Consumer LEDs for video lighting

Eric Coughlin

Eric Coughlin

Veteran
How are consumer LEDs for video lighting? Is there a way to know if they'll flicker, what their CRI/TLCI is, etc.? I'm looking at Hue smart RGB LED lighting and film movies at my house; could these work well as practicals or for general overhead lighting?

I've had some non-dimmable LEDs in my home lamps before and putting a typical dimmer on it does not work as it results in flickering, so I'd have to change out to tungsten bulbs to dim it or put diffusion over it.

I seem to recall some LED video light bulbs that are made to be put in household lamps, but I don't recall what companies offered them. I don't recall them being RGB and I doubt they'd have smart home integration, but perhaps their TLCI and flickering capabilities are better than consumer LEDs?
 
The Phillips ones I've seen are rather good at RGB and all colours between, apart from white which is a rather strange colour - a sort of dirty white. Not really yellow, but a rather unpredictable white that sort of works but is not the same as any other white I have. I think a set of 3 I bought my mum was over a hundred quid though with the controller.
 
I've tried several "white" consumer LED bulbs in my house and none of them look good, including Philips and GE. They seem to either go towards a sickly yellow tint or magenta(GE Reveal). Funny enough, the best looking ones are the flood lights outside. To me, they look dead-on and if I didn't know any better, I'd swear they were true 3200K tungsten lamps. I know they have Cree emitters in them and I believe the brand is Intellytech(not THAT Intellytech) that I think I bought at Lowe's maybe five years ago.

But the best thing to do is buy some and try them on-camera. If they look like crap, take them back.
 
If it matters, I did a ton of shooting at an auto shop last year that had only modern LED strip lights and I got all kinds of crazy flickering at all usable shutter rates, it was frustrating. I was able to clear scan most of it out but a lot of consumer LEDs do weird things on camera.
 
Suggest you consider any zoning ordinances / permitting if your are going to be doing commercial filming in your home and also be respectful of neighbors.

As for lighting, I'd stick with tungsten or "photo-flood" bulbs if you want daylight balance.
 
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We had some decent success with MiLight RGBWW bulbs this year--they photographed well as practicals and were dimmable without issues, down to maybe 20% or so. I have had issues in the past dimming Hue bulbs and getting hum bars in the image.
 
I'm not planning to do paid jobs at my house, just personal projects such as short films, which typically have a relatively small crew, and you don't need zoning to do home movies. The neighbors at my previous house were never bothered by such; it really just means some extra cars in the driveway perhaps once every couple months which is no different than anyone else having occasional guests over and we've mostly filmed inside and not done anything loud enough for the neighbors to hear, so as far as they're concerned I'm just having some guests over. I'd also send one of my neighbors the movies I'd made since we got along.

I see you can get a 500w photo-flood bulb for $5; I guess you'd need a lamp capable of handling that much wattage.


I'll have to look into the MiLight more. No Google home support, but I have Amazon Echo dots right now, which it supports with a hub.

I want to get a home lighting setup first and foremost to have a home lighting setup, but if it's easy to use for filming videos as well, all the better. Otherwise, can always switch out bulbs or stick to video lights for the majority of coverage.


I have some GE single color LED bulbs now mixed with tungsten bulbs. The colors look pretty fine to my eye, not really noticeably different than tungsten bulbs. Here's a photo where some of the bulbs are LED and some are tungsten. As I said, I had trouble dimming them so there is that issue.

Bulb.jpg



Watching Hue videos online, I don't see flickering, but I gather as Charles said they'll flicker when dimmed.
 
A lot of times the consumer LED’s will say if they are dimmable and if they’re compatible with regular or LED dimmers. I had to buy a big handful of Lutron LED “table lamp dimmers” to use with my Quasar tubes. But I don’t think they were much more(if any more) expensive than the regular lamp dimmers.
 
In A19 practical bulbs, I'm getting the best results from CREE 60 and 100 equivalents

The higher end GE bulbs come in second, although they have a pretty steep magenta cast

Most of the low-end lamps are totally hit and miss.

FWIW, I bought a $20 4' 40W "workbench lamp" that's kind of like an undimmable ultra-poor-man's quasar tube... if your target temp is ~4000K, though, they're not bad for flooding an area. They need a little minus green in post, but not obnoxious. Granted, I already have Quasars and am using this as an actual workbench lamp, but if I were just bodging together a home streaming setup or something, they kick the crap out of those stupid multi-curly-fry bulb softboxes that I find everyone using.
 
Another tip... not a top tip, but it's a tip

I picked up a couple of these because why not:
https://www.amazon.com/Bonlux-Daylight-Balanced-Spectrum-Photography/dp/B01EFK7XE6

They have a definite green cast, BUT I bought a sheet of minus green and super glued it to the bulb. I used them to retrofit a client's godafwul curly fry softbox, yielding more output and better color. Also used them in a Lowel RIFA-55 with the E26 adapter with decent results aside from it being a little large for the fixture
 
I have a kit of standard A19 practical LED bulbs that I keep in my van. They are the TP link variety. They aren't bright, but I use them to replace practicals. The color temperature controllable lights do not flicker at standard frame rates, but the RGB lights have a strange flickering that you only seen when the camera moves. I also carry a small wifi router with the kit that I plug in that allows me to control the lights with the Kasa app on my phone. I've even used the app for effects like a flickering light..
 
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