LED Flashlight for Night Photoshooting
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holygeez03
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This isn't a thread about the OP's photography techniques/decisions/business practices... he is asking about flashlights with features that may allow him to do what he is trying to do.
The more I think about it, the light I know about that might fulfill the requirements is SC52d... not a ton of output, but it's AA with Hi CRI and 5,000k temp. If you can manage 18650 battery usage, SC62d.
There will be some hotspot/spill, but shouldn't be nearly as tight as the EA41.
The more I think about it, the light I know about that might fulfill the requirements is SC52d... not a ton of output, but it's AA with Hi CRI and 5,000k temp. If you can manage 18650 battery usage, SC62d.
There will be some hotspot/spill, but shouldn't be nearly as tight as the EA41.
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A lot of good points made so far. Here are a few more from my perspective as a photographer and flashlight enthusiast (and knowing me, it will be a long post)...
If you are going to photograph people, getting a high CRI LED light with a colour temperature close to daylight is critical. I have no experience with the Luxeon T emitter but even that is only rated at 85 CRI or so, at least the ones used by Zebralight seem to be. My suggestion is to get a light with one or more Nichia 219 LEDs since they generally have a CRI of 90+ and are usually in the 4500-5000K range I believe. Sure, you can get some other 2900K LEDs with a high CRI but not only are they extremely rare in factory lights, but digital cameras are not as "happy" with warm colour temperatures in low light. At high ISO settings (needed to capture non static objects like people sharply), photos generally get noisier since there will be very little blue-channel response from a 2900K light source and once the WB is corrected, the noise can become worse and colours generally will be less accurate when compared to shooting with a more neutral high-CRI source.
The recommendations in this thread for flash usage are solid. To get an LED light that's effective in most photographic situations involving people, requires it to be bright enough that it will also cause people to reflexively squint from the glare, unless you are talking about rim-lighting, side lighting etc. and are not using it as a main light source. I will show an example later in the post where I did use an LED light with great success, so this isn't an absolute. With a flash however, not only do you have near perfect colour rendering, but the brief pulse is quick enough that you'll capture natural expressions without the squint, and if even if the people aren't holding perfectly still, you'll likely get a sharp photo, albeit with some edge ghosting perhaps if you are dragging the shutter speeds to capture ambient.
Getting back to LEDs, even ones that seem visually neutral and very pleasing, such as a 5000K MT-G2, still end up being quite horrible for photography, again especially as far as skin-tone rendering. You will get yellowish/greenish, sickly looking skin-tones. Doing a simple custom white-balance on a neutral point in the scene won't help with the ugly colour rendering either. It would ensure that whites and greys are neutral but won't do much to fix skin-tones or other colours. That said, if you are shooting raw files, are using Adobe software for your raw processing, and are willing to go through a custom calibration with an Xrite ColorChecker Passport, you can actually correct much of that ugliness. The ColorChecker calibration target includes multiple skin-tone colour patches and a custom calibration can actually be quite effective. I have done this custom calibration for most of my LED lights and it helped a fair bit, but since getting an EagleTac MX25L3C with six Nichia 219B LEDs, 99% of the time I will use that unless I am simply light painting a night scene where there are no people in the shot and I want something with more throw, or with a narrower beam.
In fact, I highly recommend the MX25L3C (the Nichia 219B version of course) for various reasons. Firstly, I know you had mentioned a multiple AA light, but I am not aware of a high-CRI flashlight anywhere near approaching the output of the MX25L3C (rated at 1810 ANSI lumens OTF) that runs on AAs. If you are going to photograph people, you will need a lot of lumens, especially if you want a more diffuse and even beam. I would strongly suggest giving up on the AA requirement and just go out and buy some high quality protected 3400 mAh 18650 batteries (EagleTac, Olight, Keeppower etc.) and a good quality charger (I use a Fenix ARE-C2 charger). Giving up on the AA requirement will give you a far greater choice of lights. In fact, the Noctigon Meteor M43, the version with a dozen Nichia 219B LEDs, would likely make an awesome photographic tool as well. Back to the EagleTac...
The next good thing about the MX25L3C is that if you buy the "kit" version, it will have standard 58mm photo threads on the front, once you unscrew the factory SS bezel. Because of its 58mm filter threads, you can easily buy standard colour-correction filters, a light amber filter to make the light tungsten balanced, a light green filter to balance with fluorescent etc. Plus, the kit version comes with a 58mm thread-on diffusion filter that helps even out the hotspot into a much smoother beam, plus some deep colour filters that can be used for special effects, a red, green, blue and yellow if I recall. IMPORTANT: note that the cheaper, non-kit version of the MX25L3C does not have any bezel threads at all, so you wouldn't be able to use any threaded filters with it.
Another nice thing about the MX25L3C is that you can program it to only have a 10% step-down from max output, rather than the default 25%. For photography, depending on the situation, you probably want a light with as consistent an output as possible and no dramatic step-down after a few minutes. I am not sure, off the top of my head, what the situation is with the Meteor M43?
As far as lensed lights versus reflector lights, probably not a great idea to get one with a lens. Many of them have a huge amount of chromatic aberration from the simple, single lens optic and often you will get an intense blue or yellow fringe around the outer edge of the beam. While it might not be much of an issue visually, this colour will be picked up strongly by your camera. However again, you had mentioned brides, grooms and other couples, so my guess is that you don't want something with a really tight beam anyway. Speaking of colour fringes, many of the EagleTac RGBY filters are dichroic, so they don't cut down on the overall light output as much as a regular tinted filter, but will produce an outer spill, away from the main beam, with a very strong colour cast. Again, possibly not all that great from a photographic standpoint.
