Intellytech vs Litemat:

P

PIMP

Well-known member
Hello:

So I am in a dilemma trying to decide my next purchase. I currently own a LITEMAT 4 s2 and I love this light to death. So much so that I want to get another light to partner it up with. First thought was to get another LITEMAT but unfortunately as you all know they are really expensive. By chance I came across a video for INTELLYTECH lights. Judging from the videos alone they seem to be a great buy. Just wondering if anyone has experience dealing with both and are aware if I combine two different brand lights? I want to add I love to use my LITEMAT through unbleached muslin material, and that makes me lose a good amount of light. Will the light quality be different if I am using a LITEMAT and an ITELLYTECH light side by side through the same muslin material?

Any advice would be appreciated

Thanks

O.R
 
I don't have specific knowledge of the products. It comes down to what you're filming and quality you need. In my experience when filming interviews you have to be careful mixing brands because the cheaper ones can have tints that you don't notice until you start looking closely at skin tones. I prefer quality for key and fill. Background and hair don't matter.
 
That’s a tough one. I have a client with some older Litemats and they look good. I also own three Intellytech’s, two 2x2 LC-160 bi-color litecloth fixtures and a bi-color Mega-litecloth(3x4.5) and they look good(great), as well. But I’ve never mixed the two together. I have however mixed the Intellytechs with my Gemini’s, Astra’s, Astera’s, Quasars and Hive’s with no issues, for what it’s worth.

My only real issue with Intellytech lights are their erector-set assembly and tear-down/pack-up. The quality of the light itself is beautiful. Of course, the Litemats are not quite as bad with set-up/tear-down, but they are still a minor pita.
 
Generally with LEDs, it's not optimal to mix brands if both sources are lighting the people in the same scene. Not that you cannot get away with this, you might be able to. But generally LEDs by brand have varying levels
of magenta I have found and color correcting scenes with mixed lighting hitting talent can be a nightmare. I mix them up all of the time when I can light in zones and it's fine but I always try to avoid lighting talent with
mixed brand LED lights.

FWIW, I have a two Light Cannon Intellytech kit I bought earlier this year and I am really impressed with the build and quality as I had never lit with their products before.
 
Just keep track of the screw tightness in the Light Cannon handle mount. The four tiny screws come from the inside the light through the body to the mounting pug, so when they start to get loose, you have to disassemble the entire Cannon shell to get to them, and the shell and the interior components are largely held together by friction and compression.

Major PITA.

Other than that, great lights.
 
puredrifting said:
Generally with LEDs, it's not optimal to mix brands if both sources are lighting the people in the same scene. Not that you cannot get away with this, you might be able to. But generally LEDs by brand have varying levels
of magenta I have found and color correcting scenes with mixed lighting hitting talent can be a nightmare. I mix them up all of the time when I can light in zones and it's fine but I always try to avoid lighting talent with
mixed brand LED lights.

FWIW, I have a two Light Cannon Intellytech kit I bought earlier this year and I am really impressed with the build and quality as I had never lit with their products before.
Click to expand...

That has always been my philosophy(due to real world results) on LED’s. Until recently. Obviously you need to test and see how they behave on-camera, but it’s not like the old days when the difference between brands was literally night & day(or white and green or magenta...). Plus, a lot of lights have +/- green adjustability, today(actually still have yet to use that on any of my lights that have that feature, mostly because they match so well, now. Ironically, when we really needed that feature, it wasn’t available).

I still try to key with all the same lights when possible, but I have used the LC-160’s as hairs with Gemini’s as keys and I regularly use a Gemini 1x1 or Astra 6x as fill with my 800 HMI.

The only LED’s that I own that really do not match anything else are my Nila’s. But I’ve only seen one(or one pair) of Nila’s in-person that I actually thought were clean.
 
puredrifting said:
Generally with LEDs, it's not optimal to mix brands if both sources are lighting the people in the same scene. Not that you cannot get away with this, you might be able to. But generally LEDs by brand have varying levels
of magenta I have found and color correcting scenes with mixed lighting hitting talent can be a nightmare. I mix them up all of the time when I can light in zones and it's fine but I always try to avoid lighting talent with
mixed brand LED lights.

FWIW, I have a two Light Cannon Intellytech kit I bought earlier this year and I am really impressed with the build and quality as I had never lit with their products before.
Click to expand...

Especially true of bi-color. I find along the spectrum things can drift between brands. All the variables makes it more difficult to gel.
 
captslomo said:
Just keep track of the screw tightness in the Light Cannon handle mount. The four tiny screws come from the inside the light through the body to the mounting pug, so when they start to get loose, you have to disassemble the entire Cannon shell to get to them, and the shell and the interior components are largely held together by friction and compression.

