Question about cheap 1000W lights for small projects

j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
But if the 'fan' is anything like my still photo Norman Strobes, it is pretty 'noisy'. If this light is for 'still' photographers who want a continuous light, rather than a strobe, not much care may have been given to the fan noise.
But if it is quiet, it appears to be a good option.
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As I understand, main task of this fan is to get heat out of the soft box.
This is specially important with strobes, as many of their soft boxes do not like heat.
Buld is postioned externally, so light will be hot, but no so hot as in cheap Read Heads or especially in fresnels.
 
i bought a set from a pawn shop branded "konway" look very similar to the ones in the top picture, the bulb seems to get hotter than the sun and they have an internal fan that is very loud, iam taking them back as they seemed very cheap and not very clever. :smile:

modified a min later (as i read the above post :smile) noise.
 
terra1 said:
i bought a set from a pawn shop branded "konway" look very similar to the ones in the top picture, the bulb seems to get hotter than the sun and they have an internal fan that is very loud, iam taking them back as they seemed very cheap and not very clever. :smile:.
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Do you want to suggest that they are too loud?

modified a min later (as i read the above post :smile) noise.
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Or you can turn down fans by modification?

All halogen lights are hot as hell :-).

EDIT:
I'll go more reasonable way of fresnel, may be this 1000W lamp and 2000W of fluos.
I'll get much less wattage after gel for halogens, but could be reasonable.
Plus I'll have around 4KW of light at hand.
 
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Vitaliy Kiselev said:
Do you want to suggest that they are too loud?



Or you can turn down fans by modification?

All halogen lights are hot as hell :-).

EDIT:
I'll go more reasonable way of fresnel, may be this 1000W lamp and 2000W of fluos.
I'll get much less wattage after gel for halogens, but could be reasonable.
Plus I'll have around 4KW of light at hand.
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I understood the poster's reference to 'modify' to mean they changed their post upon reading about 'fan noise'...

But I have Photo Flo still flash 'softboxes', and when I look on the Photo Flo site, they do distinguish between 'continuous', vs. 'strobe' softboxes. Now it could be a marketing ploy, but I would like to think the materials in the softbox designed for 'continuous' lights, has something different to protect against melting, smoking, or catching on fire, due to the high wattage of the continuous bulb.

In the case of 'strobe', while 1-2000 'watt-seconds' of power is dumped into the flash tube, the 'finder' lights are typically 150-300 W halogens, and so have much less heat than a continuous 1-2K Watt bulb.
 
I agree about softboxes. They can be pretty dangerous with halogen lights.
Good ones have vents :-)

I just realised that fluos are not that bad. The ones that I got have not perfect, but reasonable 80% CRI, pretty ok for me.
Plus I plan to got few extra bulb holders with umbrellas (to get 1500w SB + 500w or 1000w SB +500w+500w options).
Must be pretty light setup.
As for focused light, I'll go for Arri 650w copy. May be two.
 
There are many cheap lights on ebay that is of poor quality. Even if the light you do get is decent built quality is often poor and time consuming to assemble.

If you can get a Kino flo -like set that is a good start. There are LED 600 and 900 panels that are very similar to Lightpanels LED lights. CRI from 80 and up.
 
editman said:
There are many cheap lights on ebay that is of poor quality. Even if the light you do get is decent built quality is often poor and time consuming to assemble.
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I found only few actual cheap light on ebay.
Crap seems to be Red Heads imitations.
Lights in my first post seems to be not bad (but not very good either).
Plus noisy.

So, I choose this
http://cgi.ebay.com/1-x-4-SOCKET-W-...278?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf050b7d6

Plus four 115w bulbs with 80+ CRI.

If you can get a Kino flo -like set that is a good start. There are LED 600 and 900 panels that are very similar to Lightpanels LED lights. CRI from 80 and up.
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I am not so sure about LED panels.
Look at my post above with link to LED tests.
This panels are of very low power (compared to fluos).
CRI is also under biig question with this chinese stuff.
 
Vitaliy Kiselev said:
Do you want to suggest that they are too loud?

i'm no expert but in my little studio where i planned to use the lights, i set them up with my gh1 and zoom h2 and they are about as loud as my voice speaking on the recording, i think i might go for these...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-1000-LED-...ltDomain_2&hash=item4cf1ce35d8#ht_3609wt_1139

anyone know anything about these? i read they are actually really dangerous as these ones are as bright as the sun! and can burn your retinas! do not stare into the light on any LED light.

sorry, i ment i had modified my post, not modified the fan mechanism.
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I got this.

I made some calculations. And managed to come to conclusion that I better go flous way.
I don't like transport issues. But by using powerful bulbs and folded softboxes it won't be big issue.

