anyone use Litepanels, Zabolight or Socanland 1x1 bi-color led panels?

J

joker454

Well-known member
Just curious if anyone has used 1x1 bi-color LED light panels made by either Litepanels, Zabolight or Socanland? I'm using two 500watt umbrella lights right now but the heat from them is just too much when working in a small room, plus I like that the led panels take up much less room. I've been doing research on these and from what I see their light output is:

Zabolight Z1 Bi Color 1'x1' LED Panel Light, 2300 lux @ 4feet
Socanland 50CTD, 1780 lux @ 1m
Litepanels 1x1 bi-color, 1100 lux @ 4feet

I'd be interested to hear if people that have used any of these have been happy with them. Would they be good replacements for umbrella lights or would I have to add a diffuser? These LED panels cost quite a bit hence why I'm hesitant, but the heat from my current umbrellas is starting to become problematic.
 
LEDs is NEVER a replacement for tungsten unless in special circumstances.

I don't know what you shoot but it seems you still don't know what makes light "soft" - it's the size of the illuminating surface. Your umbrellas produce much softer light that wraps around your talent much more easily than a square of 1x1 LEDs.

(BTW i own 3 LitePanel lights)
 
Any 1x1 LED won't really do the trick as a complete replacement. By the time you diffuse it to the level of an umbrella, it probably won't be powerful enough for some situations. 1x1 much larger than a point source like a fresnel, but it won't be very soft once it's more than a few feet away from your subject whereas an umbrella is fairly large and can be backed off a decent distance before appearing hard.

I would hold off on LEDs for a little while, wait for the price to come down and for them to be more color accurate. Then, gang up a few of them through a 4x frame and you'll come pretty close to what you're getting now. I've used a litepanels 1x1 (surprisingly I've only come across one once), and it's definitely nice being able to dial in the desired color temperature than having to apply gels. It just wasn't as bright as what's available when it comes to tungsten and HMI's though, not to mention how expensive they are. There's a place for every light but if you want the same quality as your umbrellas, you might be disappointed with current LED's, unless you get a Mactech.
 
Thanks guys, I was worried about that a bit. I've read that the Litepanels 1x1 bi-color is about half as bright as the other two brands bi-color models, the Zabolight and Socanland versions, and the latter two seem to be similar in brightness to each other. The Socanland is cheaper so given that I was thinking of using two of them to replace my two umbrellas and diffuse the led panels as needed. Because the led panels are smaller and cooler means I could move them closer to the subjects compared to my current umbrellas, so one would be about 4 feet from the subjects and the other would be about 6 feet away (the room is small). Do you think that would provide enough soft light? Two Socanlands would be around $2000 which isn't cheap, but it beats having everyone getting all sweaty in a small room, especially me as I'm right now filming while standing between the two umbrellas. Alternatively I was also considering keeping one of my umbrella's and replacing the other with an led lightpanel. I figure since the bi-color model has color control means I can match it to the umbrella easily, and that would save much heat in the room.
 
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Only you can tell what's soft enough for what you're doing by shooting some tests. I see you're in LA, there's got to be somewhere you can rent at least a litepanel from to give you an idea of the quality of light you'll be looking at from a 1x1 instrument. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to have a larger source if need be, which would be difficult to do with a 1x1 since LED's aren't all that bright to begin with compared to tungsten or HMI's.
 
You should probably look at fluorescents as well. The 4x55W biax units behave much like LED panels in terms of softness, but are brighter. I have a Lowel Rifa 55 that I use exclusively with the adapter for three 85W CFLs, and it is my favored key light for most interview situations right now. It's not as easy to dial in a color temperature with these, of course.

I wish all lights were LEDs from the standpoint of power consumption, compactness, long life and ruggedness, but the technology just isn't quite ready yet, at least at an affordable price, so I use a mix like many others here.

