Litepanels

Ric Grupe

Anyone use these?

Never saw one before...starts the wheels turning.

Short video

ziggy53

Common white LEDs are just red and green and blue LEDs combined into a single package. Since LEDs have a "very" strong chrominance peak for their color design, this means a relatively poor CRI rating.

Phosphor doped LEDs, less common, can approach a more continuous spectrum, but probably not photographic quality.

Tri-color LED spectrum:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Red-YellowGreen-Blue_LED_spectra.png

Phosphor LED spectrum:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/White_LED.png

Daylight, incandescent and typical fluorescent spectrum:

http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~avery/course/3400/light/blackbody_color.gif

NeilL

Thanks, Ric. Always interested in lighting developments.

Neil

Tim Kamppinen

They're intended for video use but I have heard of some photographers using them. I'd like to try them out but they're very expensive. I'd want one of the bigger ones for photography, myself, as they put out more light and it would be a larger source for softer light.

pathfinder

$400 will buy a heck of a flash whether battery or mains powered.....

ziggy53

pathfinder wrote:

$400 will buy a heck of a flash whether battery or mains powered.....

... and electronic flash has many other desirable properties to make it best for photography in most cases.

There are some other interesting LED lights for the adventurous and some video applications:

For the DIYer or Frezzi Micro modifier:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/554535-REG/Frezzolini_97108_LED_2_Micro_Fill_Lamp.html

(http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/262657-REG/Frezzolini_91307_MRF_12P_35_watt_Micro_Fill_On_Camera.html)

or (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/262655-REG/Frezzolini_91304_MRF_4x_35_watt_Micro_Fill_On_Camera.html)

(I know the above are normally "hot" lights but they are very good fill sources and you can get accessories. Frezzi is the good stuff. The LED insert at top is just an option for low light.)

Other possibilities:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/650628-REG/Dot_Line_DL_DV60_DL_DV60_Video_DSLR.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/634861-REG/Bescor__LED_35_35_Watt_Broad.html

Dimmable and alternate power choices:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/656981-REG/Bescor_LED150_LED_150_150W_Dimmable_LED.html

All of my previous observations and links regarding white LEDs still hold however.

Dan7312

This just popped up today...

http://photofocus.com/2009/11/21/mini-review-litepanels-lp-micropro-led-light/

Nikolai

A nice comparison video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3dNuXSNZaA

Tim Kamppinen

If you're only going to buy one light, a flash is definitely a better purchase for most things. However, video lights are used by many wedding photographers because they are so much quicker to use and there's not a lot of time to spend adjusting light position when doing wedding portraits. Hotlights or LED lights are WYSIWYG, whereas flash usually takes longer to get fine tuned, for metering (if you don't use a meter, but of course using a meter would also take extra time) as well as direction and quality of light.