How bright are LED lights?

G

gutterball321

Well-known member
I am thinking of buying a couple LED lights due to the portability but I have no idea how to judge their brightness. I know you can get them by how many LED lights they have, 500 led panels, 528, 672... But what do these compare to if im looking to replace them with my 2 600w and 1 300w tungsten lights? I hate the shadows LED lights leave so I assume ill use an umbrella to diffuse them, but i dont know if they will be bright enough after diffusing? I was looking at these two aputure 672 LED lights (http://amzn.to/1cY7e2b) but dont know if they will be as bright as my 600w tungstens? I see the new aputure lightstorm lights say 1k output but they are twice as expensive and I dont know if they are twice as bright or just a better color CRI?

any help with how to judge these? Any recommendations on LED light kits (under $1200 for 2) hopefully cheaper. The 3 kits ive looked at are the aputure 672 lights i posted above, the new lightstorms which might be out of my price range or the F&V k4000 but i dont know if they are bright enough? Any other new kits im missing in the mid price range?
 
Look at the specs, most will have lux measured at 1m, 2m. This is comparative. The figures are largely inaccurate, especially from the chinese companies but they will give you an idea. Many assume a 10:1 ratio in efficiency - a 100W LED is often claimed to be equivalent of 1000W tungsten but in practice it's more like 5:1 when I measure with a light meter. And it falls off quicker so comparing lux measured at 1m and 2m is fairly meaningless. I've dabbled with LED with the big single 100W but haven't bought any panels yet. Have been considering it for a couple of years and my research hasn't come up with anything better in panel form than the two you mention for under $1000. They are both fairly well reviewed. I've actually bought a bunch of components to build my own using a roll of bright white sticky backed LED strip but haven't found the time to actually build it yet. If it doesn't work out I'm inclined to the two you mention to run off batteries so I can go bush without a generator.
 
The deal with the smaller 500, 528, 672 etc. LED panels is that they don't throw. The light doesn't carry.
But that's often not such a bad deal. The reason is that they are so light weight and small and COOL that you can put them close to subjects, like just off camera. I have put them as close as a foot away from someone's face.
Now if you're not talking about the larger and more expensive LED panels like the 1'x1' LightPanel Astras and other Pro lights of that caliber - those do throw more and can light a whole set if you have several.

None of them will equal a 650w tungsten light.

I have several of the Aputure Amaran panels and I really like them. They are so convenient it's insane.
To avoid the many-shadows of LEDs I do diffuse them pretty much always. Also you have to keep in mind that because the panel is small it is technically a pretty hard light. I made diffusor boxes that velcro on mine and they more than double the surface area and that helps a ton - then I move them in close and it's a soft controllable light. It's just usually not a Key light because they're just not bright enough.

I think the LightStorms are going to be really good for the price.

I also highly recommend Kino Diva clones (or the Diva herself if you can afford it).
They don't run on batteries but the low wattage draw and low heat are just LOVELY. And these ARE bright. You just can't make them into a small hard light.

The CRI Aputure lists seems to have stood up to scrutiny so you do get 'acceptable' color. No strong green or magenta spikes like in the past. But the CRI rating does not include true red, which is represented as a value of "R9" and may often be listed by makers along with their CRI number. An R9 of above 50 is good. Many LED lights of the recent past had R9 values as low as zero.
 
I have a set of 3 f&v ultracolor, all bicolors. Lovely colors but they are not bright at all. They must be placed really close to the subject.
This has been shot with a couple of them (key and fill). The backlight is a lupo led 650 fresnel.
I bought an Astra bicolor last month and I couldn't be happier. Lot of light output and beautiful colors. I definitely recommend it if you have the budget.

f&v.jpg
 
DPStewart said:
I also highly recommend Kino Diva clones (or the Diva herself if you can afford it).
They don't run on batteries but the low wattage draw and low heat are just LOVELY. And these ARE bright. You just can't make them into a small hard light.
Click to expand...

+1

I just bought some kino tubes for my chinese knockoffs and the light is lovely. The ballasts aren't as good and I'm told this effects the colour temp but for $100 worth of tubes in a $250 dollar fitting my eyes are very happy.
 
DPStewart said:
.....

None of them will equal a 650w tungsten light.....
Click to expand...

Perhaps so with the LED panels. Is this discussion limited to LED panels? There are the other LED lights like the Alzo 3000, RPS, and NicePhoto LEDs. The NicePhoto 150w LED is brighter than a 650 Fresnel. But, it is not battery operated and it is not silent. You may want to consider these lights depending upon what you need.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?316956-150W-LED-(Similar-to-Alzo)-Compared-to-650W-Fresnel

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?315845-Alzo-300-LED-light
 
The trouble is that we tend to assume so much with LEDs and compare them with what they replace. Fresnels are a really good example. An LED Fresnel is a different beast to a tungsten one. Beam spread, and the old half peak point for drop off are different, so the old very intense hotspot has evened out, and this appears centre beam to indicate lower output, but just a bit off centre, it's still there, whereas an old Fresnel would drop off quite a lot. A light meter needs to be used differently and any kind of comparison is tough. The actual beam of individual LED modules is frequently squarish, not round, again often working for you in a flood beam. In real terms light output is now damn good, miles away from the ones I used to complain about just three years ago! I've got my Arri 1ks up against some 36x19w LED moving heads. These are RGBW and set to the same size beam as the Arris the Arri wins , but only in white. As soon as I use colours, the Arris are glow worms. I still like the light the Arris produce but it's very close. These wash lights have a diffuser on the front. Removing it improves brightness but the beam is patchy.
 
