#led 100d

Written By Simon Cade

Lighting breakdowns are my favourite way to learn lighting.  You just can’t help but pickup lots of tips and techniques, and see how the different lights work together. This week we’ve got some more setups, but this time using three lights.

Lighting is something i’m really trying to dig into, and this video is the result of my latest lighting exploits. I’ve put together 4 different lighting setups, which will hopefully give you some ideas about how to have full control over your lighting.  Placement, intensity, diffusion and gels are just a few of the things to consider when lighting, so it’s good to see how others work.

CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S DSLRGUIDE: 

UK LINKS

LED Head Unit: Pixapro LED100D

Softbox: Octagonal Softbox (for LED100D)

Fluorescent Light: Fluorescent Light Fixture (85W)

Fluorescent Light Bulb: 4 x PhotoSel 85W Replacement Bulbs

LED Panel: Aputure AL-528S LED Light

Light Stands: 2 x Lightweight Light Stand

Sandbags: 4 x Sandbags

C-Stands: 20″ C-Stand

5 in 1 Reflector: 5-in-1 Reflector (43″)

Swinvel Head: Manfrotto Swivel Head

Reflector Clip: Reflector Clip

Convi Clamp: ConviClamp

Colour Gel Kit: Colour Gels Kit

Gaffer Tape: Gaffer Tape

Black Wrap: Black Wrap

LIGHTING SETUPS:

Written By Nitsan Simantov

Here's the creepy photo of my desk. I wonder if some ghost can claim copyright of this. (Joking of course)

[Note: As always, I do not work for Pixapro or any other manufacturer..]

I woke up at 4am this morning when my 5D Mark III took a photo all on its own. Yes, creepiest thing ever.

I spent a bit of time looking at some lighting tutorials online, as a lighting geek it's something I enjoy any time of the day. Now I already knew that these Pixapro 100D continuous LED lights are amazing for photography just like they are for video (and I have already claimed they are probably the best lights ever), but I didn't realize until this morning that they are actually bright enough for high-speed photography. A quick test confirmed my suspicions.

Now I'm not talking about extreme "bullet stopping" stuff, which needs to be done with some specialized strobes and dedicated high-speed trigger systems, but I'm able to easily get photos of people jumping, liquid splashes, even some photos of shooting stuff with an air gun using some cheap sound triggers [LINK], although I won't be able to "freeze" the pellet in mid air at my maximum 1/8000. Even just two of the Pixapros with their huge softboxes on gave me enough light at a normal shooting distance from the subject, about 1.5m away, easily enough for lighting a person.

Me throwing a shirt at 1/8000 shutter speed. This sort of photo seems simple but it's actually not that easy to do well with artificial lighting.

Shutter speeds and exposure:

My aim was to get to a 1/8000th of a second shutter speed, which is the fastest you can do on professional full frame cameras, although a few recent crop-sensor cameras can reach a faster 1/16,000th of a second. To do this with the lighting setup above, I set my aperture to f2 on my Voightlander 35mm f1.4 and the ISO to 12,800, which is a cakewalk for the Sony A7s. This ISO is reachable on the 5D Mark III and other professional cameras but only a few perform well at this ISO, so if we want to keep to a lower ISO we actually still have a lot of wiggle room to allow for fast shutter speeds, here are the variables we can control to allow for some high speed shooting:

First of all, the photo above was back-lit. The front of the shirt was mainly lit by light bouncing around the room. Lighting the subject more from the front or sides would give a brighter subject.

A lower shutter speed. 1/8000 is often overkill. As a rough example, starting at 1/1000 should be better for most uses, such as a person moving, this gives us back a lot of light.

We can remove the fabric diffuser from the front of the softboxes to get more light. This would give a slightly harsher light. Or removing the softbox completely and using the small bowl reflectors that come with the Pixapros, which would give a much brighter and harder light. (Hard lighting means lighting from a small area, which causes stronger shadows.)

