5600K LED is the way of the future?

Jon Furtado

Jon Furtado

Well-known member
While I was on the NAB show floor yesterday, I stumbled across the Filmgear booth. http://filmgear.net/

Their PowerLED lights were pretty insane. He was able to hit the convention center ceiling with his pannel! The Birns and Sawyer rep was on hand chatting about LED with me for a while and he said that 5600K (daylight) will now be the absolute standard. That film was 3200K but now with digital taking over everything, it favors daylight over tungsten. I had never heard this and was curious what everyone else thinks. He mentioned that the only reason we still see tons of Tungsten lights on sets are because studios have millions invested in them and that they are readily available.

It was a very interesting discussion about a fundamental shift in the industry. What do you guys think? Do you mostly use daylight in your lighting kit? Will this fundamental shift start taking over more and more since digital becomes the defacto standard over film?
 
So far sensors' filter arrays have been biased towards daylight but that doesn't mean some don't look better under (real) tungsten illumination.

Discontinous sources still have lots of room for improvement, & tungsten is still a great choice for beauty campaigns.
 
I found the 5D sensor performs better @ 5600k. Personally I like to shoot narrative @ 4500k because it feels more natural to me.
 
I find 5600k is more useful in more real world situations. So much ambient lighting is in-between 5600k & 3200k and it easier to gel down than up.
 
I think the real reason behind this reasoning is that right now 5600K LED emitters perform better than the 3200K LEDs do. ( better CRI, higher output )
 
The original Red One sensor was ALOT better in 5600k light. Sonce the MX sensor it looks just at good in 3200k, imo.
 
Damn, on paper it looks like they punch in a lot of light but have you looked at the weight of each panel? 9,5kg for the 160, 14kg for the 240 and 16,5kg for the 360! Hardly lightweight for small shoots but it sure is nice to see LED panels evolve quickly!
 
When I bought my first LED lights, I initially went for 5600K, because it is easier to mix with daylight, and because, as Bassman2003 said, it's easier to gel down than up.

Then I watched this:
http://prolost.com/blog/2012/11/30/watch-me-light-up-the-room.html
And now I'm going back to 3200K

For those without the time to watch it: warmer light goes deeper into your skin before bouncing back, so people look better under warm light. "glow from the inside" vs "reflect as if you were made of plastic"
 
Jon Furtado said:
The Birns and Sawyer rep was on hand chatting about LED with me for a while and he said that 5600K (daylight) will now be the absolute standard. That film was 3200K but now with digital taking over everything, it favors daylight over tungsten.
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It does, especially lower cost sensors. It's not unusual to see noise from the blue channel when using tungsten lights. All three channels will give you noise when light starved; it's just easier to light starve the blue channel when using lights that are themselves deficient in blue light output.
 
Are there some new updates about LED light on NAB2013 ? I didn't find many topics and the NAB is just ending.
 
mcgeedigital said:
The original Red One sensor was ALOT better in 5600k light. Sonce the MX sensor it looks just at good in 3200k, imo.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't - maybe it just looks good, maybe good enough, but no bayer CMOS sensor performs as well under tungsten conditions. Noise floor is way closer at hand on any bayer camera when shooting tungsten white-balance - the MX and its post tools form is a great system, so it is more forgiving (more room to spare), but you're still lowering dynamic range - in other words, no matter how good you find performance of any digital camera under tungsten, all aspects of image rendition would be that much better under a daylight white-balance.

LED lights have crappy CRI/color performance. I don't care what stats they may give you, they are not up to snuff for serious high-end production. In the future, that may change, but so far they are only suitable for cheapie corporates or lighting backgrounds, not main (skin tone) subjects.
 
TheDingo said:
I think the real reason behind this reasoning is that right now 5600K LED emitters perform better than the 3200K LEDs do. ( better CRI, higher output )
Click to expand...

No, CRI on LED and plasma lighting is better when at 3200K - I think the sweet spot is around 3800K - not sure why, there is a technical reason though
 
Samuel H said:
When I bought my first LED lights, I initially went for 5600K, because it is easier to mix with daylight, and because, as Bassman2003 said, it's easier to gel down than up.

Then I watched this:
http://prolost.com/blog/2012/11/30/watch-me-light-up-the-room.html
And now I'm going back to 3200K

For those without the time to watch it: warmer light goes deeper into your skin before bouncing back, so people look better under warm light. "glow from the inside" vs "reflect as if you were made of plastic"
Click to expand...

Great presentation (Prolost) by the way -- worth watching him, thanks for the link
 
Robert Ruffo said:
No, CRI on LED and plasma lighting is better when at 3200K - I think the sweet spot is around 3800K - not sure why, there is a technical reason though
Click to expand...

Really?

Most of the manufacturers show lower output with their 3200K LED sources, and 3200K LED sources are notorious for green spikes that have to be filtered out.

5600K LED sources are brighter, and appear to require less filtration to be useable.
 
yatti said:
Are there some new updates about LED light on NAB2013 ? I didn't find many topics and the NAB is just ending.
Click to expand...

As far as I could tell there were more LED lights than any other product.

There were only a couple that impressed me as "original designs" because of their small, sealed housing, but those left me wondering how long until the total output goes down significantly.

90% of the other lights were "me too" products where you'd need a controlled space to see how good the really were.
 
Jon Furtado said:
5600K (daylight) will now be the absolute standard.
Click to expand...

Totally disagree. If I had to choose one and I do all the time, 4500K would be 'it'. Indeed, my modd'd HID lights are 4500K. Add +1/4 to +1 CTB to boost for daylight or +1/4 to +1CTO for the tungsten end.
Not a whole lot of the LED panel peddlers know ( or will admit) the rest of the LED story but one thin no one can deny, the colder the output, the more lumens per watt. That's because ALL LED emitters start life a horrible 'screaming Blue' and phosphor is added to bring the temp down. More phosphor, more light lost.
so sales people run around spouting whatever just to convince customers to hit the 'BUY' button.
Sadly, I have to ameliorate even the cleaner white 5,000K emitters to suite my taste, because I detest single color emitter arrays.
Sooner or later they come around to my crazy ways ;)
One thing is for sure. You can't beat an armada of task specific lights. 5000K for outdoor fills and mains, and 3400-4000K for Incan balance.
The one good use for 5600K is if you like the cool background/ warm subject mix. That's because you can lock WB on a face say using the 5,600K light and causing the background (daylite) to go cold- a lovely effect. Great for interviews, Dawn/Dusk shoots etc.
But Indoors with mixed Flou/Incan. How is 5600K going to help?
 
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