Mobile Video Lighting - Halogen Classic vs. LED Innovations
A nice sunny day with light clouds. You've firmly gripped your favorite camera and set about capturing a series of images that will later flow into a beautiful video clip or perhaps a film.
But what happens when the walls of the room hide the inviting sunlight and we feel darkness begin to envelop us and what we want to capture? Our initial reaction is to rely on technology and increase the camera's sensitivity. An interesting solution, but not always the best possible. Come to think of it, when I enter a dimly lit room, I don't wait 10-15 minutes hoping my eyes will adjust and I'll see a little better than not seeing at all; instead, I pull out a flashlight and start making my way through the gloom. Following this logic, if I attach a light source to my camera, there's a good chance I can continue capturing memories minute after minute without issue. When I was young... that's a cliché. A few years ago, when I had to use additional lighting, I'd walk around with about 10-15 kg of batteries around my waist, constantly worrying about how long the power supply for the small projector on my camera would last. And the projectors weren't very small, not to mention the cameras. With the advancement of technology, cameras became small, and projectors... well, they did too, though not as much, but they were equipped with relatively smaller batteries, which, of course, also gave them less lighting time. In short, many small things came together. In the pursuit of both miniaturization and maximization, projectors made of LEDs appeared. I'm specifically referring to the Power LED development, which are fundamentally a new type of LED with high power and high light intensity. There's plenty of information about this development in the online space.
Halogen lighting - Twins Digi 20 LED lighting - Twins Digi Pro 80
What does all this offer compared to our well-known halogen lighting? The main difference, in layman's terms, is the white light provided by LED lighting, or more technically, light with a color spectrum of 5500 – 5800 Kelvin degrees, whereas halogen lighting has a color spectrum of about 3100-3200 Kelvin degrees. Hence, the first and very significant advantage of LED lighting – you can use it as backlighting even for outdoor shots, when you are in the shade, for example.
The moment you enter a room where warm lighting (2900 – 3200 Kelvin) predominates, you can simply place an 85 lowering filter in front of the LED lighting and continue shooting without worrying about color temperature differences, and the power loss will only be 2/3 EV. For comparison, if you need to shoot with halogen lighting in daylight, to equalize the color temperatures, you'd need to place an 80A boosting filter, which in turn leads to a loss of 2 EV.
Having mentioned the second advantage, it's logical to move on to the next: the quality of the lighting. I took a few shots with two almost identical lighting models in terms of construction and power, but one projector has two halogen bulbs, and the other has two LEDs.
I used settings that a mid-range video camera would have, and in a way I would shoot in a reportage setting. It's as if I'm 1.5 meters from the subject and at about 35mm equivalent focal length and 400 ISO sensitivity to use the surrounding available light as background.
The first shot is with LED lighting with both LEDs on. The resulting light is in the order of 1/30 sec / aperture 4. The color temperature is 5600 °K.
The next shot is of the same lighting, but with only one LED now on. The light loss is about 2/3 of the power.
Next is a shot with both LEDs on but with the built-in 85 filter placed and a color temperature of 3200 °K introduced accordingly. The light loss is 2/3 of the power.
Having switched to 3200 °K, it's probably best to continue with the halogen lighting. The measured light intensity is the same as with the LED lighting - 1/30 sec/aperture 4. The following photo shows the version with both halogen lamps on.
... and a photo with only 1 lamp on (power loss here is also 2/3)
The next advantage of LED lighting is evident: uniform illumination of almost the entire filmed area, unlike halogen, where its power is concentrated in the center of the frame. Halogen lighting also gives a slight reddish tint, while LED maintains complete neutrality regardless of whether a filter is used or not.
The last and very significant difference is battery life. With the same Sony F750 type battery, halogen lighting lasts about 50 minutes, while LED has the amazing ability to shine for over 270 minutes, which is over 4 and a half hours.
From here on, you are free to judge :-)
author: Ivan Maslarov
