LED Lighting for Video - Why we made the switch
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,231 words · ~6 min read
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LED lighting many of you may use it in your PC to illuminate your sick build or
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give it a cool color effect that matches the rest of it however today I'll be
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talking about LED lighting for video production and why we decided to adapt
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it to light the majority of the videos we make here at Linus Media
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Group Intel has brought ddr4 to the mainstream with their core i76700 K and
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core i56600k processor check out the link in the video
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description to learn more so to understand how we came to where we are
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today we have to go back to the lights I started with starting with one of the
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classics this is the standard LOL tungsten fixture it's a flood light
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which utilizes an incandescent bulb that draws a rather High 1,000 Watts from the
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wall it packs quite a bit of punch but your power bill will start to rack up
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using several of these for too long not to mention how hot the light itself gets
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after only a couple of minutes of use making it much more difficult to operate
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tungsten lights have long been the staple of lighting for anyone doing video work for decades but because of
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their high power draw and heat output they can be a less attractive option to
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work with when you need lots of light set up at once and are tight on power
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distribution this brings me to the next solution that we had fluorescent lights
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and in this context specifically compact fluorescent lights or CFLs like this
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impact softbox which can take a total of four CFL bulbs the benefit to a light
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like this is that they are generally a much lower power draw to the previous
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tungsten the main problem with them for our use is that the bulbs that can
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typically used in a fixture like this are not of the highest quality when it
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comes to color CFLs specifically also do not lend themselves well to dimming so
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the control you have over the output on these types of Lights is a bit lacking
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overall while we did end up using the CFL softboxes for a long time here on
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lus Tech tips I've been continually looking for a better solution since the
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color from the CFLs even when properly white balanced left something to be
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desired this brings me to our main fixtures of
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choice and what I use to shoot over 80% of what we do here at Linus Media Group
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high output LED lights and in this case westcott's Flex LED kits for a long time
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LEDs had a very bad reputation when it came to using them for video or
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photography work this attitude towards the mainly stemmed from the vast
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majority of LEDs available in the first few years being garbage in terms of
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build quality features and particularly color this was the main reason I had
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held back from using them since I had not found any LEDs that were better than
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our overall setup LEDs in the beginning tend to have nasty green or magenta
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color spikes not unlike poorly made CFLs
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now however LEDs have been refined to be of a much higher quality the westcot
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flex have become one of my favorite lights to use around the office simply
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because of how fast they are to adapt to any situation as well as their excellent
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rendering of skin tones compared to LEDs I've used in the past with LED lights
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like the flex I can travel to any location that has any wall power and not
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worry about blowing a circuit with any of the lights that I want to use thanks
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to LED's far more efficient power draw the opposite is true if I ever wanted to
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utilize lights like our little incandescent since blowing a circuit even in the studio is a constant concern
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if I'm not careful with power distribution the flex system like other
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LEDs can also utilize a portable battery system allowing us to use the lights in
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places where we cannot draw from the wall like in a car or on location
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Outdoors an example of how I'm currently using one of our Flex lights is in our
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Workshop set i'm utilizing one of our midsize Flex lights as a fill light for
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both sides of the set in this inexpensive 30-in China ball and because
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of the flexibility of the design I've simply folded the light into a cylinder
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and clipped it to the inside of the China ball super simple on the recent
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video that Luke did on the steam VR performance test which you can watch
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here I used flexes to set up each location we shot the video in I had a
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fairly limited amount of time and I hate doing math so instead of calculating if
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I could blow a circuit running all of our tungsten lights and instead of using
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the fluoresence which can take a while to turn on using the LEDs made sense and
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helped me speed through the setup process so in conclusion I like many
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others had my reservations for utilizing LED lighting for video production but
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since Linus would kill me if I accidentally kept leaving lights that
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Drew 1,000 watts of power constantly LED lights like the flex light have become a
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good solution to simplify the way that I work and for the curious I would highly
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recommend seeing if LED lights would fit your workflow and
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needs and on that subject race Rackspace
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questions to real people and interact with them their next sessions are on
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moving to the cloud and leaving your VMware deployment behind and performance
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require IRS improving operational efficiency check out the details in the
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video description below so thank you guys for watching if
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this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit
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that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying
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a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through the
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for now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to
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watch next so in the top right hand corner click that little button where
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Luke Cooks a pizza on a computer made of
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cardboard yeah it's pretty awesome