The rule I like to follow when looking for the brightness of a light is:
1) Take the manufacture specs and reduce it by 33%. Most specs are inflated than the real world performance.
2) For lighting talent, I look at the 1 meter Lux rating. For background lighting I will look at the 6 meter or more rating. Note that some lights fall off quicker than others, meaning they don't throw the light that far. So you need to know how far the light needs to be and how much fall off you want.
3) If the light is meant to compete against the sun, then 20,000 LUX is the bare minimum (20,000 LUX is roughly f16, ISO 100, Shutter 1/48). I would probably say the sun in the open sky is at about 120,000 lux? Ideally all of my lights should have 120,000 LUX output at up to 20 feet.

I personally would spend more on one really great quality, high output light then less on three lights. I find that cheap lights with high output tend to have bad color rendering and have lots of fan noise. With one great light you can use blocking and reflectors to create the illusion of having multiple lights.
 
When you see lux ratings, you must pay very close attention to the beam angle. You can have two lights with equivalent lux ratings, but one will deliver that over a wider area than the other, so ultimately they really are not equivalent at all - obviously it's easier to deliver all the light in a spot than in a wide area. For example, the F&V K4000 deliver their 2860 lux @1m with a 60 degree angle. The other thing is that the bi-colors almost always are much less bright at either of their color settings - daylight or tungsten, roughly half the rated brightness, because only half of the LEDs are engaged, since they achieve their color by having half the LEDs dedicated to daylight and half to tungsten - so a 400 LED bi-color is not 400 daylight and 400 tungsten, but 200 daylight + 200 tungsten... so what I do is simply buy a 400 LED daylight instead (I have 3 F&V K4000). I bought a few LED lights, but in the last year I've just sat back and watched the market, because the LEDs are just coming into their own - they are evolving so fast, that anything you buy today is going to be leapfrogged within 6 months to a year. The LEDs have fantastic potential and enormous advantages, but are still not quite ready for prime time, IMHO, and still quite costly. I'm sure not too long from now there will be much more progress in LEDs and I'll buy again when I feel they've reached a point of price/performance that makes a buy sensible. Of course, the trouble is we often need the lights NOW and can't afford to wait around :)
 
Coming from still photography, I've got a lot of big flash units but very little invested in video lights, so when I needed some recently I decided to go with the Litepanels Astra EP 1x1. I often have to work by myself, so ease of set-up was paramount. Also, I can plug them in anywhere and not have to worry about blowing a circuit. I got one to test it out, and then ordered two more a week later.

Are they bright enough? The answer is, they do OK. In a large municipal meeting room, I was able to use three of them to do a head-and-shoulders interview-type shoot of a local politician. I lit a wall of flags and the city logo at about 15 feet with two of the Astras, and I used the other one as a main light through a small softbox. The softbox was as close to the subject as I could get it without getting in the frame, with the added challenge of using a slider, and ended up being about 42" away. I put a silver reflector to the opposite side of the subject to pop up the shadows. With an FS700 at no gain or increased ISO, I was able to get 1/60 sec at f4.5, and kept everything within the good range on the histogram. All of the lights were turned up to the max.

As far as I was concerned, I barely had enough light. I was going for shallow DOF, which helped.

On a previous job I was shooting robots, 3-D printers, and a cryogenic lab. Used direct, I had more than enough light when the three units were placed about seven feet from the robot. I was able to strategically place all three of the lights in the 3-D printer lab to get the whole back section of the room lit up, an area of about 20 feet by 15 feet, 1/60 sec at f5.6 (fortunately my subject was in a plane).

The greatest thing about the Astras (and most similar LED panels) is the ability to dial in a lighting ratio. On one shot I didn't have room to put up a reflector, but I did have room to place another Astra, and I just dialed it down.

My next purchase would be an upgraded Astra unit with twice as much power. In the real world they will not overpower daylight (except when I shoot macro and the lights are reeeel close), but when used inside they can do a lot. Learn their limitations and get clever with your technique and reflectors, and you'll be able to do a lot with them.

If I have the money, instead of the Astra I'll get some of these: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1009512-REG/rotolight_rl_anova_v2_s_anova_v2_bicolor_led.html.
If I can work my way up to a bank of 16 of those beauties, there wouldn't be much I couldn't take on. Do you think that maybe I could get $45,000 on Indigogo?
 
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