Wood carvers will sometimes use chainsaws to “rough in,” but finishing requires more subtle sculpting tools. In lighting, as with other crafts, no single tool is perfect for everything. Coarse or refined, our tools shape the process and impact the results. Tools change and process follows.

When I began using lighting CAD, I wondered how it would affect my design process. After all, working with a keyboard and mouse is very different from drafting with plastic lighting templates and pens. It turned out that the resulting designs still held true to my intent, but the process was certainly different. Any trade-off was a bargain I was happy to make.

There have always been some trade-offs alongside advances. On balance, there was no doubt it was a net gain. As with my old plastic lighting templates, now languishing in storage, I’m never going back.

It’s In the Shadows
While no one wants to backslide from the advances of LED lighting, let’s admit that not all the changes are for the better. These new LED variants work, but they’re not quite the same. 

Changes in lighting styles ebb and flow with shifting tastes, but I suspect the current trend towards flatter light is steered as much by our new equipment as by our creative intent. Quite frankly, I miss shadows.

In a medium that’s basically two-dimensional (since the camera has one “eye,” and our screens are flat), a lack of shadows results in fewer three-dimensional visual cues. If our goal is to keep images interesting, shadows are still key. That’s why “hard light” is important.

By tradition, there are two main categories of lights: “Hard light,” which creates highlights and shadows, and “soft light,” which moderates shadows with diffused “ambient” fill. Although that’s a somewhat simplistic explanation, it conveys the idea. 

The main “hard light” in video studios has been the Fresnel, while “soft light” includes any fixture (or modifying accessory) that imparts a relatively large light-emitting surface. The interplay of these two qualities of light creates a sense of depth through highlights and shadows. Artists refer to this quality of shading as “chiaroscuro.” 

A basic soft light is relatively easy to make. Clump together enough LEDs into a panel, and you’ve got a crude soft light. But a proper Fresnel requires a lot more optical design. 

The best of today’s LED Fresnels are quite good, but their beam quality at flood is different than with legacy incandescent Fresnels. That difference lies in the collimation of the beam. Centuries-old designs for lighthouse lanterns worked out this problem based on a single point of radiating light. With the advent of LED, the light propagation behind the lens is different.

The Same, but Different
Many LED Fresnels are more like soft-edge wash lights than their namesake; their barn doors are more useful as glare shields rather than for shaping the beam. The name may be the same, but the tool has changed. For all its advantages, the light from current LED Fresnels isn’t collimated the same. Here’s why.

The compact “luminous capsule” of incandescent and HMI radiates light 360°. Although wasteful from an energy efficiency standpoint, it’s optically useful behind a Fresnel lens. An incandescent lamp at full flood (when the lamp is closer to the lens), allows the light to cover the entire Fresnel lens. 

By reaching all the concentric rings that comprise a Fresnel lens, the light is collimated into a larger, organized beam that’s malleable. At the same time, by filling much of the lens, the larger surface area imparts a “wrapping” quality that provides a subtle roll-off in the shadow it casts, which is more flattering to the face. This is why larger Fresnels have been so popular as talent key lights.

That’s [Not] a Wrap
That “wrap” isn’t the same with today’s LED Fresnels.

LED emitters are both larger and more directional compared to the radiant 360-degree “luminous capsule” of incandescent and arc lamps. While more efficient, there’s a tradeoff: When an LED Fresnel is at full flood, the light only engages the very center rings and bull’s eye of the lens. And, because the relative softness of a light source is directly proportional to the size of the light-emitting surface, an LED Fresnel can’t “wrap” the face quite the same way as a legacy Fresnel could.

As a result, LED Fresnels put out a quality of light that is less pliable (because the light is less collimated) and “harder” (because the working surface area of the lens is smaller at flood) than the incandescent version. It’s not the same, but “good enough.”

While clever R&D continues to improve these fixtures with the use of secondary optics (as with the ARRI Orbiter Fresnel accessory), and by redesigning the lenses (as with the innovative DMG Lion), there are some workarounds to minimize the issue.

One technique to minimize the “wrapping” deficit is to partially spot the fixture focus. This increases the illuminated lens area, although you trade off some beam-shaping control because the light collimation declines the further it’s spotted.  

An alternate solution to address the reduced beam shaping is to switch to a completely different type of fixture. “Profile” spotlights (roughly the same as legacy ellipsoidals) can be a better choice, particularly when working at distances greater than 12 feet. Shutter cuts from a “profile” fixture hold up over distance, whereas tight Fresnel barndoor cuts lose beam edge cohesion over longer distances. And since every light becomes a point source when far enough away, “wrap” eventually becomes irrelevant at these greater distances. 

