Zebralight H51 – any use for video lighting?

G

guyburns

Active member
I've been on the lookout for a headlamp that I could use for cycling, canoeing and bushwalking. For cycling it has to have a long throw, for canoeing it has to be waterproof, for bushwalking it has to be light and compact. In addition, I would like it to be well-engineered, aesthetic, and efficient.

I had my doubts I would ever see such a device, until I saw the Zebralight H51. And then I thought: Maybe it could even be used for video lighting. It is optimized to run off 1 AA Eneloop, has several brightness settings, and weighs less than 100 gms. At maximum setting it draws about 2 Amps from the battery (~2.5 Watts) and runs for about an hour.

I don't own a video camera yet. When I do, it will be the GH2. Until then I'm researching in detail all aspects of the equipment I'll need. To help me decide, I'd like some comment on the suitability of the H51 for video lighting.

I imagine I may want to use it to light up people in a dim forest, or around a campfire, or under a bridge at night. Not to try and turn night into day, but just to throw enough light on a subject so that what might have been an unusable situation, turns into an acceptable situation. My partner and I would have a light each, so two would be available. But it gets complicated because there are four options in the H51 range (http://www.zebralight.com/Headlamp_c_7.html), all using the Cree XP-G (http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLampXP-G.pdf)


H51
The base unit. 200 lumens max, cool white (6100K-6500K), 80° beam spread, 11° (3.8 feet at 20 feet) hot spot.


H51F
Flood version. 190 lumens max, cool white, 90° beam spread, no hot spot.


H51W
Neutral version. 172 lumens max, neutral (4200K), 80° beam spread, 11° (3.8 feet at 20 feet) hot spot.


H51FW
Flood neutral version. 164 lumens max, neutral (4200K), 80° beam spread, no hot spot.​


I do not have any experience with video lighting, so I'm wondering which would be the best bet.

Q1: Is an 11º spot a good idea, or would the flood version (more even lighting, though less bright) be better?

Q2. Which colour temperature (cool or neutral) would give the most natural results? This would depend, of course, on how well the GH2 can compensate for different colour temperatures.

To help answer these questions, I have located two videos. The first (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8gV7-A4EB8) shows the difference between the cool white and the neutral. The second (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8IbX0tvQLg&feature=related) is a more detailed comparison between the flood version ("F") and the hot spot version. Note that this video is actually of the SC51 and SC51F, which are optically identical to the H51 and H51F, but are normal torches, not head torches.

In the second video, the most interesting bits as far as I am concerned are:

2.30: Comparison of colour temperature (51/51W)
3.05: Inside comparison of flood vs spot (51/51F)
5.35: Outside comparison of flood vs spot (51/51F)

Given that I will be buying two of these torches, which two should I buy that would be most useful for video lighting? Two of the same; two different?
 
I am a bit of a flashlight fanatic; there are a ton of superb little lights on the market these days. On one hand, having any aux. lighting available when you have nothing else is a good thing; on the other hand, I think you're money would be better spend on acquiring proper video lighting.
There are a lot of reasons I say that; light pattern and spill being one. Flashlights generally are designed with some type of refector to concentrate the beam an increase the throw. that means a hot spot in the middle; even with something called a "flood" you will have a hot area in the middle of your image that is going to be really hard to compensate for.
Flashlights are not going to be color correct; they aren't intended for photography. It's not insurmountable, but you're giong to have to set a custom white balance every time you turn on the camera, and the lighting itself is going to fluctuate with temperature, battery condition, etc.

By all means, get a good small light. I highly recommend Fenix; their PD-20 light is extremely tough, about the size of a chapstick and throws 200 lumens. they are incredibly useful things to have in your pocket; mine is there 24 hours a day and it gets used constantly. For video lighting, especially on-camera lighting....buy for the purpose. There are several small LED video lights available for around the $100 range if money is an issue that are color correct, have a proper beam configuration for shooting video and are designed to be mounted on the camera.

I think you'll be MUCH happier with the results.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I'll grab a few of your quotes, in the hope of learning more. Bear with me… this is all in theory, remember. I don't own a video camera yet. And I'm not saying you're wrong, just throwing in a few of my own thoughts based on fairly extensive reading, and designing and building LED torches.

Flashlights are not going to be color correct; they aren't intended for photography.

My impression of the few LED video lights that I have looked at, is that they use off-the shelf LEDs, either a whole heap of cheap 5mm LEDs, or something like the Cree or Luxeon LEDS. Either way, in my quite-detailed look at the specs for a range of Cree and Luxeon devices, I have not come across an LED that has been designed specially for photography. That's not to say they don't exist, I just haven't noticed them. I have yet to look into video lights in detail, but I suspect most of the lights simply comprise readily available LEDs, or copies thereof. I may be wrong, but that's how it appears to me. If that is the case for down-market lights (up-market lights may very well use specialised LEDs), I thought that since a flashlight uses the same LEDs, they may be a poor-man's substitute in trying situations (on a 7-day wilderness trip, for example).