Bring the lights closer. We get four times as much light every time we half the distance to the subject. This is just how light works, it's called the inverse square law.

Use more lights. My pixapro kit is currently three lights (two of which were used in the examples here) but I will likely add one or two more soon.  

Open the aperture, I often prefer shooting wide open anyways so for me this is not a problem.

Me dropping some balls into my half-made tool box. 

Here's a photo shot at 1/2000, ISO 500, f2.8, with two lights up close with their bowl reflectors on. These settings are easily done even on the cheapest entry level DSLR or mirrorless camera these days.

Remember to disable the "electronic front curtain shutter" setting if your camera has it, because it may cause some minor flickering (horizontal lines on the image). This is a setting which tells the camera to start scanning the sensor electronically rather than doing it all using the mechanical shutter. I am not sure if there are any other things that might cause flickering. If you look hard enough you can see it in the shot of the flying shirt which I took before I turned off that setting.

Now of course there are other options for high speed photography, but personally I much prefer to shoot with continuous lighting rather than strobes.

Advantages to using continuous lighting:

No straining on the eyes from bright flashes in a darkened room.

No syncing limits or issues between the lights and the camera.

I only have to invest in one good lighting kit for both video and photography.

Allows you to work in a very brightly lit room so you can see what you're doing.

I don't have to use lower power outputs in order to get faster speeds. I can shoot at very high shutter speeds to stop motion, rather than rely on flash durations.

I can shoot as many frames as my camera can handle without ever having to worry about strobe recycling times.

I can see my lighting while I'm setting up without the need to take a photo.

I can use any camera I want without needing compatible triggers, which are not always available or affordable.

Advantages to strobes:

Much cheaper batteries, which is good if you want to use it outdoors.

Shorter flash durations, depending on how much you spend it can be enough to take a photo of a real bullet mid-flight.

Let me know in the comments if I've missed something.

[Note: The test shots in this article were processed, just like I do for most my photography.]

me in front of the 150cm (5 foot!) Pixapro quick-open octodome "umbrella-softbox" that arrived from Pixapro this morning. Hard to get an idea of the size of the octodome in this photo since I'm closer to the camera, but just imagine 5 feet of pure lighting awesomeness and you'll get an idea of what this thing is like. Shot using the wireless Sony/NEX/A7S remote I just reviewed {LINK}.

Update 1:

This worked amazingly well in a real shoot. My friend Andi was jumping to get a "floating" look. everything was shot at 1/4000, approx 3200 ISO and f2.8 on the Sony A7s and Samyang 35mm f1.4 lens.

One of the first test shots. Lights a bit too close, background a bit too low, and front light a bit too bright for the style I wanted.

Screenshot of one of the raw images. Unedited.

Here is the final one. Lit with two 100D lights at maximum brightness (the two back lights) and one 100D at the front at minimum power with a piece of black foil in the softbox to lower its brightness even further, something I talked about in my video review of this light. The back lights had the 120cm softboxes and the front used the 150cm octodome softbox.

After some editing in Photoshop, this is the final result. I left the softboxes in the shot to give the feeling of some sort of location rather than just a blank background.

I tried a version that looked like this as well, but I preferred the clean one, as did some people I asked.

A screenshot from the tutorial. Video below.

Another photo from this shoot. This one was edited very quickly so it is far from perfect.

The background for this was the scrim (white translucent piece) from the huge Pixapro 7-in-1 reflector kit.  It's a really nice easy way to get a perfect white background. Lit with three 100Ds.

Another quick shot from this shoot. All back-lit using one 100D through the large scrim.

Here is the video: https://youtu.be/cxvLgina1wc

Pixapro items are available via these links:

Click here to see my full Pixapro 100D LED light written and video review. There are also alternatives at the bottom of the article for those of you in the USA.

(As far as I know there is only one distributor for Pixapro products, all these links are the various ways you can buy from them. The first two links are my affiliate links, so I get a small commission from Amazon or eBay them if you purchase through them.)

