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Flolight 1024
Hi Guys
I have just bought 2 x of the new Flolight 1024’s LED 1×1 dimmable lights. They say they are around 5600k however they have a horrible green color cast. I will attach some screen grabs from a very quick 1 x light setup, just to see the difference between kinoflo 5600k daylight balanced tubes and the flolight “daylight”. Any advice on color correcting for this would be appreciated. Is it just case of putting some minus green gels over them and if so, what strength? 1/4’s? Will this reduce output by much? I have tried the FLUO matrix (hpx500), but it seems to suck the color out of everything and I don’t like the look and I don’t want to be forced to use it all the time because the lights are not balance properly.
Also, when I received the lights, one of them had a bank of 8 LED’s not working. Its gonna cost me $200 for shipping back to the states just to get them fixed (from Australia) and they were DOA. Not particularly happy with them, but they are a fair bit less expensive than the Litepanels version, so I need to find a work-around. However, the are still $1000 with the V-lock attachment! Not that cheap! The build is very nice though. Metal frame, very sturdy, just the green color cast and I got a faulty one as well.
Thoughts? Advice?
Cheers
Jarrod
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11 Replies
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At this time it appears that ALL LED units have a very imperfect color spectrum. They all, as far as I know, have a green spike. FloLight claims a CRI of 93. Kinos have a CRI of 95. You’ll need to add some minus green. I’d shoot a test with 1/8 minus green added to the front of your LED and see how that works. Not enough correction? Double it up to minus 1/4 etc. until you get a better balance.
Unfortunately, adding the minus green will not totally resolve the difference between the light of your Kinos and any LED unit. LEDs have a discontinuous color spectrum. You will find truer color reproduction with the Kinos. I don’t know which parts of the color spectrum are missing. You may want to experiment with also adding a light straw gel to improve the look. Keep on experimenting with various light tints until you are satisfied. Using a human face to test your gels is a good idea. You could get a more accurate picture if you had a good color chart and a way to look at the image your camera takes with a vectorscope.
As for the dead bulbs, you might want to start by contacting either the company from which you bought this unit or FloLight itself.
Let us know how you resolve the dead bulb issue, as well as what works best for color correction.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Thanks for the great response Rick. Have you ever used Litepanels 1×1’s and do they also have the green spike? Going to get some minus green gels today, I will post results here again.
As for the dead LED’s. The company originally asked me to re-solder the leds, that did not work. So now I need to send them back. From Australia to USA is expensive. So, going to have to live with the faulty LED bank in the mean time, and it could be cheaper to take the Panel to a local repairer rather than sending the unit back to the USA.
Cheers -
Jared:
What kind of camera are you using? Are you using preset? Is flolight your only source or are you adding any other lights?
Dumb question, but have you white balanced with the flolight on? If so, what does it do to the BG.
As you said earlier, correcting with a gel cuts down transmission quite a bit. So 1/8 to 1/4 is about it.
Rob
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Hi Rob,
Yep, tried White balancing and of course it turns the background magenta. I am using the 5600k preset, as the lights are supposed to be daylight balanced. They have a lot of kick, so they can by used as a filler for outdoor use too. In the test shots, there is no other light source other than the Kino in one shot and the Flo in the other. I have order a roll of 1/8 minus green from LEE so I will post the results. Hopefully it just needs 1/8 not 1/4 and output wont be affected too much.Using the Panasonic HPX502en (PAL version of HPX500) with a KJ21ex Canon Lens.
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As promised. Here are the new screen shots with LEE Eighth Minus Green 279 Gel over light. If you are considering buying these lights, make sure you add in the cost of buying a roll of this stuff. You will need it.
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Sorry, first 1/4 minus green shot is wrong. its actually 1/8th
here is the 1/8 proper
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Personally I like these lights and I think the new units and much better than what I purchased. I like 1/4 minus and 1/4 CTO for the most part and I manually dial the color temp to what looks good to me. If I’m using 2 EX cameras I’ll copy the picture profile I’m using to the SxS card and load it on the second camera.
What is great is using them with battery power in areas where you just can’t run extension cords. I have had 3-500 LED’s for about 3 years and I love them. Now I want 4- 1000’s.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
Just a follow up on the faulty LED bank issue. Its been well over a month now and still no solution. At first I was asked to solder my own light to fix it. Didn’t work. Now they are trying to get me a courier to send it back to them. Apparently the courier is sending me emails with shipping labels, but they are not coming through. When I last asked for the couriers number to call them myself to sort this out, I got no response. I hope this gets sorted soon. If you live outside the USA, I would consider your warranty with these lights. After sales support in this regard has been limited, to say the least. I am trying to stay objective with this post, but its getting harder and hard with the frustration of having a faulty light that arrived DOA.
I’ll keep you posted if it gets fixed. -
[Jarrod Boord] “I am trying to stay objective with this post, but its getting harder and hard with the frustration of having a faulty light that arrived DOA.
I’ll keep you posted if it gets fixed.”What happened? And what did you conclude about the color correction needed for daylight?
Bob C
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