Joker 200 vs Litepanels

[Jean Heguy]

Hi There,

 

I am about to buy a light that can be DC fed. Anybody can tell me at 4-6' if a Joker 200 in a Chimera XS emits more or less FC then a 1 x 1 Litepanel?? Especially that the Joker 200 evolution is about the same price as a 1 x1 litepanels, pros and cons ???

 

Thanks

 

Jean

Edited October 11, 2011 by Jean Heguy

[Jean Heguy]

Anybody owns or has experience with these 2 units?

 

Thanks.

 

Jean

[Tom Guiney]

Hi Jean. They're really for different things. a 200 joker is way more powerful, I mean no comparison, but not as effective as a battery fed light because it pulls so much more power and thus runs out fairly quickly. A 1x1 is a really flexible fast tool, but it cant do what a joker can do. What kind of work are you doing?

 

 

Hi There,

 

I am about to buy a light that can be DC fed. Anybody can tell me at 4-6' if a Joker 200 in a Chimera XS emits more or less FC then a 1 x 1 Litepanel?? Especially that the Joker 200 evolution is about the same price as a 1 x1 litepanels, pros and cons ???

 

Thanks

 

Jean

[Jean Heguy]

Hi Jean. They're really for different things. a 200 joker is way more powerful, I mean no comparison, but not as effective as a battery fed light because it pulls so much more power and thus runs out fairly quickly. A 1x1 is a really flexible fast tool, but it cant do what a joker can do. What kind of work are you doing?

 

Thanks Tom,

 

I shoot tv documentaries, I am looking into adding a daylight source besides my divas. One that would have punch and have dc possibility as I have limited crew to setup gennys. I am also really not convinced about LED on skin tones.

[Tom Guiney]

If that's the case, I'd go for a joker. It will gives you options fully unavailable with the divas you've got now. Hot spots in your background, real output for when you need it, you can bounce it for serious softness, hard light when you want it, soft as well with the chimera, all kinds of options. Plus you can battery-power it. Be sure to do some dry runs in non-time critical situations with your batteries so you know what kind of lifespan you get.

 

I do love my 1x1s though. So convenient! I'm thinking about selling one of my Litepanel 1x1s and getting a dedo felloni instead. They're the same thing but lighter and brighter.

 

yours

Tom Guiney

Airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels

[Guy Holt]

.... I am also really not convinced about LED on skin tones.

 

There is good reason to be wary about LED's ability to render a good skin tone. The inability of Phosphor White LEDs used in the Litepanel and Coolights 1x1 arrays to render color accurately has been well established in tests recently performed by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of their “Solid State Lighting Project Technical Assessment.” (see http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/emailnewsletter_generators.html#anchorHigh%20Output%20AC%20LEDs for details.) In one (below) a model was photographed wearing a dress that had a number of different blue/cyan tints. Footage was shot with both a true tungsten source and a White Phosphor LED source. The tungsten-lit footage displayed all of the subtle differences in blue tones in the fabric, while the LED-lit footage, lacking cyan output, showed just a nice blue dress, without the same richness of hue. Since the light doesn’t put out much cyan, the camera/film simply can’t record it because those wavelengths are not reflected by the dress.

 

Left: Tungsten source, Right: White Phosphor LED source.

 

The same holds true of flesh tones illuminated by LED light. As is also evident in the pictures above, skin tones don’t reproduce well under LED lights because of the steep drop off of high frequency colors (above the 600nm cut off) such as pinks, reds, oranges, and other long wave-length colors. As the illustration below, comparing the reflected spectral distribution of a Caucasian skin tone under theoretical pure white light (an even distribution of all wavelengths) to that of a Phosphor White LED demonstrates, absent these wavelengths the skin tones look pale under LEDs because light reflected by the skin tone is likewise absent these critical long wavelength colors.

 

Reflected Spectral Distribution of Caucasian skin tone under theoretical White Light and Phosphor White LED Light

 

In the picture above illuminated by the Phosphor White LED, both the cyan/blue dress and the skin tone, don’t reproduce well because you can't get accurate color reflected from an object unless that color is in the light in the first place. In other words, if the light source doesn’t generate the color (cyan), it is not reflected by the object (the dress) and so the camera/film simply can’t record it.

 

Another drawback to White Phosphor LEDs is that their color output is very inconsistent. That is because their color output is effected by a number of factors: the binning and manufacturing tolerance of their blue pump, the thermal management of the fixture, the ageing of the phosphors, and even the ambient temperature. For example, a one degree shift in the junction temperature of the blue InGaN LED (pump color) in remote phosphor LEDs, will cause a +/- 2nm shift in the dominant wavelength. If compounded by the average wavelength variation of +/- 2nm of blue InGaN LEDs, a 5nm divergence from the prescribed 455nm wavelength of the pump color will create color inconsistency of 5 MacAdams ellispses. While not readily apparent to the eye, image capture systems will easily see this variation.

 

And, as broadcast studios lit exclusively with Phosphor White LEDs are finding out their output depreciates overtime and their color shifts much faster than the manufacturers say (see illustration below.)

 

 

For more details regarding the issues surrounding the use of LED lights in motion picture lighting see our company newsletter at http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/emailnewsletter_generators.html#anchorHigh%20Output%20AC%20LEDs.)

 

- Guy Holt, Gaffer, ScreenLight & Grip, Lighting Rental and Sales in Boston.

[Jean Heguy]

Guy,

 

May I ask if you tried those newer Dedo Fellonisas Dedo claims a higher CRI then Lightpanels? I only used LED as fill or eyelight in the past, never as key.

Thanks.

 

Regards,

 

Jean

[Guy Holt]

… (have) you tried those newer Dedo Fellonis as Dedo claims a higher CRI then Lightpanels….

 

You can’t judge the color rendering capability of an LED by its CRI rating because CRI ratings are easily manipulated to give high ratings while delivering poor color rendering. While Felloni might be a little better than the Litepanels, it still suffers the inherent limitations of all Phospher White LEDs using Remote Phosphor Technology to generate colors with long wavelengths. If you compare the Spectral Power Distribution Graph for the Felloni to that of a tungsten light you will see that it does not resemble that of a true black body radiator.

 

The reason for this is that the “Stokes shift” process by which a portion of a LED’s “pump” color is transformed from shorter wavelengths to longer wavelengths has inherent limitations. A big one is that there is a tradeoff between lumen output and warmer color temperatures. For this reason all White Phosphor LEDs, even the Felloni, cut their long-wavelength output off at about 625 nm where a tungsten filament continues to generate light all the way out. Because of this rapid drop off of wavelengths above 625nm, pinks, reds, oranges, and other long wave-length colors will look dull under the Felloni, compared with how they look under a Tungsten source which continues strong all the way out on the long-wavelength end. And, since these long wavelength colors are essential to rendering a realistic flesh-tone, as you can see in the pictures above talent will look rather pale under a Remote Phosphor LED like the Felloni compared to how they will look under a Tungsten source (see my newsletter article available at http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/emailnewsletter_generators.html#anchorHigh%20Output%20AC%20LEDs for details.)

 

- Guy Holt, Gaffer, COO of New England Studios – soon to be New England’s first “from the ground up” feature production stage complex.