CoolLights v 1x1 LitePanels LEDs

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
Anyone who has experience with both (perhaps Richard as well) who could shine some light on pros and cons of both.

CoolLight pros:
- price
- barndoors included (?)

LitePanel pros:
- lighter (?)
- better color rendition (?)

Can someone confirm or say that i'm mistaken with those assumptions?
 
As it says on the LED 600 product page, barndoors are included.

A few more pros for the LED 600.

- Practically double the brightness of Litepanels 1x1s.
- Litepanels 1x1 has minus green built into LEDs, ours is a separate filter that slides in and is included. Its a difference in philosophy and has nothing to do with being cheaper. Some people just need more light and if the LED 600 is the only source then minus green is not an issue as the camera's white balance can take care of that. With minus green builtin to LEDs your options are limited and the output you get is what you get and you won't get more.
- Better and more versatile battery options and DC input through standard 4 pin XLR rather than wimpy 12v small barrel type connector.
- 5 bank select switches if you prefer that type of dimming although our color temperature doesn't change all that much with dimming.
- Full CTO and minus green filters included and isn't extra like with 1x1.
- We have a great softbox option. Their unit isn't really setup for a softbox and isn't bright enough anyway.
 
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Thank you Richard!

What are people using to power those lights battery wise. Are you all using AB batteries or did some people find other (cheaper) solutions?
 
hi patryk,

i have used both over the last 12 months and i must say the cool lights are better value for money

i bought two of richards cool lights 600 and they have been used on nearly every shoot.

they are solidly built and apart from a couple of small problems i can reccomend them

they come with filters and barndoors which are great for protecting the leds when travelling

in australia you can get 2 cool lights 600 for the price of one litepanel

cheers
ian dart
 
Thanks Ian.

Patryk, there are so many different ones but I guess one common one I hear is the lead acid battery belts from Bescor, like this one:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/208022-REG/Bescor_PRB18XLRNC.html

I believe that gives about 5 hours power on the LED 600. And yes its very economical.

Among the batteries that interface directly on the back of the unit, I personally prefer the AB mount type. Nice connections on those batteries. Seems to me the Sony Vmounts contacts are too small and may wear down over time.
 
I ordered 2 LED600 and I am very happy with them, very bright, very handy.

The softbox is a must, otherwise, the light can be very aggressive for your talent.

To power them in locations I've bought a inverter that comes with a battery to boost your car when needed. I can power my 2 fixtures for almost 2 hours with that. It's very handy : there's 3 120v AC outlets and a 12v for your car.

Definitely a good choice VS. Litepanels and others.
 
I've used the LitePanels 1x1s and they're ok, but I have a hard time comprehending why they cost so much. I haven't used CoolLights LED600, but I have used their CDM lights; and if these are indicative of the rest their products, value can't be touched by anything else!
 
We have a couple of the 1x1 lightpanels and they both have a sheet of minusgreen under the plex. That's they way they shipped and to tell the truth I'd been using a sheet of 1/8th plusgreen on them because they seemed magenta.

I didn't buy them personally and wouldn't have spent that kind of money for so little bang, but they were nice to travel with and they make decent scratch and hair lights. They'd be infinitely better with barndoors and maybe I should take a look at the cool lights version because of that feature.

Rob Mack
 
Cool Lights said:
As it says on the LED 600 product page, barndoors are included.

A few more pros for the LED 600.

- Practically double the brightness of Litepanels 1x1s.
- Litepanels 1x1 has minus green built into LEDs, ours is a separate filter that slides in and is included. Its a difference in philosophy and has nothing to do with being cheaper. Some people just need more light and if the LED 600 is the only source then minus green is not an issue as the camera's white balance can take care of that. With minus green builtin to LEDs your options are limited and the output you get is what you get and you won't get more.
- Better and more versatile battery options and DC input through standard 4 pin XLR rather than wimpy 12v small barrel type connector.
- 5 bank select switches if you prefer that type of dimming although our color temperature doesn't change all that much with dimming.
- Full CTO and minus green filters included and isn't extra like with 1x1.
- We have a great softbox option. Their unit isn't really setup for a softbox and isn't bright enough anyway.
Click to expand...

