LED lifespan

[rob norton]

I just saw the BB&S Area 48 light has been discontinued on B&H.

As LED technology "matures", it'll be interesting to see how manufacturer's service and repair policies vary. I can't see many "50 thousand hours" claims actually being put to the test.

Should companies also be coughing up their planned shelf lives for their products? Would it even matter?

It's a tiresome game trying to constantly purchase the flavour of the month, then scrambling to make as much money as possible over a short period.

Using arri skpanels as an example, they are actually improving with age!

This isn't a comment on Arri, but I can see lighting manufacturers using similar strategies to camera makers, in that they sell a "unit" (like a camera body), then string people along with promises of firmware updates, which may or may not take a long time to implement, or don't happen at all.

If a light nailed the hardware aspect and build quality isn't an issue, who would subscribe to the continuous updates model?

 

[dwiener]

If LED warranties are anything like other bulb warranties, then if it lights up it's good. They don't guarantee color temperature. Only whether the bulb will light or not.

 

[Run&Gun]

I think Rob is probably talking about the entire fixture/unit, not just the emitters. Lets face it, LED fixtures are a lot more complex than a tungsten fixture. Your standard tungsten fixture is a housing, some wires, a circuit breaker(on/off switch) and the lamp. Very little to go wrong and pretty easy to fix if something does happen. LED's on the other hand are essentially computers: the emitters, the controllers, the regulated power supplies, etc. And a lot of them are so integrated that they can't be fixed economically, if at all, if something does break or happen. There are tungsten fixtures out there that are 50 years old and older that are still working, because they're so simple. Whereas the chances of seeing an LED fixture lasting that long will be pretty much nil. And the chances of the manufacturers still making replacement parts for these computer controlled light boxes even half that long are probably nil, too. Who thinks even 10 years? I had a Litepanels Sola ENG go bad several years ago(it went from daylight to purple) and it was going to cost as much as a brand new unit to fix, because they were going to have to replace the entire inside of the unit.

It's kind of scary, considering how many LED fixtures I have now(like 26 individual LED fixtures). I've already had a Sola ENG have to be tossed in the trash because the repair would cost as much as a new unit(over $700) and two Astra's die and have to be repaired(one out of warranty, repair was ~20% of the cost of a new unit. Even more if you look at some of the sales that have happened recently). I've never really had to do anything to my Arri or Lowel tungsten fixtures beyond replacing lamps. The Arri's will probably last my whole career and then some, as long as they still make tungsten lamps to fit them...