Another point is that even with the supplied diffuser, the beam from the MX25L3C has quite a bit of falloff from the center to the edge of the beam. Cutting an additional piece of plastic diffusion material (from Rosco, Lee etc.) and stacking it with the factory diffuser can help this, albeit at the expense of total output.
Finally, when it comes to photographing people, a softer light source is generally far more flattering that a hard one of course. Even an unfocused "mule" LED light, while looking like it creates a wide, even flood of light, will give you very hard edged, unflattering shadows on people's faces. The only way of getting a soft light (for those non-photographers), is to make the light source much larger, so either a large bounce board, umbrella reflector or soft-box, and the closer the large light source is to the subject, the softer the shadow transitions will be. However, once you diffuse even an 1800 lumen light to give a softer effect, the overall light output will be severely reduced, requiring high ISOs and fast apertures to get a shutter speed quick enough to photograph people.
Back in January, I was reviewing Fujifilm's new 56mm f/1.2 APD lens and wanted to shoot some samples at f/1.2, at night with out of focus lights in the background, in order to demonstrate that lens' special bokeh rendering qualities. I ended up using my MX25L3C as a main light source, factory diffuser attached, with the light mounted to a 2 foot diameter octabox (an octagonal soft-box), one which also had an internal diffusion baffle. This setup gave perfectly even light filling the octabox with virtually no central bright spot. I ran the MX25L3C pretty much on turbo the whole time and while it got hot, it was never too hot to touch. That said, it was near freezing (January in Vancouver) so I am not sure how it would fair with only a 10% step-down in hot weather? My gut feeling is that it would still be okay, but obviously the body would get a lot hotter after many minutes of continuous run. I decided not to use a flash on that shoot since firstly, I wanted bright ambient in my shots anyway and secondly, a flash going off would have been a little more obnoxious in a public area where there were a lot of people walking around. I had an assistant holding the octabox too and did not use a light-stand, so that way the light could be quickly moved out of the way when other people wanted to walk by.
Here are a few photos I took with that setup - ISO 1600, f/1.2 at shutter speeds ranging from roughly 1/100 to 1/200. The octabox was positioned generally from 3 to 5 feet from my subject and overall, the light balanced well with ambient, not giving an overly "lit" look to the shots...
Here is a behind-the-scenes shot, showing the octabox rig and the flashlight clamped in with a Manfrotto SuperClamp...
For a full gallery of images from this shoot, with higher-res photos, see here: http://www.sublimephoto.com/exhibit/2015/0119_nicole_56mmAPD/
So, in my view, the Nichia 219B LEDs in the MX25L3C (said to be 4500K) did a really great job of rendering skin-tones. No custom calibration was done, just a slight white-balance tweak off daylight balance. To see how far off a 5000K MT-G2 can be with colour rendering, have a look at the following comparison, taken near Moab, Utah...
On the night shot, my MX25L3C on max (no diffuser) lit the left side. On the right, I used my SupBeam K40Mvn with an MT-G2, dialed down a notch or two since it is much brighter at full output. The sickly yellow/green tinge on the rocks is what you'd also get on skin-tones (without doing a custom Xrite calibration) and the MT-G2 is not really a huge improvement photographically from what you'd get from a typical XM-L2 equipped light, even though it actually looks quite nice visually! When I reviewed the photo on camera after taking the night shot, I was rather shocked at the dramatic difference in rendered colour between the two lights. The Nichia 219B is not perfect either, but clearly is a whole lot better when you compare it to the sunlit shot.
Anyway, apologies for the long posting, but I do hope it helped somewhat. Basically, I am strongly recommending you get an Nichia 219B equipped light, even if it means abandoning your AA requirement. You certainly can get some small, single AA lights that have one 219B LED, but I really don't see that as being a valuable tool photographically, unless you are just trying to "spotlight" a very small area on your subject. Even a maxed out, a single diffused 219B LED is going to be so dim as to be near useless as a photographic light-source for photographing people.
EDIT: Finally, on last point that is more on topic to the original question perhaps, is to look at the EagleTac D25A (one AA cell) or D25A2 (2x AA cells). Both can be had with Nichia 219B LEDs and, of course, run on AA cells. If they are bright enough to be useful for your needs, then I can recommend them as well. I have a Titanium D25C special edition with Nichia 219B myself, although personally, I rarely use it when taking photos...
-Mike Mander
If you are going to photograph people, getting a high CRI LED light with a colour temperature close to daylight is critical. I have no experience with the Luxeon T emitter but even that is only rated at 85 CRI or so, at least the ones used by Zebralight seem to be. My suggestion is to get a light with one or more Nichia 219 LEDs since they generally have a CRI of 90+ and are usually in the 4500-5000K range I believe. Sure, you can get some other 2900K LEDs with a high CRI but not only are they extremely rare in factory lights, but digital cameras are not as "happy" with warm colour temperatures in low light. At high ISO settings (needed to capture non static objects like people sharply), photos generally get noisier since there will be very little blue-channel response from a 2900K light source and once the WB is corrected, the noise can become worse and colours generally will be less accurate when compared to shooting with a more neutral high-CRI source.