- Greg
 
Greg Smith said:
You should probably look at fluorescents as well.
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I actually have two fluorescent umbrellas that I use for another website that I film content for. Each one uses two 85w cfl bulbs, and while great for one website, they don't provide enough light for this other particular application that I need. They also jut into the room more than those led panels do alas.


OldCorpse said:
There's also this: F&V K4000(S). What I like about them is that they can be battery operated - who likes cables all over the place?
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Holy cow, $500 for their bi-color model and it even includes the diffuser which is optional with the other guys. Damn, I could get four at that price. Lux reading looks good as well. What's the catch?? I'll have to do some research on that one, thanks for that link!
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
That's what i'm wondering, cause my closet filled with cheap unusable film junk proved to me long time ago that there is never a free meal.
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I'm definitely skeptical, but I searched around and they seem to be legit. For example I found this comment on them by Philip Bloom:

"K4000S Bi-Color LED Studio Panel 1×1 is an amazing €500 LED light panel…I have seen the quality of light and it’s really is amazing!"

Found that comment here: http://www.thomasloacker.com/filmproduktion/aggregator/sources/3

I went ahead and ordered their 3 pack kit for $1299, that's with no taxes and free shipping! Even includes a carrying case. I went with all bi-color models and they all come with the diffusers. Guess I'll find out how good they are soon :) Thanks for the help everyone.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
Tens of thousands (if not hundreds) of film people who worked with lights the past 100+ years?
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I didn't ask who worked with cables. I asked who liked working with cables. Yeah, all those people worked with cables - but I never once heard anyone say "oh, goodie! cables!" when they dive into the rat's nest of cables. For most of human history people drank water from rivers and puddles - but most prefer indoor plumbing to even trips to the well and carrying water back. I mean, do I really have to enumerate the advantages of batteries? I don't know about you, but I like being able to go on location and not worry about access to a specced AC outlet, or fuss with a generator. I like not having to worry how far I'm from the AC outlet even if I have access to it and if my cables are long enough. I like not having my mobility limited by the cable and provisioning power for it - I can hang my battery light anywhere. I like not having to tape down the cables. I like not having any chance, even 0.0001% of anyone tripping over a cable. I only wish more equipment ran on batteries, I wish batteries were better, smaller, longer-lasting, faster-charging, but that's in the realm of progress - nobody says, well, the pipes in indoor plumbing are not perfect, let's go back to the river - instead, people devise better pipes. Progress on batteries is slow, but it's there, and revolutions are possible with fuel cells on the horizon... cables are not evolving, and are yesterday's technology - you use it when you have to only because batteries are not available or strong enough (yet!). But maybe you're different, and prefer cables - that's fine, but a lot of people see batteries on lights as an advantage.

What's the catch??

They don't have barn doors, which is a pain. But many LED lights don't. Also, the bi-color ones are not as bright as the daylight-only (again, many LED lights are like that). And, the batteries are not your common Sony and Canon, but v-mount more expensive power ones.
 
OldCorpse said:
but I never once heard anyone say "oh, goodie! cables!"
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I guess you never had a magic shot ruined because some imbecile went the "easy route" and instead of powering up a light with cable decided to slap on the battery that went down at just the wrong moment.
I'm not even going to point out the flows in your understanding of physics... Battery attached to the head makes the unit top heavy -thus MORE prone to fall over (even with a sandbag).
 
Well, Patryk, I'm not here to derail the OP's thread, so you're welcome to have the last word, I'm done with this thread after this post. The weakness of your critique of batteries speaks for itself ("Battery attached to the head makes the unit top heavy -thus MORE prone to fall over" lol!), and the rest of us will treasure the opportunities to be rid of cables (and extremely hot lights too). I'm looking forward to the technology of the future including technical breakthroughs, which will allow us stronger lights, yet still running cool and running on fuel cells, you can stay exclusively with cables, the technology of the past.
 
