Thoughts on an LED based light kit

B

BillinSC

Active member
Dear all,

I am looking at purchasing LED lights for a light kit. I have seen Barry Green and David Jimerson's video on lighting and learned a great deal, however, they did not go into much depth on LED. I have also watched the Doug Jensen video "How to set up and Shoot Awesome Interviews with LED Lights". That video seemed okay, though it pushed the Litepanels products to a degree, and it seemed like a short video.

My budget is between 6-10k. My only caution is buying products that will work reliably and have flexibility. I know there a number of posts on here already and I have poured through them. Are there any downsides to good LEDs? Are the Flo-lights as good as the Litepanel units? Any other equipment that would be recommended?

Thanks group!
 
Bern,

Thank you. I had not seen that website before. There is certainly a universe of information. I appreciate the guidance.
 
BillinSC said:
I had not seen that website before. There is certainly a universe of information.
Click to expand...

Before you throw away your hard earned money on LED light panels you may want to also check out this article available online: http://talltalepictures.com/blog/2011/12/06/are-led-1x1-panels-ready-for-prime-time/. The author, DP Michael Morian, tested both the Lightpanels 1×1 Superspot and the Shantou Nanguang CN-600HS 1×1 panel and found both the expensive Litepanel and the inexpensive Shantou Nanquang to have poor color rendering that is not easily corrected with gels because the use of gels on LEDs has unexpected and undesirable consequences. In the article he also cites studies by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other independent sources that confirm that White Phosphor LEDs in general are not very good at color rendering. Anybody thinking of buying LEDs should first read these articles.

Movie Mike
 
I'm pretty sure people don't really care that much. The new LED Lee Filters products are a good example of what the differences are. Well known theatrical colours just don't work with theatre LED sources, and don't blend at all well, so they have brought out LED filter that produces the old well known colours - BUT - when you see what colour they are under white light, you realise how different the LED colour spectrum actually is. Sometimes I'm convinced that the kinds of difference with tungsten v LED are like applying one of the magic bullet looks - that different!
 
I wish I could just use tungstens. They're simple, reliable, versatile, & have lovely full spectrum color.

But practical concerns with heat, and color temperature, usually lead to using fluorescents, & HMI, or if away from power, occasionally LED.

Plasma looks promising, but's still in it's infancy, & just starting to come to market.

http://www.abelcine.com/store/Hive-Plasma-Lighting/

Daylight sources don't come cheap, & if renting isn't an option I'd look at a Joker 400, & some Kino Flos.
 
BillinSC,
I went through the same predicament. At present, I am renting Light Panels and Ikan LED fixtures for corporate video shoots. Last week, I shot with two guys who just sold a doc to HBO. They know what they are doing. One of them shoots on features in the NY area. On last week's shoot, we had Arri fresnels washing a site with gels and Light Panels for key's. It was pretty mixed up.

The point is that I am learning that you can use anything if you pay attention and take your time. I am shooting with LED's predominately and setting the camera as neutral as possible. That and watching the exposure is yielding more that adequate results and is gradable.

If you travel like I do, grab the LED's and don't look back. You will find your style and flow to make it work, gels or grading or both. I can tell you though, after being pumped to be able to use light panels gear, they sure have the green tint when dimming. The Ikan units (1000LED) that I rented were much truer to white. That shocked me but hey, I will happily spend less for better quality when purchase time comes.

I watched the same LED interview video and like it. After the last few weeks, I am enjoying the LP's for key and fill and then whatever small LED's I can find for rim/kicker/background. The LP brick style eng LED lights are fun. Having about 4 of those really gives some flexibility and a single one did great for rim/kicker. I think at purchase time, I may choose to grab a handful of Ikan 312's for small light usage, though.
 
Robert,

Thank you for that information. I had been looking at Litepanels, IKan, and Flo-Light. Litepanels certainly has some push out there. I am curious if you have ever seen the Arri Locaster series. I am taking my time on this. I had viewed the DVD that Doug Jensen produced about using LEDs for interviews. He really seems to like the Litepanels products. I really do not care who the manufacturer is as long as it works well and is efficient.

You had also mentioned the Arri fresnels being mixed. In the end, did the video look good, or was there too much variation?

Thanks again,
Bill
 
Heartfelt said:
If you travel like I do, grab the LED's and don't look back. You will find your style and flow to make it work, gels or grading or both.
Click to expand...

No matter what gels I use, or how I grade the image afterward, I have never been satisfied with the flesh-tones I get with LEDs which is why I recommended the OP look at other alternatives like an old fashioned quartz light kit. From what I have read elsewhere, I think the problems I (and others) have had grading LEDs has to do with their discontinuous color output and limited range. I discovered that was the source of my problems from an article by the EBU FTV-LED Group reporting on the research they are doing to find a more accurate measurement of the color output of LED lights than CRI (the full article is available at http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech-i/ebu_tech-i_011.pdf.) According to this article the color output of most LEDs is so deficient in some parts of the spectrum (long-wavelength colors cutout at about 625 nm), and unusually strong in other parts (LEDs put out extra green) that they are nearly impossible to grade. I have found from grading images that it is the long wavelength colors that make flesh-tones look vibrant. Without them flesh-tones look pale under LEDs compared to how they look under a tungsten instrument. And since those long wavelength colors are almost absent from LEDs, the results don’t look realistic no matter how much I pump those colors.

Another problem related to the discontinuous output of LEDs that I have found is that standard color correction gels have unexpected and undesirable effects on them. I think this is because gels only rebalance the spectral distribution of a light source by passing the wavelength of the color that they are. Which means that gels (even cosmetics) cannot correct for the deficiencies of long wavelength colors in LEDS because there is not much light of those wavelengths to pass in LEDs to begin with. DP Michael Morian recently posted on his blog-site some good examples of this. He did some camera tests to see what happens when you try to convert 5500K LEDs to 3200k with CTO gels. Where you can do it with HMIs because there are long wavelengths in their more continuous spectrum, Mike found that since LEDs don’t put out much beyond 625nm, there is not much for a filter to pass to rebalance the light output to 3200K so the “corrected” light is too cool. Another undesirable consequence comes from the fact that Full CTO is designed to pass extra green (there is a bump in the spectral transmission curve of Full CTO in the green portion of the spectrum) and so it creates, given the amount of green inherent in Daylight LEDs to begin with, a disproportionate amount of green (creating an overall green bias to the "corrected" light (You can see the results for yourself on his website at http://talltalepictures.com/blog/2011/12/06/are-led-1x1-panels-ready-for-prime-time/.) Because of all these problems I have had with LEDs, I still grab a small quartz kit when I travel.

Movie Mike
 
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