AbelCine Lighting Expo

[Craig Seeman]

On Sunday December 15, AbelCine held a Lighting Expo on LED lighting (with one Plasma light). They streamed the entire event which included three 90 minute presentations. There's as much as 30 minute pad of just slate between each (giving people time to visit the vendors). I thought people might want to view the recorded livestream. I was there in person. It was very informative.

Lights show are from Arri, Hive, Nila, Lowel, PRG, Zylight, Litepanels

The three presentations were:
Beyond The Bulb: New Lighting Technology
DP Lecture, David Mullen, ASC
Lighting Comparisons Workshop

I personally found the Comparisons revealing. The primary streaming camera for those were from an Arri Alexa. Some of the subtle differences were more obvious on site on a calibrated monitor than on the stream though. One thing was clear is that the manufacture specs are "subjective" whether it be beam angle, brightness, color temperature or CRI. The challenge in matching lights was that they have different strengths and weakness in their spectrums which really can't be controlled by a gel and only to some extent controlled by those lights that allow you to dial plus/minus green/magenta.

AbelCine EXPO: Innovations ... on AbelCine EXPO: Innovations In Lighting

[Craig Seeman]

Just some "stream of consciousness" takeaways from the event for me.

The Arri LC7 ($2722.50) fresnel have much more control than the Sola 6 ($2605.50) since it has color temp green/magenta saturation controls. and Zylight F8 ($2400) fresnel seemed smaller (more portable IMHO) and brighter with about the same beam angle focus range.

CRI rating in specs is only a general average and doesn't show CRI weakness in various ranges.
Tungsten lights might not be a perfect CRI 100 but they are close and even across various ranges.

It's hard to match LEDs given they may have different deficiencies. In one case there was a light on the blond haired subject in which the hair was slightly green while the skin was slightly magenta. There's no easy way to compensate for that.

David Mullen said he's still predominately using tungsten lights. That they're not billed by electrical use may be a factor. He does use LEDs for specific jobs given their portability.

I believe it was Arri that mentioned such things are firmware upgrades, circuit board and LED upgrades given the changing technology. My concern is that while LED light obviously can last many years given the technology, the technology is still young and changing.