"1000w fresnel" LED Ebay lights

B

boulder

Well-known member
Someone asked me to do a review on my purchase of the cheap "1000w fresnel" LED on Ebay. Here is my quick response mispronouncing the word Fresnel.



I should also have mentioned a green/yellow fringe around the edge of the light circle. This is either caused by the thick lens itself (I will eventually test replacing with a Fresnel) or the fact that the LED source is about 2" in diameter vs a single wire in a regular bulb (or a combination of both).

I know the lighting pros here will cringe but I guess I'm directing this at people like me who need cheap portability and can't be blowing out circuits in old houses or in the deep woods where I go battery.

EDIT:
Sorry to revive my silly review, but important info...
To get rid of the yellow/green fringe around the edge of the light circle, buy the Fresnel lens from Coollights for $12 and replace the existing lens. Paint the blue ring that holds the lens with flat black paint and also the circle where the light sits in. The fringe will be totally gone.
 
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Hehe... you sound so disappointed I wanna jump into the video and give you a hug :) What awful lights hehe.

Oh and hey... imo you nailed the genre with Insectula haha :D good job.
 
I know it's being pedantic, but Fresnel is a proper name, so should always have capital letter - I've noted people getting cross when people spell Foley with a lower case 'f' - so it's the same with Fresnel, but most importantly, it was also Monsieur Fresnel, so should be pronounced as Fre-nel, NOT freznell. It's often pronounced badly in the UK too, but as it is somebodies name, it should be pronounced properly. Sorry!

I love the idea of ebay being happy with calling something it's not. It's like advertising an omni mic and supplying a cardioid!
 
paulears said:
I know it's being pedantic, but Fresnel is a proper name, so should always have capital letter - I've noted people getting cross when people spell Foley with a lower case 'f' - so it's the same with Fresnel, but most importantly, it was also Monsieur Fresnel, so should be pronounced as Fre-nel, NOT freznell. It's often pronounced badly in the UK too, but as it is somebodies name, it should be pronounced properly. Sorry!

I love the idea of ebay being happy with calling something it's not. It's like advertising an omni mic and supplying a cardioid!
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HAHA, i WAS THINKING THE SAME THING. If your going to do a review, it might not be a bad idea to pronounce the item correctly:) Just bustin balls, as others stated your film looks awesome, great job.
 
Oops, I didn't know...never heard it pronounced before :( I'll correct that when I get home. Ugh, now I look like even more of a dolt.
 
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I really wouldn't worry, loads of people don't know the origin of the stepped lens, historically speaking - so it's a simple one to miss. I'd not bother too much. There are quite a few products that I try to avoid using out loud, because I hear it pronounced so many ways. If you shoot any more, I'd really like to see how the beam spread works, because inside, you showed a heat sink with the light source attached, so moving it forward/back with no proper lens would not change the beam angle with it. Last question - is the yellow aluminium (sorry - UK spelling) paint or some kind of anodising?

Thanks
P
 
It does have a pretty thick lens, just not a thin like a Fresnel. It is anodized. I doubt I'll do a further review, I'm just using it in my movie so you really wouldn't get a sense of how the beam works. I needed something with a single point of light as opposed to my multi-bulb LEDs and used less power so I can go battery in the woods (which I'm doing a lot of in this movie)
 
I did see the yellow fringe around the edge. It was mentioned on the Cheezycam comments also. Thanks for the review. There are actually a few more Chinese companies making these I was looking at on e-bay, but there is no reviews on those and they are twice the price ($638 and $800) and I am not willing to be the first to test these out and me disapointed. 100w LED Fresnel Light Spotlight Spot Video Studio Lighting +Dimmable + Focusable http://stores.ebay.com/PhotoLight/L...86865011&_sid=987288131&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
 
When I get my hands on an actual Freznel lens I'll drop it in there to see if it helps with the edge. Unfortunately they are kind of spendy, but I come across them every once in a while.
 
boulder said:
When I get my hands on an actual Freznel lens I'll drop it in there to see if it helps with the edge. Unfortunately they are kind of spendy, but I come across them every once in a while.
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You might search eBay. I have purchased complete Mole Richardson 1K Fresnel lights with doors & scrims for under $150.
 
