Thoughts on these LED lights

I received one today, the 500 led version. It is pretty well made, especially for china stuff. It has a powder coated metal chassis. No dimmer version just switches to disable banks of LED's. There is a version with a dimmer as well.

I paid $181 with shipping. . The fixture makes no noise. The barndoors have dimpled reflector material attached with velcro. I am stoked about it since it is relatively small and should be durable. I have yet to compare it to other lights as I just received it, but it seems to put out a good beam.

I don't know if this helps anyone, but here is a shot of the light being used with All banks of LED's on into my kitchen. My cabinets are pure white, the camera was set to "Daylight" WB (7D). The house was completely dark except the LED 500 and was placed about 10 feet from the kitchen on a 7ft light stand. ISO 640, F4, 1/80

IMG_4042r.jpg
 
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Wow.. 181$.. that's so freaking cheap.. I don't know how they are against Cool Lights..
 
DvxHerb said:
rallymatt,

Thanks for the pic and your thoughts.

Look here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Photog...r_1_27?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1272552192&sr=1-27

Appears to be the same light through Amazon for $28 more.
Click to expand...

It is sold by ephotodiscounters via Amazon. The same people I got mine from on eBay. I bought mine auction style though and paid a little less. There are other sellers on eBay selling too, as well as the 12v w/dimmer version.

I'm pretty much a lighting n00b but need something portable for interviews. Was looking at the 5 CFL softboxes and Kino style banks but these seemed so much more compact and durable for shipping and flying with. There is no gel holders or ability to affix an eggcrate or anything though.
 
Wow Rallymatt that looks good. Do you have any charts or other things you could shoot and show. Would love to see more. I'm having some lighting issues right now, so I'd love to hear more about these.
 
Have you checked the color balance of the fixture yet?

The one I bought from Prompter People was 4300K.

Totally unusable.
 
DvxHerb said:
rallymatt,

I'd like to know bout the color temp too.

Thanks,

Herb
Click to expand...

It is advertised as "daylight 5500k". I don't have a color temp meter, or any charts, but in that shot my all white cabinets were illuminated only with the 500 LED fixture and my camera was set to Daylight.

I can dial in 5500k and shoot a white piece of paper if that helps anyone?
 
rallymatt,

Is there a way we can help you to measure the color temp of this light?

Guys, any thoughts?

Herb
 
LED comparisons and a nice battery solution

LED comparisons and a nice battery solution

For the record guys, I've got a couple of these as well as a Cool lights CL-256, and Arris and Kinos of similar rating, so I did a little comparison.

First the 500 LED is consistently rated as 500W equivalent (I knew it wasn't the minute I turned it on.) and a 30 degree beam (likewise immediately obviously not) as well as 50w draw (wrong again). Basically they all just copy and paste the same info from some site and it's grossly inaccurate.

The good news is it's actually well made for a Chinese knock-off. It's solid and gives a nice light but not particularly high CRI even by LED standards...but not bad. Side by side it's less output than a two bank Kino (110) and not as soft. It's about the same output as the CL-256 but considerably softer and wider more like 60 degrees not the 30 they claim. I also guess that it draws 30W not 50 so that's a plus in there misstatements. Also yank the reflective bubble stuff off the velcro on the barn doors - they're useless and have weird specular potential..

Now the CL-256. It's about a 1/4 the size of the 500 and a third the weight, it's fully dimmable and comes with a NP or Pany battery mount, nice case, full hard filter set, articulating ball head has a better quality light (less green, less CC necessary). Build is comparable (both very good). I'd say the 256 is comparable to the output of the Arri 300 at full flood with a remarkably similar pattern. It fits right between the 500 and Arri in terms of soft/hard light.

The 256 is much more a spot than a flo or soft light. It's very punchy and has decent shadows, much closer to the Arri (but you couldn't use it with a cookie). Basically it's a $100 more than the 500 and you get a hell of a lot more professional control and accessories, much smaller and lighter and better CRI - it's also a bit warmer - lower kelvin than the 500.

For general comparison -

Kino 2 bank - brightest and softest (I always think of it as about a 500w with a softbox)
Arri 300 - next brightest (at full spot) as well as obviously the hardest light.
CL-256 - maybe a hair less bright than the Arri but close and a softer beam but close too.
500 LED - probably a similar overall output to the 256 but put through a softbox.

So there ya have it. If I was recommending one light it would be the Cool Lights. Amazing bang for the buck, small, light weight, take them anywhere, full control, full battery operated, really nice light quality, everything you could want in the package, very affordable.

Also, the CL-600 spot for $150 more than the 256 puts out a bit more than twice the light than the 256 - in fact the photometrics are about twice those of the Litepanels 12' x 12" spot for about 1/4 the price. The CL-600 is probably twice the output of the more expensive Flolight LED 500 too.

Right now, no one touches Cool Lights for light quality, build, features - and all of that at a considerably better price.

One last tip for ya on the LED 500 - Get the Duracell Powersource 100 and some vlecro and you can mount them on the back and run them for an hour and a half. You can pick them up from BUY.com for about $30 delivered and they're great and self charging. That's where I got my estimate of 30W draw on the 500. They make a tiny whine but not much and because they're rated for 80W continuous the little internal fan never came on in almost 2 hours of shooting. They're a little smaller than an Endura V-mount and take a direct 3 prong AC cord so they're perfect for the ebay LEDs.

In fact I'm thinking of trying them on the new CL-600s because we recently moved on from all of our IDX/Endura V-mount stuff and would love not to have to get all of that again. I think the problem will be the draw/battery life and they will probably kick on the fan making them unusable with audio. But I'll see.

Oh, we're also using the Duracell to run a 19" HD field monitor and that's another totally great thing...really nicer than our Marshall or SmallHD setups and much cheaper but that's another story.

Bottom line: I'll be building my new LED kit with Cool Lights going forward, but the ebay 500s are certainly built well enough and they do have a nice soft light and with a $30 battery pack they make an affordable entry into LED world. I used them in two film segments last week (CL-600s are still out of stock) and they were very effective as keys from about 5 feet. Also we shoot with 5DIIs and I have a custom white balance (minus green) dialed in that works great with all of the LEDs.

IMO the way to go is a few CL-600s and a couple of 256s and then build from there. If you do have the 500s, you can power them easily with the Duracell and then add Cool Lights as you can..the 500s will blend in well enough.

Whew...I didn't mean for this to be an article but I just did these tests for my own edification.
 
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The Duracell Powersource 100 look nice, but how much time it could power a CL-600 or a CL-256?
 
As I said, I haven't tested it on the CL-600 yet. I'd estimate about 45 min. But the 48w draw of the 600 would likely trigger the fan making it a problem with audio.

It would probably power the CL-265 for 1 1/2 or more but that's not something you'd do. The 256 comes with a Sony or Panny mount and runs great on small camera batteries...plus it's too small to even hold the Duracell.

The idea of the Duracell is for stuff without battery options, like the inexpensive ebay 500s. Plus these are drawing more like 30w and don't trigger the fan making them a real solution for them...affordable, they don't need a separate charger and are little smaller than a V-mount.

It's also ideal for something like our new 19" LCD monitor that's drawing 28w. it will run that about 2 hours on a single charge...really good for $30.
 
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