Lighting carries a great weight in film and video in terms of setting a tone and mood that directly effects the audience. While most productions still use the traditional tungsten or fluorescent light kits, LEDs are becoming more and more of a real option for filmmakers. Taking notice of this, manufacturers\u00a0have really been pushing toward bringing LED lights into the professional production market.<\/p>\n
ARRI now offers some amazing LED Fresnel lighting options with it’s L Series<\/a>. Other professional grade LED Fresnels can be found through Flolight<\/a> or LitePanels<\/a>. However these options are expensive.<\/p>\n If you are working on a tight budget turn your attention toward Yonguno,\u00a0which has begun producing the YN160 LED lights<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0great lights and cost effective. I was on a documentary film shoot recently that used these lights due to their portability and I came away from the experience incredibly impressed by their capabilities.<\/p>\n Let’s start by taking a look at the pros and cons of LEDs, fluorescents\u00a0and tungstens…<\/p>\n LEDs are capable of producing\u00a0a high range of light. For example the ARRI L Series comes in tungsten, daylight and tunable white\/color giving a production team a wide range of lighting capabilities. In addition to the range of light, the mobility and operating temperature of LED lights is something that cannot be ignored. In the past when working with traditional tungsten lights, my crew would have to wear leather gloves to make any lighting adjustments due to the high operating temperature. However with LEDs things can be changed at a moments notice.\u00a0The ability to do this cannot be understated.<\/p>\n Remember to take into account that LEDs can be run through standard AC power sources or by way of batteries, so power consumption costs are very low compared to tungsten lights. You can also safely plug 3 or 4 LED lights into one power strip, versus needing to have each tungsten light on its own circuit.<\/p>\n Here is a nice introductory video to the ARRI L Series LED Lights by Clearhead<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\nPros and Cons of LED vs\u00a0Tungsten Lights<\/h2>\n