Inexpensive LED lights

[Bill Davis]

Personal opinion is that the best price/performance ratio is the CoolLights units. The company owner is active in these boards and proves that he really cares about customer service, and his equipment, while perhaps not at the absolute pinnacle of manufacturing fit and finish, are well designed for their task and are totally as functional as the expensive brands at less than 50% the price.

I own 3 (two 600s and a 250) and seldom work out of state without them.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Dan Brockett]

What Bill said.

Unless you are ponying up the BIG bucks for LitePanels, Coolights are the best value out there. I too own two of the 600s and a 250, love them.

Dan

A Producer Who Is Also A DP? Yep, that’s Me.

http://www.danbrockett.com

[Rick Wise]

Do you find you need to add any minus green gels?

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[Dan Brockett]

Yes, but they have thoughtfully included nice minus green resin panels, no gels needed. Like them more, I just leave them in the lights, no gels to crinkle in the wind, make noise or wear out. The Minus .5 Green does the trick.

Dan

A Producer Who Is Also A DP? Yep, that’s Me.

http://www.danbrockett.com

[Rick Wise]

Thanks, Dan. Going to their site I see that now. Be great if they did the same thing for their fluorescents.

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[Dan Brockett]

Yeah, I am liking the resin panels a lot more than gels these days.

Do their fluorescents also have a green spike too or do you just mean that it would be nice to have ND or CTB/CTO as resin panels on their fluoros?

Dan

A Producer Who Is Also A DP? Yep, that’s Me.

http://www.danbrockett.com

[Rick Wise]

Dan,

I have not yet tried out the fluorescents. I believe they have a CRI of 87, which strongly suggests that they do have a green spike. Almost every fluro other than Kinos do need treatment — and even Kino Divas need some gelling help. How much varies a lot: 1/8, 14, 1/2.

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[Bob Cole]

[Rick Wise] “even Kino Divas need some gelling help. How much varies a lot: 1/8, 14, 1/2”

I assume you mean 1/8 etc. minus green. But I’ve never seen the need for minus green on my Diva. Perhaps the fact that I don’t white balance helps? (I use the tungsten Kino fluoro lights which are rated 2900K and set the camera to 3200K) But I also use their daylight and set the camera to 5600K.

[Bill Davis]

I have 3 of Richard’s LED units and 3 of his fluorescent fixtures. The LED units I ordered in 3200k since many of the retail stores I commonly shoot in have re-lit their interiors using the newest generation of high-efficiency fluor tubes and these typically read at about 3800k. On the fluorescent lights, I ordered sets of both the 3200 tubes and the 5600 tubes.

If either of these are the ONLY lights involved in a shoot, I don’t typically use any minus green on any of them. On standard cameras shooing in a “single technology” (all fluor, tungsten, or LED environment, regular white balancing seems to take care of things and I just don’t find much use for the magenta filters in that circumstance.

When I’m shooting on DSLR, the cameras have pretty lousy white balance capabilities, however, my 5dMkii does have a fluorescent preset that seems to balance really well with either the fluors OR the LEDs. With that setting, shooting the DSLR, it’s Fluors in the studio and LEDs in the field and the setting gives me excellent color rendition.

However, if you’re shooting in a tungsten space and want to use ANY of these as kickers or fill, then you’ll definitely need the magenta filters. In a mixed light environment, the green tinge is quite apparent. The amount of minus-green you’ll need depends on the environmental light you’re fighting.

None of these yet do what tungsten, especially the traditional fresnels in my Arri Kits do – which is allow you to really shape the light with barn doors, gobos and foil wraps. But for broad, soft fill light for interviews and other small setups, the savings in power and the ability to generate a whole lot of lumens at an incredibly low cost and power consumption is a HUGE leap forward in location and broad space studio lighting.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Richard Andrewski]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for your comments.

Our customers haven’t reported the need to use minus green on our flo tubes nor has any of our own testing shown the need. But then again most of them are using digital mediums. The ones using real film are most likely using Kino tubes which work in our fixture. The current CRI of the tubes we sell is 90 and has been for a while, just haven’t updated the site.

The most common scenario where it might be necessary is if you are shooting real film. In the case of real film, you actually have to overcorrect to keep the green spike from coming in and that is why many will report for example that Kino Flo bulbs seem a bit more “magenta” than others. As far as I know Kino Flo tubes are the only ones made expressly for use with film as they came out in an era where there was no significant digital mediums to speak of.

So, when shooting digital, most of the time, the green spike is easily taken care of by the white balance circuitry of the camera in use.

As for LEDs, as far as I know, we were the first and still about the only company that has admitted that LEDs are in an immature state where CRI is concerned, and therefore should facilitate their use by supplying acrylic correction filters with the panels as part of the kit. No cheap gels in other words. You get a 1/4 minus green, 1/2 minus green, Full CTO and diffuser all in a nylon pouch.

I believe we are still the only ones to have a softbox accessory for our LED fixtures as well, even the small 256 has one available now.

Richard Andrewski
Cool Lights USA