Recommendations for LED lanterns please

[Gillian Donaldson-Selby]

Hello. I’d like to ask for recommendations on LED lighting suitable for interviews. In a past life I was a theatrical lighting designer and am familiar with ye olde tungsten fresnels and ellipsoidals, but haven’t worked with LEDs before. Looking at YouTube videos, I quite like the look generated by soft boxes and fresnel modifiers*, but am unsure about the quality of the units available, especially some of those on Amazon. Assuming a fairly standard 3-point setup which lanterns would you recommend for an interview of 2 or 3 people? Any book recommendations also very welcome!

* Do folk still do hard and soft modelled lighting?

[Matt Irwin CSC]

We certainly still do hard lighting!  Though I'm noticing it's a dying art, generally speaking. 

To get this straight you're looking for hard fixtures that you can attach a lantern to?

In LED land for hard fixtures, I've been liking the Aputure "Storm" family of lights as well as the Fiilex Q fresnels. I don't have experience with these new Nanlux lamps but have heard good things. 

The Fiilex Q's have excellent color and function like traditional tungsten fresnels. Very much a "drop-in" replacement type of thing with doors and the ability to attach a chimera etc. There are equivalents up to +/- a 5K. 

Aputure has a series of lamps with their "BLAIR" color engine, which has been pretty impressive to me so far. Lots of built in color/gel modes, effects, and a tungsten-like warming as you dim feature. They are physically more akin to photo strobes, with stock fixed focus reflectors (kinda like pars) as well as focusable fresnels that bayonet on. That may be a better choice with lantern attachments as it will more evenly fill the ball.

Careful with the amazon lights... the color is usually pretty terrible, but some may surprise you.

Best of luck!

[Gillian Donaldson-Selby]

Matt

Thanks for the info. That is very helpful🙂

Gillian

[Tyler Fukuda]

Depending on the interview: Space, # of people involved, composition of shot... If you need something simple with a fairly small/medium space--Id be looking, at minimum, Nanlite 720B's (bi-color units), Aputure 700x or 1200x's. 

You certainly can get away with small units but the fact that you want to soften them up means you're effectively working with less light, so you're going to want more output.

I still use tungsten in my kit and like having various 1k's, 2k's and a few dimmers, as the quality of light to my eye is much-much better--But it's also much more affordable if you can work with tungsten/incandescent units as people are readily offloading them.

As far as lanterns go, It would be best if you can test a few at some of the show rooms in your area. Generally though, the Aputure lanterns are fairly decent, and since they are Bowens mount, you can attach them to most of the modern LEDs. I'm sure Nanlite has their own but i've yet to use it. Bigger is usually better though.

Edited August 1 by Tyler Fukuda

[Aapo Lettinen]

cheaper cob led fixtures may have noisy cooling fans so it is good to test them out first if possible or at least order them long before the shooting day to have time to replace if they are too noisy to be used close to the mics. 

another thing is that led lights tend to age at some point causing horrible color shifts usually towards green or magenta and intensity drops as well. So purchasing super expensive lights or used lights may not be a good move either. Something mid range bought new wold be a safe choice. A combination of cob fixtures and mat lights is useful for documentary projects, you get the necessary power but they are small-ish and easy-ish to transport and can be managed with lightweight stands. I am not a fan of those close-to-20kg led panels, you'll just break your back hauling them and heavy combo stands around the whole day by yourself when a lighter weight fixture could have done basically the same on tiny stand

[Matt Irwin CSC]

On 6/16/2026 at 9:13 AM, Gillian Donaldson-Selby said:

Hello. I’d like to ask for recommendations on LED lighting suitable for interviews. In a past life I was a theatrical lighting designer and am familiar with ye olde tungsten fresnels and ellipsoidals, but haven’t worked with LEDs before. Looking at YouTube videos, I quite like the look generated by soft boxes and fresnel modifiers*, but am unsure about the quality of the units available, especially some of those on Amazon. Assuming a fairly standard 3-point setup which lanterns would you recommend for an interview of 2 or 3 people? Any book recommendations also very welcome!

 

* Do folk still do hard and soft modelled lighting?

 

Gillian, just reread your post and noticed the note about 2-3 people on camera. Is that a single camera setup with 2-3 people on one eyeline to an interviewer or a 2 camera cross covered conversation type of thing? To me those each dictate a different approach.

The fixtures and approach can also vary based on the space you're working in along with your own preferences, and resources. The lights mentioned above are certainly good and valid, but there's a *lot* of options out there. Will you need your kit to be air travel friendly or vehicle based? Will you be starting with some existing light in a location to augment or from total scratch on a stage? Is your preference to end up with soft light / big wrapping soft light for the key/fill? Will you have a crew or are you doing it all yourself? Answering those questions might point you toward equipment that would better set you up for success.

 

[Gillian Donaldson-Selby]

Thank you all - so many things to think about!

I was thinking about a single camera setup with 2 or 3 people on one eyeline. I can see that a 2 camera setup would require a different approach. I'm thinking vehicle based at the moment - as Tyler pointed out there are (or maybe were) lots of cheap used incandescent lights available on eBay at the moment - I currently have a few Arri 650 and 300 Fresnels*. As an ex stage lighting designer, I feel more comfortable with them - despite the weight, power needs and heat! Hopefully I will have a crew too. 

LED is definitely the way of lighting in the future, so I am grateful for all the very useful advice given here.

Gillian

*I also have a Kino Flo I'm keen to play with 🙂