LED Christmas lights?

[David G. Smith]

For fun and games, I was surfing on eBay, and did a search for "Christmas lights". I was very surprised at the number, and variety of listings that came back. What really impressed me was the massive number of listings for LED lights strings. When I first started going through those listing, I thought I had stumbled upon Manna from heaven! I have been looking for specialty lights, for background effects and the like, and for lights to use in very tight spaces. These LED Christmas lights look like they fit that bill, and are stupid cheap! They can be strung up almost anywhere, like under shelves, behind lights and so forth. In tight spaces, they can be formed in to small lighting instruments, or just taped to walls, and give great versatility in lighting.
I am very excited about these kinds of lights. I have ordered a 10 meter strand, with 100 "Super White" LEDs to play around with. Here is an example of a listing I am very interested in"

200 "White" LEDs (I am assuming these are close to daylight in color temp), in a 64ft string, for 15 bucks!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-New-Fairy-Lights-White-Color-64ft-20M-200-LED-Xmas-Light-Party-Lights-/310384535350?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item48445c2736

There are a lot of colored LED light strings that I am interested in also. I really think that lights like these can be very useful for low budget filmmakers.


Is there anybody out there using these kinds of lights? Are there any issues that we should know about when using them?

 

[Postmaster]

Shane Hurlbut told me this little secret. But he doesn´t use LED.So I got some of those light hoses, he recommends.They have little tungsten lights in them and come in various colors.You can also dim them with any dimmer, or flicker them as a fake fire reflection.Those LED that can change color are intriguing, but may be pulsed, what totally messes up your material beyond repair in post.

 

[J Davis]

Nice find David. - ordered!

edit: I'm sure the cri and color temp will be wackazolo but what really interestes me is the shapes I can make it into, wrapping it in blackwrap, experimenting etc

 

[David G. Smith]

Shane Hurlbut told me this little secret. But he doesn´t use LED.So I got some of those light hoses, he recommends.They have little tungsten lights in them and come in various colors.You can also dim them with any dimmer, or flicker them as a fake fire reflection.Those LED that can change color are intriguing, but may be pulsed, what totally messes up your material beyond repair in post.


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Wow, great minds think alike Frank! That DIY article by Hurlbut http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2011/11/05/lighting-basics-going-with-what-is-available/ is exactly what I was thinking about when I went surfing on eBay for the Christmas lights. I have a 20 foot or so strand of that rope light like you and Hurlbut posted. My roommate, who is an art director and costume designer, had bought it for a haunted house event she designed and I have "Appropriated" it for my light kit. I was looking to get some more but found, from the link on Hurlbut's blog, that they are relatively expensive. http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/GROTE-Light-Rope-2CWK8?Pid=search

I also have a few boxes of white incandescent Christmas lights that I have picked up at after Christmas sales the past few years and I wanted to get some more when I went to eBay. I may still get some more of those also, as I love the warm soft light they produce, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the variety of LED strings available, and the low cost. I am NOT a big fan, yet, of LED lighting for video, due to some less than pleasant experiences with dimable LED stage lighting and with some cheap Chinese knock off LED "Video" lights". I shot a band under dimable stage LED lighting and got burnt with horrible pulsing from the lights. The footage was unusable. I also got onto a shoot, at short notice, where the producer only had a set of cheap knock off LED video lights, and they sucked. He wanted to use them as the only lights to shoot a bar interior and they were wholly inadequate for that. They had no throw at all. Luckily, I was a Boy Scout as a kid ("Be Prepared") and I had a small tungsten kit in the back of my car that took care of the job. So, anytime I start to think LED, I have a large pinch of salt available and try to think about the down side of the lights. The thing about these LED Christmas lights that excite me is that I am also not a real stickler for motivated lighting, all the time, and like to throw in some stylized lighting now and again. These kind of cheap lights may just be the ticket for stuff like that. And, like a said, they are stupid cheap. If they don't work at for filmmaking, we are going to have a fancy decorated house come next Christmas!

Nice find David. - ordered!

edit: I'm sure the cri and color temp will be wackazolo but what really interestes me is the shapes I can make it into, wrapping it in blackwrap, experimenting etc

That is the thing I dig J., experimenting with these lights.

One thing I was thinking about is for car shots. Using them for dashboard lights was my first thought. Also, I have done "Poor Man's Process" for car shots before and when I saw those colored LED Christmas lights, I started thinking about the possibility of setting up some of the red, yellow and green lights, maybe taped into circles on a piece of foamcore, and using them to simulate the lighting from stop lights shining into a car windshield.

That is just a start of the ideas... taping them to TVs or computer monitors to simulate lights coming from them, putting them into a brief case to simulate the "Are we all right Vincent?" light from "Pulp Fiction" and on and on...

This ought to be fun!