The TSL-2009 eBay store here (LINK) Pixapro on Amazon (LINK) www.EssentialPhoto.co.uk (LINK)

Visit PIXAPRO at:https://www.essentialphoto.co.uk/

More information about PIXAPRO LED 100D please visit at: https://www.essentialphoto.co.uk/search-results/?query=led+100d&records=16

Written by Terry Hope

As a surge of interest in filmmaking increases demand for continuous lighting, LED technology is becoming ever more advanced. We look closer at what it has to offer those moving over from photography.

To adapt a time-worn saying just a little, cometh the hour, cometh the technology… In other words, just as HDSLR capability was ramping up the interest in filmmaking amongst a whole new generation, ensuring that the need for a simple, convenient and economical form of continuous lighting was really starting to make itself felt, so LED technology was coming of age. It’s now presenting itself as a truly viable alternative to traditional forms of continuous lighting, such as tungsten and HMI, and comes with a whole heap of benefits that potentially make it a winner both for those shooting stills and those interested in making movies.

Like any kind of emerging technology, of course, this is an area that has had a few teething problems, and some early products were struggling to produce the power of output and stability of colour that was required. Times have changed, however, and the latest generation of LED lights is truly capable of living up to the requirements of the most demanding of operators. Its key benefit is the fact that it truly can do a job right across the spectrum; it’s powerful, reliable, stable, cool, safe and lightweight, and fully controllable to boot, so that its power and even its colour temperature can be adjusted at will. It all means that it has the potential to be the perfect tool for those who don’t want the expense or the inconvenience of having to invest in two completely separate lighting systems.

Pros and cons

The idea of emitting light from a solid-state substance has been around since 1907 when British scientist H J Round was experimenting in his laboratory with a crystal known as silicon carbide. When he applied a charge of electricity to it, light was emitted, and the concept was born: 20 years later others found a way to make the whole idea work outside of the lab and the first light-emitting diode followed shortly afterwards.

So much for the history lesson: what exactly are the key benefits of LED lighting? And are there still some areas in which it’s struggling to do the job demanded by the professional? We’ve mentioned the efficiency of this source and LEDs have a remarkably long lifespan and are very resistant to damage since there is no glass to break and no filament to damage via vibration. They are also more environmentally friendly since they last longer, they don’t give out emissions of gases such as CO2 and they don’t contain any toxic material, such as mercury vapour.

Because they have a lower heat output than their continuous light rivals they are the perfect partner for the studio. It means that the working environment doesn’t become uncomfortable, while those shooting perishable subjects, such as food or flowers, don’t face the issue of their subject literally wilting in front of their eyes. For good measure they’re also very safe since their typically lower infrared and ultraviolet output makes them less of a fire risk, while they’re also remarkably efficient and cheap to run. By comparison conventional incandescent lights waste about 90 per cent of their power on heat output, which is why they run so hot. That’s an amazing line-up of benefits, but are there any downsides? Well, LED lighting can be expensive to produce: top-of-the-range products can cost hundreds of pounds, so they are a big investment. And they are prone to failing prematurely in high temperatures. The quality and colour of the light might also not necessarily be as good as incandescent light, although that side of things is improving, and it’s also possible to be able to vary their output, so dimming a light panel down is now commonplace. There’s the issue that if an LED should fail in a panel it’s not possible to replace it, but such is the reliability of the technology that this isn’t likely to happen on a regular basis. Finally, for still photographers there’s also the issue that they’re not as powerful as flash heads, and would be fairly useless at freezing fast motion if that was required.

For all of these issues, however, there is no doubt at all that LED lighting has taken the video market by storm, and it’s being refined and improved all the time. Prior to its introduction into the film industry the predominant lights were based on HMI (Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide), tungsten and fluorescent technology. All these traditional sources have their issues: fluorescent lighting is heavy, complicated, expensive and really best suited for the studio, while tungsten quartz lights are expensive to run, get way too hot and can start fires.

