Home made DIY LED baby light

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Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

I finally had a moment so I shot some pics of my homemade LED light. I'm pretty happy with it. It saved me from doing the battery brick thing or perhaps even a battery belt. Instead I just use the small DVX100 batteries on the back. It slips right into the hot shoe and puts out true tungsten balanced light thats both directional and soft without the need of a mini chimera or any diffusion at all. LED's also never get hot light halogen bulbs so no more cooking gells or actors. In the future I be looking into DC to DC converters so I run it with just one battery and throw a eletronic pulse dimmer so that I can dim the light on the fly without any effect on the color temp. Sorry for taking so long to get them up. Anyways enjoy.

-Brett Erskine
www.CinematographerReels.com
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Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Jez. I really should proof read what I post or at least think about the same sentence that Im typing at the time. Let me know if you need it translated. ;-)
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

that looks great. i wish i was able to do stuff like that but i would probably kill myself trying this...
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Bret,
As cjoyce mentioned, you should consider marketing just the plans, with detailed part lists and suppliers. I'd be willing to buy a copy!
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Yes yes yes...part numbers, suppliers, instructions etc. pleeeease. I would pay for that ;)

Thanks!
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Thanks. The next one I will build will be even smaller, have a dimmer and work off one battery. It would look basically like this:

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A interesting thing you can also do with LED's are make a light source that will never need ANY colored gell again (red, purple, green, whatever). Similar to how a TV screen mixes RBG to make any color - if you have a dense array of LED's that are R-G-B then you can dial in your color temp instantly. This concept is already starting to show up in stage lighting where its very time consuming to get up on a ladder and change the gells. It also means that they dont need to buy as many lights because one light serves many purposes. And because you arent using gells your getting alot more out of your light. Perhaps I should add this feature to my next light. News camera guys would love it.
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

"part numbers, suppliers, instructions etc. pleeeease. I would pay for that "

yes! what he said.

im in need of a small efficient light that will run off battery without the need to wear a butt-pack and deal with the small cables.

please share your genius with us. =)
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Well to make one like the one pictured above I pulled LEDs and panel out of a different fixture (http://www.ledtronics.com/ds/gdl002-200/) and put a lexan face on the front a textured plastic panel on the back. The battery docking plates are from (http://www.lenmar.com/accessories_list.asp?product=camcorder&type=accessories&category=2) and the hardware is all available from homedepot.

There are many ways to improve on the design (such as dimmable, color shiftable/matching, more compact and runs off a single battery). The light pictured was made more as a test to see if the system could work and if so perhaps sell them. I planned on having some if not all of the features above. Unfortunately it just wouldnt be cost effective to make them because the MiniDV market is generally more interested in bottom dollar products rather then putting importance on quality and fuctionality. Besides the major manufactures are going to pick up this technology and muscle out the rest fairly soon.
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Im getting alot of emails about my LED light. To clear up some of the confusion the very last picture shows a virtual mockup of what I hope the size of the next light will be. The other three pics are of a very real and working light that I built. Anyone else working on a LED light?

-Brett Erskine
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

i bought a big bag of bright white led's and i just haven't gotten around to doing anything with it.

i have a friend who is really great at electronics but knows next to nothing about what sort of light we need for dv so i've been hoping for someone to post some more specifics of what they did when they built there lights.

matthew
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Jarred said:
"I used the ProjectX LED light, WC201-03 8000mcd leds" and "I think I paid $.15 for 5600k LEDS when I built mine..."

I went to their website and these are sold out - back ordered actually - due to a customs strike or something. I e-mailed to see if they were still available and got a yes, in a few days, but they cost about 75 cents each, not Jarred's recollection of 15 cents. :( Still, not too bad a price.

John at ProjectX was also curious where all the WC201-03s were going. Hi John!

Personally, I'd love to see someone develope a parts & vendor list and basic how-to, although this looks so easy even my mom could do it. Well, maybe not _my_ mom - but someone's! :)


LHB
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Look earlier in the thread for pics, links to and prices on how to build your own. I also made one. Check out my posts too.

As cool as 56k lights are I might recomend that you get tungsten balanced LED instead. The reason being is you'll never have a big/strong enough LED array to be useful outdoors (56k). Gelling your 56k LED's for indoor use will waste alot of light too. IMO tungstens the mmost practical way to go for a on-camera LED lights.

Brett Erskine
www.CinematographerReels.com
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

I've read all the pages, just lazy I suppose. :) I'd like links to places with the best prices for batterie connectors, breadboards etc. The prices for white light LEDs have really dropped over the last 2 or so years and Jarred's project got me interested in them again. So far, I've come up with some ideas for lighting the custom exterior gauge package in my 1981 Turbo TA, a handy nightlight for a pocket digital camera, and this on cam video light thingy. Your suggestion as to color temp is well noted on the latter.

LHB
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

[quote author=PFP_VIDEO link=board=Links;num=1071261354;start=135#139 date=09/12/04 at 20:54:18]First off, nice light, great job. My question is , who's Zoom? Jarred = Zoom?[/quote]

Yes, Zoomforce is Jarred's former DVXuser 'handle'. I believe he still uses the name for his business ventures (i.e. DVXuser batteries).
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

hi all,
I loved this gadget. Two thumbs up for Brett Erskine.
I've been thinking about this since i heard about bright white leds. I'm planning to convert my pag into an led instead of the halogen bulb. I'm trying design a system that keeps all options open so i'll be able remove the led system and revert to the halo again without fiddling about. the only probelm i'vgot so far is that white leds are quite expensive here (if I am to buy them locally-Malta) about 4euros each. But I'll tru to find a foreign supplier to buy leds with bulk.
More detiails will follow, once I've finalised my project. I'll love to share it with you all.
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Thanks. Correct me if Im wrong but it sounds like your trying to make one or perhaps just a few LEDs take the job of the tungsten bulb in your Pag light. While they do make larger LEDs that are bright there is no way you will get enough light out of just a few LED's to be useful. There are 198 LED's in my light so a bundle small enough to be interchangeable with the Pag light bases just wont give you enough room for the amount of LEDs your going to need.

On a side note Im finding the LEDs do have one unexpected draw back...They give you no warning before you run out of batteries. Seems that LEDs just plain stop working after the batteries reach a certain level. They simply go from bright as hell to off instantly. I believe I've heard of electronics that regulate the battery level though. Something like this will stretch the run time of the light further and hopefully even offer a light indicator when the level is getting too low. Can anyone help me with specifics?
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

Maybe you're right. I was planning to make my own pcb that fits into the pag reflector with terminals similar to the halogen bulb....... until I swithced plans. I came across an old Photo flash gun that houses four AAA batteries and converted it to an led baby light by removing the reflector and fixing a veroboard with 15 superbright white leds ( acutally there's space for 27 leds but it's still on test for batteries lifetime) it works awfully well. A diffuser gel is indispensable because superbright white leds give quite directional light. I'm powering it by 4 ni-mh AAA cells 2350mAh. (can't find how to attach photos to a post - i'm quite new for this site- any help)

As regards voltage regulation it will shorten your power on life because if you use a voltage regulator chip  it will switch off your leds as soon as your battery goes down below your treshold voltage. Remember as well that we are dealing with diodes, and they have also their own treshold voltage, that's why they just go off abruplty.
 
Re: Home made DIY LED baby light

MARIOSCICLUNA-
What do you recomend to squeeze out the last of the battery life while still maintaining the operating level?

BTW Lith-Ions like the batteries for the DVX are proven to work much longer for LEDs then other forms of batteries. Also they tend to be the smallest and most light weight for their power rating. Check it out.

-Brett Erskine
 
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