On-camera light for use outdoors at night

[Noam Osband]

i guess. although i dont own a tv and havent watched network news in ages so it’s hard for me to envision what that looks like. It’s doc stuff I shoot so I assume I’ll always be within 5 feet of the subject. I dont have a budget to get anything that’s going to light me farther away. I’ll going to be following someone around for a bit in August filming them for a week, so I want to be able to get useable footage at night if we’re some place with no lighting. Would more information be helpful? Thanks in advance!

[Noah Kadner]

Yeah it’s a deer in the headlights look you’ll end up with- not ideal.

Noah

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[David Johnson]

I’m not disagreeing with Dave’s or Noah’s advice, but from what you described, it sounds like slap a high-wattage Frezzi with dimmer on your cam, get what you get and do the best you can with it in post … omfg!! did I just say “fix it in post”!!!?. That’s never a great (or cheap) solution, but sometimes it’s the only solution.

[Guy Mcloughlin]

If you want something very affordable, you should take a look at the LED lights from CoolLCD.com. They are light, bright, modular, can use rechargeable battery packs, and low cost.

Cool LCD LED Lights

[Frank Sorensen]

Have a look at the Lowel Blender 3000-5000K https://www.lowel.com/blender But it’s still LED and that’s just not super for TV production because of the Color Rendering Index

[John Fishback]

Checkout Alzo Video’s on-camera lights. We have the 790L. It’s flexible, dimmable, comes with various filters and the price is very competitive. And it works off-camera, too. It’s handy when you need to hide a light in a car or on a set.

John

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[Noam Osband]

I think I’ve decided on the Comer 1800 light. I do have a question about color temperature with on-camera LED lights. The Comer does 4500 and 3200 but other lights have a greater range of temepratures. That said, I’m not sure I need that range. I’m thinking long term here and maybe I would need the range that something like the Ikan Multi-K gives.

Any thought on this matter would be appreciated!

[Frank Sorensen]

Do you know the CRI on that sungun.. DON’T buy a sungun under CRI 80.

I never use LED light under CRI 85.

[Sam Red]

Indeed check on CRI, smaller cheaper LEDs tend to spike sharply on the green channel inherently… you can always gel to color correct it, but you will drop the light output a bit.