The advantages of LED light fixtures over legacy incandescent versions are tremendous, yet we’ve also lost something along the way. While current LED Fresnels fill the gap, I haven’t stopped hoping for a revised design that restores some of what was lost in the process without giving up the gains. “Good enough” isn’t a final destination. It’s just the latest point on the rising line of progress.

The sun has set on incandescent, and the last of the fluorescent tubes are being snatched off the shelves as they too fade to black. HMI still plays a role in the larger fixtures, but their days are likewise numbered. As for LEDs, it’s been an uneven and sometimes clumsy ascension, but there’s no doubt that they’re the current king of light.

The industry stubbed a few toes while fumbling through the gloom of LED’s infancy, but we’re now getting the lighting tools that work the way we do. 

Trendsetting
When ARRI’s original SkyPanel S60 first came out in 2015, it set a trend: With its RGBW light engine and built-in effects, it heralded new possibilities for what a light could do. Like most early iterations of any new technology, it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It even met the economic utility of staying serviceable long enough for the rental houses to amortize their investment. Well done! But that was eight years ago. What’s next?

LED components are still improving at rates reminiscent of the early days of computer chips. Other manufacturers have taken advantage of those advances, making the original SkyPanels look dated today. ARRI was apparently just biding their time working on their updated fixture. Sharing little more than the root name—the SkyPanel X is completely new.

ARRI’s new panel follows the practical 2x1 form factor. Rather than offer stair-step increases in fixture size—as they did in the past—they’ve taken a module approach. Different yoke configurations handle one, two or three heads. This approach simplifies everything from manufacturing on down. 

To paraphrase Darwin, it’s not the brightest light that succeeds in the wild; it’s the most adaptable. ARRI has created an adaptable light by incorporating the best qualities we’ve seen in several of the best lights, rolling them into a single package. With this measured evolutionary step, they’ve raised the bar again.

The new SkyPanel X won’t be for everyone, but it will likely become a “must have” item at rental houses and large studios. These lights offer some exceptional features.

ARRI is abandoning their RGBW light engine for the broader color gamut of RGBACL (Red, Green, Blue, Amber, Cyan and Lime). This brings their SkyPanel X light engine into line with their Orbiter monolight. This change fits well with the larger landscape of products that ARRI is known for—their cameras. This is where things literally come together.

Unique Advantage
LEDs are discontinuous spectrum emitters, unlike incandescent and natural daylight. Camera sensors are, likewise, discontinuous spectrum sensors. By manufacturing both the lights and the cameras, ARRI now controls both the paint and the canvas. The spectral frequencies of the light can now be tuned to match the cameras. This gives ARRI a unique advantage. And they’re making use of that.

With the greater range provided by their RGBACL light engine, SkyPanel X uses software to match the color gamut of various Arri cameras. Although the current software is programmed for ARRI cameras, they could match the LUTs (Look Up Tables) of any camera.

Another advantage of an RGBACL LED package is the ability to accurately adjust for a wide range of CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) while staying closely within the perfect Planckian locus of accuracy. Bicolor, RGBW and RGBWW fixtures are limited in this ability with their smaller color gamut and fewer possible metamer combinations. SkyPanel X should be able to cover a CCT range of 1,500K–20,000K, which is huge. 

SkyPanel X now boasts an integrated power supply, IP 66 (Ingress Protection) rating, the enormous color gamut of RGBACL LEDs, wireless control (LumenRadio CRMX2), and modular scalability with their multiple-head yokes. Old accessories can even be used with an optional adapter, along with new ones, including an unusual, lensed adaptor they call the HyPer Optic.

To some extent, SkyPanel X is both a soft and hard source light.

The HyPer Optic puts a lens in front of every LED chip, collimating the multiple beams into a single round shaft of light. It’s a nice trick that increases the utility of the fixture, but don’t expect it to take the place of a Fresnel. Although it’s effective for pumping light through a window or into a bounce at a distance, you’re less likely to use the HyPer Optic directly on someone in the same room for anything “natural.”

Many of today’s LED fixtures draw so little power that you can almost ignore load calculations. SkyPanel X is not one of them. While the RGBACL light engine provides a broad color gamut, that flexibility comes with a trade-off in efficiency. A single SkyPanel X pulls up to 800W, which is double the original version’s draw.

