New Flexible LED Panels

[Duncan Craig]

When you say A-clamps do you just mean the simple spring loaded clamps you squeeze to open?
The reflector holders are good idea and in fact I've got two Calumet ZipDisc Holders which will probably hold these flex panels quite well.
On their own they don't have enough reach to go out over an interviewee so I'd probably add another boom for extra length.

I think I'm going to have to order the 3060A...
I've already bought two lenses, a camera, a flight case, and a load of acoustic panels this week.
You'd have thought after 20+ years I'd had enough stuff already FFS!

 

[Mitch Gross]

Well I've had pretty good luck clipping these around. A-clamps to put them on drop ceilings or quickly on a stand, or C47s to clip inside an umbrella softbox. I think I need to buy some middle size A-clamps though since they might be a better fit. Of course when clipping with only one or two clips you leave a lot of the orientation up to gravity and a little adjustment available by bending the lights the way you want. They also make little clip reflector holders that have a stand mount and a small clip for a reflector that can grab one of these and put it on a stand a bit more securely. I have one of those. I've been trying to think of ways to secure them to stands quickly and was thinking maybe just a lollipop/ball mount attached to maybe a small coroplast board with velcro on it and some velcro on the back of the light... haven't gotten around to trying it yet though. I'm especially interested in coming up with a way to put 2-4 of these together and easily mount the whole thing on a stand...

Why not just velcro them to a piece of foamcore and grab the thing with a platypus clamp? Here's one from Lupo but all the grip companies make them.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/co...pi=1876,{creative},{keyword}&is=REG&A=details

Or you could stick a pigeon on the back. This stuff is so lightweight you can get away with some simple solutions.

 

[nyvz]

Why not just velcro them to a piece of foamcore and grab the thing with a platypus clamp? Here's one from Lupo but all the grip companies make them.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/co...pi=1876,{creative},{keyword}&is=REG&A=details

Or you could stick a pigeon on the back. This stuff is so lightweight you can get away with some simple solutions.

Heh I guess part of the issue is that I'm looking for mounting mechanisms that aren't more than twice the size of the light itself. If I can put 6 lights in a bag, is it worth it if including the mounts means I can only fit 2 lights? The real condundrum of super light fixtures is how to keep the accessories/gak light...

 

[Mitch Gross]

Think geometrically, my friend. You can cut foamcore into slices that would each hold two lights. You could also cut foamcore pieces of the same size that could orient at a 90 degree angle to the ones the lights are attached to (think 1x2 as horizontal and 2x1 as vertical). by offsetting the overlap by half the piece of foamcore, you could make a 6-unit panel using three horizontal strips and two vertical ones, all attached to one another by heavy duty Velcro so that you could then pull them apart for easy packing. All of the strips would be the same size, and it's cheap as chips to make. Get creative enough and you can actually do this with a whole bunch of foamcore pieces that are the same size as your LED sheets. You could pull them all apart and stack them neatly in a small case. And what's nice is that you could enlarge or shrink the size of the array as needed.

 

[scotchtape]

Light output of the FL3030 is about 1,500 lux @ 1m. Beam angle is pretty wide since there are no lenses on it.
With the diffuser on it's about 1,050 lux @ 1m.
At 3200 it's a bit less.

Would be great if they lensed them, for me I'm not sure if I'm going to get any more of these for what I'm doing (not much, just interviews, using the Aputure 672s right now).

 

[nyvz]

Yeah I ordered some lenses for 5050 LEDs to try to attach but they haven't arrived, super slow aliexpress shipping on those unfortunately... Might not be the right fit though since the flexibility and thinness of the panels might make keeping the lenses on tough, but I will see if it works when they arrive. Probably better to just stick to using these for soft sources, they are great in softboxes. My older lensed LED panels really created pretty spotty softbox unless it was double-diffused, but these are more even with only the front diffuser.

BTW I finally hooked 4 of these up to my 24 5A adapter together and it seems to work fine at full power and draws 140W and meters 400fc at 3ft. I suppose this may be pushing the power supply to its limit and possibly limiting output a bit since 3 panels hits 110W and gives me a bit over 300fc.