The recommendations in this thread for flash usage are solid. To get an LED light that's effective in most photographic situations involving people, requires it to be bright enough that it will also cause people to reflexively squint from the glare, unless you are talking about rim-lighting, side lighting etc. and are not using it as a main light source. I will show an example later in the post where I did use an LED light with great success, so this isn't an absolute. With a flash however, not only do you have near perfect colour rendering, but the brief pulse is quick enough that you'll capture natural expressions without the squint, and if even if the people aren't holding perfectly still, you'll likely get a sharp photo, albeit with some edge ghosting perhaps if you are dragging the shutter speeds to capture ambient.
Getting back to LEDs, even ones that seem visually neutral and very pleasing, such as a 5000K MT-G2, still end up being quite horrible for photography, again especially as far as skin-tone rendering. You will get yellowish/greenish, sickly looking skin-tones. Doing a simple custom white-balance on a neutral point in the scene won't help with the ugly colour rendering either. It would ensure that whites and greys are neutral but won't do much to fix skin-tones or other colours. That said, if you are shooting raw files, are using Adobe software for your raw processing, and are willing to go through a custom calibration with an Xrite ColorChecker Passport, you can actually correct much of that ugliness. The ColorChecker calibration target includes multiple skin-tone colour patches and a custom calibration can actually be quite effective. I have done this custom calibration for most of my LED lights and it helped a fair bit, but since getting an EagleTac MX25L3C with six Nichia 219B LEDs, 99% of the time I will use that unless I am simply light painting a night scene where there are no people in the shot and I want something with more throw, or with a narrower beam.
In fact, I highly recommend the MX25L3C (the Nichia 219B version of course) for various reasons. Firstly, I know you had mentioned a multiple AA light, but I am not aware of a high-CRI flashlight anywhere near approaching the output of the MX25L3C (rated at 1810 ANSI lumens OTF) that runs on AAs. If you are going to photograph people, you will need a lot of lumens, especially if you want a more diffuse and even beam. I would strongly suggest giving up on the AA requirement and just go out and buy some high quality protected 3400 mAh 18650 batteries (EagleTac, Olight, Keeppower etc.) and a good quality charger (I use a Fenix ARE-C2 charger). Giving up on the AA requirement will give you a far greater choice of lights. In fact, the Noctigon Meteor M43, the version with a dozen Nichia 219B LEDs, would likely make an awesome photographic tool as well. Back to the EagleTac...
The next good thing about the MX25L3C is that if you buy the "kit" version, it will have standard 58mm photo threads on the front, once you unscrew the factory SS bezel. Because of its 58mm filter threads, you can easily buy standard colour-correction filters, a light amber filter to make the light tungsten balanced, a light green filter to balance with fluorescent etc. Plus, the kit version comes with a 58mm thread-on diffusion filter that helps even out the hotspot into a much smoother beam, plus some deep colour filters that can be used for special effects, a red, green, blue and yellow if I recall. IMPORTANT: note that the cheaper, non-kit version of the MX25L3C does not have any bezel threads at all, so you wouldn't be able to use any threaded filters with it.
Another nice thing about the MX25L3C is that you can program it to only have a 10% step-down from max output, rather than the default 25%. For photography, depending on the situation, you probably want a light with as consistent an output as possible and no dramatic step-down after a few minutes. I am not sure, off the top of my head, what the situation is with the Meteor M43?
As far as lensed lights versus reflector lights, probably not a great idea to get one with a lens. Many of them have a huge amount of chromatic aberration from the simple, single lens optic and often you will get an intense blue or yellow fringe around the outer edge of the beam. While it might not be much of an issue visually, this colour will be picked up strongly by your camera. However again, you had mentioned brides, grooms and other couples, so my guess is that you don't want something with a really tight beam anyway. Speaking of colour fringes, many of the EagleTac RGBY filters are dichroic, so they don't cut down on the overall light output as much as a regular tinted filter, but will produce an outer spill, away from the main beam, with a very strong colour cast. Again, possibly not all that great from a photographic standpoint.
Another point is that even with the supplied diffuser, the beam from the MX25L3C has quite a bit of falloff from the center to the edge of the beam. Cutting an additional piece of plastic diffusion material (from Rosco, Lee etc.) and stacking it with the factory diffuser can help this, albeit at the expense of total output.
Finally, when it comes to photographing people, a softer light source is generally far more flattering that a hard one of course. Even an unfocused "mule" LED light, while looking like it creates a wide, even flood of light, will give you very hard edged, unflattering shadows on people's faces. The only way of getting a soft light (for those non-photographers), is to make the light source much larger, so either a large bounce board, umbrella reflector or soft-box, and the closer the large light source is to the subject, the softer the shadow transitions will be. However, once you diffuse even an 1800 lumen light to give a softer effect, the overall light output will be severely reduced, requiring high ISOs and fast apertures to get a shutter speed quick enough to photograph people.
Back in January, I was reviewing Fujifilm's new 56mm f/1.2 APD lens and wanted to shoot some samples at f/1.2, at night with out of focus lights in the background, in order to demonstrate that lens' special bokeh rendering qualities. I ended up using my MX25L3C as a main light source, factory diffuser attached, with the light mounted to a 2 foot diameter octabox (an octagonal soft-box), one which also had an internal diffusion baffle. This setup gave perfectly even light filling the octabox with virtually no central bright spot. I ran the MX25L3C pretty much on turbo the whole time and while it got hot, it was never too hot to touch. That said, it was near freezing (January in Vancouver) so I am not sure how it would fair with only a 10% step-down in hot weather? My gut feeling is that it would still be okay, but obviously the body would get a lot hotter after many minutes of continuous run. I decided not to use a flash on that shoot since firstly, I wanted bright ambient in my shots anyway and secondly, a flash going off would have been a little more obnoxious in a public area where there were a lot of people walking around. I had an assistant holding the octabox too and did not use a light-stand, so that way the light could be quickly moved out of the way when other people wanted to walk by.
