Alzo 300 LED light

Norman99 said:
David, the "expected gradual falloff at various distances" is not always a constant as a wide beam has a much steeper falloff than a barrow beam. It can be expected to follow the inverse square law of light falloff if the beam is 45 degrees as it is very predictable ( doubling the distance requires 4X the amount of light to be the same brightness, of every time the distance doubled there is 4X less lumens). For example, a very very narrow beam of 2 degrees will have almost the same bright spot ( brightness wise) at a huge distance varying perhaps only 5-10% up to 100ft. because it does not spread out it's lumens all over the place, it keeps them collimated within a narrow field. A wide reflector, on the other hand, will have a fast falloff after a distance doubling and the light level will be much less, perhaps 8X less than the medium ( 45 degree beam) reflector. It has to spread the lumens over a much wider area. The amount of lumens are the same wether a flood, medium or narrow beam. I can safely say that my AA powered led pocket flashlight is brighter than a 1K soft light because at 50 feet away my flashlight projects a small ultrabright spot, wheres the softlight spreads the light at a wider area but is much less bright at that same 50ft. distance. That is why when photometrics are done, the distance and beam angle must always be given in order to truly guage performance.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I do get the math of photometrics, for sure, and that is pretty much the starting point for me when it comes to my lighting design. The sticking point, I think, is that there are a lot of new lighting technology out there now that post specs that are inconclusive at best and deceptive at worst. Doing a lot of naughts gozinta naughts calculations based on manufacture specs is a nice exercise, but that won't beat setting the light up and taking your own light meter readings.
 
The Alzo's dropped of at my door today. I will test them out tomorrow alongside my Sola 6's and my Skylux lights.

First impressions unboxing them....

They are built quite nicely. The yoke is different but I can't see any problems coming from it. The light is mostly metal with plastic here and there. It's pretty light weight which is nice. When I plugged it in and turned it on my office lit up brightly. So much so that my wife ran out blinded. All my light meters are in storage (I don't really use light meters anymore been lighting so long) so I can't give you actual numbers. But by eye I can say this unit puts out some serious light. Not sure if many people read this as the dimmer is a clickable dimmer in I would estimate 1/2 stops. Makes sense it's this way so the ballast can stay compact. It came with an 8in dish and I wish it was a 7in as all my other lighting are 7in dishes so my grids wont fit. But being a Bowens mount I'm positive that is not of much concern.

The light is bright. Built well. It's Chinese so let's see how long it lasts. But for the money it costs, I'd say so far so good. Tomorrow I'll see how it performs.
 
Very exciting, dustylense! Looking forward to your results. I also wonder if these could be made more of a "hard" light, maybe with some eggcrates? Or are they just too soft? I'd love to find "hard" LED lights, especially for not too much $...
 
OldCorpse said:
Very exciting, dustylense! Looking forward to your results. I also wonder if these could be made more of a "hard" light, maybe with some eggcrates? Or are they just too soft? I'd love to find "hard" LED lights, especially for not too much $...
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For sure this is a hard light. Toss a honeycomb grid or a snoot on it and narrow the beam. Use barn doors. Or like you said an eggcrate and you have very directional light.
 
dare to do a burn in test? say 24 hours at full brightness? :)

wouldn't/shouldn't put a kink in its seemingly endless chip life

liking the sound of it, wonder if they'd divulge the make and model of the chip
 
Darren Levine said:
dare to do a burn in test? say 24 hours at full brightness? :)

wouldn't/shouldn't put a kink in its seemingly endless chip life

liking the sound of it, wonder if they'd divulge the make and model of the chip
Click to expand...

Let me put a full day shooting in first before leaving a Chinese LED sitting around without me attending it :violent5:

They will be on most the day tomorrow. I'm shooting some real estate and will mix in with my existing lights. Stuff like this...
DVX samp.jpg
Amilfi Hills.jpg
 
Thanks dusty!
Sounds good so far though I'm a bit worried about the made in China thing - I did a search on Alibaba and couldn't find anything similar to that light so I hope it's not just a rebranded chinese creation and Alzo just outsourced manufacturing; I guess they have to to offer them that cheap.
 
Hey dudes..

Little update from location while taking a break.

The Alzos are quite good. I'm liking them. Nice and light and they seem to be pumping out the light as advertised without too much scientific nerdiness. Let's just say they are bright. Color seems good. I'm shooting arch-i-torture so I can't comment on skin tones yet. Lets just say I'm not seeing drastic green spikes like LED's of past. I will post more thoughts tonight when back at the studio.

Here are some grabs though so far. Mostly shooting at 640Iso 30p at F/8 on these. On the upstairs loft image, the alzos are crossing and you will see the highlights rimming the couches while the Skylux lights are filling. The couches are slightly off white (the house is warm).
Alzos.jpg
Here is an image fighting the full sun coming in through the window and some sunlight outside. The greenish tint is the tint from the windows. The Also is lighting the near couch from the left being thrown about 5 feet or so.
Alzos 2.jpg

In this one, the Alzo is being used to fill the wall above the vanity. About an 8 foot throw.
Alzos 3.jpg

More about the lights later....
 
Can't see anything wrong so far! Great news about color cast. Of course, we all want to know about skin tones, as that's traditionally been LED weakness.
 
wonder why there's no mention of CRI in the specs. someone mentioned that they say in the video it's CRI 90, but you'd think they'd want to advertise that number quite a bit if it were accurate
 
jeez. under 300 is just so darn tempting.

that first link is one of the big downsides to chinese manufacturing if you're a small design company, you get a chinese factory to make a product to your specs, and you are pretty much guaranteed they'll be making more than just what you order, for themselves, for anyone who wants to slap their name on it, etc... good for savy consumers, bad for good little companies who come up with good designs
 
At the EVS street fair event last Saturday, I saw a similar unit from Photoflex (100w LED, same output, CRI=85) called the "Northstar".
As I recall, the list price was just under $1,000.00.
Ken
 
Notice the second link claims 50% higher power/light output for the same price as Alzo and in a nicer package. It doesn't have that odd side mount. It looks like it might have continuously variable dimmer or at least more than half-stops. It has a Bowen S-mount which means it can use a lot of accessories from many vendors like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/151156172199?lpid=82

and this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Goldenshell...-S-mount-/400611285504?_trksid=p2054897.l4276

and this:

http://compare.ebay.com/like/400541045152

and this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jinbei-Octa...pe-Mount-/400610636404?_trksid=p2054897.l4276

and this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/EZ-Lightsta...d=100005&prg=8344&rk=2&rkt=4&sd=221286450447&

or this:
http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=BOWBW6650&ref=cnet&omid=113&CAWELAID=230005120000185896&

or this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-Speedlig...A%2BFICS%2BUFI&otn=21&pmod=400541045152&ps=54


and on and on. Let the games begin.
 
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yes but the main attraction to the alzo and copies, is the single source type bulb. that second link is an array that looks about the diameter of large jar lid. no good for contrasty single edge shadows
 
Yes. If I had to guess, I'd say the Alzo point source is about 1/3 the width of the second link.

I wonder if Alzo mount is compatible with Bowen?
 
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