On Camera LED

Nice light, just wondering what the beam angle is with and without the diffuser in place and what the resultant lux value will be with it on. At 3ft. of course.
I wish they would include beam angles. It's like buying a lens for your camera without regard to the focal length, and only after you get it home, look in the camera and oops ! that's not wide enough.
 
check out the brightness level with the 3200K setting in place
Click to expand...

Even if the ring lost illumination with filters and diffusers, the 80 W starting point is currently 4 times what I currently use, so I'd still be ahead of the game. I was curious if anyone in these forums had ever used one, though. I'd love to hear real world opinions.

Same for the F&V LED-60.
 
Yeah, the LED-60 doesn't seem to be that popular. But it does offer a lot of what I'm looking for - if only it doesn't spot.

So...anyone ever use one? Or see a real world video of one in use?
 
the LED-60D is a modified light from LED-60,they are both from the same company with the z96.my Z96 is great and this light gains many good reviews.so I thing the LED-60 and LED-60D maybe good too.
 
In reference to the exciting new Torchled Bolt just announced earlier this week, does anyone know just where the dimmer control is located ? I see that from the few photos that are available, there are 2 controls that mix/blend the intensity of the 2 banks of leds ( warm and cool) and marked as such ,but where is the main dimmer that controls the overall brightness ? If one sets the "mix" just right and decides to raise or lower the brightness level WITHOUT losing that dialed in "mix", how does one go about it ? Lux value says 3800 lux with BOTH banks ON, but both banks ON would equate to around the neutral white territory. In reality 3200K necessitates the dimming DOWN of the 5600K (bluish) banks) thereby lowering that 3800 lux figure to 1800. Likewise when 5600K is needed for daylight fill, the warm banks are dimmed down for the resultant 2000 lux. So, from what I gathered, that 3800 lux figure at 1 meter is only obtainable at neutral rendition with both banks on full blast. Not to be a critic, but these are questions that will be asked. Also, how can one power it from li-ion batteries that are 9.6V or 8.4V ? Can't wait for a full review.
 
Well, I took the plunge and ordered a new Rotolight. For the light itself and an optional hot shoe mount (so you don't have to slide it over the shotgun), it came to about $120. I have a shoot coming up next weekend, so I'll report back on how it went.

In the meantime, I was also looking at the Comer CM-LBPS900. Tests available on YouTube showed to have a seemingly even spread, without spotting unless you flip down the filter. I can get the light, 3 batteries and a charger for about $300 shipped. Has anyone here ever used one?
 
My new Rotolight came in today.

The weight of the unit surprised me a little. With batteries, it comes in at 10.3 oz. My old light (Bescor MX-600D) came in at 7 oz. for the light itself (not including the separate 2.5 lb. battery I had to carry around my shoulder). Strange, but that extra 3 oz. on the end of my camera feels subjectively a lot heavier. Still, for a complete unit with batteries that will last about 10 times as long as the Bescor battery, it's well worth it.

The spread on this thing is amazing! The entire field of view in my camera is covered, no hot spotting whatsoever. THIS is the kind of coverage ALL LCDs camera lights should have.

The ergonomics of the light are really very odd and in the long run, rather unusable. Because of the light's design, the power switch is a push button affair in the center of the ring, inside the circle of LEDs. I guess given that the light is round and can spin freely, there really is no 'side' to put the switch on. To change the color temp of the light, it's far more than a simple matter of flipping down a barn door type filter. You have to remove the light from the camera, disassemble it, take out the appropriate filters from the storage case behind the LEDs and add them to the clear front ring, then reassemble the light and reattach it to the camera. Same goes for dimming with the ND filters. This is all data I knew before I bought the light. It just really hits home how unwieldy the system is when you do it for yourself.

Still, for the price of $120 (including optional hot-shoe mount), the light is overall a definite upgrade from the old Bescor tungsten with separate battery that lasted (if I'm lucky) 20 minutes. I'll definitely be using my new Rotolight for my upcoming wedding.

But...I will also be saving my pennies for a new Comer as well. The spread looks sufficient, and the ergonomics of power, dimming and color temp are far superior. But then, for almost three times the price (including Sony batteries and charger), they had damn well better be superior.
 
Happy to hear you like the light. Can you keep us updated as how the light performs on that upcoming wedding ? especially at the reception.
 
Important to consider when you're thinking about trying to light a wide angle shot from on-camera is the falloff. Even if you had a powerful light right over your head, well-diffused so it spread out exerywhere, unless everyone in your frame was roughly the same distance away from you, their greatly varying brightnesses will look add and give away the presence of the camera and the light.

A somewhat more poewerful light pointed up at the ceiling would give you more evenness, but that can be kind of a party-ruiner. In the maysles documentary "salesman", it was clear the cameraman was doing something like that. It seemed like he had a lightbulb on top of his camera that was flagged off the subject, only working to lift the room ambience.

I developed something for shooting in darker crowded situations with onboard LEDs. It's an inflatable softbox that fits onto a litepanel, or could probably jerry rig onto some other brands that are similarly sized. Point is it makes it a much larger, softer source, and it takes an eggcrate so that you can direct it a little more. I've found the crates useful in crowd/bar situations, to let you effectively and nicely expose your subject whose in the middle of the frame without blazing the shoulder or column or whatever than is just nudging into your frame close to you on the right or the left.

If you really just want to spray out the light, you could rig multiple small LED fixtures like litepanel micros or micropros onto your camera facing out at different angles. That'll give you a spread. I really am not a huge fan of undiffused LED lights; they so often have a weird "electronic" feel to them. I believe because of the incomplete spectral distribution of the light, much like an hmi or fluorescent.

-Tom Guiney, Gaffer, LD, DP in NYC
Owner, Airboxlights.com
inflatable softboxes for LED lights
lighting tips on Twitter: @airboxlights.com
 
Even if the on-camera light is powerful enough to be diffused with a clip-on/slip-on diffuser panel, it still behaves like a point light source as far as the brightness and directionality of the light is concerned. The only way to avoid the blinding beam on the eyes, other than bouncing the light, is to use a large diffuser panel, and I mean large like over 18 inches in diameter. It is the size of the diffuser that makes all the difference. Yes, you will need a lot more brightness behind the diffuser to work, but you would have needed a lot more from bouncing to ceiling. A lot of them venue (wedding) ceilings are mighty high and bouncing is like doubling your subject distance ( the light has to travel to and from the ceiling along with ceiling reflectivity loss. If the ceiling is a dark color, good luck.
 
Just got back from my first wedding with the new Rotolight, and I must say it performed very well indeed. I LOVE that I can fit the Rotolight into my camera pack, so that's one less bag I have to haul around for the day. And I reeeeeeeally LOVE that I no longer have an external battery strapped around my neck with a dangling cord between battery and light. The 3 AA batteries used in the Rotolight are very convenient, and last the whole reception. The spread from the light was very wide and lit the entire scene from left to right and top to bottom, no hot spotting whatsoever. Granted, all light will fall off with distance from the lens. It wasn't necessarily my intention to light the entire dance floor with a single camera light. It was simply my intention to fill the viewable scene from edge to edge, without any light falloff as we went away from the center of the frame (as we tend to see with most LCD camera lights). The Rotolight did its job extremely well.

For $120 with optional hot-shoe mount, I can definitely recommend this light for event use. It's only real drawback is the lack of ergonomics when it comes to changing filters. But for me, I don't need to change them that often. I'll definitely be using this until I save my pennies for a new Comer light.
 
jim-

glad you like the rotolight 48b.

if i may ask, where did u find it w/stand for $120?

thanks in advance

be well

rob
smalltalk productions
 
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