Varizoom LED Light

bilgami said:
Im glad you guys are pleased with your lite. i was wondering is hard to deal with the placement of the battery on the handle it just seems from pics ive seen you lose a lot of handle space or can it be put somewhere else?
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You do loose a lot of handle space but the camera can still be carried by the handle. I don't think of anywhere else on the DVX that the battery could be mounted but I think the handle is a great location, even with a large battery it is not hard to handle. I'm looking forward to using this instead of my cool lux mini cool and shoulder pack bescor battery that takes all night to charge and last 45 minutes. I would love to use my softbox for my mini cool with this. Hmm..... Maybe I can adapt it somehow.
 
So guys,
final consensus for the two new owners:
Worth the purchase? Enough light output?
Fluid dimmer? Able to clean up hotspots with softbox and dimming?

Already got the battery info...thats good news.

Need to know ASAP, as i plan on ordering mine today given your responses.
Thanks!
Kapil
 
Test footage looks good. From that I'd say it is worth the $$$. However the real test won't be until tomorrow night when I shoot an outdoor wedding reception.

The dimmer appears to be quite smooth and, being LED-based, there is no color shift. The diffuser panel seems to do an excellent job.

I know it'll be too late for you, but ask me again next week and I'll have real results to base an opinion on.
 
I got the Vidled light with the dimmer and I am very pleased with it! Much cheaper in price than the Litepanels LED lights which are good too but pricey!
 
having mine two day aired today.
just ordered a DVXuser battery too...hope that makes it here in time!
thanks guys

kapil
 
meta4 said:
isn't anyone concerned with paying nearly $100 per LED?!

LEDs are cheap, even super white ones.

What makes this so special?

For 400 bucks, you could build a ton of LED lights, I know it's DIY but here:
http://www.theledlight.com/led-specs.html
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Not really concerned, it's more than the LED's themselves, it the ease of using the same type of battery that the camera uses, Not need for a battery belt or shoulder pack, barn doors, diffuser, dimmer light weight package even with the biggest battery available mounted and decent light output. Don't get me wrong I'm not against DIY product's but I think in the long run this product will pay for itself for me because I do so many night interviews at concerts. so far the think it's well worth the $369.95 I paid for it, even though i have not done a shoot with it yet my test with it have made me happy.
 
MDfilms said:
So was there a final thought on this product? Id love to hear it
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I couldn't have shot the outdoor wedding reception without it. OK, I could have, but I'd have had to turn up the gain so high that the image would be crap.

Sure, there are other light choices. Most are much more expensive or not as powerful. No others were available in time that could run off the Panasonic battery.

This weekend I'll be using it at Necronomicon (SF/F convention) to capture footage like the obligatory interactive Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most events will be well lit, but some will be too dark to shoot without a light, and big, plug-in studio lights wouldn't be an option.

It was worth the price to me.
 
meta4 said:
isn't anyone concerned with paying nearly $100 per LED?!

LEDs are cheap, even super white ones.

What makes this so special?

For 400 bucks, you could build a ton of LED lights, I know it's DIY but here:
http://www.theledlight.com/led-specs.html
Click to expand...

I've researched this to death. building your own LED light you run into three major issues:

power - you need the exact ammount of power going into the bulbs. if not, they'll burn out. this requires a lot of careful math, a lot of soldering resistors in sequence and a lot of tricky handwork.

cooling - even though the LEDs are cooler than incandescent and fluorescent bulbs they still generate a lot of heat. so do the resistors you use. you need to find a good way of cooling both

dimming - making a dimmer for LEDs is far more complicated than making one for a "normal" bulb. while "normal" dimmers are nothing but scalable resistors that reduce the power sent to the bulbs an LED dimmer is a small computer that sends pulses of power at different frequencies to the LEDs. The reason for this is that if you feed an LED a lower-than-required current you kill the bulb. Again, very tricky stuff

In addition to this you have to find a good powersource, tilting casing, barn doors, filters etc. Not to mention that you have to be careful what kind of LEDs you buy (spot vs spread etc) and how you direct each of the LEDs to avoid an uneven spread.

mor10
 
Varizoom Lights

Varizoom Lights

Has anyone else bought the VariZoom Light? I too do ENG in the field and I need a camera light I can switch on in a moment and not have to gel for indoor or outdoor. Can someone tell me how they are compared to the mini frezzi (50w)? I miss that light. To bad Panasonic didn't include a light plugin on the HVX.

Thanks,

Jimmy
http://people.tribe.net/giacomino
 
Tom McKay said:
We just had a nice review on one of our LED light products

It is in DV magazine but also on the DV web site. (see link below).


http://www.dv.com/reviews/reviews_item.php?articleId=196602658

Tom
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I have been debating over which light to get for a while now. My friend just text me the other day. He is shooting in the south west and he ran into someone using the varizoom light. He said it's awesome. Also, received my DV mag today, great review on the light.

Jimmy
 
giacomino said:
Has anyone else bought the VariZoom Light? I too do ENG in the field and I need a camera light I can switch on in a moment and not have to gel for indoor or outdoor.
Click to expand...
After we did the Varizoom S-2010f review for DV Mag, I went out and bought two of the Varizoom kits. Love 'em. The ability to gel for 3200K or 5600K at the flip of a filter is nothing short of genius, and extremely intuitive for the run-n-gun shooter. And the fact that I can use my spare camera batteries to power the light is very nice, it cuts down on the proprietary stuff I have to carry in my kit.

Applicable section from the review:
"VariZoom offers four different battery adapter plate styles, one for each major camera manufacturer. When ordering, simply specify the appropriate model. The S-2010F plate fits Sony batteries, the S-2010P is for Panasonic, the S-2010J is for use with JVC, and the S-2010C works with Canon batteries. Note the adapter kit doesn't need to match the model of the camcorder in use. It corresponds simply to the model of batteries that will be used to power the light. If you're a Canon XL H1 shooter but also happen to have extra Sony L series batteries lying around, you can use this light with the Sony battery kit on your Canon camera. Blasphemy, I know, but it works."

Anyway, it's a great addition to my kit. I've been very pleased that after trying a number of other LED solutions we finally found a winner.
 
I have this light before. It is the re-badge of the SWIT light S-2010P. The WATT rating they translated is not accurate. It isn't as powerful as they claim. However, at that time it was still brighter than my LitePanel Micro light. The light was solid. You still have to find a way to mount the battery pack.

I made a few shoot out video long time ago. This light is included

 
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