Major PITA.

Other than that, great lights.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, I just tightened them down!
 
The main appeal for the Intellytech litecloth fixtures (IMO) is just how small they can pack if that is important. I bought two LC160 units before starting a bunch of OMB travel shoots for a major health care provider. Having a 2x2 source that packs down to flat 1x1 was really useful in that situation. I packed it along with all of the gack in my large suitcase with a domke wrap around the controller. Worked very well and I even got away with using Merf stands on those travel shoots. I've used these fixtures in other situations as well, but when I'm local I much prefer using my COB fixtures with domes or diff frames.

As RnG mentioned, the parts and build up can be a bit tedious on set, so if the portability isn't super important to you, then you can stick with Litemats. As far as color quality goes, they are great but my main issue with them was that my two units did not match well to each other on the Green/magenta spectrum. Since that's a small sample size, it's hard to know if that issue is pervasive. I haven't heard anyone else complain about that, and there are a number of folks on DVXuser who own multiple copies of the same litecloth fixtures, so I'm guessing it was just my bad fortune.

I also appreciate the Kelvin range on the Intellytech fixtures. It's pretty generous. Just don't expect the temp reading on the box to be super accurate. You may need to do tests to know how much it's off and get to know your offset.

Lastly, if it were me I would stick to what Puredrifiting said for lighting people. These are all high quality lights, but not close enough to use the two brands on the same person or for multiple people in the same scene. I'd stick with a brand for that.
 
ozmorphasis said:
The main appeal for the Intellytech litecloth fixtures (IMO) is just how small they can pack if that is important. I bought two LC160 units before starting a bunch of OMB travel shoots for a major health care provider. Having a 2x2 source that packs down to flat 1x1 was really useful in that situation. I packed it along with all of the gack in my large suitcase with a domke wrap around the controller. Worked very well and I even got away with using Merf stands on those travel shoots. I've used these fixtures in other situations as well, but when I'm local I much prefer using my COB fixtures with domes or diff frames.

As RnG mentioned, the parts and build up can be a bit tedious on set, so if the portability isn't super important to you, then you can stick with Litemats. As far as color quality goes, they are great but my main issue with them was that my two units did not match well to each other on the Green/magenta spectrum. Since that's a small sample size, it's hard to know if that issue is pervasive. I haven't heard anyone else complain about that, and there are a number of folks on DVXuser who own multiple copies of the same litecloth fixtures, so I'm guessing it was just my bad fortune.

I also appreciate the Kelvin range on the Intellytech fixtures. It's pretty generous. Just don't expect the temp reading on the box to be super accurate. You may need to do tests to know how much it's off and get to know your offset.

Lastly, if it were me I would stick to what Puredrifiting said for lighting people. These are all high quality lights, but not close enough to use the two brands on the same person or for multiple people in the same scene. I'd stick with a brand for that.
Click to expand...

Because they do break down to 1/4 of their working size and the case is so small, too, it lets me just leave them in the truck 24/7. It's one (or two) less thing(s) to think about or have to make the decision, "Should I carry them or do I have room to carry those?". They're always in there, at least as back-ups.
 
I have used Intellytech and Litecloth together successfully. You need to dial in color by eye -- don't trust any of the readouts. I own a 2-unit Intellytech LC-160 kit just like the others. It came in a small rolling case but the packaging is certainly not conducive to quick setup and break down. But yeah, beautiful light and they nicely replaced my old Rifa.
 
PIMP said:
Hello:

So I am in a dilemma trying to decide my next purchase. I currently own a LITEMAT 4 s2 and I love this light to death. So much so that I want to get another light to partner it up with. First thought was to get another LITEMAT but unfortunately as you all know they are really expensive. By chance I came across a video for INTELLYTECH lights. Judging from the videos alone they seem to be a great buy. Just wondering if anyone has experience dealing with both and are aware if I combine two different brand lights? I want to add I love to use my LITEMAT through unbleached muslin material, and that makes me lose a good amount of light. Will the light quality be different if I am using a LITEMAT and an ITELLYTECH light side by side through the same muslin material?

Any advice would be appreciated

Thanks

O.R
Click to expand...

If you're in LA you should be able to rent one for peanuts.

There's great information here already but I'll add:

- even soft LEDs can have different enough beam angles that can be annoying when punching a few through diffusion. One light might need to be at a greater distance to the point where the closer light with wider beam angle is in the way.
- litemat might have stronger brand recognition and therefore could be easier to get $$$ if that's the way you do business.
- maybe you prefer the carrying case of two litemats vs. one litemat and one intellytech. I know it sounds trivial but might be the difference.
- Aaron at intellytech offers unbelievable customer service - one of the nicest people I've dealt with.
- shooting through muslin takes up too much light, have you tried bouncing!?
 
