biginvegas
Well-known member
Anyone specifically in beauty and fashion using just LED banks over Kino's? I'm investing in own lighting and looking entirely at LED for my needs and renting Kino's when clients desire it.
Using AF100: LED over Kino Flo for fashion, beauty?
- Thread starter biginvegas
- Start date
CineStill
Active member
I'm not specifically into fashion but own Light Panels LED 1x1' & Kino Flo 4' x 4 tube. The great thing about LED's is that you can run them by batteries (I have Swit Lith-Ion v-lock batteries) and they are dimmable - so you can use them anywhere and can work very fast with them. The 4 foot 4 tube Kino I have is a larger source so can work well as a soft key light (especially with diffusion on the front like 216 or 250 ) and the LED's as fill.
biginvegas
Well-known member
I guess my query is about skin tone comparisons as I have yet to use LED's in a professional setting. Clearly one can use the larger light panels for key lighting, they do pack a punch some of the units.
David W. Jones
Veteran
As far as skin tones With LED lights, I spec each LED before use with a color temp meter and have found that it generally takes a 1/8 minus green, and 1/4 CTO gel to bring the light into spec, but it really depends on the LED manufacture. Some will take even more CTO to bring the light to 5600k as some of them are really blue.
Good Luck!
Dave
Good Luck!
Dave
biginvegas
Well-known member
Thanks David, very useful, need to buy a set of those gels for the litepanels.
David W. Jones
Veteran
A little diffusion can be good with them as well.
I also agree that being battery power-able and dim-able, are LED advantages which I have found helpful.
In a fashion shoot, it would be hard to say, but I might be more incline to light with a large source through a silk overhead if I had the space and fill with the Kino's, and maybe add a Kamio ring-light if it was that kind of fashion thing.
I also agree that being battery power-able and dim-able, are LED advantages which I have found helpful.
In a fashion shoot, it would be hard to say, but I might be more incline to light with a large source through a silk overhead if I had the space and fill with the Kino's, and maybe add a Kamio ring-light if it was that kind of fashion thing.
NoahK
Hottie Mod
Either way a good makeup artist can make or break if it's all about fashion and beauty- but you knew that. I've personally found Kinos to be a bit softer and less harsh on skin than LED but it's not a night or day difference. If you aren't already- I'd highly recommend a trip out to NAB next week in Vegas so you can see all of this stuff for yourself.
Noah
Noah
groveChuck
U-matic Member
Granted, it's not fashion, but mcgee shot this interview with a double diffused (216 + Flexfill diffusion disc) uncorrected LED.
Don't know what the LED's CRI is, but the skin tones look pretty good to me.
It's a Bi-Color Chinese LED, Socanland. I'm trying to find them in the US.
Kinos are a little softer, but I think it's hard to beat dialing in any CT from 3200 to 5600. And no breakable tubes, too.
Originally Posted by mcgeedigital 
mcgee's set up:
Don't know what the LED's CRI is, but the skin tones look pretty good to me.
It's a Bi-Color Chinese LED, Socanland. I'm trying to find them in the US.
Kinos are a little softer, but I think it's hard to beat dialing in any CT from 3200 to 5600. And no breakable tubes, too.
mcgee's set up:
mjmcneese
Veteran
For skin and beauty - Kinos. Like others have said...it would take a trained eye to tell the difference. But if you have the choice, go with flo.
I use LEDs only when I need battery-powered lights, which LEDs are IDEAL for!
As for diffusion, the LitePanels I rent come with a kit of 7-8 diffusion and gel sheets that stick in the face of the light. Super simple. I'm not aware of any softbox options - that would probably minimize the throw from the light.
The big advantage I see with LEDs is that they do a much better job of maintaining color temperature while being dimmed. My Divas get very magenta-ish when you get lower than 50% dimmed.
I use LEDs only when I need battery-powered lights, which LEDs are IDEAL for!
As for diffusion, the LitePanels I rent come with a kit of 7-8 diffusion and gel sheets that stick in the face of the light. Super simple. I'm not aware of any softbox options - that would probably minimize the throw from the light.
The big advantage I see with LEDs is that they do a much better job of maintaining color temperature while being dimmed. My Divas get very magenta-ish when you get lower than 50% dimmed.
RieniO
Well-known member
I shoot beauty and would say that LEDs give too hard light, even flos are almost too hard sometimes. Even when working with make-up artists the flos create very shiny skin sometimes which is fixed by either a lot of powder or stepping down the lights on the front a little. I think LEDs are good to use as back lights though and for beauty/glamour good strong back lights can be very important, but then you mix lights so you need to balance them carefully.