Here are a few photos I took with that setup - ISO 1600, f/1.2 at shutter speeds ranging from roughly 1/100 to 1/200. The octabox was positioned generally from 3 to 5 feet from my subject and overall, the light balanced well with ambient, not giving an overly "lit" look to the shots...
Here is a behind-the-scenes shot, showing the octabox rig and the flashlight clamped in with a Manfrotto SuperClamp...
For a full gallery of images from this shoot, with higher-res photos, see here: http://www.sublimephoto.com/exhibit/2015/0119_nicole_56mmAPD/
So, in my view, the Nichia 219B LEDs in the MX25L3C (said to be 4500K) did a really great job of rendering skin-tones. No custom calibration was done, just a slight white-balance tweak off daylight balance. To see how far off a 5000K MT-G2 can be with colour rendering, have a look at the following comparison, taken near Moab, Utah...
On the night shot, my MX25L3C on max (no diffuser) lit the left side. On the right, I used my SupBeam K40Mvn with an MT-G2, dialed down a notch or two since it is much brighter at full output. The sickly yellow/green tinge on the rocks is what you'd also get on skin-tones (without doing a custom Xrite calibration) and the MT-G2 is not really a huge improvement photographically from what you'd get from a typical XM-L2 equipped light, even though it actually looks quite nice visually! When I reviewed the photo on camera after taking the night shot, I was rather shocked at the dramatic difference in rendered colour between the two lights. The Nichia 219B is not perfect either, but clearly is a whole lot better when you compare it to the sunlit shot.
Anyway, apologies for the long posting, but I do hope it helped somewhat. Basically, I am strongly recommending you get an Nichia 219B equipped light, even if it means abandoning your AA requirement. You certainly can get some small, single AA lights that have one 219B LED, but I really don't see that as being a valuable tool photographically, unless you are just trying to "spotlight" a very small area on your subject. Even a maxed out, a single diffused 219B LED is going to be so dim as to be near useless as a photographic light-source for photographing people.
EDIT: Finally, on last point that is more on topic to the original question perhaps, is to look at the EagleTac D25A (one AA cell) or D25A2 (2x AA cells). Both can be had with Nichia 219B LEDs and, of course, run on AA cells. If they are bright enough to be useful for your needs, then I can recommend them as well. I have a Titanium D25C special edition with Nichia 219B myself, although personally, I rarely use it when taking photos...
-Mike Mander
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One more quick point...
You can buy small hot-shoe mounted LED light panels that have a rectangular grid, usually with multiple 5mm LEDs. Some of these will also run off of AA cells and are generally intended as fill-lights when shooting video, but not as main lights. They're used to just fill the shadows in a face a little and add a catch-light to the eyes, for example. Be aware that many of the cheaper ones do not have a high CRI and will also yield ugly skin-tones. Even if you buy one with high CRI LEDs, when you have a grid of small individual light sources, you will often get striped shadow transitions if you are trying to use one as main light and not just as a gentle fill. Even when you put a diffusion panel in front of one of these, the panels are usually just barely frosted (so as not to dim the light too much) and you will still get similarly bad shadow transitions. Again, you need to substantially soften and diffuse the resulting light and that will mean losing a whole lot of brightness in the process...
You can buy small hot-shoe mounted LED light panels that have a rectangular grid, usually with multiple 5mm LEDs. Some of these will also run off of AA cells and are generally intended as fill-lights when shooting video, but not as main lights. They're used to just fill the shadows in a face a little and add a catch-light to the eyes, for example. Be aware that many of the cheaper ones do not have a high CRI and will also yield ugly skin-tones. Even if you buy one with high CRI LEDs, when you have a grid of small individual light sources, you will often get striped shadow transitions if you are trying to use one as main light and not just as a gentle fill. Even when you put a diffusion panel in front of one of these, the panels are usually just barely frosted (so as not to dim the light too much) and you will still get similarly bad shadow transitions. Again, you need to substantially soften and diffuse the resulting light and that will mean losing a whole lot of brightness in the process...
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twistedraven
Flashlight Enthusiast
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- Oct 22, 2014
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Ew, that shot of the MTG2 vs the 6 Nichias doesn't look so pretty for the MT-G2. Seems like even the MT-G2 suffers the Cree problem of being too green.
The Luxeon T isn't as green as the Cree LEDs, but is still slightly green compared to the 219B. However I think it's closer looking to mid-day direct sunlight than the 219B on color temperature alone. 219B looks closer to early morning or late evening sun.
The Luxeon T isn't as green as the Cree LEDs, but is still slightly green compared to the 219B. However I think it's closer looking to mid-day direct sunlight than the 219B on color temperature alone. 219B looks closer to early morning or late evening sun.
StorminMatt
Flashlight Enthusiast
Speaking of Nichia emitters, another option is the Sportac triple (also made by Eagletac). It is a P60 module with three Nichia 219 emitters. And while output is not as high as the MX25L3C, it's still a very respectable 676 lumens - FAR higher than the D25A2/D25A. And at $35, it's less than a quarter of the cost. You WILL need a host to put it in. This can range from a $15 Solarforce on up. The only drawback (for you) is that it requires the voltage of 1x18650. 3-4xAA could supply this voltage. But I know of no hosts that run on 3 or 4 AA batteries (the Dereelight Javelin with a 3AA extender will, but won't fit this P60).
