LED lighting suggestions (for video)

[Cistron]

G'd morning lighting ladies and gents,

I'm currently writing a grant application, to produce some instructional videos with some of my students in my lovely purple-ish molecular biology lab. Most of them are probably gonna be relatively close-up: lab-bench and upper body visible.



As you can see it's quite an open space and should work just fine. I can ask for about £1k, half of which probably has to go to audio equipment, since we have nill (besides and old Zoom H1). Mobile phones should settle the camera side of things.

I'm a little stuck on lights. The lab is a big space, with shoddy fluorescent lighting from the last millennium and little natural light from the windows.

I'm torn whether I should go with direct lighting, using LED panels (e.g. Falcon Eyes?), or rather go with some S-mount based monolights to bounce off the ceiling for more even illumination. I own a PixaPro 100D, which is decent enough, but I'm wondering whether I could get away with a single light, given the budget restraints?

I rather we buy something of higher quality, on which we can build.

Any brand suggestions I can browse? Amazon's repertoire is a little overwhelming and colour quality is always a concern.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Garry Edwards]

LED has now become the trendy choice, but there are few if any real world advantages over photographic fluorescent. They're smaller, and adjustable for power, and (at a cost) can be fitted together into banks of lighting, but that's about it.
This one is fairly typical, and at least I know that it has a decent CRI value. https://www.lencarta.com/all-produc...nova-panel-1024-led-light-panel-single-colour
I would advise you to avoid the lights that have electronically adjustable power - they work well enough but deliver only half of the expected power.
This cheaper alternative may also be suitable for you, https://www.lencarta.com/all-products/continuous-lighting/ultra-thin-diffused-led-light-panel but the best value for money by far has to be fluorescent, such as this kit https://www.lencarta.com/all-produc...800w-5400k-flourecent-continuous-lighting-kit
I happen to know that the bulbs are truly flicker free, because they have a coating that retains the light, eliminating the flicker. Be very cautious of Amazon/Ebay continuous lighting, generally speaking most of the LED lights sold cheaply use components designed for the much lower colour quality needs of security lighting, and most of the fluorescents are household quality, not photographic quality.

If you need to light a large area then you will need several lights. Even if bouncing light off of the ceiling would work, which I doubt because of the size of the area and the obvious need for more controlled lighting (at least for some of the time) I don't feel that the S-fit LED lights would be up to the job - you would need several, and as they have powerful cooling fans you are likely to have sound problems.

You may be right about using mobile phones as cameras, we did try this a while ago and found them pretty useless, but they may have improved a lot since then (a couple of years ago).

 

[Cistron]

LED has now become the trendy choice, but there are few if any real world advantages over photographic fluorescent. They're smaller, and adjustable for power, and (at a cost) can be fitted together into banks of lighting, but that's about it.

I agree, but the bulbs are large and I am wary of breakage. Also LEDs are getting better. Matching colour output between different manufacturers (or even within a line) is my big concern.

So the two light kit with stands is a sweet deal. Something to ponder. Thanks, Garry.

edit: I'm not so concerned about the cooling fans, as we'll very likely use lavs on the talent. Overall, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it shouldn't be shoddy.