CineStill
Active member
I find daylight light panels (US made) to have good true 5600K colour but they can be a hard light, they come with a gel set (or mine did in Australia) with 1/4 1/2 full CTO and 1/2 or full white diffusion that drops into the front. I suspect the cheaper chinese models may need to be tested for colour? I think there great lights but you will probably still want others e,g large soft source, or small hard source to be able to achieve variety, contrast, modelling in your lighting set ups.
I've just switched over to LED panels (made by Datavision) for my beauty shoots. They need diffusing- mine came with a mild diffuser sheet, but I've found an additional layer of diffusion taped over the key and two taped over the fill light were necessary.
I was previously using fluorescents (Photon Beard, but I believe they use the same tubes as kino flo) and I find the colour rendition to be better with the LEDs. I don't have an actual colour meter, but doing some colour tests with colour checker passport through the camera using the daylight preset and observe what the colours render as via photoshop eyedropper. I find that the panels I have which are nominally daylight balanced are if anything lacking very slightly in the blue- a 1/8 CTB seems to balance them with window light (which is actually bluer than "dayllight" as it is mostly light from the blue sky not direct sunlight). But actually I tend to leave that off because I prefer a slightly warm rendition.
I also have a "spot" style LED light from Bebo which I use as a hairlight, which has a colour rendition very close indeed to the AF101's daylight presets. The grey colour checker patches are all rendered impressive neutral under the 5600K preset without even custom white balancing.
Finally I have some small flolight on-camera LED panels used for catchlights or sneaky kicker concealed in the scenes. These have a blue colour cast but only need 1/8 or 1/4 CTO to correct. I usually set everything up based on the Datavision panels which are slightly warm, so usually run with 1/4 CTO on the flolight.
I haven't found green colour casts to be much of a problem in practice, despite the fact that the lights do have quite a green spike. My Hasselblad certainly "sees" that spike, and needs quite a lot of minus grren tint correction in RAW processing, but even the daylight balance preset of the AF100 seems to cope OK. No more than 1/8 strength minus green needed to correct in the worst case I've observed thus far. It seems to help models with pale skin to chuck on a 1/8 minus green. I'm tending more and more to the daylight preset rather than custom white balance on the AF101 with the LEDs.
So routinely I'm running the lights with diffusion on the Datavision panels, nothing on the Bebo (a slight coolness compared with the key looks great for the backlight anyway), slight warm-up and diffusion on the flolights.
The overal colour rendition is better than I got with my fluorescents. (In fact I've sold them). I've also sold most of my tungsten, because the workflow with the LEDs is FAR superior. (Dimmable over several stops with very little colour shift, portable lights running with no wires for a couple of hours at full power from a V-lock battery, no heat, no
power concerns, no losing most of the light to blue gels to get daylight.)
Cheers, Hywel.
I was previously using fluorescents (Photon Beard, but I believe they use the same tubes as kino flo) and I find the colour rendition to be better with the LEDs. I don't have an actual colour meter, but doing some colour tests with colour checker passport through the camera using the daylight preset and observe what the colours render as via photoshop eyedropper. I find that the panels I have which are nominally daylight balanced are if anything lacking very slightly in the blue- a 1/8 CTB seems to balance them with window light (which is actually bluer than "dayllight" as it is mostly light from the blue sky not direct sunlight). But actually I tend to leave that off because I prefer a slightly warm rendition.
I also have a "spot" style LED light from Bebo which I use as a hairlight, which has a colour rendition very close indeed to the AF101's daylight presets. The grey colour checker patches are all rendered impressive neutral under the 5600K preset without even custom white balancing.
Finally I have some small flolight on-camera LED panels used for catchlights or sneaky kicker concealed in the scenes. These have a blue colour cast but only need 1/8 or 1/4 CTO to correct. I usually set everything up based on the Datavision panels which are slightly warm, so usually run with 1/4 CTO on the flolight.
I haven't found green colour casts to be much of a problem in practice, despite the fact that the lights do have quite a green spike. My Hasselblad certainly "sees" that spike, and needs quite a lot of minus grren tint correction in RAW processing, but even the daylight balance preset of the AF100 seems to cope OK. No more than 1/8 strength minus green needed to correct in the worst case I've observed thus far. It seems to help models with pale skin to chuck on a 1/8 minus green. I'm tending more and more to the daylight preset rather than custom white balance on the AF101 with the LEDs.
