Looks quite useful and the price is right. I wonder what the color temperature of the LEDs might be.

My other question is what effect it might have on the audio by placing a large, flat disc on the mic. It's possible that it might slightly improve the directional characteristics of the microphone, another possibility is that it may cause some phase cancellation at certain frequencies due to reflecting the audio back to the mic element. Then again, it may have no noticable effect at all and the light is a heck of a deal for $150.

John

Looks quite useful and the price is right. I wonder what the color temperature of the LEDs might be.

They clearly look daylight from the video. I wish it had a way to add color media to it for CT. I also am not big on sticking it on my mic, because I seldom have one on the camera.

The idea is good and it will be a product to watch. I am looking at a unit at the same or lower price that may work well. After I know more about it, I will let you know.

As we say down here, there's one born evey minute!

I can sell you one for $50, shipping discount if you buy two or more. Buy 10 or more and I'll throw in a set of steak knives.

Bugger, we're all mates here, so I have to tell you, you can buy the same thing from eBay for $10.

Just search for "New 48 LED"

Bob.

Hmmm, how about that! Looks identical to the MicLight. Thanks for that tip, Bob. I'll buy you a beer or two at next year's NAB.

Too blue for daylight.

Anyone know the CRI of white LED's I know they come in 5600k and 7000K (3200K is now available as well but harder to get) ? I will have to get some and look at them on a scope. Imagine a softlight using LED's if the CRI was good. Less power and more durable than Fluorescent. I sure there is a problem with that thought, but I will have to play with it.

hey thanks for the tips, good to know it! excellent point re colors etc too..

now if I could just get that $50 teleprompter I'd be all set... :-p

excellent find re LEDs.. that's a good niche market for someone... buy at $10 sell at $150... I was looking for an accessory to stick on my Rode shotgun mics...

ken

Most of the these lights on eBay are shipped to the U.S. from Australia or Hong Kong. I found this one for $13.89 that ships from Dallas, Texas. I'll order one just for the heck of it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-48-LED-UFO-Camping-Light_W0QQitemZ120121938523QQcmdZViewItem

John

Most white LEDs have a shockingly bad CRI, regardless of CT.
Also most have a very narrow beam, up close you get multiple spots of light.
We are the local agent for Zylight, they're expensive as they use custom made LEDS with no lens to get almost 180deg light distribution. CT is infinitely variable plus two presets for daylight and tungsten. You can link multiple units using inbuilt Bluetooth, dim one they all dim, change color, they all change color.
The new Z90 unit offers 3 times the light output of the Z50 with a lambdian light distribution for less fall off but still covers the 16:9 frame very well. It's also able to emulate just about every gel made.

The CRI is very good on both models.

Unfortunately though you're looking at around USD 600 to 900 for these.

We've also got 6 Hyperlights from Photon Baird. These are a small fluro on camera light. Again very good CRI but also expensive.

Putting a gel in front of a LED is not really a wise move. Most LEDs produce light in a very narrow spectrum, the gel doesn't work the same as it would on a tungsten or good fluro.
Most white LEDs are actually fluro lights, technically speaking. A UV LED is used to excite a piece of flourescent material that produces sort of white light. Problem is that unlike fluros designed for video / film there's only one kind of flourescent material (good fluros use upto 5) and hence the poor CRI.
Good white LEDs for video /film use three junctions that produce RGB, by controlling the current through the RGB junctions CT can be changed. Using three separate RGB LEDs works OK for studio lighting but not for on camera lights, you get colored spots.

I'm thinking to buy a few to rebuild as a lens mounted ring light, the PCBs inside the thing would save me a bit of cost.

Except I've got too much on my plate as it is, like orders for 10 of my HMI China Balls!

Bob,
You got a web site for your product?

No. But there's some info on it here:

http://www.madison.thewikies.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=27&sid=5be325883b51d65c3d52d2ac912cef3d

Feel free to copy my design, if you need any help send me an email.
We've had one running for over a month 10 hours per day and nothing's gone bang or melted so I think it's pretty good.

You could use a bunch of double D compact fluros instead of the HMI lamp to save some money and work.

Bob.

Thanks for the link.
Sorry for the OT here, but are you The Wikies? I just tried to send you a msg from your site.
You did a song last October that I've been trying to find. I don't remember the name and a hard drive crash took that song from me.
It was a very cool, spooky song done in a 1940s style, as I recall.
Can I get that from you somehow?

Matthew, the Wikies guy is Jonathan Neal and we haven't heard too much from him lately.
I did a search on his name and came up with a thread called OT: My Video & Audio Hearts Vegas where he links to some songs he's done. Hopefully one of them is what you're after.

Mike

Most white LEDs have a shockingly bad CRI, regardless of CT.

