Have you tried Velvet Lights LED Panels? I have.

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
On a recent shoot in Brazil, we shot one day in a recording studio in Rio. I had requested some Astras on my gear order and the local grip and lighting company did not have them so they instead sent out Velvet Light 2s instead with the 40 degree egg crates. I lit the whole thing mostly with Arri tungsten overheard, a lot of 650s and 300s so I ended up using the Velvets for soft fill from underneath the musicians. I was happy with their performance and quality of light. Before this shoot, I had not even heard of them. If you get the chance, try them out on your next rental, they were nice, reminded me of the Arris Skypanels but I didn't notice as much of a green spike. Unfortunately this documentary project is under NDA, still in production, so i cannot post stills.
http://www.velvetlight.tv/product/velvet-light-2/
 
Unfortunately I didn't really get to play with them as it was a busy day and I had a crew who set them up and broke them down. But I liked the quality of light from them, it was "Velvety" ;-)
 
puredrifting said:
.... reminded me of the Arris Skypanels but I didn't notice as much of a green spike.http://www.velvetlight.tv/product/velvet-light-2/
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Our engineer found those about a month ago while looking for new studio lights. I have not seen them first hand yet. One unique feature is that they are claimed to be rainproof.

They do mention they don't have a 'green deviation' on their web site, so maybe they are taking a swipe at Arri.
 
Paul F said:
Our engineer found those about a month ago while looking for new studio lights. I have not seen them first hand yet. One unique feature is that they are claimed to be rainproof.

They do mention they don't have a 'green deviation' on their web site, so maybe they are taking a swipe at Arri.
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I think they are, they seemed aimed at a similar market.
 
I haven't used them myself, but I have a friend in Atlanta who has been talking them up for at least a year or two, now. I think he has the Velvet Mini's.
 
Noel Evans said:
What do these price at in USD?
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I'm wondering that, too. Their webiste shows Fiomtools as an authorised dealer. But Fiomtools has no listings.

Musson Theatrical (musson.com... new one for me) has them listed at $2,025 USD for the Velvet 2.
 
Did you see the "power" version? 1x2 panel with 50,000 lux at 1 meter with a 15 degree beam angle. That is some seriously long throw for an LED panel.
 
We got a quote for the Velvet Power 1 lights.

VELVET Power 1 Studio with 30 degree beam - $1,950.00
VELVET Power 1 Studio with 15 degree beam - $2,050.00
 
I talked to these guys at NAB... The 1x2 was over $3K... like $3200. I enjoyed the conversation with them, as well as the DMG guys... but it seems the really bright LEDs aren't coming down in price any time soon... also... the Velvet lights appear to be built like a tank, but check the weight... they're heavy. I picked up a 1x2 while commenting on the weight of the Softpanel 1x2 being "heavy" at 16.5 lbs... the Velvet 1x2 felt heavier. Specs on their site put it around the same weight.

A funny thing about Velvet (and Area 48, etc) is "binning"... I brought this up in the Softpanels thread when others were making generalizations about all LEDs being predictable on power-draw... and I mentioned "binning"... which is the practice of sorting out the "golden samples" from a diode production run... and building lights from only those sorted diodes. Well... Velvet is one of the (several) companies I talked with, who puts an emphasis on this practice... (this is also why I expected Softpanels to be brighter).

Oh... also... Astras are about to get a good boost in brightness too. The current Astra says "4x brighter than the original"... well... now they'll be "6x brighter than the original".

The Velvet lights are/were very nice... but I have to wonder how long companies will keep making really heavy location LED lighting(?) Astras feel downright feathery by comparison.
 
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