ARRI boasts that the triple-headed version is as bright as a 2400W HMI. Well, it also pulls 2400W. Based on early data, it still has an acceptable 65 LPW (Lumens per Watt), which is OK in a fixture with the color agility of a six-chip light engine. But if you only require “white” light for use in a conventional studio, there are other fixtures that will be a better fit for cost and energy efficiency. 

Still, I’m impressed with this fixture while acknowledging that nearly all its features are already out there. What the SkyPanel X notably does is combine them into a singular modular light with excellent build quality and high usability. This fixture has undoubtedly set a new bar for other manufacturers to hurdle. As with the original SkyPanel, we not only get a great new tool, but this new version will also encourage the competition to adapt and become even better.  

Bruce Aleksander invites comments and topic suggestions from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

LOS ANGELES—Quasar Science today released a new firmware update for its Double Rainbow and Rainbow 2 RGBX linear LED fixtures.

Available as a free download, Firmware v0.7 offers new features and improvements, including parameter controls for image-based lighting, the company said.

Offering several benefits for virtual production, the latest version features lighting profiles with global parameters to set the color space and white point of input media, allowing users to match adjacent outputs, such as a video wall, for accurate and consistent rendering and providing control over lighting in virtual environments, it said.

“Global parameters for pixel mapping, such as white point, spectrum control and color space, are not available in traditional RGB profiles,” said Quasar Science CTO Ben Dynice. “We have created these new DMX profiles specifically for pixel mapping for image-based lighting. Now, for example, users can change from pixel mapping a source video that is in Rec 709 to another source that uses traditional color management on the fly for more accurate and correctly balanced light.”  

Users can control the color space of Rainbow fixtures to match the playback media with a single DMX parameter along with control of global parameters with new pixel-mapping profiles, it said.

The RGBVW profile (RGB Variable White) allows pixel-level control over RGB, CCT and +/- Green with control of the global parameters, including spectrum, color space and output level. The VRGB profile (Video RGB) adds CCT and +/- Green into the global parameters to minimize the DMX footprint, the company said.

Two new color engines for use with new color spaces are also available. The Absolute Hue RGBX color engine offers users the maximum capabilities of the LED diode set. The Relative Colorimetric color engine is x-y calibrated with color temperature (CCT) calculated into the output and maximized Spectral Similarity Index (SSI), it said.

Other new features include:

• TimoTwo over USB.
• sACN priorities to improve network management.
• Fractional intensity dimming below 12%.
• Auto Lead/Follow pairing.
• Preset IP addresses for unicast networking.

The firmware update also improves RDM implementation, the UI and navigation.

More information is available on the company’s website.

While change is a constant in the broadcast industry, one element never changes: making your subjects look good. And when it comes to professional productions, perhaps nothing is more important than proper lighting. In our latest guide on lighting, we take a look at how advances in lighting technology are helping broadcasters reduce costs and promote sustainability.  

Download the free guide here. 

Anyone who’s delved into lighting knows that it’s a complex blend of art, craft and science. Within that pillar of science is the formula, which helps us predict how lights spread over distance—The Inverse-Square Law. 

Fortunately, you don’t need to be a physicist to understand this little bit of energy propagation science. This subject is usually presented as a formula to solve, but my goal is to cover it in a way that even math-phobic people, like myself, can understand. Here’s the sum of it. 

The Inverse-Square Law describes how point-source light spreads out over an area. Intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between light source and the measuring point. Got that? If not, relax. 

I’m going to be a bit heretical here and save you the pain of memorizing a math formula that you’ll probably never calculate. Those who run this computation are more likely to be engineers involved with the I.E.S. (Illuminating Engineering Society) than I.A.T.S.E. (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees). For the rest of us lighting folk, I offer you a rule of thumb that I hope you’ll find more accessible:

• Reducing the distance to a light by one-fourth doubles the brightness. 
• Increasing the distance from a light by one-fourth halves the brightness. 

The closer the light is to your subject, the more drastic the change of intensity for any variation in distance. This is particularly relevant today, as many LED fixtures are frequently used relatively close. 

Another reason not to worry much about the precise calculation of Inverse-Square is because it’s based on a “point source.” That requires the distance from the lamp to measuring point to be at least five times the width of the light emitting aperture. Given the larger aperture size of many LED fixtures today (such as panels and tubes), a lot of fixtures don’t fit the “point source” description at the distance they’re used. 

Precise point-source calculations simply aren’t useful in predicting the light drop-off of large aperture sources. Intensity still changes over distance, but not in the manner that the Inverse-Square Law promises. If we’re interested in the practical application of light, we must accept that reality beats theory every time. Fortunately, there are lighting techniques designed to smooth the intensity that don’t require advanced math skills.