As for LED panels. See my link above to compare them to halogen and fluos.
In fact - they are much more heat prone and same effectiveness as fluos. Have worse and unpredictable CRI most of the time.

Best solution for me is to have 2-3 softboxes with fluos and 1-2 hard LED sources.
But I do not see any suitable leds. Something even with 100w fluo output will be at $1000, I think.
 
You're right about LED being unpredictable. I have one LED 600 that's just spot on and one that's not. Same manufacture but different batch.
LED's are great to be portable and low power and heat. But a fluorescent like the Kinos are much more pleasing to the eye.

Today I had some testing to shoot interviews inside a car and we rented some small Lightpanels. They are a bit harsh and thou the colours were okay the are not very pleasing to the eye.
But in a car you don't have many choices so I'll but some soft diffuser on and it will look better.
 
Do you mean that you need small items in car or power issues?

Look at me thread http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?225359-On-camera-lights-for-GH1 about Cree based light.
Four diodes on alu heatsink, 16W total. Two of such lights must be about the same as 500 led panel.
And CRI is claimed to be very high.

And one other thing about LED panels - they use long chains of LEDs. If any if them fail, whole chain will be down.

Other option is to use powerful led flashlights and diffuser. You can get 100W or even 200w using few powerful 4-8 Leds lights. And diodes will be much better in color rendering.
 
Led cri

Led cri

Does anyone know the effective CRI of LED panels which use RGB led's rather than white led's?
They have the advantage of being DMX controllable with full color mixing (change the lamp color to whatever you want), internal dimming, even program effects for variable lighting if necessary. But if they can't do a good white for image, I guess there's no point.
 
I have small question.
Do you think that it is best to use more portable 1 bulb collapsible softboxes or better to add same as original (4 bulbs with 24"x24")?
Good thing of the later option is that I could softbox at home and got any umbrellas if I want. First option require additional sockets with umbrella holder.
Generally I do not have any expirience with umbrellas other than watching some results of others work. As I understand light control options are almost nonexistent in this case.
And it'll be better to use softboxes with optional grid (bad thing about all mine is that they are small, so one large with grid could be good idea).
 
dasbin said:
Does anyone know the effective CRI of LED panels which use RGB led's rather than white led's?
They have the advantage of being DMX controllable with full color mixing (change the lamp color to whatever you want), internal dimming, even program effects for variable lighting if necessary. But if they can't do a good white for image, I guess there's no point.
Click to expand...

Do you mean concert or DJ lights with adjustable light color?
Or very costly Led panels that use same principle?
I think that it is hard to talk about their CRI, as they use cheap LEDs from different manufacturers.
But RGB leds must be better. Unfortunately due to LED nature you'll still have some peaks for pure color leds (RED is the best as I know).
 
If you want good light for cheap price I think the best thing you could do is build some heads yourself and stuff them with fluorescent lights. That is what I will do when I start building my own studio. All you need is a box of reflection material, like aluminium and some wires and switches. I find good huge heads all over e-bay but from either American or Asian suppliers and each time the shipping costs are so high that it isn't worth it, like $600 for shipping a $200 head from the USA to Europe by DHL or USPS. The lights I will be using in my studio don't have to be portable which makes them even easier to build. Just simple and ugly, producing a lot of light, that's all I need.
 
What do you mean under heads?
And why do you need huge head for fluos?
As I understand due to light nature open silver softbox will do the task, and you cen get pair for about $70 shipped (with socket even).
I want to experiment with very powerful daylight balanced flashlights for hard light (hair light must be working).
 
It depends on what kind of light you want. If you want softer light you use bigger heads with multiple lamp. If you want harder light you use a small head with one lamp. Let me put it this way: 12 bulbs of 50W placed next to each other give softer light than 1 bulb of 600W. When using multiple bulbs you also don't need a diffuser sheet so your "soft box" stays open at the front and you don't have heating issues either and don't need a noisy fan. This is what I mean by head and that could be built at home easily:

SLF-24-2.jpg
Check out this link, very interesting products:

http://www.shopwise2000.com/continuous-fluorescent-lights.aspx

I would love to get some of these but shipping to Europe is too expensive so I'm going to build this stuff myself. I'm an electrian anyway.
 
You can get all this cheap from ebay. All this huge panels seems like overkill. Get two 7 bulb SB and place them together. Plus add 7 x 125W bulbs to each. :-)

I went for 4-sockets SB (pair for $75 shipped only) + various lamps (115w and lower).
Three air cushioned 2.9m stands. Plus, may be, small light stand.
I'll try this 16w LED on camera light to add small direction (removing diffusion in front) plus use it as real on camera light.
We'll see how it works as it arrives.
 
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