to define that as a hard source. I don't.
 
Those old 9 lights got hijacked by the music industry - we've pretty much given up on them, but retitled 'blinders' - you point them at the audience and er, blind them. The new LED types with COB sources are perfect for this function. I suppose we've forgotten how much light we needed in the 60's/70's. My favourites were the double ended hard/soft units with pole operation. One end had a Fresnel lens and the other a large egg-crate grill - and the other one was the Mole Sputnik. So sad now to see them all polished up sold for crazy money to the trendy who put them on wooden tripods!
 
paulears said:
I wondered if it was me, out of touch with the 'new' methods, but I just completed a shoot for a dancer and I tried the 'new' techniques and they were so boring, and worse, formless. The dancer stuff I've done for years and for traditional ballet and leotard stuff, a waist high side light is really useful because it puts light into places normally in shadow. Adding a conventional key light (a Fresnel with COB source) pulled the dancer away from the white background - when she was wearing black and pink tights and footwear. I get the impression that the modern way is to light for camera positions anywhere, rather than rig for certain angles. Now, shadows are consider bad, or worse, mistakes!
Click to expand...

thank you for saying this. every time a director says, "i love it! but can we get rid of that shadow...?" i die a little inside.
 
It’s funny… there are now companies selling little lights that clip onto your phone that they are calling ‘soft’ lights. There is even one called ‘the big softie’ - it is the size of a credit card and mounts close to the axis of the camera on your phone. They promise ‘cinematic’ results - haha.

So yes totally agree that the terminology is crazy and confused these days.

Honestly, I wouldn’t consider most LED panels to be a truly soft source either. Perhaps the Arri S360-C is close to big enough to substitute for a small window when used direct. Anything smaller than a moderately sized window attempting to act like a moderately sized window tends to look a bit uncanny to my eyes…. So what is the minimum size to create a character that feels truly soft? It is certainly not 1x1 or 2x1…

One other point made in this thread that I would strongly disagree with though is that ‘hard’ lights create shadows and soft lights fill them. There is so much stunning cinematography out there where deep shadows are created with an incredibly soft key light…. Some more sci-fi inspired scenes can often use a very hard source as a fill too… so there are no definitive right or wrong… it is subjective and stylistic decisions as we all know..

For me personally probably the most interesting light coming to market soon is the Fiilex Q10. That is a true hard source with a very small point source emitter that packs 900w…unfortunately it is going to be incredibly expensive so not really relevant to the original subject of this thread…
 
Have we got a little confused maybe with just certain features that old lights had as standard and newer people don't quite 'get it' and are confused. I've always had a foot in video lighting and theatre lighting, and it always kept me smiling how different they were. I had to get used to TV folk thinking Fresnels were hard sources, while the theatre people considered them soft, and the hard light in theatre being projected shapes and shutters that gave as sharp and edge as you could get. We had 'floodlights' in theatre so useless for everything that nobody quite knew why we used them. The first videos I did in theatre showed just how un-floodlike they were. Then somebody invented asymmetric reflectors that put more light in the bottom of the beam so you could light cloths from the top, more evenly. In theatre, the small stages had Fresnels with 6" lenses and the big ones had 12" versions - which were much softer, but the 6" were more happy making nice puddles of light. The tubular soft lights never had any use on stage - though of as totally devoid of any emotional power - they sort of went blam! I remember Disney coming to London - my first time at a major show and the Lighting Designer hating the British frosts we had available for our follow spots. Up til then we'd had hared edged follow spots - but he wanted special soft, so he flew in from New York, deli-bags which when cut and opened out were just the right softness and lasted a couple of shows if you were lucky. Then another US Designer, Richard Pilbrow introduced us Brits into the light curtain - another new lighting concept. Throughout all this we've had soft light, controlled with barn doors and flags, and we've had hard light with real lenses, controlled with shutters and gobos, and even sharpened harder with snoots on the front to remove contaminant stray light.

What we currently have for video seems to be re-purposed photographic equipment with light source, with gizmos for the front to soften up hard light. A good old fashioned tungsten lamp surrounded with white fabric worked for years as a really soft source, but now we concentrate LEDs in a small package and then moan when they don't quite do what the old ones did.

We never even complain when we dim LED light and it goes that dirty sort of white - LEDs are the future and we must avoid not liking them. In fairness, I've now been running RGBW LED washes for years, and not the mega expensive ones, and they've been reliable and excellent value for money. I can throw almost any colour onto a set and see it. In the Tungsten days you could put a dark blue gel on a 1K par can and see about 5W of visible light, and watch the blue get eaten away minute by minute! A red or blue background was virtually impossible, now it's easy.

We used to judge a face well lit when you could see both eyes because the angle hitting the eyebrow did not block the light, and we would intentionally have a shadow at the side of the nose, so your brain knew where the light was coming from. We then filled it in a bit because the cameras didn't do blacks very well, but kept the sense of direction. We'd happily light the backs of heads or maybe come up under chins to highlight or reveal stuff.

I have couple of the bright small LED 'studio' lights. Dinky, but bright LED sources, small opening at the front, AC or battery power, a little set of barn doors and variable output. They look totally different from any of my old lights, and thankfully, camera sensitivity has gone up as LED brightness has reduced. The last rig had 6 flat LED panels and a Fresnel LED key. Looked OK, but boring - but I could put cameras practically anywhere and it was lit. For curiosity, I hung sip an Arri 1K tungsten and turned it on. Wow it was bright the cameras all blew out and 5.6 had to go down to F11 to cope with the brightness - from ONE light. Turning it off gave a sense of disappointment.

I guess I'm just old and look at lighting as an art, and now it's more a craft - as in even illumination and a over concern about colour temperature. We've sort of got a bit paranoid about CT and the consistency of it - LED is just different, and all we need are whites that look white and pleasant skin tones on all skins. I accidentally sold the wrong LED panel - I sold a 5500K ones thinking it was a special ordered 3200K version. The customer never came back but I opened a box and discovered I had just one 3200K panel in with the others. I actually rather like it now, it goes in just off centre so one side of a face is warmer than the other. I like the look.
 
LED’s have gotten really good(and most of my lights are LED, now), but you still can’t beat real tungsten and real sunlight.

When I’m in a space I can completely control, 99% of the time, I still light it 3200K, even with bi/variable color LED’s. There’s just something so off-putting to me, to lighting 5600K in a completely controlled indoor environment. It just doesn’t look or feel right to me(my naked eye). And at home, all of my outdoor floodlights are LED, but still 3200K. My neighbors are all 5600K. Every time I look over there and see his floodlights on at night(or even the day, he’s old and they’re on most of the time), I just shutter a little.
 
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