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Hi Guys,

 

I am currently on a hunt for great and affordable LED tube light like the quasar science, to enhance music videos and other projects. When I search online for them, they are like £60 for a 4ft one.

 

 

Does anyone know any websites, stores, rental houses that provide great & affordable LED tube lights, that work well for filming? I'm writing from the London, so I would preferbally would like things that I could buy over here, thank you!

 

Christopher

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I've used things similar to this as practical lights in the shot:

https://www.amazon.com/Barrina-Integrated-Fixture-Utility-electric/dp/B01HBT3BVM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1517967096&sr=8-4&keywords=4%27+led+shop+light

They're relatively affordable and "cold." Though truth be told I think you'd be better served by Quasars as I don't think those can be dimmed at all. Even Quasars aren't perfect on the dimming, but they'll go down about 50% or so-- sometimes more- depending on the dimmer

 

Also there aren't many tube lights I"m aware of which will give you 3200K and 5600K (or more if you go with the crossfades). There's sourcemaker (which I don't personally like) and MacTech as well which I'm aware of but never used as well as, I think, Colt LED?

I'd also be remiss to not mention the new Digital Sputnik tubes coming out; which are fantastic but expensive.

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Quasars are insanely expensive in Europe though. I've been looking into it as well but other than the Yuji tubes (which are not as bright, almost always out of stock and not bicolor) there really isn't anything that has a high CRI and is dimmable.

 

Sylvania, Philips, Osram and all of the major players have led tube products (some with CRI 95+) but none of them are dimmable unfortunately.

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It's such a simplistic thing to build, though.

 

Plenty of places make three-watt LED drivers of reasonable colour quality. Plenty of places make suitable heatsinks. Plenty of places make power supplies. There are even extrusions available with tidy clip-in diffusers, it's such a common requirement. Total cost of parts for something like that is trivial.

 

P

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Cost of parts aside; the cost of time to build them must be considered. I used to think about just "making" my own kinos or what have you , awhile ago, until I realized that more often then not I'd need a weeks worth of work to make enough for the specific thing I was doing.

I wish you all could've seen the producers face on the last show when we had to order about 600' worth of LED (in various sizes with dimmers and power) for a shoot

But yeah it is surprising and sad there are so few good LEDs out there at present in flim-like fitting.

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Honestly, it's not rocket science. The heatsinks come in foot lengths; each mounts four hexagonal heat spreaders, to each of which is soldered one 3-watt LED. Wire up. Driver. The most work is in casing it.

 

Why don't you start making them and the sell them cheaper- you'd make a killing.

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This is about as far as I got:

 

Driver - $5.58

LEDs - $0.24/piece, 16 required.

Heat spreaders - $7.41 for 200

Heatsinks - $3.06, four required

 

Plus fasteners, some sort of diffuser, cases and connectors, shipping and so on. Parts cost to prototype might be as much as $50.

 

The design risks are that those LEDs, heatsinks or drivers aren't as good as the manufacturer claims, which is all very plausible. I'd mitigate that by designing it down to a 36-watt device, as opposed to a 48-watt device, which would still be somewhat more powerful than a conventional T8 fluorescent tube (though less powerful than a Kino-Flo 75W four-foot tube.)

 

I'm not stopping anyone.

 

P

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This is about as far as I got:

 

Driver - $5.58

LEDs - $0.24/piece, 16 required.

Heat spreaders - $7.41 for 200

Heatsinks - $3.06, four required

 

Plus fasteners, some sort of diffuser, cases and connectors, shipping and so on. Parts cost to prototype might be as much as $50.

 

The design risks are that those LEDs, heatsinks or drivers aren't as good as the manufacturer claims, which is all very plausible. I'd mitigate that by designing it down to a 36-watt device, as opposed to a 48-watt device, which would still be somewhat more powerful than a conventional T8 fluorescent tube (though less powerful than a Kino-Flo 75W four-foot tube.)

 

I'm not stopping anyone.

 

P

 

Please don't let us see how much we are over paying for our lights sir ..

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