LED light panels suggestions from China?

Lenilenapi said:
First - you insulted my professionalism and knowledge of lighting, not a piece of metal, and you followed it up by insulting my math. I don't want to get into a flame war with you, just pointing out that that kind of post gets people's hackles up and ruins the quality of discourse on the forum.

Second - No one said anything about diffusing tungsten. I stated a preference for barndoors as a way to diffuse a 1x1 LED over taping to the unit. A 3x's larger source is a lot in my book and I've been doing it a long time. If you think its miniscule that's a legitimate point of view, we just have different standards and taste.
Click to expand...

Bro, this is a public forum. Lots of people are reading it - some are pros who can see through BS, some are hobbyist researching info about their next purchase. As such many don't know what to look for when buying their next LED light. Statements like "barndoors!" are not really helpful as they are wrong in the first place as the barndoor usefulness on LEDs in comparison with traditional light is marginal. Traditional light diffuses the light over 100x while LED diffused only 3x versus non diffused light, so the softness of the shadows will improve tremendously on tungsten lights while with LEDs will be barely noticeable. The minute improvement sometimes is desirable but i definitely would not recommend one LED light over another based on if barndoors are included because there are other factors - the quality of the LEDs used - that are vastly more important.
 
Last edited:
I have two of the China no-name 1000 LED mono-color. It has barn doors, slot for gels, dimmer, v-mount plate, and AC adapter.

Barn doors - nice for protecting the light when not in use. Useful for attaching gels - the unit only comes with one gel, so having a way to attach other gels or diffusion is useful. I find the barn doors without diffusion to be useful to a point, but with that stuttered light, one really needs to add some diffusion to remove the steps of light.

The battery is great.

I don't use these for films. I use them for television or to light my green screen. Having portable, lightweight light is really useful. I suppose I might use them in a film for a rim light, but I haven't had enough time to play with them to see what they can do.
 
Patryk,

Slight disagreement on the barn door issue. Though they are of limited use compared to hard light fixtures, they have three specific, fairly common uses for me:

1. I put a sheet of opal or frost right on the LED face, then spread the doors as far as reasonable and add another sheet of diffusion...frost or 250 or something in between. Classic double-diffusing trick, the first layer spreads the light a little to fill the larger sheet on the barndoors. Makes a 12" into an 18" source. If your close enough to talent, and don't need a huge throw, it can be enough to soften the light (by making the source larger) while at the same time taking care of the multi-shadow issue.

2. Though you don't get any kind of hard cut with the doors, you can achieve some gradual falloff effects. Again, sometimes that's just what you need.

3. They add some extra protection during transit.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
In open face tungsten light the lighting source - the bulb - is like 1x1 inch, so taping diffusion to the barndoors you increase the lighting source exponentially - to something like 12x12 inches. That's 100x more lighting surface. On 12x12 inches litepanel when you add the diffusion to its barndoors it increases to what, maybe 20x20 inches if you are lucky. That's not even 3x increase in the lighting surface. Yes, you get tad softer shadows but the difference will be minuscule if comparing with how diffusion affects typical hot lights.
Click to expand...

More likely the effective light source in an open-face light is a circle with about 4-10in diameter depending on the size of the light. The bulb is the initial light source, but the majority of the light projecting forward from the unit is bouncing off the reflector, so the light source is effectively quite a bit larger than just the size of the bulb/filament, and is closer to the size of the reflector (or fresnel lens). And then barn doors also tend to be sized proportionally to the front of the face of a lighting fixture, so the amount barn doors will allow you to increase the size of a light fixture will tend to be fairly consistent. I might expect the barn doors on a 1x1 LED to be larger than those of a 6in fresnel/openface, so maximum area of diffusion that would fit on the barn doors at their widest position will likely be larger as well.

I agree that barn doors are likely more effective for giving a hard cut on a 6in open face than a 1x1 LED, but as mark mentioned, it's not all about hard cuts, even on a 1x1 LED, barn doors could cut down the spill or beam angle of the unit quite a bit with a soft edge. Also, there are a lot of LED sources that are smaller than 1x1 and tungsten sources bigger than 6in diameter. Perhaps we can just all agree that diffusion can be useful on all sorts of light fixtures, and barn doors are useful on all sources especially on smaller units?

I find multi-emitter LED fixtures create a really nice soft light with some diffusion just a few inches from the front of the fixture, certainly in a way you can't really get on a tungsten open face without double/triple diffusing. So I could see a good use for barn doors in allowing space behind the diffusion.
 
Last edited:
Barn doors, frost, gaze, opal, etc... surely gives good results according to what one is trying to achieve.
Me, coming from too many years shooting stills, I still like to use umbrellas, and I do with LED panels: reflective or shoot-through.
Anyone else?

L.
 
Sorry Terry, it's here but I have been so swamped with work that I have only had time to make sure it works. It seems that some folks forgot they needed new commercials to run after their Memorial Day Sales. ;)
 
No scientific tests yet, but I let the light run 24 hours and it is stable. Again not really a test, but from my eyes alone the light looks to need 1/8 minus green and 1/8 CTO gels to bring it where I like things.
 
LED panel option for soft light applications should include Fill-Lite.
I've not seen anything close to this. DMX capable, wifi controllable very soft image. Almost like shooting through a Chimera or silk with out the Chimera or silk.. Only 52watts of power per panel... http://fill-lite.com/
 
I have bought x2 Daylight panel lights, http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111054344776?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 . I have noticed its slightly green though, (crap CRI I expect) so I at the moment I have just changed the white balance in camera towards Magenta. (if using just these lights)

But I want to use other lights with them, anyone know what's the best Minus Green grade Gel for these? Half, Quarter, Eighth ??

Have a shoot tomorrow so any help would be great!
 
Last edited:
Simon, You'll have to figure this out for yourself.Who knows without testing?. Every one of these LED's is different and even from the same manufacturer over time they may be using different bulbs..
Get a bunch of minus green gel - couple of 1/8's and quarters and put them beside whatever you want to match it to. You'll figure out yourself very quickly. Most likely its between 1/8th and 3/8's
 
I have bought some 1/8th Minus Green, however it is now too Magenta....So a bit stuck on what to do now as is that not the lowest minus green you can get!?!

Anyone have any other solutions??
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top