any decent LEDs for practicals yet?

B

Bruce Watson

Veteran
I figured by now that there might be some reasonable LED lights I could screw into practicals to improve the light quality. I usually carry a few of the Kino Flo compact fluorescents, and some lower wattage BlueMax CFLs. But they are fragile and full of mercury and I just don't like carrying them around. Thankfully the only one I've broken I dropped on the street so cleanup wasn't such a problem. :shocked:

Anyway, what with Cree getting all this good publicity about their white LEDs, and with so many of them being used in actual cinema quality lighting fixtures, I thought that they might have made it all the way down to dumb old e26/27 screw-in fixtures. But I can't find any that make me want to replace my Kino Flo CFLs.

Surely there are some. What am I missing?
 
You can try to hunt down those Alzo bulb & ballast combos - really great daylight rendering in an e26 - but 150 watts so bright as hell. Great for china balls, I still have tow of them and three of the alzo 150 fixtures and some extra globes. Still get them out sometimes.

Again and again, I find when I do location work that the "warm daylight" sort of consumer spirals look good as practicals - sort-of tungsteney, which works for me, I like when fixtures have that warm glow. There have been times I've wrapped some CTB inside a lampshade though.
 
Cree makes some LED practical bulbs in their "TW" line, which I presume stands for True White. The color quality is much higher than their standard bulbs. Home Depot used to sell them in the US, but now I believe that they are only available from Home Depot online. I use them in my home.
 
I guess what I'm looking for is something like this new Philips Hue Ambiance system. It promises at least variable "daylight" without giving any idea what they think this means. And we all know (I hope) that there's a lot more to light quality than just the Kelvin temperature.

Anyone have any experience with the Philips Hue lights that let you adjust temperature? How's the light quality? Rendered skin tones? How camera friendly is it?

EDIT: I see that Osram has a Lightify brand. Looks like a competitor for Philips Hue.

All these things are low power though -- maybe 800 Lumens tops. Not really sufficient to be useful.

Maybe we'll see Kino Flo, or Westcott, or... get into this eventually. NAB is coming...
 
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Hi Bruce,

I was initially curious as to what sort of power you meant when you said "Practical".

I have been looking a lot lately, and also trying to follow the state of the tech - and so far it seems that LED bulbs in a e26 housing are hitting some kind of development wall.

The ones that I have found that had more power all suffered terribly from an array of different flaws. One of them being that these LED bulbs are tending not to last even a remote fraction of the hours claimed. What goes wrong above 16w I don't know...but it seems to be a widespread stumbling block.

I've been considering getting a couple of these "recessed" simulator fixtures and seeing if I can get the frame off for a more spherical throw. Haven't had the time to do it yet though.
http://www.amazon.com/Cree-DRDL6-11...8&qid=1458003711&sr=8-9&keywords=cree+tw+bulb
 
I like high CRI photo grade CFL lamps for practicals. Alzo digital has a good line of those up to 85 watts. That 85 watter in a big china ball makes a bodacious softlight too. Lots of light.
 
DPStewart said:
I was initially curious as to what sort of power you meant when you said "Practical".

I have been looking a lot lately, and also trying to follow the state of the tech - and so far it seems that LED bulbs in a e26 housing are hitting some kind of development wall.
Click to expand...

So... it's not just me. I was hoping I was just blind and there was a good alternative to CFLs and I just couldn't find it. Oy. Sigh....

I'm with you. I want a range of power, up to at least 1500 lumens. And so far all I'm seeing is half that more or less. And I can't find out much at all about the quality of the light. Not even CRI numbers seem to be published, let alone any spectral diagrams.

Maybe something will surface at NAB. There's always hope. But I suspect we'll have to wait for Kino Flo to make one for us.
 
Not sure I get your use of term practicals. I understand those to be visible lamps/sources in a scene..which tend to only be workable at lower output. For instance, I am soon to hunt down some low watt/small LEDs that are dimmable inside table lamps without color shift.
But I also have a mogul based softbox/fabric grid fixture I have adapted to Edison socket. I have a non-dimmable higher wattage CFL in there that I would prefer to swap out for a reasonable quality/output LED. Given the apparent tech or market limitations in edison LED..maybe adapting base out to a 3 or 4 way edison mount is the way to get a useful LED adaptation.
 
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Interesting options. So."avp"..your waiting on the one you ordered? Any idea how the lumens compare to tungsten watts? That they are already softened might make them interesting bare...or simply even softer in a soft box.

Keith, what fixture are you using the 3 ways?
 
avp said:
I've been on the same hunt lately. Here's one that I ordered to test out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LPV09AY?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

A stated 1600 lumens but a bit warmish at 3000k


Here's another one that caught my interest:

https://www.superbrightleds.com/mor...30-led-bulb-40-watt/1700/#/tab/Specifications
Click to expand...

OUch - CRI of 80.

Now I know CRI doesn;t mean everything...but I would really hesitate to work with anything rated at only 80.
 
Gweilo66: Any idea how the lumens compare to tungsten watts?
Not really sure but I'll do some testing once it arrives.

DPStewart: OUch - CRI of 80.

Now I know CRI doesn;t mean everything...but I would really hesitate to work with anything rated at only 80.
I won't be using this lamp for key, fill, rim or the like. I wanted to see how it looks as a bg splash (using a snoot or barndoor) on some artwork/furnishings in a dimly lit side room adjacent to our main location. We'll see... I find the LED technology intriguing but certainly wont give up my tungstens or Dexel flos just yet.
 
Don't you think the critical issue is whether the CRI deficiency is correctable? I mean..depending on the spike(s) etc., a strategic use of gel might reign it into the usable zone.
 
In the famed BBC white paper last year, an 11W Ikea bulb showed up with an impressive 93 CRI. Not sure how their current product lineup fares, but worth looking into (and several models are dimming, very important for practicals).
 
Interesting list. Seems like a good number have decent CRI (but TLCI?) at odd Kelvin...so would likely need correction in a mixed fixture environment. Oh..I guess a lot of trial and error is in order...perhaps a "shootout"?
 
From that list I found this bulb which looks good -
CRI 0f 90+
1100 lumens
110-degree beam angle
4000k color temp
Dimmable

http://www.americanlighting.com/cr90-br40.html

But from the PDF list the VIRIBRIGHT brand hits the highest R9 values - which is the pure red rendering.
Combined with a CRI of over 90 these are the ones I'm going to look at. Really pretty much none of the others.
 
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