Hi all!
Just joined the site today so I figured I'd come out of the gates with something useful. I've been building a ribbon light kit and have purchased a few different brands of strips. The most useful ribbon will be the bi-colors so I will give you a rundown of how they perform. Yugi has a good name so I got production to buy a few reels of the BC series bi-color ribbon. I purchased 3 bi-color dimmers directly from Yugi as well. The $90 dimmers are great, as long as you aren't trying to go with a battery setup. They take an AC cable directly so there isn't a separate power supply going to a dimmer. The power supply/dimmer units have two knobs, one for dimming and one for color mixing. Yugi claims that they are flicker free to 240fps. I have tested mine to 60fps with no flicker. This dimmer is the cheapest price I could find for this functionality. The dimmer/power supply and ribbon are both 24 volt.
The ribbon performs pretty well for $100. I have included screens from my Sekonic C-800 color meter to show the performance. I tested at full brightness in tungsten, daylight and mixed modes. I then did the same readings at about half brightness. I like that the LEDs cover a wide color range. Full Tungsten is at about 2700k while full daylight is around 6650k. It's a very useful range. I've also been happy with the color rendition in general and on camera everything has looked good so far. It's not perfect but great for the money.
Here is the breakdown of the screenshots: Full power tungsten, then daylight then mixed followed by half output tungsten, then daylight then mixed. But first I'll lay it out in print.
Full Power:
Tungsten:
2720k
TLCI: 98
1560fc
CRI: 95.7
6643k
TLCI: 95
1920FC
CRI: 94
Mixed:
4477k
TLCI: 98
1810FC
CRI: 92.4
Dimmed half (by foot candles roughly, not based on knob position, which is more like 3/4 power) :
Tungsten:
2714k
TLCI: 98
738FC
CRI: 95.7
Daylight:
6570k
TLCI: 95
949FC
CRI: 94.5
Mixed:
4438k
TLCI:98
944FC
CRI 92.9
It looks like I can only upload 1 image at a time. I'll do a few. this one is full power, full tungsten.