Let’s look at an example where a point-source light is relatively close to the subject. In this case, our subject is 6 feet from the light, and the intensity measures 100 foot-candles. Moving the subject just 18 inches towards the light (which is ¼ the total distance) doubles the brightness to 200 fc. 

This drastic change works in both directions. Moving the subject away from the light by the same 18 inches will halve the intensity to 50 fc. Those changes are huge from the standpoint of camera exposure. One short step in either direction would result in being over-exposed, or underexposed, by a full f stop. Fortunately, there are practical techniques to minimize this impact.

Making Artificial Light More Natural
Our goal in covering this isn’t just about sidestepping the Inverse-Square Law. Minimizing the impact of abrupt-intensity-change benefits more than just minimizing exposure swings. Lighting that’s consistent across a broad area appears more natural. 

As in most things, nature is the best teacher. Our most fundamental light source is the sun. At its relatively infinite distance from the Earth, its rays are parallel. Collimated rays aren’t impacted in a meaningful way by The Inverse-Square Law. The sun is a prime example of how great distances between the light source and the subject minimize intensity changes. By the time sunlight enters our neighborhood, the intensity will be the same all along its path.

Light in the real world tends to vary brightness more subtly than our added production lighting.  Practical lamps cast their light in accord with our expectations of the real world. If you want your reel world to look like the real world, your lighting would do well to follow nature. 

The way you create your lighting should be invisible to the audience. In support of that goal, masking the impact of the Inverse-Square Law is akin to smoothing the brush strokes of a painting. If your aim is realism, let your audience be free to concentrate on what you’ve painted, rather than how you’ve painted it.

Tips on How to Finagle the Inverse-Square Law
Distance: The primary technique to mitigate abrupt intensity change is to work the lights from farther away. This approach requires more output from your lights to deliver the desired intensity from a greater distance. Higher-output fixtures, with excellent color fidelity, are always a good choice. It’s better to dim down a powerful light fixture than have to move an under-powered one closer. Avoid close-in fixtures whenever possible.

Modifiers: Another means to finagle the Inverse-Square Law is to change the intensity by intervening along the path of the light. Light is malleable. Shaping and shading light can be done with a variety of modifiers. Scrims, flags, nets, reflectors and diffusers can be inserted into the light path to manipulate both the quantity and quality of the light. 

One common technique to “cheat” the Inverse-Square Law with a Fresnel is to place a half-double scrim in the accessory slot. The scrim can be positioned to hold back whichever part of the beam would otherwise be too bright for the nearby subject. This is especially useful in smoothing the intensity whenever talent moves toward a light. 

Nets, diffusion filters and flags are some of the different modifiers that can be placed in the beam to selectively reduce parts of the total area. Whether clipped to the barn doors or held more precisely by C-Stands and gobo arms along the path, these modifiers can attenuate selected portions of the beam to smooth intensity. 

On some beam fixtures, you can use the less-intense outer edge of the light (the “field angle,” as opposed to the central “beam angle”) to smooth and blend the light levels. Likewise, soft-lights and LED panels with “control screens” or “egg-crate” louvers may be panned or tilted slightly off the main focus to provide a less-intense light from the edges of the light. 

One novel approach to minimize the impact of the Inverse-Square Law uses mirrors and assorted reflectors to increase the total throw length of the beam’s path. This effectively folds the light to increase the light-to-subject distance. This unconventional technique has been well-demonstrated by Cinematographers Dedo Weigert and Christian Berger to excellent effect.

Even though physics dictates the behavior of light, we have the tools and techniques to sidestep those limits to better serve our purpose. Inverse-Square turns out to be more of a suggestion than an unbreakable law. 

Of all the cultural advances that have fostered humanity, the most important may have been the discovery of fire. The ability to harness the heat and light of fire helped elevate humanity from just another species scrambling for survival, to become spacefarers. Harnessing light is a quest that threads its way through history—LEDs being the latest chapter in that story.

The development of LEDs follows a repeating path of light source breakthroughs. In previous eras, oil lamps, gas lighting and incandescent fixtures all went through a process of becoming more refined and perfected during their time. Right now, LEDs are just emerging from the awkward teenage years.

In evolutionary terms, the advent of LED is nothing short of a revolution. By comparison, incandescent light is a dinosaur. From an energy standpoint, LEDs are roughly eight times more efficient than tungsten-halogen lamps.

