which one of these lights is the best? plus questions about 5600k

Goodness, where to begin. Light spectrum is measured in degrees kelvin (k) named after a famous physicist Lord Kelvin. Daylight is roughly 5600k and tungsten lighting is usually 3200k. Florescent can vary from 3200k to 6000k. LEDs can vary greatly as well, and the newest expensive ones can be adjusted. Your camera needs to color balance to the existing light conditions or the recorded color will look whacky. If you buy a light and it doesn't match the existing conditions or you don't color balance to your artificial light, your recorded color will look whacky. Now that is a simplistic explanation that doesn't take into effect a bunch of other factors. You probably need to study this a bit, or this will bite you when you edit your footage.

I didn't mean to complicate your life, but light is your artistic pallet and some study will pay benefits to your product.

Grant
 
Hm... they really look like they are worth the price those lights. Dunno what to say... I guess you are just starting out? And then I can't really blame you for wanting to try out different things, maybe even cheap stuff like this.
The thing is, while light is supposed to be light, all light is not created equal. LED is exciting because it's low power, but the quality is awful. Skintones can look sickly and have bad spikes of magenta or green.

To be honest... I would almost suggest that you spend your money on reflectors and duvatyne instead. I take it you want to film outside on the go since you asked about on camera lights?
Learning control contrast ratios in your shot and using existing light (when possible) will teach you a whole lot more about lighting and give you a more pleasant result.
Then as you start to build up experience and money you'll soon learn why a lot of the guys here prefer using lights like fresnels, pars and bouncers.
And those lights can be had pretty cheaply as well on fx Ebay.

For now, if you insist on going with the cheap light, then I'd go for the 5600k light. That is daylight and will probably be the most useful for you. Maybe a light where you can dial in the color from 3200 - 5600 if possible for the same price. But really... 60w isn't a lot. I severely doubt that you can see ANY effect from it when using it outside.
I have a MicroBeam 256 that is equivalent to 200w and it's not really that powerful. I'd only ever pull that out if doing something at nightly events etc.
 
5600k is close to the native color temperature balance of silicon sensors. You get best overall color balance and sensitivity at this temp.

There are good and bad led lights. The cheap daylight balanced ones typically have one or more strong color spikes or gaps in their spectrum. But they do give much needed illumination. The tungsten balanced LED's 3000k typically have better color rendition especially for flesh tones. The on camera lights are like flash on a still camera. They are useful for fill light. With built in dimmer and a gel kit for diffusion and color manipulation they are useful for closeups in some situations. A kit with a stand and battery is more useful than just the on camera mount.
Good ones are not so cheap, but sometimes any light is better than nothing.

http://cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/us-doe/color_quality_of_white_leds.pdf
 
Last edited:
Back
Top