Hi Richard, I need some advise and since I read your post I thought I would as here, maybe others could benefit from the answers. Sorry for the slight thread jack.

I will be shooting some rather exclusive houses with beautiful interiors and big windows, with a time constraint of about six hours per house. So the obvious place to start was with available light so I shot this test of my kitchen with a 7D. [It's short, 2 minutes.]

This is not bright enough, f/2.8 ISO 400, plus I had to wait until near dark so the windows weren't blown out. I tried using a softbox with six 45 watt CFL's 3200, it helped but it was obvious that I needed 5600 so I added additional softbox so I now had 12 45 watt CFL's, this time all 5400 which helped quite a bit.

After reading this and other threads I noticed people are gravitating towards LED and "Kino-flo" types of lights. If what I'm doing gets picked up I'm OK with purchasing more lights, but for this first episode I'm trying to spend as little as possible plus make the setup and tear down as easy and quick as possible. Although the LED looks like a better way to go, they're a little too pricey for the first shoot so I was looking at the CL-255 and the CL-455.

Any advice for improving the lighting and shooting would be greatly appreciated.
 
Hi ChuckS,

Overall looks pretty good. I would say that it will take a lot more light than you might hope to do what you want.

You're waiting till dark and thats a good thing otherwise you'd be fighting the windows even more and needing to gel them. You may need to go on doing that till you feel like getting more complex.

A CL-455P will put out about the equivalent of a 800w tungsten light behind softbox. CL-655P about the equivalent of a 1200w tungsten behind softbox. These kind of ballast models will be as efficient as you can get in flos and thats why many like them. CFLs are about as inefficient as you can get due to their small internal and minimal ballasts--this is why I don't carry more of them than I do. I would say your 12 45w CFLs are perhaps putting out about equivalent of 1500w tungsten behind softbox. So using these numbers for what you have and some of our fixtures you can see what you may need. Maybe two CL-455Ps and a CL-655P for example might do the trick.

If you think you need too many flos to do it right, you may for example need to see about going with HMIs because of their concentrated output and have more throw too than flos which are okay at short range but don't do well at long range.

That's just my random thoughts on the subject, hope this helps.
 
Cool Lights said:
A few more pros for the LED 600.
Click to expand...

Richard, can you please answer a geek question about your CL-LED600 600 LED Lighting Panel. It is my understanding that LED lights use power conditioning and/or current limiting that is either a Switch Mode Power Supply type (SMPS) with “constant current” regulation, or a series Resistor Type. I gather from the Operations Manual for your CL-LED600 600 LED Lighting Panel that this light uses a series Resistor approach to current limiting because you state "The LEDs on your panel are connected in series of 3 with a current limiting resistor." Is that the case? If so, does your separate AC power supply simply step down and rectify the AC current or are there conditioning capacitors and a linear regulator in there as well?

- Isabelle Landers, Gaffer, Nashua, NH
 
I'm not really savvy enough to answer, but in the interim before Richard answers, my cl-600 power supply looks identical to a 3rd party laptop power supply, so i would assume there to be conditioning caps inside.
 
floop said:
I'm not really savvy enough to answer, but in the interim before Richard answers, my cl-600 power supply looks identical to a 3rd party laptop power supply, so i would assume there to be conditioning caps inside.
Click to expand...

Is there someone who can answer my original question in Richard's absence. Or, would a CL-600 owner please post the model number and name of the manufacturer that makes the AC-to-DC power supply that Cool Lights uses for their CL-600 LED Light so that I can look it up online.

Thanks, Isabelle Landers, Gaffer, Nashua, New Hampshire
 
Its a linear regulated power supply. The part number on the supply is our own part number so there is nothing to look up.

Please address any other of your technical questions to info@coollights.biz which is where we do all detailed support for our products. Thanks.
 
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