“Two steps forward and one step back” is the dance of technological innovation. So, it is with lighting.

Early LED fixtures remind me of the dawning of the automotive age. Carl Benz’s first car was basically an internal-combustion engine bolted to a horseless carriage. Likewise, early LED fixtures were little more than flat boards with rows of LEDs. The more sophisticated efforts were clusters of LEDs packed in the shells of traditional incandescent fixtures. In retrospect today, these were clunky, if significant steps forward.

The Case of the LED Fresnel
Many of the refinements that we had in the classic incandescent versions of “workhorse” light fixtures have suffered in the transition. One case in point is the LED Fresnel, because today’s version has a completely different optical path than the incandescent one. By comparison, lighthouses from two centuries ago have better optical design than today’s LED Fresnels. 

Those who work with “classic” studio lights will have noticed that only a few inches in the middle of LED Fresnel lens are now illuminated at “flood.” It still works, but because the area of illuminated lens is so small, the beam no longer “wraps” the face. As with all lights, the relative size of the illuminated aperture directly impacts the quality of the shadows. Such nuances may seem minor, but they are also the subtle tools of lighting as an art.

Charles Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change."

Nature tries out many designs in evolution with a randomness that’s been described as a staggering drunken sailor. Apparently, so do some designers. We’re seeing that play out now with some novel, and occasionally brilliant, designs. As in nature, only the adaptable ones survive.

Advances in LED chip density and optical design are leading these changes. Lumen-per-watt performance has already out-paced the original Department of Energy’s hypothetical limits. Likewise, the bar for acceptable color has been raised to near perfection. 

The shape of light fixtures reflects its component’s parts. The industry started with Dual In-Line Package (DIP) LEDs, which naturally gave us the original flat-panel “soft” lights. Since then LEDs have evolved at a breathtaking rate.

The best we have today are Surface-Mounted Diode (SMD) and Chip-on-Board (COB) LEDs. The density and brightness of these LEDs is increasing the way that computer chips did in their early days, but the luminous capsule is still quite large compared to either arc or incandescent lamps. That’s limited the optical design potential of fixtures to date, but the components themselves are evolving with the clearing of each technical hurdle.

Color Takes Center Stage
It’s no longer just the amount of light, but the quality of the light. Color has taken the center stage. LEDs are a discontinuous spectrum source and getting the right color mix is complicated. Like a dish out of a gourmet kitchen, it’s the mix of quality ingredients that create the desired taste. Likewise, the best light fixtures today are made by those who understand the nuanced recipes for beautiful color. The worst examples are like cold burgers from a fast-food chain: Slightly green and sickly-looking.

Both LEDs and camera sensors are discontinuous spectrum devices, so getting the right light to stimulate the sensors requires an informed understanding. Lights interact with cameras almost as paired devices. If the spectral frequencies don’t match up, nothing looks right. Fortunately, there is a shorthand way to evaluate the color quality of light fixtures.

Color quality distinguishes the best from the rest.

CRI (Color Rendering Index) and TLCI (Television Lighting Consistency Index) scores will give you a reasonably accurate basis for comparing light fixtures: a “perfect” score for CRI and TLCI is 100. Anything over 90 is fairly good, but scores of 95 or higher are considered the new benchmark for excellence. There are quite a few competing scales evaluating color quality, but CRI and TLCI scores are readily available from most manufacturers today. This, too, will change over time.

Still using incandescent and fluorescent? The clock is ticking.  

With the ongoing lamp industry consolidations and changes, you will one day find that replacement studio fluorescent lamps are simply unavailable. I’ve already seen some sites selling “gently used” fluorescent lamps—if your management needs to see the writing on the wall to move forward, consider them. Besides, your anchors shouldn’t have to dodge red hot shards of glass from exploding incandescent lamps.

To help with the transition, some manufacturers are offering LED upgrade kits for their earlier lights. This could be a good choice for fixtures with good, original build-quality. I applaud the effort to find a more sustainable equipment life cycle. Reusability makes good sense. 

The Changing Shapes of Light Fixtures
Generations of professional use and refinement have given us the traditional lighting fixtures that serve the industry today. But the advent of any new light source, such as LED, brings unique requirements that require new shapes. One such new form has been the “mono-light” lamp-head. 

Mono-lights use either proprietary or universal accessory mounts (such as Bowens) to accept a broad range of accessories. These fixtures are designed to emulate the qualities of single-purpose light fixtures with a matching attachment. They offer an adaptability that reminds me of a Swiss Army Knife: some of the “tools” work passably well, but none are the equal of the single-purpose version. I can’t imagine a grip truck filled with them but they will offer more utility for those working out of their car trunks. One multi-tool doesn’t do everything, any more than one size fits all. Perhaps it’s fine for a travel kit, but not for lighting a full studio. 

