What LED panels to buy

Keep in mind that to get the equivalent of your 650W lights, you'll need LED's that are at least 100-200W and that most of the tungsten equivalencies quoted in LED advertising are either exaggerations or comparisons between bare LEDs and bounced/diffused tungsten which is hardly a worthwhile comparison unless you are directly replacing a bulky old ziplight with an LED light.

For example, the 122W Area48 have similar photometrics to a 650-1000W tungsten softbox but even at $2500 it won't ever get the punch you'd get from even your 650w tungsten fresnel undiffused/unfiltered. According to the photometrics, a bare 650W fresnel can illuminate your subject about 3-15x brighter than the Area48 can depending on how you set your focus knob on the fresnel. Area48's have great, soft light with very wide beam angle, but I always prefer to buy narrow beam LED lights if I'm buying LEDs since you can always diffused a narrow beam light to spread the light but you can't focus (narrow+brighten) the beam of a broad light, and one of the great efficiency advantages some LEDs have is in their high efficiency lenses.

Currently the benefit of LEDs these days comes more from being daylight balanced or bicolor, long life, low heat, low power consumption, etc. Not from their output. It's still handy to have a $100 1K tungsten openface light sometimes... or an HMI for that matter.
 
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Darren Levine said:
you might also take a look at the HR672 series by amaran/aputure. 400w equivalant, can choose from bi color/narrow/flood, and a 2 pack runs 500bucks, claimed 85CRI
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Actually, the HR672 has a claimed CRI of 95, not 85. I suspect Darren just made a typo there.
 
The Aputures are great little lights.
I initially got a pair for a travel shoot because they were small enough to carry.
For LED we had a bunch of Coollights which were really the affordable Litepanels alternative...big and all metal, V- mount and needed minus green gels.

By contrast the original Aputures 528s are tiny (iPad size) and plastic and run on L batteries and skew magenta but were more powerful than the Coollights, with a nicer light. Sold the Coollights and got a bunch of these little units that go on little ball heads rather than separate yokes (which I hate), small Gittot stands.

Basically I remade my light kit with Small Kino fixtures and 8 of these (2 floods, 6 spots) with 1/8 plus green gels (permanently inserted) and they match the Kinos really well.
I had some soft boxes made that fold to nothing and work perfectly on the 528 spots...like them better than the Kinos with diffusion.

The new 672s are the same light with 95CRI and nice wireless remotes (each able to control 4 panels.)
I really like small and light because we produce all over the place with a small crew.
I cut down on my size and weight to almost nothing compared to our previous package...they're really ridiculous that way

You can ft them anywhere (I had them rigged in trees last week for a night shoot) and they put out more light than a 1x Litepanel on a small battery, and the 672's are as good as any Litepanel, IMO, for a fraction of the $ and size.

Also as not particularly rugged and plastic as they are, I've had them at NASCAR tracks and dirty, wet and rough TV shoots...even had two blow over in a parking lot, and have not had a single failure or issue in 2 years or so.

Just thought I'd give them a little shout out. I've meant to for a while because I figured a lot of people probably don't know about them or think that they're "toyish", but after producing with them for a while now, they've made for a totally different production experience.
 
jimagine said:
The Aputures are great little lights.
I initially got a pair for a travel shoot because they were small enough to carry.
For LED we had a bunch of Coollights which were really the affordable Litepanels alternative...big and all metal, V- mount and needed minus green gels.

By contrast the original Aputures 528s are tiny (iPad size) and plastic and run on L batteries and skew magenta but were more powerful than the Coollights, with a nicer light. Sold the Coollights and got a bunch of these little units that go on little ball heads rather than separate yokes (which I hate), small Gittot stands.

Basically I remade my light kit with Small Kino fixtures and 8 of these (2 floods, 6 spots) with 1/4 plus green gels and they match the Kinos really well.
I had some soft boxes made that fold to nothing and work perfectly on the 528 spots...like them better than the Kinos with diffusion.

The new 672s are the same light with 95CRI and nice wireless remotes (each able to control 4 panels.)
I really like small and light because we produce all over the place with a small crew.
I cut down on my size and weight to almost nothing compared to our previous package...they're really ridiculous that way

You can ft them anywhere (I had them rigged in trees last week for a night shoot) and they put out more light than a 1x Litepanel on a small battery, and the 672's are as good as any Litepanel, IMO, for a fraction of the $ and size.

