DIY LED Light panels - which color temperature do you recommend

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Inprogress

Well-known member
I am considering building a few LED light panels for soft lighting (I have some ideas on more spot lighting as well). I need to crunch the numbers but it looks like it will be more (actually a lot more) cost effective (initial and long terms) than a CFL setup - plus the ruggedness that LED's bring.

I've played with the idea of RGB and the like, but finally I settled (unless you convince my otherwise) to either 6500k leds, or 3500k leds, or mixing them to some thumb sucked ratio and sticking with that.

So the question(s) really are,

A: Do I try a mix of color temperature?
A1: If so, which color temperature should I aim for?

B: Do I pick one color temperature and then use gels as needed? (I'm leaning towards this idea - almost old school meets new tech)
B1: If I pick one color temperature, which color is recommended out of experience, a warmer or a cooler color, considering I will use gels to balance it either way.

My gut tells me cooler, but that is out of little experience.

As for dimming, I might go for a solution (flicker free) whereby I merely switch of sections of my panel.

Thanks a million.

P.S. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to purchase dimmable and temperature adjustable lights, but for now, DIY.
 
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I would say daylight, then use CTO gels. CTB gels cut something like 2 stops, while CTO cuts only 3/4 stop. You'll get more output from a daylight fixture gelled for tungsten than the opposite.
 
Here is another question, not so much related to a light panel but still relevant to me ultimately building the light panels: Would you rather have three light panels with gels and dimmable electronically to some extent, or three spot lights (or rather same light output but from a small area like a spot light) with soft boxes, dimmable with gels and also gells to change colour temperature?

In other-words, which is more use-full to you: Light panels, or spot lights with soft boxes?

EDIT: Lets say the difference between having a light panel and a spot with soft box setup is $20 extra. (Roughly $80 for a light panel, $100 for a Spot with soft box). In both cases I'm talking around 9000lumes per light - but cause it's cheap ebay stuff, lets say 7000lumens.
 
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Ultimately, wou would want both a few panels and at least one spot. Unless you are trying to match extensive tungsten illumination, 5600 makes a lot more sense. For example it allows you to shoot outdoors and to suplement daylight entering a room.
 
You can also have in one enclosure, 6 leds warm tint (3200K) with spot or narrow beam , 6 leds ( 5500K) wide or flood beam, 6 leds cool daylight (5500K) narrow and 6 leds ( 5500K) wide beam. That is a total of 24 leds with a wide or narrow beam ( without using diffusers for wide) choice at the flick of a switch and also a 3 temperature color choice ( warm, neutral and cool ) with the other switch. You would need 2 drivers and 2 switches of ( one DPDT on-on-on for color choice, the other SPDT on-on for beam choice). The Cree XM-L2 leds are great for this. The 3000K ones coming out soon will have a high 90 CRI option.
 
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