And so, we’re in the midst of great change in our lighting tools. This evolution will eventually lead to a clarification of form, but we’re a long way off from the equilibrium we had in the era of incandescent. The one constant we have today is our need to tell our stories—a task for which lighting continues to play a key role. 

LEDs have revolutionized lighting in the past 15 years, and that is especially true for television lighting. Lightweight, compact, efficient, bright and cool, LED lights have kicked all other types of television lighting to the curb.

In addition to the LED light attributes already mentioned, there is one other benefit of LEDs that makes the technology seemingly ideal for television. LED’s components come in a wide range of shapes, sizes and emissivity, so they can be packaged in many different ways. Need lights on a car’s dashboard for an action shot? LEDs are the only choice that will fit the space, provide enough light, run all night from a simple battery and not bake your talent.

One other benefit of LED lights is that you can get devices that use red, green and blue LEDs, creating lights that can be adjusted to produce any color—and some pretty impressive lighting effects.

“The ability to produce any color from a light without gels is quite attractive, and using some number of color effects lights often makes a lot of sense,” said Pete Challenger, manager of U.S. sales and support for Lupo Lighting. “Whether it makes sense to use such lights for every fixture is more open to debate.”

LEDs were the overwhelming favorite of the companies contacted for this article, and the fact that LED lights can be configured in so many different ways is an important factor in their popularity.

Light Quality
One of the lingering questions about LED lighting is the quality of the light that the fixtures make. Tungsten incandescent lights made a broad spectrum of light that worked well with camera sensors. The first LED lights targeted at television production did not have this same quality of light.

Today, lights used in television are rated for their color rendering index, which is a measure of the light’s ability to reveal colors in the object illuminated by the light. The higher the number—up to 100—the better colors are represented.

Some early LED lights targeted for television production were rated at 75 CRI, while current technology is 95 CRI and higher.

“The first panels were rated about 70 CRI and tended to be rather green—but that didn’t stop people using them back then,” Challenger said. “Now if they don’t rate in the 90s, no one would consider them.”

Challenger said that Lupo’s latest Ultrapanel series of lights have lower- and higher-efficiency versions, and the lower-efficiency line has a CRI of 98, while the higher-efficiency model has a CRI of 96.

“Either of those would have been viewed as insanely good just a year or two back,” he said.

ENG Lighting
Frezzi has long made lights popular with ENG crews, combining small size, high durability and punchy brightness that makes on-camera talent stand out on murky city streets at night. The company’s tungsten and HMI lights got the job done a couple decades ago, but it is mostly all LED now.

“Our ENG customer’s primary application is live and in-the-field stand-ups, so they’re looking for the highest-output LED in a compact/lightweight form-factor,” said Kevin Crawford, vice president of engineering for Frezzi Energy Systems in Hawthorne, N.J. “Because our Frezzi SkyLight uses a single-source LED element, it provides a smooth, flat optical field with a single shadow and the intensity of an HMI in a user-friendly and small fixture.”

Are LED fixtures good enough to push HMI lights from the market, however?

“We also see the HMIs are being phased out rapidly for LEDs, even though they produce beautiful light,” Crawford said. “The product trend we see is for LEDs to replace tungsten and HMIs, as LEDs are becoming more efficient and continually improving in quality.”

Crawford said that LED is the light technology of the foreseeable future.

“LEDs are here to stay and always improving output, quality of light and efficiency,” he said.  “HMIs have a much higher cost of operation/ownership, plus UV concerns, and lamp life is typically only 200 hours vs. 50,000 hours for LEDs. With new tunable LED single-source elements, we are mapping out adjustable color temperature fixtures [3200-5600K], while maintaining HMI-type output in a compact fixture.”

Form-Factor Finesse
LED lighting fixtures are available in many more shapes and designs than was possible with tungsten and HMI fixtures. One reason why is because of the high-efficiency/low-heat nature of LEDs—you can just package them in many different ways, and use a range of diffusing techniques to get the lighting effect you want.

“For LED fixtures, there are many different types of light modifiers now available, so end users can bounce and diffuse the light to change the size of the illuminated surface area, to get the desired result,” said Michael Herbert, product manager for Litepanels. “What is increasingly important is that the LED light itself has enough output to be used with a range of different modifiers.” 

