Small.."DIFFUSED"...Dimmable DSLR light

[Brett Sherman]

No speedring, just stick it on the light, I had to cut maybe a half inch more between the panels to give myself a bigger opening. It's usually tipped up slightly since it runs into the light stand mount at the bottom. However, it stays on pretty well. I have the Coollights 256 and their softbox. It's slightly different with a smaller opening, but the same basic design. It wouldn't work with these lights.

[Ron Fabienke]

After a lot of reading and looking I ordered and have just received the Sabre S2400. More than I wanted to pay but worth every penny. "Awesome" light in build and performance. At high setting on the excellent, "non" pulse width modulation dimmer control this is throwing the most bright, uniform, beautiful illumination in a perfect 16x9 field I have ever seen from a camera light in over 20 years in the field.

Spec Sheet - Sabre Pro Lighting Solutions

Cons:
Heavier than most
More expensive

Pros:
Finest low wattage yet powerful, high quality illumination. The 2 separate light sections in its design allow at the exact same illuminations with no external filters required: 3 switch controlled temps: 5500K, 4000K and 3200K

The LEDs have very high CRI or color rendering index

As opposed to conventional lamps there is zero color shift when dimming all the way to off

Tremendous uniformity in the area of the light's coverage

It does indeed at full brightness and only 15 watt draw from long lasting normal lithium camera batteries, look to be putting out their advertised equivalent of 140 watts from a conventional lamp.

I put a fully charged Sony NP-F770 battery on and let the light sit on full brightness to test how long before it started to go down, and got 1 and 1/2 hours out of it. In normal use with any, and more likely a lot of dimming......that time will extend greatly.

There are a number of good, easy and effective diffusion options that they offer which really make this sweet in close proximity and dimmed, with still all kinds of brightness headroom.

Build quality of everything is exceptional and should be very rugged and durable in the field. Personally I like the look a lot.

I cannot wait to shoot with it. The quality of the light and uniformity I expect would make any camera sing to its best potential and likely require less gain settings in low light even at 30 foot distance when needed. Even auto tracing white with Sony PMW 320 seems to be much more accurate in lower light conditions, for when needed in place of normal white balancing. With a DSLR I have the very same expectations.

[Heiko Saele]

Originally Posted by D.J. Ammons

The best I have had at a great price is the Z96 LED camera light.

I totally agree. It is a really good light for a very reasonable price. Very soft and even illumination with a wide angle. Good brightness, too. With the magnetic diffusor clip you can also very easily clip gel filters to the lamp. I often use a 1/4 CTO on it because the lamp's native color temperature is a little high for most daylight situations.
The Full CTO magnetic clip that comes with the lamp is really good, too. A little different from a Lee full CTO, but not worse in my opinion.

I use eneloop NimH batteries most of the time which works great, but you can also use Sony batteries or any power source from 5-16V (it has a power socket for that).

A colleague of mine took our Z96 to Brazil and Bolivia where he shot a documentary. He also used eneloop Nimh batteries and said he did not have a single problem with the lamp for over three weeks of shooting.

I often use it as a hair light/edge light when I don't have time for a real lighting set up. Just put it anywhere with a super clamp, and in less than one minute your interview lighting looks 100% better :)