As anyone who follows my blog knows, I like stuff that’s simple, smart and compact.
Being a great fan of LED lighting for the home, I felt it was time to check up on the advances of LED technology for the film industry.
I was never happy with the bulk, fragility and horsepower-lack of my flouro softbox lamps, so I went to the Broadcast Video Expo in London earlier this year to see what the LED crowd was up to. They were up to a whole lot of things it turns out.
But of the vast array of impressive LED lights, one particularly caught my attention–the Flexlite, manufactured in Korea by Neonix Co., Ltd. I spoke with the London distributor Prolight Direct Ltd.
It’s designers didn’t follow the traditional path of encasing it in an aluminium housing. Rather it is on a flexible backing.
It has a clever, compact mounting bracket that slips into elastic bands on it’s backside. Or, using its velcro tabs, can be mounted just about anywhere.
You can curl it up into a cylinder, bind it with rubber bands and drop it into a Chinese lantern for 360˚ illumination.
You can stick it on the end of a monopod or selfie stick and, with a battery, use it as handy fill for vox pop interviews.
And, of course you can stick it in a softbox.
Is it durable?
I asked this of the distributor at the Broadcast Video Expo. To answer that, he took the lit panel and threw it down on the floor. “I’ve been doing this all day”, he added.
It’s currently available in 5600K adn 3000K versions only. Bi-color versions may come in the future.
Cost is £413 available at Prolight Direct Ltd.
Full technical specs and related accessories, including battery and cable can be found here.
U.S. Distributor (Wescott) here.
The battery offered by Prolight Direct is a single unit with built in charger, but any Vlock battery will attach to their belt-clip V lock battery holder. If you already have V lock batteries, all you need is the adapter cable provided by Prolight Direct or any future distributor.
It comes with a power adapter and dimmer, adjustable from 10-100% maintaining a constant color temperature throughout the range. It also comes with a compact support frame, adjustable light stand mounting hardware, and an extension cord for the dimming unit that can be employed as the case demands.
Following a video review I did demonstrating the light, showing samples of its use and demonstrating its brightness and constant color temperature at different brightness settings using its dimmer.
Note: I’ve uploaded over 180 videos to YouTube with no trouble and for unexplained reasons, this one was a nightmare. 3 aborted uploads. Finally made it as a 720p upload, but the color was quite red. Thought it was a fluke, but uploaded again with same results. Finally in desperation I altered the red in the edit by several points and did several test uploads until I got what you’re about to see. It’s still not as nice as the original edit which had absolutely no color correction, but I was getting fed up. Anyone else have trouble recently with Youtube uploads being altered in color by YouTube?
The Video Whisperer 
Hi,
I’m thinking about buying this or the Bi-Color version. Do you think the Bi-Color version (x2 rice) is necessary? Or I can take the Daylight version and chage the color temperature in my camera?
Thanks
Masoud
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Drawback to the bi version is that there are the same number of leds, so if you select 32K, for example, you’ll get half the brightness. (likewise if you choose 56K you’ll get half the brightness). Or put another way, if all the bulbs are the same color, you’ll get twice the brightness. In practical use for exterior work or work that is using daylight color balance, you’ll want the most brightness you can get (to be able to compete with the luminance of daylight). As mentioned in the video, this little unit was already twice as bright as the brightness flouro bulb in the same application, and considering that the flouro was never really enough (without sometimes having to put the light very close to the talent), the brightness factor was a big plus. On the other hand, 32 applications (interior lighting) don’t need that much brightness. So….a better solution is to get the 56K version and then get a color correction gel to put over the LED when you’re shooting with interior lighting. It will cut the luminance by almost a stop of light, but usually that doesn’t matter because the light levels are much lower when using interior lights. Changing the color temp on your camera won’t help as it will only balance to one color. (If you balance your camera to 56K inside, the rest of the interior lighting will then be very yellow or if you balance the camera to 32K, any daylight (coming in windows, for example) will be very blue. If you haven’t already, for a better understanding, watch the tutorial I did on color temperature.
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ok. corporate interviews? why 2 lights? to isolate the subject. right? right. as it used to be. But now we have the GH4 or the cheap canons (dslr) for that. and you can blur the background. so you don’t need the second light from the back or to the hair to isolate anything. Just one to balance the scene. It’s a new world in lighting. I know that we’re gonna disagree (again).. but at least consider the idea of 1 light only to spray contrast to the face …. at least for a moment. (and a used t2i with a 50 1.8 will cost less than the second light…hmmmm)
After the ridiculous 444 of vegas that reads all the cameras except the X70 (in xavc-L) Ive decided to dump both x70 and leave sony. It’s another day and I have a month to my next assignment. (soccer, full games) I guess I’ll go to check the JVC 850 again (HD, but . ya know…)
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