So routinely I'm running the lights with diffusion on the Datavision panels, nothing on the Bebo (a slight coolness compared with the key looks great for the backlight anyway), slight warm-up and diffusion on the flolights.
The overal colour rendition is better than I got with my fluorescents. (In fact I've sold them). I've also sold most of my tungsten, because the workflow with the LEDs is FAR superior. (Dimmable over several stops with very little colour shift, portable lights running with no wires for a couple of hours at full power from a V-lock battery, no heat, no
power concerns, no losing most of the light to blue gels to get daylight.)
Cheers, Hywel.
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biginvegas
Well-known member
I have excellent wholesale prices on the Chinese knockoffs (PM if you want the trader) so going to give one or two of them a try first as my start up company has cash flow problems...
Been shooting with fashion photographers and noticed a trend as they shift to Kino's and now LED's over traditional slave flash so we have the same results and can shoot alongside each other with one setup. The LED's make it so much easier for location set up's with batteries and portability. Noted all comments, all invaluable gracias...
Noah would love to party next week in Vegas but stuck here at foot of Southern Africa... best
Been shooting with fashion photographers and noticed a trend as they shift to Kino's and now LED's over traditional slave flash so we have the same results and can shoot alongside each other with one setup. The LED's make it so much easier for location set up's with batteries and portability. Noted all comments, all invaluable gracias...
Noah would love to party next week in Vegas but stuck here at foot of Southern Africa... best
RieniO
Well-known member
Question mark here... you write photographers shift from Kinos to LEDs but do these lights produce sufficient light for still photography especially when using large sensor like Hasselblad? The only times I use kinos for stills is when the shoot is mainly a video shoot. For dedicated still shoots I still use studio flash lights. When using Kinos for stills with my Nikon D300 I'm shooting in ISO 400 or 800 and f5.6 and 150/s or so, this is really on the edge!
biginvegas
Well-known member
It's a trend I have noticed yes as photographer's love the look they get from the Kino's using Canon and Hasselblad. I'm in Cape Town, South Africa so not sure what others elsewere are doing. LED's very new here for rental. Shoots have to adapt as clients are asking for (mostly 5D) footage to be shot at same time for behind scenes, low budget web commercials etc so photographers have to light for all.
I'm only using my LED's for video, personally I much prefer shooting with powerful strobes. I have two of the AWESOME Hensel Porty 1200 generator/head systems which are also Lithium battery powered- the freedom of using those in the field is what made me try LEDs for video. I really like the range of lightformers that the Hensel system has, and it has power and short enough flash duration to cope with large softbox diffusion but still kick out impressive power.
I've only shot tests with the Hasselblad under LED light to test colour rendition. If I wanted shallow depth of field, or I didn't care about short shutter speeds maybe I'd use them for stills, but mostly I'm wanting to whack out enough light to shoot 1/400th of a second at f/10 at ISO 100 or maybe even overpower daylight by a stop or two at 1/800th, and there's just no way the LEDs could do that.
I light separately for stills and video. Luckily I'm kinda my own client most of the time (I sell the shots and the footage directly to the public, not to a company making products) so I can do that.
Cheers, Hywel.
I've only shot tests with the Hasselblad under LED light to test colour rendition. If I wanted shallow depth of field, or I didn't care about short shutter speeds maybe I'd use them for stills, but mostly I'm wanting to whack out enough light to shoot 1/400th of a second at f/10 at ISO 100 or maybe even overpower daylight by a stop or two at 1/800th, and there's just no way the LEDs could do that.
I light separately for stills and video. Luckily I'm kinda my own client most of the time (I sell the shots and the footage directly to the public, not to a company making products) so I can do that.
Cheers, Hywel.
RieniO
Well-known member
Yes I would say fluos and LEDs aren't powerful enough for proper still photography. For stills I use 4 Visico flash heads with large softboxes. I chose Visico because they have a nice remote control system, with one small remote controller you can change settings for all heads. I used them for shooting these series: http://www.rieniotten.com/pics/Chelsea1 The light is very soft here but I wanted it that way. I understand you about portability Hywel, for that I'm experimenting with 12V to 220V convertors, powered by car batteries. Car batteries are much more powerful but also very heavy but when I'm shooting outdoors usually I go there with my car so my car is nearby anyway. One advantage is that I can leave the batteries in my car and have them charged automatically while driving. I love shooting outdoors in the wild at night using the black sky as a background and always hoping for some deer or fox or badger to show up in the background but of course that never happens.
CarolMyers
New member
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