ONce there was a thing called a shop. Yes it was a building in the same city as you with stock of product.

I bought Lupo because the importer was in my city - I dont thing it is dumb when considereing two brands with similar paper specs to go with the one available in your local shop
 
James0b57 said:
Especially true of bi-color. I find along the spectrum things can drift between brands. All the variables makes it more difficult to gel.
Click to expand...

I feel like the tungsten setting on bicolors is usually less accurate than the daylight setting and often leans magenta. So, I totally agree that it's harder to mix and match once you start adjusting color temp. But I have 6 different brands of daylight LEDs and I feel like they all mix well except for 1 which was the cheapest per output and has a strong green bias
 
ahalpert said:
I feel like the tungsten setting on bicolors is usually less accurate than the daylight setting and often leans magenta. So, I totally agree that it's harder to mix and match once you start adjusting color temp. But I have 6 different brands of daylight LEDs and I feel like they all mix well except for 1 which was the cheapest per output and has a strong green bias
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I think that it depends heavily on the brand. AND on the camera. And if you're shooting baked-in, log, preset or WB for the source itself.

Ultimately it boils down to "How Does It Look On-Camera?". Which is why so many of these on-line video lighting shoot-outs aren't really that useful, because what is being done in the camera(and post) is such a huge variable. I've seen lots of tests show others getting opposite results that I get with some of my lights. There was an LED shootout a few years ago and the results from the Gemini's looked green. These are some of the best looking LED's available. But they were shooting the test RAW on a RED. So it all came down to how that sensor was seeing the light and how they were processing it in post. One of the few on-line testers I really trust is Matt at NewsShooter. His reviews are probably the most thorough and in-depth available. And he's a straight shooter. He's not gonna sugar coat it.
 
Run&Gun said:
I think that it depends heavily on the brand. AND on the camera. And if you're shooting baked-in, log, preset or WB for the source itself.

Ultimately it boils down to "How Does It Look On-Camera?". Which is why so many of these on-line video lighting shoot-outs aren't really that useful, because what is being done in the camera(and post) is such a huge variable. I've seen lots of tests show others getting opposite results that I get with some of my lights. There was an LED shootout a few years ago and the results from the Gemini's looked green. These are some of the best looking LED's available. But they were shooting the test RAW on a RED. So it all came down to how that sensor was seeing the light and how they were processing it in post. One of the few on-line testers I really trust is Matt at NewsShooter. His reviews are probably the most thorough and in-depth available. And he's a straight shooter. He's not gonna sugar coat it.
Click to expand...

are you talking about the color accuracy of the tungsten LEDs or about green bias? Doesn't mixing lights in the same shot give you some sense that one is objectively greener? especially if it looks green to the eye?
 
ahalpert said:
are you talking about the color accuracy of the tungsten LEDs or about green bias? Doesn't mixing lights in the same shot give you some sense that one is objectively greener? especially if it looks green to the eye?
Click to expand...

I'm talking about color accuracy in-general, but also using Gemini's as an example. I'm generally shooting my cameras in preset if I'm in controlled conditions and the Gemini's are clean(white light looks white), whether at 3200, 4300, 5600, etc. On a color meter, they have a very small magenta offset in both 3200k & 5600k(maybe .1 to.3), but nothing I have seen(or can see) with my naked eye or on-camera. I have yet to use the +/- green adjustment on them, whether just using them or mixing them with other LED's that I have. And I've mixed them numerous times on larger shoots where we have keyed with them and flown the lightweight Intellytech 2'x2' LC-160's as hair lights. I've also used them with my Quasar Tubes, keying with the Gemini's and using the tubes to light a seamless white background, all at preset 3200K. No color correction required. It was ready to air straight out of camera. Now compare that, to say my Nila's that I can see the green push with my naked eye, as well as on-camera(and why I only break them out in emergencies). Even with a white balance, I don't like the skin tone's they produce.

Back in the day, mixing LED's was a huge no-no and I was constantly telling people not to mix brands in the same shot. Most brands were so far off from one another it was an exercise in futility. Especially the lower priced and no-name stuff(generally speaking). But now, it's possible and not something I really even think about today, at least with the fixtures that I own(the exceptions are the Nila's). Don't get me wrong, they're not all gonna match, but it's not the absolute "none of them are gonna match" like it once was.
 
hell, in the early days, there'd be significant variation in different copies of the same model of light :D
 
mcbob said:
hell, in the early days, there'd be significant variation in different copies of the same model of light :D
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I remember part of Arri’s sales-pitch on their early LED’s, the lo-casters and broadcasters, was that their quality control was so high that they would swap out/replace any fixtures that didn’t match.
 
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