HMIs meanwhile are extremely powerful for their size, which is why they’ve been such a staple of the film studio for so many years. A single 150W light in a bare bulb fixture would be capable of lighting a whole room, something that would require several LED panels. However the HMIs would need to be plugged in since they must have a ballast to power them – LED panels are often battery operated – and their absolute Achilles heel is that they are slow to warm up and cool down. They need to be switched on for around ten minutes before they produce consistent output, and they have to be cooled down for the same amount of time before it’s safe to move them. If you’re shooting at a wedding, for example, this could be really difficult to handle. More irritating still is the fact that once you’ve turned an HMI off you must wait at least ten minutes to turn it back on again or it won’t ignite correctly and that can damage it.

By comparison LEDs are a joy to work with. They can be turned on and off instantly, and because they lack moving parts they can take rough treatment. However, they don’t have much power so you need a lot of them to make enough light for anything other than small sets or close-up shots. That’s why they are usually arranged in panels of 100, 500, or even 1000 individual LED bulbs. The light a large panel puts out is soft – it resembles that which is created when a light is used in conjunction with a softbox – and so they’re very good for lighting interviews close up but not so adept at lighting large sets or rooms. Right now most LED panels are made up of very small one-watt individual LED bulbs, but technology is moving on and 10W bulbs are becoming available that may well revolutionise the power output capability. Nothing stays still, and the future looks rosy for the LED light: with so many advantages already in its favour, if the small remaining issues can be ironed out then there is little doubt this will be the way that filmmakers will be going in the future. What’s out there?

One of the most successful LED video lights currently on the market is the Rotolight Anova, with the latest Bi Colour V2 model launched at NAB. The revamped light features enhanced colour rendering with an output that’s 350 per cent brighter than previous models. The units are designed to be clipped together to provide banks of lighting and for some time now the Anova has been making inroads into professional film and TV sets. They’re currently being used on the set of Coronation Street, and Chris Chisnall, the head of lighting at ITV, has been impressed with their performance.

“I’ve fallen in love with these lights,” he says. “They’re quick to place around cameras, and the Bi Colour Anovas make balancing easy, being able to match the prevailing colour temperature perfectly without having to resort to a selection of gels. In addition, the ability to run off batteries, even in the studio, make them a dream for fast rigging in awkward areas of the set where we would usually have to hide cables. These lights really speed up shooting for us and have become the fill lights of choice in the Rovers.”

Another major benefit of the lights is the fact that they are totally flicker free and have been extensively tested by the Phantom Flex high-speed camera at up to 7000fps with no flicker detected at all due to the Anova’s ‘constant current dimming control system’, which is ideal for high frame rate cinematography. For good measure Rotolight claims that the Anova family is also the most eco-friendly system on the market, delivering up to 3.9kW tungsten equivalent output for just 41-watt consumption. Each Anova light can be powered by a standard V-Lock or Gold Mount battery for up to four hours, making them ideal for location or ENG operation. The Anova Bi Colour V2 is priced at £1918.79, and can be ordered direct from Rotolight.

Also at NAB, Litepanels debuted the Sola 9 (daylight balanced) and Inca 9 (tungsten balanced) LED Fresnels. Following last year’s breakthrough launch of the Sola 12 and Inca 12, the new nine-inch fixtures are designed to fill a market demand for medium-sized LED Fresnels. Developed for studio and remote applications, both lights are stronger and brighter than a traditional 1K Fresnel, while offering a host of cost-effective features. For a start they draw just 189W of electricity, and generate only a small amount of heat through Litepanels’ patented ‘Cool to the Touch’ LED technology, ensuring greatly reduced HVAC costs. They also promise years of colour accurate service without the need for traditional lamp replacements, while an integrated DMX module allows both remote dimming and focusing.

