I’ve decided to enrol in KDP Select which gives me some promotional options including making the book available for FREE for 5 days.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
I’m doing it for two reasons.
I’m locked into KDP select for 90 days during which period the book can only be available on Kindle. So that gives me a sort of deadline for making the book available in soft cover and putting it on other platforms. I can’t promise it, but it’s a good target for me because I’m going to be pretty busy before then anyway. Plan is to update it and make it available in hardcover next fall.
Though the book has sold a few hundreds copies, it’s only gotten about a little over 30 reviews between the UK and US markets. They’re all good reviews, but I’d like to see a lot more reviews.
The Free Download Offer is NOW LIVE on Amazon and runs through Sunday.
I hope that most of my subscribers here who don’t have it yet will take the opportunity to download it.
In exchange I have a humble request: Please review it on the Amazon page once you’ve read it.
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.
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?
Flexlite–The Flexible, Dimmable, Versatile LED Light Panel
Just one more thing to get out of the way over the weekend and I’ll start putting together a review of the Flexlite LED panel.
Flexlite–the flexible LED panel
Like everything I review, I own it. And I only review it if I really like it. And I only buy it if I really like it anyway.
LED lighting is coming of age in the film and video industry. There are a LOT of good LED lights out there. This one was the only one of it’s type–the rest mainly being encased in aluminium housings of one sort or another.
But for sheer functionality without the weight and bulk, this may be the perfect solution for the run and gunner.
Innovative holder for use on light stands or even ‘selfie sticks/monopods’ for hand holding
You can snap in its holder for regular light stand mounting or even put it at the end of a selfie stick or monopod for hand-holding (say for fluid man-on-the-street interviews).
Or, using the velcro already sewn into its corners, you can velcro it to a surface or even to the inside of one of your existing soft-boxes (which I did). It’s brighter than the brightest spiral flouro lamp.
Dimmed to it’s lowest setting
Full brightness
What I intend to do is some testing to quantify its brightness and colour temperature.
I’ll also show it in use during an actual corporate shoot (nice to be able to sit in the chair with the viewfinder flipped so I can see it and simply dial in the correct exposure).
It’s also apparently quite durable. The fellow at the BVE show in London earlier this year threw it down on the ground while it was lit to answer that question when I asked it–and said he had been doing that all day long.
You can curl them up into a cylinder, wrap with rubber bands and drop into Chinese lanterns for 360˚ illumination.
Pretty clever.
Anyway, hope to get the review up within the week.
The Video Whisperer 