I was never going to buy a rotolight and previously continuous lighting never really interested me, I tend to use speedlights and an ad200. However I am tempted to get some sort of continuous lighting to play with. Mike has already talked about the Godox sl-60w which seems like a good option. What else is out there that you would recommend?, I'm looking for cheap and portable. Preferably battery/powerbank powered as the fewer the wires the better however I'm not wedded to that because initially I'm only looking for one light.
I've used the SL-60W as a key a lot for video shoots, but I have found it isn't really powerful enough for stills. They do a 150W version though, but haven't tried it yet.
One setup I've found worked particularly well is using a combo of a Neewer Ring Light (mine is 75W) and then an on-camera 15W light and you get something very natural looking with a nice small DOF.
(Much as I'm loathe to spam pics in someone's thread always feels like hijacking when people do it, it's just for example of what it looks like)
I've used the SL-60W as a key a lot for video shoots, but I have found it isn't really powerful enough for stills. They do a 150W version though, but haven't tried it yet.
Yes, it’s great for still life and with a fresnel you can focus it to make it bright enough at ISO 200 with a vintagey vibe in stills, but it’s not really bright enough for routine use as a key light unless you’re very happy with your results at say ISO 640.
100W might be enough for me to find many more uses blended with ambient; I am tempted by the small new ML100bi because of the power supply options.
150W would be enough to replace flash as key for a lot of stuff, but I am not wholly sure why one would? Once you want say f/5.6 at ISO 100 you might as well use flash.
Get a fresnel if you get an LED head; it’s a lot of fun as well as making the light a fair bit brighter.
I've used the SL-60W as a key a lot for video shoots, but I have found it isn't really powerful enough for stills. They do a 150W version though, but haven't tried it yet.
Yes, it’s great for still life and with a fresnel you can focus it to make it bright enough at ISO 200 with a vintagey vibe in stills, but it’s not really bright enough for routine use as a key light unless you’re very happy with your results at say ISO 640.
100W might be enough for me to find many more uses blended with ambient; I am tempted by the small new ML100bi because of the power supply options.
150W would be enough to replace flash as key for a lot of stuff, but I am not wholly sure why one would? Once you want say f/5.6 at ISO 100 you might as well use flash.
Get a fresnel if you get an LED head; it’s a lot of fun as well as making the light a fair bit brighter.
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
What would you recommend for a Fresnel? Only ones I can see with a Bowens fitting are more than the light?
What would you recommend for a Fresnel? Only ones I can see with a Bowens fitting are more than the light?
Yeah, I think that's in the nature of things unfortunately. The one I bought is the original Aputure unit, but it has some flaws (light leakage from vents) that they fixed in later versions. The newer Aputure unit is about 130 quid and rather good.
To be fair though the NG-10X unit that was popular at about the same time as the original Aputure unit is not totally awful, and it's about £50. It's not as well made; quite lightly built. But it could be worth a try:
There are plenty of reviews of this thing on Youtube. (NG stands for Nanguang; this is a product from back when they were a cheaper brand.)
Here's a good video about fresnel issues generally with LED heads:
The Aputure unit he's testing there is the £130 Aputure unit. I believe the NiceFoto unit he's talking about typically has the model number FD-110.
You may want to clip a plastic frost filter on it to break up any pattern that appears a paper backdrop; all fresnels do this at some level if you really go looking, but the small light source makes it a bit more noticeable.
It's also worth bearing in mind that fresnels cannot totally avoid imaging the shape of the COB element when you zoom in tight! You can see it in that video. So a squarer chip like the one in the SL60W is in some situations going to end up making a squarish beam. But these S-fit lights often have round chips now -- I'd definitely favour an LED head that did.
gm7.photography here's another comparison review of the Aputure against the iFootage fresnel which is about £100:
This iFootage unit appears to exist in both Bowens mount (code 6FPL) and "mini Bowens" (6FPM) mount, but I would caution anyone who is looking at "mini Bowens" kit that it doesn't appear to be a standard; there's incompatibility among the various mini-Bowens lights.
In general terms daylight LEDs are good value, most of them produce good colour but at the cost that you have to gel them if you want something different.
Avoid bicolour (unless you use them either at both ends of the range or like adding +green to your images.)
Plain RGB can be fun but really only for effect, not for key light on skin.
RGBW is better but beware going too far off-piste in terms of colour. Even some very expensive LEDs are still only RGBW.
RGBWW is where colour performance starts to get skin safe again but with caveats that it will perform better around the colour temperature of the white LEDs, as anywhere in between will need to add green to compensate for the problem bicolour LEDs have.
RGBMA, RGBACL and RGBACLW are where you need to be looking for the best colour fidelity but you will pay a premium over RGBWW.
I just successfully used a amaran 60 with a mini softbox in the dark bit of a woods. 125@f2.8 so it’s just on the border of useful for handhold iso 400 film. Fits into my backpack ok with a mini light stand. Sony style batteries also compact.
I've also a much bigger aputure 300w but it’s a pita as a “bring along just incase” kinda light.
I think when 100/120w is in the smaller form factor with 2 small batteries that will be the sweet spot for me
I suspect you may guffaw, but I have several of the LED ‘inspection lights’ - about 2 foot long, 96 LEDs, bought mine from Homebase a few years back. They cost next to nothing. Unsurprisingly the light is quite hard, no colour temperature control, but for £15 or whatever they were, they do a decent job
I suspect you may guffaw, but I have several of the LED ‘inspection lights’ - about 2 foot long, 96 LEDs, bought mine from Homebase a few years back. They cost next to nothing. Unsurprisingly the light is quite hard, no colour temperature control, but for £15 or whatever they were, they do a decent job
I always keep an eye out for these. Fine for mono work; tend to make skin tones look a bit odd sometimes in colour (and this can't be corrected easily because the spectrum is discontinuous).
Ultimately, work and inspection lights -- particularly painters inspection lights -- will end up with higher and higher CRI light sources.