This is partially why Lietpanels is seeing a trend toward “hard” LED light sources, Herbert added. 

“These high-output fixtures can throw beams of light through windows to simulate midday sunlight, but then can be pushed through multiple layers of diffusion to create a much softer lighting effect,” he said.

One benefit of LED lights is its excellent efficiency: They make a lot of light using a modest amount of power. Will this efficiency continue to improve over time?

“It has been increasing for many years, but we’re starting to see it level off,” Herbert said. “Unlike the general lighting industry, television and film lighting has to pay attention to the color quality of the LEDs. There’s an inverse relationship between color quality and LED efficiency—the more you focus on a broad, full-spectrum LED, the less efficient it’s going to be at converting electricity into light.”

How does the efficiency of LED lights compare with tungsten and HMI lights?

“Film lighting fixtures are now typically surpassing 100 lm/W, which is much more efficient than tungsten, but only about on a par with HMI,” Herbert said. “I think we will continue to see smaller, more incremental improvements in LED efficiency, but with an increasing focus on improving the color quality.”

White vs. Color
As is true for many technical situations, having flexibility is a good thing—if you understand how to use it and keep the parameters of the device in mind. Beginning several years ago, there was great interest in lights that had red, green, blue and white emitters; lights that could create light of any color and even produce effects like ambulance lights or mimic the light from a fireplace. 

Such lights are still popular for many applications, and they can be the right thing for a range of applications. However, the key is that you need to understand what the light can do and how to get it to produce the light you need for your project.

“Just a couple of years ago everyone wanted RGBW lights, but in recent years the market has been asking for high-quality white light in fixed color temperature or in bi-color without RGB,” said Toby Sali, co-owner of BB&S Lighting. “What we hear from professionals is that the option to use RGB is not needed, and most of the time creates issues because of the option to add colors to the white light.”

Although LED components are generally stable, there is a little aging over time and slight variations among similar components.

“The problem with most RGBW fixtures is the calibration of the mixing of the different LEDs,” Sali said. “No LED is the same, and variations from diode-to-diode affect blending the RGBW colors to get the color temperature you want.”

A Match for Cameras?
So just how good are today’s LED lights? Ultimately, a camera has to capture the scene that the light is illuminating, so how well do today’s lights work with today’s cameras? Do tungsten lights still have an advantage in color purity?

“Matching tungsten really doesn’t matter much anymore in most cases,” Challenger said. “The issue is that all LED sources have non-continuous spectra— different manufacturers’ cameras have quite different spectral response, so it comes down to how the peaks and valleys of the LED spectrum align with camera sensors. My personal recommendation is, despite whatever color index is popular at the time, you should test lights you are considering by viewing the results through the cameras you have, or are considering. Anything else opens you up to the risk of unpleasant surprises.”

Frezzi’s Crawford said that modern lights and modern cameras are a good match.

“Today’s cameras can balance to all types of light sources,” he said. “The LEDs we use have a very good broadcast-quality spectrum, and our SkyLight is balanced at 5600K for maximum output to compete with a full-sun day. If tungsten color temperature is required for an indoor shoot, we have a flip-down converter filter that will balance to 3200K without significant loss of output.”

It may sound trite, but in the past 15 years, LED lights have revolutionized television lighting. In addition to being all the good things mentioned above (low-weight, low-heat, high-efficiency and available in a wide array of shapes and sizes), LED lights are also economical. They are no more expensive than the technologies that preceded them, and in many cases are less expensive.

Good-quality lights at common-sense prices is one more tool that the industry has used to drive down the cost of film/video production. It’s a win-win situation for creators—the gear keeps getting better, while the cost goes down.

It’s a great time to be creating content.

In my earlier columns we looked at some of the basics of lighting. As a quick recap, light and shadow work together to create the shading (or “chiaroscuro,” as Renaissance artists called it) to reveal dimensional form. Those visual cues enable a flat medium, like television (or a painter’s canvas), to look three-dimensional. There are other visual cues involved, but here we’re concerned with those created by lighting.

Studio and Field
Moving beyond that theoretical groundwork, let’s consider the practical business of lighting for television. For our purposes, we can break down television lighting into two basic categories: studio and field.

Studio lighting is exemplified by the creation of a plausible space within a controlled environment that’s basically a blank slate. Within its ideal confines, power is always ample, hanging positions are plentiful, and the only limits to what you can create are your imagination and the size of your budget. 

And then there’s the world of field shoots—barely contained chaos, with a deadline. Field lighting is typified by constraints beyond the control of the photojournalist, including location, time of day and accessibility. 

