Which Low Budget Led Lights for Indoor interview Use?

S

Stelvium

Well-known member
Hallo guys,

wanted to know what are your suggestions for Led light for interviews in indoors....i have the back light, z96 Led....
Wanted to ask you right now what's a good deal for quality/price
thx
 
I'm really digging my little Aputure Amaran HR672S -- the one I have is the spot version, and I want to pick up a flood to complement it based on my experience with it so far. It's compact, light, reasonably well made, comes with a useful case, has a 95 CRI, and is cheap -- $278 from B&H including a pair of batteries, which can be charged on the light itself. It runs a little over an hour (at full power) on a set of batteries or you can use the AC adapter. There's a nice remote included that can control multiple units of both the Amaran and LS series lights.

The LS-1S -- see Erik Naso's review elsewhere in this category -- looks like a great higher-powered light, and I want at least one of those as well, but I haven't tested one personally yet. It is also bigger, heavier and more expensive than the Amarans, but more ruggedly built.

- Greg
 
I have a YN300 and I like it, it's good in a pinch, but I stilll prefer to use some Lowel totas or fresnels and spiderlite with softbox when I have time and power. Brighter and better light quality.
 
Stelvium said:
Compared to Yongnuo YN600?
What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

From what I have read:

The YN600 is bigger and heavier than the Aputure.
It has only a single 1/4-20 mounting point.
It has a noisy fan; the Aputure is silent.
The Aputure comes with batteries and can charge them on the light.
There is no case with the YN600.
90 vs. 95 CRI makes a big difference.

OTOH, the Yongnuo is about half the price of the Aputure. Looks like you get approximately what you pay for.

I haven't seen an objective comparison of the light output of both units.


- Greg
 
I think the replies by Erik & Greg really point to the Aputure Amaran as being the better option.

I'm about to purchase based on their real world experience.


 
You can disable the YN600 fan by sticking a toothpick in it and as longs you avoid the plastic diffusion panels it won't get hot.
I consider the barn doors a huge asset because t akllows you to diffuse the light and make it a larger source.
I've never used the apertur but the color quality of the YN600 is very good. I never gel it and i'm very picky. I often mount 2 on a small arm and its a killer light outdoors. I'm thinking of throwing 4 on a single arm that you can get from B&H.. Just did an interview where we bounced 2 into a card for a key - lovely.
Damn thing is practically free. All my friends have gotten them.
 
I wonder how Yongnuo YN900 really compares to Aputure HR672S or the new Lightstorm series.

Especially when compared to Lightstorm series, the price difference is huge. YN900 claims to be CRI 95. I wonder if the quality of the light really is that good.

And is YN900 with diffusion added powerful enough for key light?

This review makes me worried, green cast on skin tones. Look at 5:07, exactly same ugly skin tone as with my previous lights. So talks about CRI 95 seems b******t to me. The fan isn't that much a problem, since it's easy swap to quieter model.
 
That review is not very good. First of all it only tests the color cast with Tungsten and he also never tells you whether and how you can mix proportions of the Tungsten and daylight bulbs to get different color temps. Sounds like the bulbs are either all tungsten, all daylight or half & half only.

Does anyone know if you can vary the Kelvin freely between 3200 and 5600, and also how easy it is to dim the light level without screwing up an "in-between" Kelvin temp.?
 
At the request of a user here, I took some light meter readings of my three different Aputure lights. Some others may find this valuable.

Measured with a Sekonic L308DC DigiCineMate meter using the flat disc (as recommended for metering individual light sources). Distance from the lights was 2.00 meters (plus or minus a cm or so). I did two readings, with and without the hard plastic diffusion filter that comes with the Amaran lights (the LightStorm comes with some paper filter material that I didn't try). Exposures are the f-stop for 1/60 sec, ISO 100. This was not done to laboratory grade accuracy, but the readings were all consistent over time and correlated well with my photographic results -- "good enough for government work," as they say.

Aputure Amaran 672S (spot, 5600°K)
No filter: 150 footcandles, f/3.2
With diffusion filter: 97 fc, f/2.5

Aputure Amaran 672W (flood, 5600°K)
No filter: 50 fc, f/1.8
With diffusion filter: 42 fc, f/1.6

Aputure LightStorm LS1S (spot, 5600°K)
No filter: 340 fc, f/4.5

- Greg
 
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