Using inexpensive “DJ” LED lights for video productions.

Good quality light fixtures are well worth the money spent as they will provide years, even decades of faithful service. But a single, good fresnel light head, stand, doors, etc can easily run several hundred dollars. Then, to get creative, you still need an external dimmer, and several colored gels to craft the light into something more creative.

Alternatively, LED panels have been gaining popularity for their energy efficiency and cool running features. Looking beyond the small set of white and bi-color LEDs specifically made for video production, you can find a whole other world of LED fixtures made for other markets- including “disk jockey” LED lights and controllers. For the cost of one good fresnel light, you can have a multi-light, expandable LED lighting package.

LED Lighting Advancements focus on Control of Illumination

Abel Cine Tech has a very cool little article / promo page highlighting several new LED lighting solutions that you just don’t hear of every day. This includes the Creamsource by Outsight, the Laniro IANILED54 (pictured), Dedolight dual-condenser lens Ledzilla, and Litepanels fresnel lens Sola lights. I was fascinated by the new creativity in engineering controlled light using LEDs.

This $22 Sima SL-10HD LED light shines nicely.

I ordered the Sima SL-10HD because it touts “widescreen” LED lighting for HD cameras. I’ve one of the many people who have taken to using the digital still camera as my ONLY camera when travelling, or even around the house. This means I need tit to shoot both stills and video- and without a video light, or a lot of daylight, the video is very dark.

Well, it does the job pretty well, though I’ll probably end up adding a bit of diffusion inside to help spread the beam out a little flatter.

Illuminating Laptops – still the missing feature.

An interesting image on CrunchGear shows a new Lenovo Laptop with a halogen bulb clamped above to illuminate the black keys. This is because it’s really hard to see a black laptop in a dark room. The people selling the laptop at CES realized that, so they clamped a light to the top of the screen so people can see the keyboard. But why haven’t manufacturers realized it?

Red rolling shutter redux

There’s been a bit of discussion about the image distortion caused by the scanning (rolling) shutter used by CMOS chips which are starting to proliferate in the prosumer and professional video camera world. The key problem, as I have mentioned previously, is that the scanning imaging device is no longer sending the image solely to scanning displays- i.e. tube televisions. Today’s displays include plasma, LCD, DLP, OLED, etc. Most are progressive, but some include circuitry to display the image as if it were a scanning device.

Confused yet?

Mike Curtis, of HD For Indies, is very heavy into RED usage and promotion on his web site. RED is the video camera that I will agree is changing, or will change, the hardware business in the video industry. I checked in with Mike about the “rolling shutter” issue…

HD-101, a reference for your friends and family.

For the most part, readers of this blog are tech savvy folks that can actually recite the two different ATSC HD frame sizes off the top of their heads.

This is something mere mortals (i.e. usually everyone else in our families) simply cannot, or care not to do.

But then, when any of those folks need camcorder advice, or computer help, or digital camera assistance, they turn to us. As if knowledge about how to shoot and edit professional video equals a complete encyclopediac knowledge of every consumer camcorder, computer, software problem & how to fix it.

But there’s now help from a retail friend…