Also as not particularly rugged and plastic as they are, I've had them at NASCAR tracks and dirty, wet and rough TV shoots...even had two blow over in a parking lot, and have not had a single failure or issue in 2 years or so.

Just thought I'd give them a little shout out. I've meant to for a while because I figured a lot of people probably don't know about them or think that they're "toyish", but after producing with them for a while now, they've made for a totally different production experience.
Click to expand...


Thanks for chiming in, as my finger has been floating over the buy button on a pair of 672's, perhaps you could reaffirm a decision:

they have spot, flood, and bi color. i'm leaning towards spot for two reasons: you can diffuse a spot to widen the field, but not vice versa, and the bi color is nice for convenience, but if half the Leds are each color, than the peak brightness is in the middle, vs getting daylight where 5600 would be brightest, and gelling it to 3200 would result in about the same power as the bi color set to 3200.

So despite that, any other insight you could give for the choice between the 3?
 
I say spot all the way Darren.
They work really well for kickers and accent...I like to rake a little light on faces a lot and they're perfect for that too...easily dimmable.
But with diffusion, either attached "soft boxes" or through a panel, one or two make great key lights for they're size.

Like I mentioned, I have a couple of the original floods too that work well for washes and quick fill, again because they're dimmable.

I think you'll be surprised at the punch of the 25 degree spots.
I agree the bi's are a compromise in output and I'm always shooting 5600 with these and the Kinos.
They come with simple CTO inserts that I used on spot recently in a location that was designed with of old clear glass Edison filament bulbs and that worked out perfectly.

I'll try and post screen shots of a couple of recent scenes I've shot with them.
 
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Originally Posted by jixkk
This one may be a choice too: http://www.led-video-lights.com/high...ht-panel-light High quality from F&V, 116W and very compact. The price is also attractive
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“ CRI >=85 doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. ”


For the price and light quality, it's a good deal. This one is nearly same design as F&V' ultra high CRI leds. Their K4000/K4000s are 85CRI, but received good reviews. Some guys here bought the versions. Maybe their inputs are objective:grin:
 
blommer said:
CRI >=85 doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
Click to expand...

How many times do we have to get into the "I don't like the CRI number" argument? I have 80 CRI gear that's beautiful, and 95 that looks like ass. Do some searches of the forum and google in general - CRI is often meaningless, and it's been talked to death around here.
 
Michael Carter said:
How many times do we have to get into the "I don't like the CRI number" argument? I have 80 CRI gear that's beautiful, and 95 that looks like ass. Do some searches of the forum and google in general - CRI is often meaningless, and it's been talked to death around here.
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Yeah.

There are more color measurements that are critical that are not contained within the CRI standard measuring group of colors, R9 being one of the more important for example.

You really have to test all of these non-tungsten lights. There's no way around that bit of work.
 
I would think photos/video of these lights in action for a talking head shot would demo the actual color pretty well, no? You could see how correctly white balanced cams look with different brands of LEDs. Then the CRI thing would be put to rest for each brand.
 
Yes, IF the tester has his act together.

Honestly, I'd rather just see someone shoot a raw still of a grayscale, open it in camera raw, and see what the actual color temp is and how closely the R, G and B values match in blacks, grays, and just pre-white. I'd rather see raw stills uncorrected as well vs. something shot with a camera profile.

A great test is a still life with a model and color charts, and post a raw still. You can learn a lot about a fixture's color space by playing with the raw sliders for temp and tint while watching skin tones and eyedroppering the grays. A few points off (say 120R, 122G, 118B) is pretty clean.

And I'm always interested to see if someone has a gel combo that gets the grays clean without losing much light. I have some HID stuff that generally needs 1/2 CTO and maybe some minus green - and looks great after that.

We really do need a better standard than CRI - people talk about it, wonder what's coming?
 
DPStewart said:
Yeah.

There are more color measurements that are critical that are not contained within the CRI standard measuring group of colors, R9 being one of the more important for example.

You really have to test all of these non-tungsten lights. There's no way around that bit of work.
Click to expand...

Agree with you !
 
what was said above works too...i just meant some simple test that shows in real world terms how the various lights perform. if we're going to say cri doesnt necessarily matter, then we need other ways to compare.
 
the new Aputure Lightstorm LED lights might be the best. Remote controlled. CRI of 98, 1 k for smaller than a 1x1 and at only $600. Dont see any other LED light that can compare to these. And they come with barn doors
 
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