LED Continuous Lights and Close-up Lenses

[Michael Erlewine]

I generally use natural light, and have, after trying it, not used flash much. In the last few years I have gotten into higher-end video (4K, 10-bit, ProRes, etc.) and gotten used to continuous light, including ARRI hot lights, various fluorescent banks, and most recently LED banks (with chimera), dimmers, and variable temperatures.

I am just beginning to experiment with LED continuous light at 5600k for still-camera use. I just bought the Ikan iLED312-V2 on-camera dual-color LED light, a small LED system, with dimmer and choice of light temperature. I am just a beginner in this arena, and wonder if any of you have looked into LED lights for close-up, macro, and so-on use? I have a ring-flash/continuous light, but am finding that a small bank of LED in the hot-shoe or on a small stand seems less cumbersome and more useful.

How close do LED lights come to being useable as daylight? What are the best brands and models?

I am getting my feet wet here and wonder if anyone else has more than their toe in the water? Let’s discuss this, if there is interest.

[Hulyss]

Was into led for a long time but abandoned it because of overpricing. I continue to use PAR led only for proofing and those leds alone was not cheap at all. Thing is : It work ... but you need power. Led brands are very important too. You would expect to put money on the table only if the brand use the best components AND in your case, the brand do not specify the leds. Good leds are Philips lumiled (luxeon), Cree and now, in 2015, you might expect COB modules instead of single leds (more efficient).

I also got problems with color and contrast on Nikon body's (traditional bayer sensors). Even if you scene seems well lighted, the final rendering on perfect exposure is not that convincing IMHO. It start to be good when you put more watts such as 400W modules + accessory (Fresnel ...) for big studio shoots and then again, I got very good results but only with foveon sensor... D810 was a bit off. The foveon respond to led light far better and I do not know why.

Then someone come to you with a KinoFlow and you forget about led, expensive and power hungry leds modules. For me, it's good for video but for studio work I wouldn't bet nor invest on led ... YET. With cob modules, when a module burn, you can change ONE module. The lens is an accessory so no need to buy one again (and you have the choice between different angles). In you configuration, it is like CCD sensors. Depending of your circuit board I bet that if one led have a problem, a whole line will shut off.

This is the problem with directional lights. Your module have 60° lenses, bound to the led directly. Led light "cut" a lot. For products you need to "blend the beams" with maybe 2 light sources and here is an another problem :  it is hard to blend the lights because it is hard lights. Depending of the lenses on the leds, you might push a module, then the other, then you notice you'll need more power because modules are too far ... never ending story. IMHO leds are good as monolight only (or you churn out big money to have big modules and led lightning solution but it will be far beyond 400$ the module).

The best continuous lighting I ever used are KinoFlow. Real flood of the scene, very good uniformity. This year I might try HMI solution from Broncolor.

Here is the price of a KinoFlow little led module, power hungry as yours approximately : http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/884942-REG/Kino_Flo_kit_c2_120u_Celeb_200_DMX_LED.html

I'd rather go this way : http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/504311-REG/Kino_Flo_KIT_D42_120_Diva_Lite_400_Two_Fluorescent.html