Even with something called a "flood" you will have a hot area in the middle of your image that is going to be really hard to compensate for.

I don't think I would ever want to use a flashlight to light a room – I imagine that would have a rather poor look. And mounting on camera probably won't interest me either. I would want to be more creative, trying out backlighting, sidelighting, and all those other types of lighting that I have never used in practice. Lighting faces creatively is what I am thinking off. In my imagination, I see a person in a dark forest, and I've got two flashlights that I can position anywhere I want, to create a certain lighting effect centred on them. Or on a bright day, close down the aperture a bit so that the background is underexposed, and again use the torches to light the subject's face. Maybe it's not a sensible idea to use a flashlight. That's why I asked about it here, to hear from people who have experience with video lighting.

There are several small LED video lights available for around the $100 range if money is an issue that are color correct, and have a proper beam configuration for shooting video.

This is the skeptic in me coming out: the manufacturer's may say their lights are colour correct, but are they? What LEDs are they using? What are their spectral characteristics? My intuition is that expensive torches like the H51 or PD20 which use a LED for which detailed specs are available – and which appear to be used in video lighting products – may find a use in certain situations.

But my original question remains (even if using torches is a fool idea), which of the four H51s would be the least "foolfull" for video?
 
You're right about a lot of companies using cheap, off the shelf LED's...I guess that was one of the points I didn't get across well. Becuase of that it can be a bit of a minefield finding a decent lighting system.

I guess the term "color correct" is to a degree a mis-statement...perhaps "color uniform" would be more accurate. Because so many use off the shelf, cheap LED's, QC is not always the best, and you may have a mix of colot temps that is hard to get an accurate white balance from. Some of the higher end LED's ( Cree is a good example) are pretty consistent in their color temperature regardless of battery condition, which is also a consideration; how is the circuitry on the light itself set up? are you getting uniform output in terms of color and luemens throughout the battery life, or does it dim down as the battery goes flat?

A good quality light will be more likely to maintain close to constant output without changing color or intensity too much, reach a critical voltage level and then cut off, where a cheaper light may simply drain the battery and feed whatever voltage remains to the LED until it simply can't sustain illumination any more.

Creatively there are lots of uses, and as I said, I recommend you getting a good quality light because they are very useful. I'm not overly familiar with the brand that you're looking at, but I think I would be inclined to go with the highest output possible combined with the widest beam pattern. Even though there is a lot of discussion about the relative merits of one camera over another in low light, the reality is that they all struggle considerably to manage noise free images in lower light levels.

You tend to need a lot more light than you think to get usable footage. I'd certainly not hesitate to use something like this for effect lighting, but Wouldn't want to try and fully light anything with it as a sole source. The SC51F would look to me to be perhaps the best option there.

I hope that made a bit more sense ;^)
 
seems weak man, why not just get some of those ebay 160 led panels? About $60 shipped.

I find they work pretty well, much brighter than this.

I have one of those coleman lanterns with 4 removeable lamps that has 6 LED's each. Its ok for a pinch, but still not nearly as bright as the 160led thingy.
 
yycadm said:
how is the circuitry on the light itself set up? are you getting uniform output in terms of color and luemens throughout the battery life, or does it dim down as the battery goes flat?… The SC51F would look to me to be perhaps the best option there.
Click to expand...

The H51 is current controlled in some modes, PWM (on/off at max current) for others. The drive circuit has been designed to extract the maximum out of its one Eneloop and its one LED without sacrificing light output. As the battery dies, the light remains of the same quality for each particular setting. That's what impressed me about the H51. I can't detect any compromises having been made.

You suggested the 51F (cool-white, flood) might be the best option. Is that because its colour characteristics are more appropriate for video, rather than the more yellowish "natural"? Or because it does not have the "hot spot"?

jonE5 said:
seems weak man, why not just get some of those ebay 160 led panels? About $60 shipped. I find they work pretty well, much brighter than this. I have one of those coleman lanterns with 4 removeable lamps that has 6 LED's each. Its ok for a pinch, but still not nearly as bright as the 160led thingy.
Click to expand...

Regardless of brightness or colour temperature, the fact that those 6-battery, 160-LED panels are cheaper than the one-battery, one-LED H51 must say something about the quality difference. The 160-LED panel (9.6 Watts) must, of course, throw more light than the flood version of the H51 (~2.5 Watts), but I wouldn't be surprised if the "hot spot" version of the H51 was brighter in it's spot than the 160 LED light. At 3 metres, the 160-LED light creates 120 Lux. The figure for the H51 is not stated, but if half it's lumen output was concentrated in the spot (I'm guessing here), that would mean 400 Lux. How useful for video work is a spotlight as compared to a flood? I don't know.

The only real way to find out if the H51 is of any use is to try it. Which is what I'll be doing eventually. Thanks for the feedback.
 
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