LEDs in WorkLights now
 

The price of video LED lights like LitePanel has got to drop soon. They are starting to make LED Worklights now. Look at these.

And if its good enough for NASCAR...

Patrick, great find, I hate paying through the nose just cause manufactures can get away with it. Even if color temp is off and assuming a fairly uniform color across the LED's, the right combo of gels can always get you close to perfect if not exactly on the money.


Noel

I can't speak to it's quality, but Overstock is selling a 20 LED lantern for $16 ("marked down" from $75). It runs on 4.5V DC (3 D-Cells).

As long as the LEDs aren't total junk, this seems to have serious hacking potential...

::md

Use a fader to attenuate the voltage to them. The whole reason for using LED is because they do not flicker, even when you have a fader on them. It'd be nice to have a programmable fader that can flash the LEDs at intervals, too, in case you need to give a scene an industrial lighting feel. Not strobing but a nice soft throbbing of light. Am I just being strange?

Hey Stephen,
What about an array of LEDs that mimics the light from a fire?

(Seriously though, that would be cool.)

If you can do it with an LED SIGN, why not simulate it by using the light from it. Exactly. A programmable dimmer. And possibly multicolored LEDs. I think they only go as far as 3-color but I may be wrong.

You could even do an undulating random effect to give the illusion someone is driving at night. They could have the light move over them and flash like they are passing buildings and stoplights and whatnot.

If you are doing a process shoot for a car, you could even capture left, right and front camera views while capturing the rear plate on location, then on stage use large LED screens to illuminate the talent inside the car. With the rear plate and the LED screens sychronized, you could insure that the illumination on the talent matches what's going on in the plate.

Is such a thing already being done? It would make too much sense not to. The only two issues I can think of is that the base level of illumination would have to be pretty low, as the LED screens are not capable of outputting as much light as lighting instruments, and that the separate red, green and blue LEDs can end up casting multiple shadows. Maybe a slight diffusion would eliminate that problem. Speaking of diffusion, it seems that another problem would be the diffuse nature of the screens - no direct beams of light coming into the car.

I guess if you wanted a soft, diffuse look it might work out. It would have the benefit of allowing very complex lighting and color shifts throughout the shot, without having to fake it all with a complex rig. What do you all think?

Here is the ultimate cheap version of LED-like lighting. This will bring back memories: Low Cost Throw-back Lites

Yeah but aren't those a choking hazard? I smell a lawsuit from the families of lighting technicians with oral fixations.