The high CRI (Colour Rendering Index) LEDs in these panels ensure a host of applications. For example, the Sola 9 can balance natural light in full daylight in exterior or interior situations, and it can serve as an artificial sunlight source through a window or other opening on a stage or location setting. The colour temperature of the tungsten balanced LED in the Inca 9 is designed to match existing incandescent Fresnel fixtures, so it can be installed for side-by-side use.

For those looking for a run ’n’ gun LED solution, the launch of the latest Lowel GL-1 Pro Power LED, also at NAB, will be of interest. A compact, focusing light available in hi-CRI Tungsten or Daylight colour with impressive output and a wide Fresnel 8:1 focus range, this unit can light from a greater distance, allowing the filmmaker or photographer to get more of the location into the wide shot.

The light is dimmable without colour shift and works with either AC power or its proprietary DC accessory battery system, which clamp-mounts to the light stand to improve balance and stability. It can also be used with a shoulder strap for handheld lighting and has a selection of accessory light control and mounting options. It’s available alone or in kit combinations and is said to be perfect for run ’n’ gun ENG or even small location studio set-ups. Cost of the GL-1 from Prokit is £498.

Another option for those looking to cover both still photography and video bases with their lighting kit is the broncolor Move 1200, announced towards the end of 2012. Flash recycling time is a super-fast 0.02 to 0.9sec (min/max) with action-stopping flash durations of 1/1,000 / 1/350 sec (0.5 /t0.1) at full power and as short as 1/20,000 / 1/8,500sec at minimum power. That means fleeting gestures and water droplets can be frozen in mid air if desired.

What makes the Move interesting to filmmakers is its continuous 30W LED modelling light, which outputs the equivalent of 100W of tungsten light but at a perfect 5,500K. You can run this on your selected head for up to two hours thanks to the inclusion of a Continuous Light Adapter, and many photographers are starting to look at the potential of this to give them a light that they can use for video production.

Moving down towards the entry-level point of the market, there are many well-priced and practical solutions. The Pixapro LED 100 series studio lights, for example, cost £299.99, and utilise the latest High-Intensity LED technology with a high luminous efficiency (up to 90 per cent). Meanwhile the LED chip has a lifespan of 50,000 hours. The LED100 series is available in either 5600K Daylight or 3200K Tungsten colour temperatures, with an equivalent brightness of 1000W tungsten light whilst only using ten per cent of the energy. The LED100 series feature a built-in 2.4GHz wireless radio remote receiver, which allows you to control up to 99 units with up to ten different channels with the optional remote control (sold separately). The LED 100 series lights feature an S-Type mount allowing you to work with a variety of light modifiers. Also highly affordable are the latest LED video lights from Reflecta. The RPL170 and DR10, both have a street price of £128.28 and feature either 170 or five power LEDs respectively, the equivalent to 12 or ten watts, allowing filming to take place even in unfavourable lighting conditions. Units offer a broad lighting angle of either 60 per cent or 65 per cent and the 170 model features an adjustable rotating head with hotshoe. There is also an integrated control found in both versions, which allows colour temperature to be adjusted between 3200K to 5500K or 5800K.

The RPL170 is dimmable, and features a rotating metal ball head with hotshoe and two included Sony Adaptors so it fits nearly all camera/camcorder shoes. The DR10 meanwhile was developed for interviews, and it can easily be mounted onto professional video cameras from the likes of Sony, Panasonic or JVC, or onto DSLR cameras. To cope with a variety of lighting conditions the DR10 is equipped with a soft filter and a daylight filter, together with two brightness levels. It’s also possible to regulate the light beam using the two integrated barn doors. The power supply is via Li-ion battery or by the power adaptor cable via the integrated battery of the camera. So, plenty of products to choose from, with more launches taking place all the time, while advances in technology are pushing back the boundaries at a rapid pace. There can be little doubt that LED lighting is here to stay and that it’s the positive future of film lighting. As with any other accessory, take time to look around at what’s out there, try before you buy and explore the options that will allow you to use your lights not just for filming but also for your still photography. If you can cover all bases with one set of kit then it’s an efficient and cost-effective way to work. More information: