Fotodiox 312 LED Lights

roxics

roxics

Veteran
So I went looking for some inexpensive on-camera LED lights and stumbled upon these:
https://www.fotodioxpro.com/fotodio...removable-sony-compatible-f550-batteries.html

Which come in daylight for $190 and bi-color for $200.
That's a full kit with two batteries, charger, camera mount and case.
Seems like a decent deal. But does anyone here have a first hand usage of one? Can you tell me how you like it?

This would be my first LED light(s) and I'm prompted at the moment to pick one or two up to use on a little short film shoot I'm doing on a camping trip with some friends in July. Nothing serious in term of production. It's just for fun. I like to spice up our camping trips since I have captive crew/actors for a few days. So we'll be in the woods and I could use something small and battery powered rather than the fresnels and lowellpros I typically use for client shoots.

At the same time I figured maybe they would come in handy for some of those client shoots. Especially in scenarios where we're on an event shoot capturing a seminar and b-roll and the boss suddenly says "can we get an interview real quick with [insert important person here]" and we left all our big lights in the car twenty flights down and a quarter mile over in the parking garage because we were told we weren't going to need them and didn't want to lug them that distance when we didn't have to.

My big concern is brightness. I dont know how to properly measure it. I'm used to using non-LED lights so I know what a 300 watt or 650 watt light outputs, but I'm not that familiar with lux/lumens when it comes to knowing light output. As far as I can guess, one of these daylight only models should be equal to about a 150watt incandescent bulb, right or wrong? It says 2200lx.
 
Looks like a modified version of the 312AS LED which I've had for a few years and bought for $99... I would not recommend it. The 3200k LEDs are very green but the 5600k LEDs are not so it's hard to correct with a gel if you use the bi-color. I think it's about a 18W LED panel so I wouldn't expect it to outperform more than about 75W of tungsten.

I'd definitely recommend the YN300II instead which is cheaper and remote contolled and doesn't require much color correction if any.
 
nyvz said:
I'd definitely recommend the YN300II instead which is cheaper and remote contolled and doesn't require much color correction if any.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the suggestion. That's definitely a lot cheaper, even when you include a battery and charger. $75 is 37.5% of $200.
I think I would go for the all daylight version 1 model though. I would want the max output for daylight and then just gel it for indoors.

Is the light output between these two units compariable, about equal to 75watt tungsten you say?
 
Just be careful about gelling LEDs, you might not always get what you expect since gels are not designed for light sources with color spikes. Often CTO exacerbates any green spike issue you get on an LED. The YN-300 and YN-600 (I use both) do come with plastic CTO inserts but haven't really used them much. I think I tested them once when I was figuring exactly the right gels for the LEDs and was surprised they didn't increase the green spike too much but I'm not certain.

It's a bit complicated to really compare an LED lighting unit to a tungsten one since there are fundamental differences, but I would probably say at full power expect similar output to a 75-150w tungsten fresnel at a similar beam angle. LEDs are generally 3-4x as efficient as tungsten but they gain a bit extra optical efficiency in their lenses.
 
Last edited:
That Aputure Amaran AL-198C LED is probably more comparable to the YN-160 in output. Haven't tried either of those, though, and not sure a light that small and low power is that worthwhile.

I am always wary of any light that only takes AA batteries since they usually are often very low output so that they can run on such low power batteries. And AA batteries get expensive and wasteful. For about the same price, the YN-300 has barn doors, remote control, probably about twice the power, and runs off much more compact and convenient batteries. I'd always rather change 1 battery instead of 6...

And those amazon reviews say the AL-198C may have flicker issues? It is a pretty old light so maybe it uses slow PWM dimming.
 
nyvz said:
Just be careful about gelling LEDs, you might not always get what you expect since gels are not designed for light sources with color spikes. Often CTO exacerbates any green spike issue you get on an LED. The YN-300 and YN-600 (I use both) do come with plastic CTO inserts but haven't really used them much. I think I tested them once when I was figuring exactly the right gels for the LEDs and was surprised they didn't increase the green spike too much but I'm not certain.

It's a bit complicated to really compare an LED lighting unit to a tungsten one since there are fundamental differences, but I would probably say at full power expect similar output to a 75-150w tungsten fresnel at a similar beam angle. LEDs are generally 3-4x as efficient as tungsten but they gain a bit extra optical efficiency in their lenses.
Click to expand...

How do you find the YN-300 compared with the old 312 panels? My only experience is with the 312s (which I find very useful, especially with suction cup mounts, though I agree the green spike is a killer) and the much higher end units which are $600 for half the output in an even smaller unit but great color, and would gladly replace them with the YN-300s if that fixed color rendering issues with the same brightness.

How bright is the YN-600? Small enough to use on a suction cup? Bright enough to use as a key or day interior fill or would I want to go up to one of the 2000w panels? Is the tungsten rendering ok? Those prices are so right.
 
For $61 with prime shipping I decided to pull the trigger on the YN-300 plus a couple NP-F550 batteries and a charger. If I like it I'll grab a couple more in the future. I should know by next week.

Thanks, you saved me over half the cost of the other one.

 
roxics said:
For $61 with prime shipping I decided to pull the trigger on the YN-300 plus a couple NP-F550 batteries and a charger. If I like it I'll grab a couple more in the future. I should know by next week.

Thanks, you saved me over half the cost of the other one.

Click to expand...

Id love to hear your thoughts or see a review after you get it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top