I wonder how they both would compare with equalized white-balance? That is, with the WB fine tuned for neutral whites on each? I have only ever seen white-wall and outdoor beamshot comparisons between the Luxeon T and Nichia 219. Have you ever seen a post where someone used both to photograph a person so one could compare skin-tones?
For me, I can deal with slightly warm skin-tones as it might just make someone look more tanned, but a green cast? :green: That said, the subtle green I've seen with Luxeon T beamshots has certainly never been even remotely nauseating, but I've never seen how it renders skin either. I came very close to ordering an SC62D to EDC since I was very interested in seeing what that emitter would do as far as colour, but I just couldn't get past the fact that its 320 lumen output was not really a whole lot better than my smaller Nichia 219 equipped D25C on a 16340...
I did a side-by-side comparison of skin-tone rendering with various flashlights at the end of this post here... http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...nd-beamshots&p=4510909&viewfull=1#post4510909
Note that indeed, the slightly warm Nichia 219B light, when using the default daylight white-balance in the test, made my arm look a little more tanned than it really was, but it is still a far cry better than any of the other lights. The second best light in that test, in my opinion, was the neutral white XM-L2 actually, which edged out the MT-G2. I should redo a similar test some day with my warm white, 4000K Armytek Predator or my warm Tiara C1 Pro. Hmm... I should still consider adding an SC62d to my collection sometime too, just to have one light with that Luxeon T emitter...
twistedraven
Flashlight Enthusiast
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I like the 219B more than the Luxeon T for making skin look pinkish. The Luxeon T is slightly green in comparison, while the 219B is slightly too tannish-- not enough cyans or not high enough a color temperature when compared to sunlight.
What I'm really interested in is the variation of the 219B that's binned at 4700-5200 cct.
What I'm really interested in is the variation of the 219B that's binned at 4700-5200 cct.
StorminMatt
Flashlight Enthusiast
On the other hand, the SC62d is capable of indefinite maximum output (without a stepdown). That's about 2.5-3hr. I'm guessing the D25C won't go NEARLY that long, especially given the paltry capacity of your average 16340.
Great post mmander, thanks!
I was coming into this thread thinking about white/silver spray painting the inside of a compact folding umbrella and making a flashlight mount for the stem to take better pictures with my phone... lol!
You're post brings together everything I was wondering about and then blows it up a few levels. Thanks for taking the time to share.
I was coming into this thread thinking about white/silver spray painting the inside of a compact folding umbrella and making a flashlight mount for the stem to take better pictures with my phone... lol!
You're post brings together everything I was wondering about and then blows it up a few levels. Thanks for taking the time to share.
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TopGunRMNP
Newly Enlightened
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Awesome post! I just asked a similar question in mine at the bottom under p.s...
This photo was captured using a $2.99 "Cree Q5 300lm" 18650 light. I don't think flood would be good, but it depends on what you're shooting. I like to "paint" with the light so durring a 20-25sec exposure the wife or I will be away from the camera and do a rapid paint on high setting for the subject in focus. I am looking for the correct LED CREE type 18650 to paint with as well, likely needing to be under 5000k if possible with LED these days?
This photo was captured using a $2.99 "Cree Q5 300lm" 18650 light. I don't think flood would be good, but it depends on what you're shooting. I like to "paint" with the light so durring a 20-25sec exposure the wife or I will be away from the camera and do a rapid paint on high setting for the subject in focus. I am looking for the correct LED CREE type 18650 to paint with as well, likely needing to be under 5000k if possible with LED these days?
A lot of good points made so far. Here are a few more from my perspective as a photographer and flashlight enthusiast (and knowing me, it will be a long post)...
If you are going to photograph people, getting a high CRI LED light with a colour temperature close to daylight is critical. I have no experience with the Luxeon T emitter but even that is only rated at 85 CRI or so, at least the ones used by Zebralight seem to be. My suggestion is to get a light with one or more Nichia 219 LEDs since they generally have a CRI of 90+ and are usually in the 4500-5000K range I believe. Sure, you can get some other 2900K LEDs with a high CRI but not only are they extremely rare in factory lights, but digital cameras are not as "happy" with warm colour temperatures in low light. At high ISO settings (needed to capture non static objects like people sharply), photos generally get noisier since there will be very little blue-channel response from a 2900K light source and once the WB is corrected, the noise can become worse and colours generally will be less accurate when compared to shooting with a more neutral high-CRI source.
The recommendations in this thread for flash usage are solid. To get an LED light that's effective in most photographic situations involving people, requires it to be bright enough that it will also cause people to reflexively squint from the glare, unless you are talking about rim-lighting, side lighting etc. and are not using it as a main light source. I will show an example later in the post where I did use an LED light with great success, so this isn't an absolute. With a flash however, not only do you have near perfect colour rendering, but the brief pulse is quick enough that you'll capture natural expressions without the squint, and if even if the people aren't holding perfectly still, you'll likely get a sharp photo, albeit with some edge ghosting perhaps if you are dragging the shutter speeds to capture ambient.