 

[Duncan Craig]

My 3060A arrived quite quickly from Travor.
The flexible panel is a odd thing to work with...

The velcro catches so often, and because the panel keeps trying to roll itself up it can be a PITA to get it mounted on the frame.

One of the bars for the frame was missing it's velcro, so they are sending replacement.

The remote is quite big, and I'm sure they could have made it more compact and square shaped.
I hang my Aputure remotes around my neck on a lanyard with velcro at the end and under the remotes.
I've used Sharpies to crudely mark in orange and blue on the remotes, showing which directions do what to the light temperature.

I coudn't work out how to store the kit in the supplied bag, it's really useless. So everything is now in a Large Laptop/Tool Tote which is working quite nicely.
I recommend storing the diffuser inside the rectangular black fabric thing, and keep the bars separate from everything else because of the velcro being such a pain.

The cable between the power supply and the DC barrel is really short.
I've made some 5.5mm extensions to work around it.

There's a tiny hard to see marker on the switch to tell you which way is on and off, so I've drawn on a large 0 and 1 in silver sharpie.

That's all the negative stuff.


On the plus side the light output is very good, and the quality of light seems very good.

Working without an external controller hanging off the light stand is a real boon, and while the light only has 16 steps of brightness and temperature I think it gives enough control.

I've been using mine as a top light. So I've just used the supplied frame on a heavy duty counterbalanced extending boom pole.
The supplied diffuser hangs away from the LED emitters and provides just enough diffusion and light wrap as it's quite a wide source already.

I now thinking about buying a second 3060A, the frame parts are totally modular so you can build a 60x60 frame. Although the frame would be nearer 59x59 so the panels would need a bit of moving around to fit. Then I think I could add a cheap 60x60 velcro honeycomb for some spill control. I'm not sure how strong the section with the 1/4 thread will be, so it'll need gentle treatment.

I wondering now If I could run two 3060A from a 5A 24V PSU, and whether I'd get any more light output by using a much more expensive 6A PSU.

 

[Drcoffee]

Hi Duncan, so could 2 sets of 3060 frames be constructed into either 1'x4' or 2'x2' configuration? Or even 3 sets of 3060 into a 2'x3' layout?

 

[Duncan Craig]

My second 3060A should arrive tomorrow... I contacted Travor and they confirmed that I could make a 60x60 using my two kits and they reckon the thread will support the weight.
I can't imagine that the little 1/4 thread will support anything bigger, and I wouldn't suggest making a 30x120 for example, unless you support the frame differently.
The basic 3060 LED panel is 30x60cm, so using the modular box panel frame and it's clips you could make any size of frame as long as one side is 60cm max.
A 2x3 is possible, but you'd want to be careful how you support it.

 

[Keith Martin]

Noah,

I just received a couple Falconeyes RX-18TD and my color testing is very much in line with your findings. If I had noticed this thread earlier I probably wouldn't have bought this light but I agree you're correct in that a 1/8-1/4 CTB + an 1/8 minusgreen should make it pretty accurately balanced for daylight. With the correction gel(s) they would still be useful, though a little bit of a PITA to manage in fast setup situations. I have communicated with Falconeyes through Facebook messaging and, to their credit, they are aware of the 47K-48K output when the controller is at 56K and are currently working on a solution. All that said, the larger source, high output bi-color and good softbox/grid option are very close to what I'm search for in a flexible LED light. I'm planning to return 1 of the 2 as I'm currently looking for roll up, flexible light mat system with good bi-color rendition for flying/travelling doc style work that costs considerably less than the current + or - $2,000 USD for approximately a 1' x 2'. Let's just say the kit needs to be a less than $1K each as a target price. I'm pretty confident that flex light is very close to arriving on the market so I'll hold off buying until I see it.

 

[Drcoffee]

Thanks Duncan.

Does anyone know how close to 5500k , 0+Tint the FL-3060 are?

 

[nyvz]

Thanks Duncan.

Does anyone know how close to 5500k , 0+Tint the FL-3060 are?

What tint scale are you referring to? In my test I found them to be very near spot on with nearly no tint, too low to be correctable with gel anywayn I would say.

