Using LED Stage Lights for Video Lighting
 

Hey everyone,
I was looking into LED lighting for abvious reasons (power and efficiency) for use as general purpose video lights. I have see what companes like Litepanels, etc. has to offer, but frankly, they cost a lot of money. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of using LED stage lights for video lighting from companies like Color Kinetics, Elation, Chauvet and American DJ? Here are a few examples:

http://colorkinetics.com/ls/rgb/colorblast12tr/

http://colorkinetics.com/ls/intelliwhite/iwblast12tr/

http://www.elationlighting.com/produ...LED%20Lighting


There are a bunch out there, and it definitely seems like they are bright enough to handle most applications. Thoughts?

I had got a couple of these to try that out; http://www.musicstore.de/is-bin/INTE...mpTo=OfferList.
It gets about daylight by having al the blue, red and green leds on. Stopped using them because of that; It causes a nasty headache...

The cheaper PAR can type led fixtures I have are great for about 7 colours, but the shades between require low intensity from some of the colours, and they flicker - you can see it with the naked eye - but through the viewfinder it can look very odd. Also, the colour rendition isn't very smooth, producing some unexpected tints. White is also nowhere near the whites you get from other sources making colour balance tricky.

I have ordered some of these and should have delivery in a few days.
http://www.flolight.com/500LED.htm

I'd planned on getting some fluorescents from http://www.coollights.biz but they weren't in stock yet, so I went to Flolights intending to get their fluorescents and found these LED lights.

Those are nice bill, and not that expensive at all. To bad that Flolight does not export to Europe since the manufacture restrictions are more strict over here, from what they told me @ this years NAB.

Yeah, Bill, THAT is what I'm talking about. I absolutely LOVE the Litepanels stuff, but $2000+ per fixture? Way too much in my opinion. Until their prices come down, I want something that's going to be both economical and efficient. That fixture looks like a good start.

I did my first shoot with 3 of these last week and they perform as advertised. Have a location shoot tomorrow.

I can tell you that the Chauvet Colorsplash Jr. is NOT a good video light--at least for key locations. If you want something to splash color on a wall, it'll do a great job: pick whatever color and intensity you want--right there on the unit.

However, with all LEDs on, the light is not white but fairly discrete areas of red, green, and blue. Diffusion may help, but there are better choices available.

But what about whiteLED light units? When the LED's are white themselves?

Alas, I cannot say. But I suspect these instruments are more concerned with quantity of light rather than quality. But I don't know how much variation there can be among LEDs. Are all 'white' LEDS the same color temperature? I don't know.

Mine are 5600K.

All white is not created equally in LEDs. This is really something to watch and if possible try to do some tests before you actually buy the unit (although in the Internet / eCommerce age thats quite tough). "White" as its called can be anything from 4000K to 7000K and that's a big range. Ideally you could check it to be sure and know what the exact color temp is. The problem is that LEDs are not as mature yet as fluorescent bulbs are. The way the process works its kind of hit and miss. They literally manufacture a batch of LEDs and then sort them out by color temperature later. The really goods ones of course carry the higher price tag and the lesser quality ones demand less money. Its really hard to find a manufacturer that even lists CRI and exact color temperature for their LEDs.

The stage lighting models will usually use the lesser quality LEDs in the interest of keeping the cost down.

Richard,

Are there other differences with the lesser quality LEDs than color temperature matching?

For example, are the lesser quality LEDs:
1. Less durable
2. Shorter life
3. More harsh
4. Other difference?

I guess the the question is about the units that are listed at 5600 and 3200. Is the great difference in price do because of differences in the LEDs other than color temperature, or is the difference in price solely due to reasons (construction, mark-up, advertising budget, etc.) other than the LEDs used?

Thanks for any insight!

This LED display was mentioned and I was wondering if anyone has feedback on it?
http://www.flolight.com/500LED.htm

jon

I wrote a review of my first shoot with the 500LEDs on http://www.dvfreelancer.com .

Bill....thanks for taking the time to write the article. Very informative information on the product.

Jon Haskell

Richard's lights are so nice and he has posted a lot of information on this board. I would really try to go with his stuff. You know you will be getting a quality product. I just received my lights today from him. All I will say right now is that his products are premium.

Hi Jack,

Could be all 4 of those criteria or only one. That's the hit or miss nature of LEDs. You really have to deal with a serious factory to find some good ones that have been well sorted out, higher quality, etc. Its one reason I've delayed a bit on making a panel as I want to find a good factory over in Asia which is where most of the world's LEDs are coming from anyway.