OldCorpse said:
They don't have barn doors, which is a pain. But many LED lights don't. Also, the bi-color ones are not as bright as the daylight-only (again, many LED lights are like that). And, the batteries are not your common Sony and Canon, but v-mount more expensive power ones.
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Yeah that's true although for me that's ok. I wasn't going to use the barn doors anyways, instead I was probably going to just hang these led panels on the wall almost like pictures that way they don't protrude into the small room at all which will be great. I love that they run cool, the ladies I'm filming tend to be nude and the last thing I want is having them bump into a burning hot light. I'm ok with the batteries as well as I was just going to go with a/c power. I do all my filming at my house so I have the rooms already setup ready to go, so the cables don't bug me. The bi-color model is lower lux than their daylight one but it's actually still fairly bright, and cheap enough so I was able to get three anyways :) Thanks so much for that link, I can't wait to get these led lights!
 
I hear you. You know your use needs the best, and so you're using your gear to meet your needs the best. The reason why I am so keen on batteries is that I also shoot a lot in my apartment, but I live in an old building (or what passes for old in the U.S. - 1928), and the wiring is actually from that era - when we were having some problems, the electrician who came out showed me how a lot of the isolation on these old wires was rotting away! Basically, I can hardly plug anything into the mains here without paranoia. But even without this issue, when shooting on conventional sites with AC, you should always test your sockets. When I'm in any small building, I am always aware that I should not overload the capacity of the electrical system - obviously it's not an issue when you're shooting on soundstages or backlots - any tap on the AC is at a premium... perhaps I'm already running lights off of the grid, and I don't want to add to the power take - that's when battery operated lights are a life-saver. Funny, because while I've never seen anyone run out of battery power at a "critical moment" with lights, I absolutely have seen circuit breakers triggered at "critical moments" and blown fuses (on two occasions over the years, I've even seen smoke). So, from my point of view - why strain the household wiring? It's not really equipped to deal with massive demand that lights can have. But of course, you know your situation best, so I'm just giving my reasons for battery-love.

As to bi-color - there's also the approach to get daylight as bright as you can, and then use gels/filters to go where you need - you'll lose less light with gels most of the time, than dedicated bi-colors which simply use fewer individual LEDs to cover the spectrum. Of course, it's a bit of a pain to use, so the convenience of the bi-color is hard to beat (and why barn doors are also convenient for gels :)).

Re: the F&V lights, here's a brief comparison of the K4000 - http://freytag-film.com/blog/artikel...00-led-panel-1

Anyhow, let us know how you like the bi-colors!
 
That's interesting, I have had the same issue when I used to rent homes for shoot locations. Once we were filming and everything was ok, and then some other electric device in the house kicked in and poof it tripped the circuit breaker and we were all left in darkness mid filming. Given the nature of the stuff I film means that sometimes you only have one take and if you miss it, then that's it you won't get it back. Some of the homes I used to film at were built for filming and had 400amp service whereas some others simply weren't up to the task. So I can totally see your point of view. That's a good thing about filming at my house though, I know exactly what the outlets can handle so I'm good there.

Gels sound cool but given that I'm paying the girls per hour, the bi-colors will pay for themselves even if they save me just 10 minutes of fiddling with gels on a shoot. Plus I like it all simple and convenient. I actually use the rooms native light fixtures which may be halogen, fluorescent, led, incandescent, etc, so the bi-colors will be really nice because I can match them to existing room lights with just a turn of the dial.
 
So, did you get the lights yet? How do you like them? Do you notice a green cast or a flicker on camera? Did you get batteries? Are they generating enough light with diffusion on them? Thanks.
 
Sorry I missed y'alls posts! Yeah I did get them and have been using them. I do not notice any color cast with them, nor any flicker. In case it matters I only use them for video, and I always film at 60fps. I did not get batteries, I use them only plugged in. I always keep the diffusers on and they work well. For a small room they do generate enough light (I use two), but for a large room I still use my regular umbrella's. I'm very happy with them, it's much more comfortable using these lights in a small room than traditional lights.
 
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