Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Westcott has recently announced the L60-B Bi-Color COB LED (60W), a continuous light for photographers and videographers who need both power and transportability.
The new light is apparently 20% lighter than any other COB LED currently available. Sized at just 3.2 by 3.2 by 5.5 inches and weighing 1.45 lb, it still packs quite a punch.
Light is key to photography. Of that there is no doubt. But typically when we shoot portraits, particularly in the studio, many of us will opt for strobes. They’re tried and tested, they give us plenty of light and you can stick some huge modifiers on them. But it’s absolutely possible to shoot portraits with continuous light, too.
Making the switch from strobes to continuous, can feel a little daunting, though. But in this video, photographer Emily Teague dumps her strobes and switches over to an array of continuous lights to shoot some portraits in her home studio to show that it’s really not all that difficult. After all, light is light.
The problem for many photographers making the move to video is that there’s generally a lot more gear, and most of it’s much bigger than the gear they’ve been using for photography. Especially if they work on location, and particularly when it comes to lighting. Well, Lightcore is here to help fix that. At least the lighting part.
Being funded through Kickstarter, Lightcore is a 5800 lumen LED light that’s smaller than a speedlight, and offers flicker-free operation even at 1% power shooting 120 frames per second. It claims the equivalent combined power of 8 60 Watt tungsten incandescent bulbs, and offers a CRI of 97+.
Elinchrom has expanded its lighting range, adding to its long-standing range of strobes with a continuous LED light. Manufactured by Light & Motion in partnership with Elinchrom, the Elinchrom ELM8 is a portable continuous LED light with an EL mount. For Elinchrom strobe users, this means it should work with all your existing modifiers.
As we’ve come to expect from Elinchrom products, it’s not cheap, though. In Europe, it has a price tag of €1,379 + VAT and in the USA it’s $1,699.
The whole “continuous vs strobes” choice is pretty easy if you shoot video. But for photographers, it can be a little more challenging. New lights of both types are coming out all the time, and a lot of photographers wonder which type of light they should go with. In this video, Jay P Morgan looks at the advantages and disadvantages of both types of lights to see what tasks they’re better suited to.
If you’re like me, and you shoot mostly on location, power is an issue. For photography I solved those issues by switching to Godox strobes with light battery packs or integrated batteries. For video, though, power for continuous lights can be troublesome. Or at the very least, expensive. Some lights will allow you to use relatively inexpensive Sony NPF batteries, while others require expensive V-Mount batteries.
I’ve found another solution to my continuous power problem, though. RC lipo batteries. I had a few left over from my DJI Flamewheel F550 drone after the controller was stolen. So, I figured why not put them to good use elsewhere? They’re also great for powering cameras for battery-draining long exposure timelapse sequences, too.
Choosing continuous lights has become such a struggle for new filmmakers and photographers. Not too many years ago, your options were simple. Either you get some great big super hot tungstens, or you use that big ball of fire in the sky. Easy. These days, there are so many more options. We’ve still got those old tungstens, but we’ve also got fluorescents and leds.
And all this new tech comes with confusing terminology. Lux vs Lumens. CRI vs TLCI, and it all feels a bit like TMI. Information overload. So, here’s a video from Kevin, The Basic Filmmaker to simplify things, with a look at the state of lighting today. He covers all the different types of lights, the terminology used, what’s actually important to know, and what’s not worth wasting your time with.
The Godox AD200 flash has proven to be very popular since it was released a couple of months ago. A $299 200Ws flash with a similar form factor to a mid 90s cellphone, and interchangeable heads. Thus far, two different heads have been available for this unit, both of which come supplied. There’s the speedlight-style Fresnel head, and a strobe-like bare bulb, just like the AD360II.
At the moment, you can turn the Fresnel flash head continuous by enabling the modelling light. But now, Adorama have put up a new product for pre-order. A dedicated continuous LED head for the Godox AD200 (or eVOLV 200, as Adorama call it).
Honestly, I cannot believe this went under the radar for me. Photographer Dani Diamond just broke our ring light record, not by making it any bigger, but by adding a clever inner ring making it the first double-ringed DIY light I’ve seen.
The outer diameter is 4 feet and it features 12 bulbs in the inside ring and another 15 (actually 14) bulbs on the outside, making it a 27 bulbs monster. The only bulb that is missing, making it a 26-bulber is the topmost bulb that Dani uses as a clever mounting point, booming it rather that mounting it on a light stand.
OK, OK, I am a sucker for ring lights, don’t hate me. This build by DIY Perks combines the benefits of LED lighting (i.e. bright, continuous, cool) with the awesomeness of a ring light (smooth light, no shadows, glamorous look).
If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you know that we consider ring lights to be one of the best creative tools, and we have featured ring lights as big as 4 feet, and as small as 4 inches. This one is in the middle of the range, though probably brighter than both.
The makers at DIY Perks (who also made this LED panel) made one of the nicest ring lights I have seen to date.
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