On your second question, I would say all of that is possible. Some price markup may be due to the "sorted" nature of the LEDs but also some is always just the discretion of an individual company as to what they feel they need to make a profit and keep running. One may decide they need to sell a product for $399 and another may feel $199 would give adequate profit to stay in business. Still another may need to sell it for $999. Every company has their own overhead level that must be supported and their products will reflect that.

Remember too, that much of the stage and studio lighting world operates off of dealer networks. These middle men require a cut to be interested in selling the products and supporting them. There will be a wholesale price that is designed to interest these dealers and then they will markup to something close to a "suggested retail price" or discounted version. All of this plays a part in making the price what it is. Its all about controlling the entire product from beginning to end, starting with the cost of parts and continuing on with keeping the number of transportation steps from parts to finished product down to a minimum. Keeping the number of hands it passes through to a minumum too. Personally, I try to buy parts near the factories where they are assembled to keep the freight costs down. We then try to minimize the times we transport the final product too. Every transport step adds another level of cost. You'd be surprised how much the average product gets transported during its life cycle and how big a part of the cost it really is.

I will say that when I started my prototype project for an LED panel, I decided the price would probably be $199 for the base unit without battery and that would give us adequate profit to support it. Of course things can change, we can learn more information during the development process but that was the target price for such a panel, in the 25w range and with dimmer. I could have sold the Lishuai LED panel that flolights is offering but as usual, I prefer to control the product from start to finish so I can also control the final price that I offer. When you just buy a panel from another manufactuer and sell it, you control nothing really; so you offer the markup you need to justify selling the off-the-shelf product.

There are a couple of things lacking to make that panel a real product. We still have to come up with a good fixture housing for it and when that's finished we'll no more about the target price. Right now, I am considering a tiny version of our portable flo's using the same plastic we use there which is a polycarbonate and very tough.

Batteries and other options would add an appropriate markup to that base price too and we haven't found the good battery/recharger system that has the watt/hours to support a 25w panel like the one I have. It will most likely be a lithium ion battery though--something small and light. This would not be considered an on-camera light, I would think of it as more of a "light stand" type light. I'm including a picture of our prototype below. That's the stage its in right now. You can see the dimmer circuit on the side. Its the standard type dimmer for use with LEDs with a special something "extra" that no one else is doing. ;-)

Hi Eric!

Glad to hear you got up and running okay. Did you find you needed the operations manual or was it a pretty intuitive setup?

For the original poster, Colorblasts are not cheap either, you'll pay about $1000 for one of those, PLUS you have to have an external DMX controller to control it. Not really practical for on camera use, and barely practical for other use.

Thanks for the reply Richard. The Manual was nice. I read both of them although setup was very straightforward even if I would have not used the manual. The lights seem to work good for photos also.

Here's a self portrait attached of me with the 4 bank fluorescent and 150W HMI as key and background lighting.

I'm going to send you an e-mail in around a week and give some feedback on the lights once I have played around with them a little more.

Its interesting that headaches was mentioned. I just replaced 4 overhead "cool white" fluoresent tubes in our company lunch room with 4 -7000k cool white led tube lights. This is an experiment to see how people like them and any other effects. I won't get into the positives of LED lighting but the "claims" are astounding as far as energy conservation.
Fluoresents are normally associated with some folks getting migraines due to the flicker. LEDs T8,10 and 12 tubes on the otherhand have no flicker and are instant on since you wire them to bypass the exisiting fluoresent light fixture ballast. What I found after just 2 days of observation is that about 10% of the staff started noticing a slight headache after 20 minutes exposure. Very odd. I am replacing the 7000k tubes with 5000k warmer tubes next week to see if there is any difference.

Actually I would think that it is their own policy. They are owned by Prompter People. The owner of Prompter People charges European Customers who have to buy through the European Stores almost the double price from the US... Their explanation is .. well.. you know shipping and customs... - riiiight.... A 1'499 USD Prompter sells here for about 3'140 USD (converted back to USD)... Oh and if you get one from the states (for that price I can take a nice little trip and still be cheaper) they will not service it in Europe!

I have some disco LED lights and they are very colourful for effects, I was also going to get one of these and see what the colour temp is:WARM WHITE LED PAR 64 FLOOR CAN - UPLIGHTER/STAGE LIGHT on eBay (end time 31-Jan-10 10:36:58 GMT)

ebay....
 

What about the 500 and 1000 led units showing up on Ebay anyone tried them?

Last week I did a stage show in which these RGB disco LED lights were used. RGB LEDs= white light daylight. The light itself looked ok, but watch out for the shadows... you'll have magenta, yellow, and cyan fringes on the edge of every shadow that looks really funky.
http://colorkinetics.com/ls/rgb/colorblast12tr/