Sorry to revive my silly review but some good info:

To get rid of the yellow/green fringe around the edge of the light circle, buy the fresnel lens from Coollights for $12 and replace the existing lens. Paint the blue ring that holds the lens with flat black paint and also the circle where the light sits in. The fringe will be totally gone.
 
No picts but pretty simple, the new lens is the same size so it just fits where the old lens is. The ring holding it in place is blue so just paint that black and the circle that the lens fits into needs to be painted black too. I just masked off the area outside of that and spray painted it with flat black paint
 
So that "lens" on the front appears to be a curved piece that is held on with three magnets? Is appears to be a combination of color-correction and a bit of diffusion. Is it made of glass or plastic?

Was that large "line lump" just a switch, or was it a dimmer? And/or was it the low-voltage power supply for the LED array?

But as paulears says, without a proper lens (either stepped or solid), moving the light source isn't going to do enough to warrant the complexity. We seem to be on the downhill side of technology when manufacturers from other cultures can take concepts and mechanisms and clone them (sometimes with quite decent workmanship) but apparently completely clueless about the underlying principles. For example what makes a focusable (Fresnel or otherwise) lamp operate is the presence of a proper lens. :-(

It is a bit disappointing that they held on to the century-old design of the lamp housing. It was designed for the old hot incandescent bulbs and keeping that design appears to be only a nostalgic throwback to the "good old days". Witness putting the heat sink on the back of the LED array (which is required to allow it to operate), but then enclosing it inside that now-useless assemblage of aluminum which serves mostly to prevent the heat-sink from operating optimally. Perhaps some clever Asians can come up with a new 21st century design more suitable for modern LED technology.
 
The lens you are talking about was just a filter, there is a very thick glass lens in front where the Fresnel lens should be and I just replaced it with a proper Fresnel. That box is just a switch. This isn’t very focusable as the mechanism would show. Clearly they just took the old Fresnel housing and plopped an LED in there. I don’t think this is a replacement for a Fresnel, what it is to me is a concentrated single point LED which is what I needed (or at least wanted). I have many multi LED fixtures but I needed something I could barn door, low wattage and durable. I’m on a shoestring and if I could afford better lights I would buy them, but until I get more money I have to make do with DIY or cheaper alternatives, and this fits my bill. I should probably made it clearer that I was addressing that audience as opposed to those who could afford higher quality fixtures. I'm sure the CRI is bad but I work around things best I can.

When I used to play guitar way back in time we used to look at the new Japanese guitars with distain and rightfully so, but eventually they got better and better and began innovating and in time got as good or better than our American guitars. I expect the same thing to happen with the Chinese.

lens 001.jpg
 
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boulder said:
Sorry to revive my silly review but some good info:

To get rid of the yellow/green fringe around the edge of the light circle, buy the fresnel lens from Coollights for $12 and replace the existing lens. Paint the blue ring that holds the lens with flat black paint and also the circle where the light sits in. The fringe will be totally gone.
Click to expand...
I love your ingenuity! It would be smart to update the Cheezycam review too. I am currently on a shoe string budget too and I understand totally, I was looking at those lights instead of light panels but your review steered me away. I really need them to be battery capable too though, so I went with some cheap 1008 leds from ePhoto. I am testing these as diligently as I can and I am finding them acceptable especially at their price (around $250 for an 1000watt equivalent LED panel).
 
Actually someone else told me about it and I did add the comment to the Cheezycam. I run all my LEDs including this off of a Duracell Powerpack 600 when I'm in the woods. I'll probably get a second Duracell for shoots that last longer but so far I haven't run out. The 1000 LEDs are nowhere near a 1000w equivalent though, however I find them good for a wide blast of low wattage light
 
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