Getting back to LEDs, even ones that seem visually neutral and very pleasing, such as a 5000K MT-G2, still end up being quite horrible for photography, again especially as far as skin-tone rendering. You will get yellowish/greenish, sickly looking skin-tones. Doing a simple custom white-balance on a neutral point in the scene won't help with the ugly colour rendering either. It would ensure that whites and greys are neutral but won't do much to fix skin-tones or other colours. That said, if you are shooting raw files, are using Adobe software for your raw processing, and are willing to go through a custom calibration with an Xrite ColorChecker Passport, you can actually correct much of that ugliness. The ColorChecker calibration target includes multiple skin-tone colour patches and a custom calibration can actually be quite effective. I have done this custom calibration for most of my LED lights and it helped a fair bit, but since getting an EagleTac MX25L3C with six Nichia 219B LEDs, 99% of the time I will use that unless I am simply light painting a night scene where there are no people in the shot and I want something with more throw, or with a narrower beam.
In fact, I highly recommend the MX25L3C (the Nichia 219B version of course) for various reasons. Firstly, I know you had mentioned a multiple AA light, but I am not aware of a high-CRI flashlight anywhere near approaching the output of the MX25L3C (rated at 1810 ANSI lumens OTF) that runs on AAs. If you are going to photograph people, you will need a lot of lumens, especially if you want a more diffuse and even beam. I would strongly suggest giving up on the AA requirement and just go out and buy some high quality protected 3400 mAh 18650 batteries (EagleTac, Olight, Keeppower etc.) and a good quality charger (I use a Fenix ARE-C2 charger). Giving up on the AA requirement will give you a far greater choice of lights. In fact, the Noctigon Meteor M43, the version with a dozen Nichia 219B LEDs, would likely make an awesome photographic tool as well. Back to the EagleTac...
The next good thing about the MX25L3C is that if you buy the "kit" version, it will have standard 58mm photo threads on the front, once you unscrew the factory SS bezel. Because of its 58mm filter threads, you can easily buy standard colour-correction filters, a light amber filter to make the light tungsten balanced, a light green filter to balance with fluorescent etc. Plus, the kit version comes with a 58mm thread-on diffusion filter that helps even out the hotspot into a much smoother beam, plus some deep colour filters that can be used for special effects, a red, green, blue and yellow if I recall. IMPORTANT: note that the cheaper, non-kit version of the MX25L3C does not have any bezel threads at all, so you wouldn't be able to use any threaded filters with it.
Another nice thing about the MX25L3C is that you can program it to only have a 10% step-down from max output, rather than the default 25%. For photography, depending on the situation, you probably want a light with as consistent an output as possible and no dramatic step-down after a few minutes. I am not sure, off the top of my head, what the situation is with the Meteor M43?
As far as lensed lights versus reflector lights, probably not a great idea to get one with a lens. Many of them have a huge amount of chromatic aberration from the simple, single lens optic and often you will get an intense blue or yellow fringe around the outer edge of the beam. While it might not be much of an issue visually, this colour will be picked up strongly by your camera. However again, you had mentioned brides, grooms and other couples, so my guess is that you don't want something with a really tight beam anyway. Speaking of colour fringes, many of the EagleTac RGBY filters are dichroic, so they don't cut down on the overall light output as much as a regular tinted filter, but will produce an outer spill, away from the main beam, with a very strong colour cast. Again, possibly not all that great from a photographic standpoint.
Another point is that even with the supplied diffuser, the beam from the MX25L3C has quite a bit of falloff from the center to the edge of the beam. Cutting an additional piece of plastic diffusion material (from Rosco, Lee etc.) and stacking it with the factory diffuser can help this, albeit at the expense of total output.
Finally, when it comes to photographing people, a softer light source is generally far more flattering that a hard one of course. Even an unfocused "mule" LED light, while looking like it creates a wide, even flood of light, will give you very hard edged, unflattering shadows on people's faces. The only way of getting a soft light (for those non-photographers), is to make the light source much larger, so either a large bounce board, umbrella reflector or soft-box, and the closer the large light source is to the subject, the softer the shadow transitions will be. However, once you diffuse even an 1800 lumen light to give a softer effect, the overall light output will be severely reduced, requiring high ISOs and fast apertures to get a shutter speed quick enough to photograph people.
Back in January, I was reviewing Fujifilm's new 56mm f/1.2 APD lens and wanted to shoot some samples at f/1.2, at night with out of focus lights in the background, in order to demonstrate that lens' special bokeh rendering qualities. I ended up using my MX25L3C as a main light source, factory diffuser attached, with the light mounted to a 2 foot diameter octabox (an octagonal soft-box), one which also had an internal diffusion baffle. This setup gave perfectly even light filling the octabox with virtually no central bright spot. I ran the MX25L3C pretty much on turbo the whole time and while it got hot, it was never too hot to touch. That said, it was near freezing (January in Vancouver) so I am not sure how it would fair with only a 10% step-down in hot weather? My gut feeling is that it would still be okay, but obviously the body would get a lot hotter after many minutes of continuous run. I decided not to use a flash on that shoot since firstly, I wanted bright ambient in my shots anyway and secondly, a flash going off would have been a little more obnoxious in a public area where there were a lot of people walking around. I had an assistant holding the octabox too and did not use a light-stand, so that way the light could be quickly moved out of the way when other people wanted to walk by.
Here are a few photos I took with that setup - ISO 1600, f/1.2 at shutter speeds ranging from roughly 1/100 to 1/200. The octabox was positioned generally from 3 to 5 feet from my subject and overall, the light balanced well with ambient, not giving an overly "lit" look to the shots...