 

[Drcoffee]

Yeah sorry Noah I mean magenta/green tint. Ahh nice these sound promising. So just to clarify, the 3060a vs 3060 both at full daylight brightness produce the same output/lux? Even though the 3060a would be using half the LED's?

 

[nyvz]

Oh yeah I understand you meant magenta/green, I was just asking what plus/minus scale standard are you using? I only have access to my Camera RAW method of judging tint which may be pretty dependent on my camera. I don't have a color meter.

As I mentioned earlier these were the readings I got with my camera.

Daylight: 5500+10
FL-3030a: 5400+15
RX-18TD: 4700+28

And yes the FL-3030(a) and FL-3060(a) appear to draw the same power and output the same photometrics no matter what your color temperature is set to. And yes that must mean that the bi-colors use half as many emitters to achieve the same output at either end of the WB range.

 

[Drcoffee]

These do look awesome then.

Do you know the output in footcandles from 6ft of the 3060a at daylight?

I remember seeing this test as a comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrxgCNSD2Rs&t=106s

- Arri sky panel 4'x1' - 250fc
- Aladdin 4'x1' - 100fc with heavy diff
- Kino bare 4' by 4 tube Kino - 64fc
- Kino Select 30 - 64fc
- s2 lite mat - 24fc

Do you think it will be around the Kino 4' by 4 tube output?

Thanks

 

[Duncan Craig]

I've built a 60x60 frame.

The 1/4 inch mount in the frame seems strong enough to handle the weight.
The two sheets of diffusion are noticeably different even though I bought both quite recently - the newer panel seems thicker.
The first 30x60 came with a proper UK plug, the second came with two adaptors instead.
They pull 114W when set to full daylight and 124W on full tungsten.
I also added a cheap velcro 60x60 honeycomb grid which is a little too small in one axis, but is still usable.

I've bought a 24V 6A PSU which is total crap and causes the units to flicker when dropping the brightness, and it only seems to be supplying 94W.

I've taken loads of photos, but attaching them is utterly tedious.
Here's a Dropbox PDF contact sheet if it's any use: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14270310/Travor60x60.pdf

 

[nyvz]

Oh awesome, looks good. I assume your higher power draw values are with the included power supplies separately powering each light? I haven't found enclosed, end-user PSUs with more than 24v 5A... I wonder what the best approach is for carrying only one power supply and getting full output. Seems like you might benefit from upgrading to two 3A power supplies or at least one 5A one? Seems like the 5A might still cripple your output though so the gain might not be that significant.

 

[Duncan Craig]

Hi Noah. Yes, the higher draw values are when using both supplied PSUs.
You can find 6A 24v PSUs, here's one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1PC...Switch-power-supply-144W-LED/32612545951.html

I bought one from eBay, branded 'Minger' (which is hilarious if you are from the UK!).
However this 6A supply is clearly faulty.

One flex panel draws about 60W using the supplied PSU, if I power the same single panel with the 6A supply it only draws 50W.
I know the 6A PSU could be a little more efficient, but there's too big a difference here.

Now if I power both panels through this one PSU the draw is only 94W, and if I dim the panels below 100% they flicker really badly.
For now I'll just use the two PSUs.

Travor have told me that they are going to be making a 3090 panel.

What I need now is a 60x60 velcro diffusion panel to cover the entire 60x60 frame.

Thanks!


EDIT..i I've just seen a 7.5A inline PSU. But it's over £35.

 

[Strouty]

Sorry if this has been discussed previously in this thread, but are there any battery solutions for 3030's or 3060's? I already have a slew of lights I like when I have access to AC power, but looking for something lightweight and portable for when I'm shooing without power. I have a bunch of vmount batteries but wouldn't be opposed to picking up another battery type if they work.

The falconeyes looked perfect with the vmount adapter, but the 4700k color + green tint is a deal breaker. Although, I didn't see much of a difference in color on one youtube test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1o-9gbgmpY

 

[Duncan Craig]

One option for battery power is two 12volt batteries in Series. I've not done it myself though.
Travor have suggested that they are looking into battery options, as well as larger sized panels too.

I've filmed a lot of interviews today using one, sometimes two 3060A panels, only on full daylight.
They results are really acceptable, if there are any colour case they don't seem to show too badly.