Jump to content

Color-accurate LED lighting for FIXED set


Recommended Posts

  • Premium Member

A lot of our LED production gear is color accurate, like skypannels, Litepanels and Aputure. But they're built for daily use, and are bulky and expensive for a permanent placement.

I'm looking for LED fixtures just as color accurate as our production gear, but intended as permanent installations.

 

I'm going to be lighting for a string of permanent studio sets. They're all interior rooms with "windows." The studio will have no hanging grid or grid power drops, but instead permentant sky and sun installations and main distro from lunchboxes for production floor lights. LED over tungsten will save on power, air conditioning, and cable gague to the fixtures.

I may end up using tungsten for the suns but certainly not skylight. So friends, any suggestions on color accurate LED sources meant to be set and forgot?

 

FYI, I have used industrial fixtures, like hibays, for some budget builds, and the green tint is apparent. This could be a backup option, but I'm hoping for something that I dont have to correct, or is missing color wavelengths.

Edited by Stephen Sanchez
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't get it .. cant you permanently instal production lights ."for daily use" ...isn't that what a million studios around the world do ? thats why they cost more than LED lights from Walmart .. but you are talking about studios no ?  they cant afford tv lights .. I would run from that job .. ? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

More or less everything LED is missing some spectral content.

On a budget, consider Aputure or Nanlite rather than Arri or Fiilex. The real penalty for the less-expensive options is generally sturdiness, which won't bother you in a long term install. Check them out, of course, but physically they'll likely be fine and white light is largely a won war in terms of colour quality.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As said above, everything LED is missing spectral content - now this is OK as long as you can control the camera systems being used under said limited frequency bands of lights. Now I'm going to assume (purely from the point that doing otherwise would be almost absurd) that you can't tell the studio to only shoot on one particular camera system. With this, unless you go down the route of say Kino Freestyle panels (that attempt to match the spectral response of numerous camera systems) you may want to give up the versatility of RGB based (RGBWW, RGBW etc) LED's for just plane white LED's (either CW or WW) for the sake of somewhat colour accuracy. 

As said above Aputure and Nanlite are good when looking at it's simple single white LED fixtures (WW in this instance if your going to use large tungsten fixtures for sunlight) so it may be your best option. White light LED's, while lacking in versatility do have the most uniformed spectral power distribution emitting a singular wider frequency band that will harmonise with more camera systems and allows a larger gamut of colours to be resolved, meaning less inorganic skin tones and serious colour shifts. 

At the end of the day you may want to look again at tungsten space lights. Permanently installing LED fixtures may be a little unwise considering the extreme amount of misinformation and the technologies infancy. I remember listening to an interview with John Higgins 'Biggles' on his work on 1917 and he talked about purchasing LED fixtures and how doing so at the moment is unwise as a long term investment. 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

 

@Phil Rhodes thanks Phil. I didn't consider forza. I'm looking at Aputure LS1 and Dracast too.

@Gabriel Devereux yea I'm looking at white LED. You know, I've seen recent news stations built with LEDs completely. And while news doesn't care about image quality to the degree we do, I dont see any problem with it. The tech is constantly changing and refining. But for static skylight, I'm not concerned. Thanks for the info man.

Personally I think banks of surplus Kino Image 80s would be perfect for the job. I'm on the fence about it, since LED is so efficient and dmx dimmable. And Image 80 abailability is dependent on what I can find.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...