TERRA Operative
Active member
I just received my Ebay special Yongnuo YN160 camera mounted light. (No affiliation).
I needed something nice and bright for when I am running and gunning at night for docos etc.
This one was the right price and got ok reviews, so I though I'd give it a try and see how it goes. I've also done some basic testing with my i1 Display 2 calibrator to check colour temp and illumination.
Turns out it's not too bad so far. The whole thing is plastic, with 160 white LED's, barn doors (which are pretty much useless out of the box), some colour filters, and a few mounting and battery options.
Upon opening the box, I found a black velvet bag containing the gear which was a nice touch, inside was the following:
(Mind the vignetting from my old Olympus P&S).
The included accessories include a cold shoe mount, a foot for the cold shoe (for desktop use), a handle for hand-held work, a battery adapter, instruction manual (in Engrish and Chinese), a velvet bag, and 4 filters.
The unit measures 150mm wide, 115mm tall (not including the stand) and 52mm deep (without batteries protruding in the case of Sony/Panasonic batteries etc).
Dry weight is 310 grams, with hotshoe (barn doors weigh 53 grams included).
The mount seems ok, but being plastic you would want to be a little careful, especially with something like a Sony NP-970 battery on board.
There are a few options for battery power available. 6x AA batteries, Sony NP, or Panasonic CGR-D16S/D220 style batteries. Unfortunately there is no provision for an external power supply. It shouldn't be too hard to modify a DC jack in DIY style though, I plan to do it myself when I get a chance.
The filters come in diffuse white, red, orange, and blue. I'm not sure how useful the coloured filters will be outside an artistic approach, but it's easy enough to stick normal gels onto the light.
As for the barn doors, they are a reasonably good idea, but they don't quite work. The inner surface is shiny aluminium (it appears to be similar to the textured reflector used in halogen spotlights), so rather than block the light, they just reflect it in the other direction, making a square pattern in the illuminated area.
Painting the doors black will solve this issue though, as will removing them altogether. This is simply done with a small Philips screwdriver and a set of small pliers (the screws are loctited in, another nice touch).
On the back of the unit, there is a power button (slightly recessed so you don't press it in the dark while trying to adjust something else), a test button for battery level which illuminated a row of 5 red LED's (I'll have to test what the voltages that each LED corresponds to) and two buttons for brightness up and down. There are 16 steps from the brightest to the dimmest setting.
What about the actual light output?
I measured the light with my calibrator in a dark room to check both linearity in light output and consistency in colour temperature. The results were quite good.
It turns out the colour temp ranges from 5400K at the lowest setting to 5700K at the highest setting.
The light output (measured at 1 meter, with a fresh 7.4 volt Sony NP-F960 battery) ranged from 140 lux to 1554 lux and was practically perfectly linear across the whole 16 step range.
If anyone can show me how to use my calibrator to measure the actual colour of the light, I'll see how that goes across the full range too, although the colour looks pretty white, and seems to lack almost all of the characteristic blue tint of cheaper LED's. The spot has a *very* slight blueish cast in the centre, fading off to a *slight* yellow at the edges of the spot, it's barely noticeable though (I had to look at it on my flat white ceiling to see it).
Here are some photos of the light in action (the wall is cream coloured, so the yellow cast isn't the light itself).
The light was about a meter from the wall, the spot is about 1.5 meters in diameter.
No diffuser, barn doors wide open.
With diffuser, barn doors wide open.
No diffuser, barn doors almost fully closed.
So far, it looks like a pretty good unit, as long as you either don't use the barn doors, or paint them black. Oh and be careful with the plastic hotshoe mount.
Once my AA Ni-MH batteries are charged, I'll see how long it lasts on a full charge.
As for actual use? We'll have to wait until I'm back from Japan. (Unless I get around to filming some night tests before then).
I needed something nice and bright for when I am running and gunning at night for docos etc.
This one was the right price and got ok reviews, so I though I'd give it a try and see how it goes. I've also done some basic testing with my i1 Display 2 calibrator to check colour temp and illumination.
Turns out it's not too bad so far. The whole thing is plastic, with 160 white LED's, barn doors (which are pretty much useless out of the box), some colour filters, and a few mounting and battery options.
Upon opening the box, I found a black velvet bag containing the gear which was a nice touch, inside was the following:
(Mind the vignetting from my old Olympus P&S).
The included accessories include a cold shoe mount, a foot for the cold shoe (for desktop use), a handle for hand-held work, a battery adapter, instruction manual (in Engrish and Chinese), a velvet bag, and 4 filters.
The unit measures 150mm wide, 115mm tall (not including the stand) and 52mm deep (without batteries protruding in the case of Sony/Panasonic batteries etc).
Dry weight is 310 grams, with hotshoe (barn doors weigh 53 grams included).
The mount seems ok, but being plastic you would want to be a little careful, especially with something like a Sony NP-970 battery on board.
There are a few options for battery power available. 6x AA batteries, Sony NP, or Panasonic CGR-D16S/D220 style batteries. Unfortunately there is no provision for an external power supply. It shouldn't be too hard to modify a DC jack in DIY style though, I plan to do it myself when I get a chance.
The filters come in diffuse white, red, orange, and blue. I'm not sure how useful the coloured filters will be outside an artistic approach, but it's easy enough to stick normal gels onto the light.
As for the barn doors, they are a reasonably good idea, but they don't quite work. The inner surface is shiny aluminium (it appears to be similar to the textured reflector used in halogen spotlights), so rather than block the light, they just reflect it in the other direction, making a square pattern in the illuminated area.
Painting the doors black will solve this issue though, as will removing them altogether. This is simply done with a small Philips screwdriver and a set of small pliers (the screws are loctited in, another nice touch).
On the back of the unit, there is a power button (slightly recessed so you don't press it in the dark while trying to adjust something else), a test button for battery level which illuminated a row of 5 red LED's (I'll have to test what the voltages that each LED corresponds to) and two buttons for brightness up and down. There are 16 steps from the brightest to the dimmest setting.
What about the actual light output?
I measured the light with my calibrator in a dark room to check both linearity in light output and consistency in colour temperature. The results were quite good.
It turns out the colour temp ranges from 5400K at the lowest setting to 5700K at the highest setting.
The light output (measured at 1 meter, with a fresh 7.4 volt Sony NP-F960 battery) ranged from 140 lux to 1554 lux and was practically perfectly linear across the whole 16 step range.
If anyone can show me how to use my calibrator to measure the actual colour of the light, I'll see how that goes across the full range too, although the colour looks pretty white, and seems to lack almost all of the characteristic blue tint of cheaper LED's. The spot has a *very* slight blueish cast in the centre, fading off to a *slight* yellow at the edges of the spot, it's barely noticeable though (I had to look at it on my flat white ceiling to see it).
Here are some photos of the light in action (the wall is cream coloured, so the yellow cast isn't the light itself).
The light was about a meter from the wall, the spot is about 1.5 meters in diameter.
No diffuser, barn doors wide open.
With diffuser, barn doors wide open.
No diffuser, barn doors almost fully closed.
So far, it looks like a pretty good unit, as long as you either don't use the barn doors, or paint them black. Oh and be careful with the plastic hotshoe mount.
Once my AA Ni-MH batteries are charged, I'll see how long it lasts on a full charge.
As for actual use? We'll have to wait until I'm back from Japan. (Unless I get around to filming some night tests before then).