I figured that was the problem, because of what I saw in the video. Thanks for the info. I guess to decrease power usage, it is still HMI and Flour.

Thanks much Mike. I'll check that out.
Again, sorry for the OT.

Yeah, I got one after seeing it at NAB. It white balances to the outdoor preset on my VX2000. (manual WB is best of course). If you WB to the indoor preset it is way too blue. The two things I don't like about it are that one, being a round white object, it kind of shouts "look at me". It also doesn't appear to throw very far. They claim the same output as a 50 watt light, but it doesn't throw very far. I've used it twice, need to test it more.

Thanks Bob!

Secretary on intercom.....

Mr. Jones, there is a camera crew from 60 Minutes in the lobby with
one of our MicLights to see you.....



I am not so ashamed of my flashlight on a swivel now.

Just to report on Bob's 48 LED camping light.
Bought one for tests. Couldn't buy the parts for the cost of the light and I can always use it for camping.
The light and the packaging didn't match, the differences being the number of LED (24 in photo, 48 in device), the number of AA cells was 4 in instructions and 3 in device, the diagram for opening it was contradictory (clockwise in drawing and counter-clock in words -- the latter being correct). The packaging tells me the among the "Produet specialties" is : "water-proof (chare strong system of water-proof but prohibited to dry in water)".
There are no instructions for operation and I might mention that the square spigot isn't for holding while you try to open the thing. That is the push switch and is easily broken.
The light is bright and it's hard to imagine it will really run for 30 hours on 3 AA cells. It is a good light for camping. Very low weight, convenient (hanger included) and looks water resistant. The one I received had several broken solder joints, so the number of LEDS lit depended on twisting the case; possibly damaged in transit because it was in a thin envelope without protection. However the joints were easily repaired.
I haven't a setup for determining CRI. This index was designed to be quantitative but the test procedures don't well suit modern light sources and I note that the American Cinematographer Manual defines CRI as "a qualitative procedure for visual colour matching or inspection of objects"

So if we go with "visual evaluation" (commonly employed in human factors studies) and employ unsaturated test colours as listed in http://www.kruschwitz.com/cri.htmtecnical measurement of CRI[/link] then I think we can set up a reasonable test. I took a paint shop sample colour chart of matte pastel colours covering the defined spectrum in much finer steps.
I also used a photographic test card (including 18% grey).

These were videoed under daylight and under the LED light, with white balance set for each test and peak white levels matched.
I loaded the tests into Vegas, putting each on separate tracks so I could swap back and forth easily (now the eye comes into play). I also checked with the vectorscope.
Obviously under daylight illumination colours were easily discriminated and matched the colour chart. Under LED illumination the colours were equally well discriminated and with only slight variation from the chart (as seen by eye and vectorscope). The LED has some deficiency at the red end of the spectrum but not enough to distort the difference between red and magenta on the photo chart. In fact on the chart each segment of Blue, Cyan, Green, Yellow, Red and Magenta look to be in correct relative balance.
So what is the light's CRI? Well, not 100. All I can say is that all colours were recorded in good relative balance and that small differences in colour and saturation were perceived in their appropriate colour space. And remember that household CFs are given a CRI well below 90 but Victor's "Nanolight" (using 6 of those) is an excellent video light source.

A test I omitted was to photograph a live face (in addition to that on the photo test chart), but so far the 48 LED Chinese light stands up to testing for a video light. My colour temperature meter says 12000 degrees (average summer daylight being 6500), but the meter is designed for measuring black body light sources (which LEDs are not).

Hope this might be of some help to anyone wanting to try a non-photographic LED source.

For a review like that they should have given you the thing for free!

One simple subjective way to evaluate CRI is to use the light to illuminate a color wedge and look for any missing colors. It's not going to give you numbers of course but good enough for subjective comparisons from what I've seen of demo setups for domestic CFLs in hardware stores.

Bob.

Bob, broadly that was my procedure. The subject consisted of subtle colour differences and I was looking for any that couldn't be differentiated from their neighbours (or were missing). Also any whose colour would be mistaken for a different colour. Incidentally, the proclaimed life of 30 hours is very unlikely. After a few hours playing around the 1.5v cells now read 1.25v (I assume that they read 1.5 when received). Even at full brightness this isn't going to replace a 800w Redhead and indeed I'd think of it more as an eye-light. But it needs an external power supply! Also not easy to mix with other lighting.

I guess you can't complain for the price although I feel for anyone who paid USD 150 for one.

By my guess each one of those LEDs would have around 10mA going through it, so 48 would draw 0.5 amps. I don't see an AA battery running it for more than 2 to 3 hours.

One word of caution. The only thing limiting the current through the LEDs is the dynamic resistance + the internal resistance of the battery. So bigger battery = more current = more light = LEDs go bang.

Bob.