Here is a behind-the-scenes shot, showing the octabox rig and the flashlight clamped in with a Manfrotto SuperClamp...
For a full gallery of images from this shoot, with higher-res photos, see here: http://www.sublimephoto.com/exhibit/2015/0119_nicole_56mmAPD/
So, in my view, the Nichia 219B LEDs in the MX25L3C (said to be 4500K) did a really great job of rendering skin-tones. No custom calibration was done, just a slight white-balance tweak off daylight balance. To see how far off a 5000K MT-G2 can be with colour rendering, have a look at the following comparison, taken near Moab, Utah...
On the night shot, my MX25L3C on max (no diffuser) lit the left side. On the right, I used my SupBeam K40Mvn with an MT-G2, dialed down a notch or two since it is much brighter at full output. The sickly yellow/green tinge on the rocks is what you'd also get on skin-tones (without doing a custom Xrite calibration) and the MT-G2 is not really a huge improvement photographically from what you'd get from a typical XM-L2 equipped light, even though it actually looks quite nice visually! When I reviewed the photo on camera after taking the night shot, I was rather shocked at the dramatic difference in rendered colour between the two lights. The Nichia 219B is not perfect either, but clearly is a whole lot better when you compare it to the sunlit shot.
Anyway, apologies for the long posting, but I do hope it helped somewhat. Basically, I am strongly recommending you get an Nichia 219B equipped light, even if it means abandoning your AA requirement. You certainly can get some small, single AA lights that have one 219B LED, but I really don't see that as being a valuable tool photographically, unless you are just trying to "spotlight" a very small area on your subject. Even a maxed out, a single diffused 219B LED is going to be so dim as to be near useless as a photographic light-source for photographing people.
EDIT: Finally, on last point that is more on topic to the original question perhaps, is to look at the EagleTac D25A (one AA cell) or D25A2 (2x AA cells). Both can be had with Nichia 219B LEDs and, of course, run on AA cells. If they are bright enough to be useful for your needs, then I can recommend them as well. I have a Titanium D25C special edition with Nichia 219B myself, although personally, I rarely use it when taking photos...
-Mike Mander
Great post and a nice guy!
very nice picture !Awesome post! I just asked a similar question in mine at the bottom under p.s...
This photo was captured using a $2.99 "Cree Q5 300lm" 18650 light. I don't think flood would be good, but it depends on what you're shooting. I like to "paint" with the light so durring a 20-25sec exposure the wife or I will be away from the camera and do a rapid paint on high setting for the subject in focus. I am looking for the correct LED CREE type 18650 to paint with as well, likely needing to be under 5000k if possible with LED these days?
RedLED
Flashlight Enthusiast
A higher key would fade some of those wrinkles, and no fill light, and do you want to carry that rig all over the place? Color is off, too. Awful catch light in the eyes.
You need to learn how to use rear curtain sync.
Learn your flash, flash, a bounce with a white card to push some light on the subject is something all photographers need to know.
Where is your work published? That is the highest level if a photo editor picked your photo.
l have been a photojournalist for 25 years and had assignments all over the world. If you are testing and playing around that is fine, however if you are charging, you need to make some major changes.
Since day one I have worked on the world and US national level, and guess how long we get to shoot the president, a CEO, musicians, sports figures and so on?
It is lot of time like 15 to 30 seconds, maybe less. Be warned if you are lucky enough to shoot an event like that, the handlers don't care if you got your shot or not. With Sinatra I got 4 seconds for his Last Christmas portrait, see it on my web site. And that was film no chimps then!
I can tell just by your asst's posture or if you are using a Tri pod you are fumbling with that rig, and I am not trying to be mean,,but if you want a job in this field you must be on your A game all the time. In LA, DC or NY you would be in big trouble with the press Corps as that thing would block others shots, and since we often police ourselves, you would be out quick.
Also 1600 at f1.2?
It is not easy, and I do wish you good luck
You need to learn how to use rear curtain sync.
Learn your flash, flash, a bounce with a white card to push some light on the subject is something all photographers need to know.
Where is your work published? That is the highest level if a photo editor picked your photo.
l have been a photojournalist for 25 years and had assignments all over the world. If you are testing and playing around that is fine, however if you are charging, you need to make some major changes.
Since day one I have worked on the world and US national level, and guess how long we get to shoot the president, a CEO, musicians, sports figures and so on?
It is lot of time like 15 to 30 seconds, maybe less. Be warned if you are lucky enough to shoot an event like that, the handlers don't care if you got your shot or not. With Sinatra I got 4 seconds for his Last Christmas portrait, see it on my web site. And that was film no chimps then!
I can tell just by your asst's posture or if you are using a Tri pod you are fumbling with that rig, and I am not trying to be mean,,but if you want a job in this field you must be on your A game all the time. In LA, DC or NY you would be in big trouble with the press Corps as that thing would block others shots, and since we often police ourselves, you would be out quick.
Also 1600 at f1.2?
It is not easy, and I do wish you good luck
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RedLED
Flashlight Enthusiast
You know your stuff, a true professional! You have always given good advice.
Thank you! And so have many others here in this thread.
Not sure if your entire post was in response to mine RedLed? I am a bit puzzled by some of your comments as I don't understand how they are relevant to the discussion, but I realize my posting was very long-winded and perhaps not enough to the point. Let me distill it down a little, but also add a bit more concise detail, for those who may have not wanted to read everything I wrote in the other post...
1) The test shots I posted, and indeed the entire gallery I linked to, were purely done to demonstrate the blur characteristics, with bright out-of-focus lights, of a particular lens. This was not a shoot for a client, it wasn't a press event, these were not beauty shots and my model (a colleague) was wearing virtually no makeup. She is very easy going and didn't mind if a few wrinkles showed.
2) I used a diffused LED light source instead of strobes (flash) mainly because I was doing handheld shots in low light, with a fast f-stop lens wide open at f/1.2, and thus didn't need a whole lot of oomph. Plus, it was a good test to see how my new Nichia 219 based light rendered colours... and that was the main point of relevance to the OP.
3) I also described how I used a small octabox to soften the shadows from the flashlight and mentioned how hard-edged and harsh the shadows would be from a small, bare light source, like a flashlight. Even putting a diffuser on the light itself won't do much to soften the shadows since it's the size of the light source (and when talking about a single source, also its distance from the subject) that determines how soft the shadows are. The last sentence was not for your benefit RedLed, rather for others reading this who might not realize that. This is relevant to the OP's questions since he seemed to be looking for a flashlight he could use to light people with, he mentioned weddings shots and couples, and anything as small as a flashlight is going to look pretty bad in my view. Of course he didn't really describe exactly how he was planning to light his subjects, so my assumptions on a bare flashlight not working well might be way off? Maybe he was going to use flash for the main exposure, then have his subjects keep still and light-paint in other areas of the shot with the flashlight? I am in no way suggesting that the ideal way to photograph wedding or portrait shots is with a single LED flashlight, in a single small, 2 foot diameter octabox. I am only suggesting that it would be an improvement over a bare LED flashlight, again, with the assumption that it was going to be the primary light-source.
Not sure why you mentioned rear-curtain sync? I am fully aware of how and when one might want to use that, but since we are talking about an LED light-source and shutter speeds of 1/100 to 1/200, this would have zero effect on the shot of course. I wasn't using flash but even if I had been, with such fast shutter speeds, rear-curtain sync would have almost no effect unless the subject was moving fairly quickly. If you are talking about your subjects potentially moving a fair bit while being photographed, and you're using slower shutter speeds with a flash, then of course rear-curtain sync will make the shots look more natural, absolutely. Sadly, many cameras won't even allow you to use rear-curtain sync with proper strobe units and require a dedicated TTL flash to be used.
Not sure what standard your monitor is calibrated to, but printing 20x30 inch prints to high-end, calibrated inkjet printers (Canon Pro-1 and a Canon iPF6400) looked great on my end. Personally, I'd say the colours are pretty much bang on, considering the conditions with multiple coloured light sources from ambient also contributing to the overall lighting. And yes, she does have blue/purple highlights in her hair! I have been working in the digital imaging and colour management field nearly as long as you have been a photojournalist, so I think I'm a fairly good judge of such things.
Personally, I actually quite like the effect of a single soft light-source with just a single resulting catch-light, and generally dislike the overly flat, bright high-key look that is popular these days (with usually way too much retouching, if we're talking fashion), with multiple light sources or reflectors often creating multiple catch-lights in each eye. However, to each his own - it would be a boring world of imagery if every photographer lit their subjects in exactly the same way! Note that I don't make any claims to being a competent portrait photographer. My work is landscapes, cityscapes, architecture and on occasion, film set production stills although I dabble in everything, just for fun, including light painting. That, and testing gear for work, way too much testing of gear sometimes...
As far as my assistant, another colleague, despite the impression you might get from the behind-the-scenes snapshot someone else took, she had no issues holding up the small octabox assembly. I was not using a tripod and as mentioned, as a group we wanted to be agile to get out of the way of passersby if need be. Otherwise I would have used a small light-stand. This wasn't a press scrum, so I wasn't blocking any other PJ's with the rig.
I'd say I did pretty well with ISO 1600 and f/1.2 in this case (it certainly worked for the intended purpose of testing the lens), but thanks for the good wishes! :thumbsup:
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Mike V
Enlightened
Fashion for types of LEDs for photography / video are constantly changing.
Hot at the moment are the LED lights by Aladdin.
They have this really cool little light with an internal battery rechargeable by USB.
CRI of 95, dimming down to 5%. Daylight or Tungsten version (not BiColour).
http://aladdin-lights.com/eye-lite/
Hot at the moment are the LED lights by Aladdin.
They have this really cool little light with an internal battery rechargeable by USB.
CRI of 95, dimming down to 5%. Daylight or Tungsten version (not BiColour).
http://aladdin-lights.com/eye-lite/
holygeez03
Enlightened
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2010
- Messages
- 778
Seriously? Did the OP or the other poster say he/she intends to photograph the president or provide Christmas portraits for the Sinatra family? Did anyone say they would be holding up that rig at a public event?
While we're on the topic of being critical of other's work RedLed... you're website is EXTREMELY amateurish and looks like a template from the mid-90's (at best)... and your "professional" email address uses the @aol.com domain... are you kidding me?
ISO 1600 at F/1.2... what's the problem? The results look great and the artist clearly wanted the 1.2 bokeh while still having detail in the dark areas and clothing... are you aware that modern equipment can shoot relatively-noise free at those levels of gain?
Lastly... browsing your galleries, I don't see any examples of photos that were shot outside at night in a difficult, dynamic environment similar to the above post... Well, maybe one of Todd Field at the Int'l Film Fest and it is overwhelmingly unimpressive and potentially out-of-focus...
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