Freelance photojournalist Jerry Hattan has his own ways of controlling contrast.

“It’s not just about adding more light.” he said. Working “with” the location is always better than trying to “muscle” a solution with brute force. But everything you want to be seen in the picture has to be within the limits of the camera’s contrast range. This is where lighting skills and ingenuity come into play.

Controlling brightness and reducing contrast is fundamental to field lighting. Midday sunlight can reach 10,000 footcandle or more—that’s very bright. You can’t just match those intensities on the talent, because anything more than 2,500 fc will cause people to squint, which is never a good look. 

So how do you reduce the contrast between the background and the talent? To an extent, you add “some” light on the talent, but you must also reduce the brightness of the background. Hattan offers an example. 

“Take advantage of the natural shade to get the talent out of the direct sunlight,” he said. “Once you’ve softened or eliminated the direct sun, you can add your own lights from a more flattering angle. Making sure the reporters look good is always an important part of the job.”

When existing shade isn’t available, you may need to make your own. Frame-mounted diffusion can create shade and soft fill light, instead of harsh shadows from the direct sunlight. But that requires additional gear.

“How we light the talent is often determined by what we can bring to the location” according to cameraman Roger Brooks, of Brooks Video Production & Lighting in Houston. Brooks and Hattan often work together when projects require additional support equipment or a second photographer. 

To transport that additional equipment, Brooks notes that “If it doesn’t have wheels, you’re in a world of hurt.” This is why his gear always travels on carts. “There’s almost always a ramp, so rolling carts is an easy way to have the equipment right where it’s needed. You never want to have to go back to the van for something forgotten.”

Even with carts, the equipment still needs to be compact. Several companies make breakdown frames for mounting textiles that can modify or completely block the light. Stands and shot bags are also essential grip equipment to safely support them. 

For Example…
A 6X6 silk diffusion does a great job softening the sunlight, but it’s wise to remember that it can become an unruly sail on a windy day. In addition to solid stands and shot bags, it also takes more people to safely handle the gear in such conditions, (Fig. 1).

Another effective way to control bright backgrounds is to add a special double-net screen behind the talent, according to Brooks, (Fig. 2). This technique reduces the background brightness by a full stop from the camera’s perspective, yet it’s transparent to the camera when shot at a wide aperture. It often takes a combination of techniques and equipment to yield the desired look.

“It’s not just the setup. When things change—and they always do outdoors—you have to respond quickly,” said Hattan.

Evening shots present contrast problems of a different kind. Nighttime calls for creating layers of separation in the darkness to keep the image from looking flat. This is where backlights are essential to ensure talent doesn’t disappear into a dark background, (Fig. 3.)

Today, LED lights justifiably dominate the field. The best of them have excellent output and nearly perfect color rendering. They can be dimmed to match changing intensities without color shift, and many are bicolor (if not full color) to match ambient-correlated color temperature. 

Although fluorescent, HMI and even incandescent are still used (and useful), no previous light source has the range of flexibility found with LED lights today. And while I may miss the direct simplicity of making light by heating a tungsten coil, I don’t miss the low efficiency and waste heat of incandescent.

Those older light sources will eventually fade into the sunset, replaced by LEDs. As it was with gas lights and kerosene lanterns before them, they’ll soon become quaint relics—more appropriate for nostalgic occasions than lighting sets. 

We’re already used to it. 

Bruce Aleksander invites comments from those interested in lighting at TVLightingguy@hotmail.com.

MUNICH—DoPchoice has introduced new creative tools that can be used with the Rotolight Titan X1 and Velvet Kosmos LED lighting fixtures.

For the Rotolight Titan X1, DoPchoice has created a Snapbag softbox that slides out of its own carry bag, snaps up and mounts directly on the fixture, the company says. The Snapbag is sized at 24x24x13 inches and weighs 1.32 pounds. It features a silver interior for illumination distribution and matching diffusion. The Snapbag can be used with or without the DoPchoice dedicated 40-degree Snapgrid.

Another new tool is the Rabbit Ears mounting system. The Rabbit Ears Mini combined with a dedicated Titan bracket offers compatibility with six DoPchoice softboxes: Octa 3-foot, 5-foot and 7-foot with or without matching grids; Lantern 3-foot and 5-foot; and the Snapbag Medium.

DoPchoice says it offers similar lighting controlling solutions that work with the Titan X2.

For the Kosmos Studio 400 lighting system, DoPchoice has created softeners and shapers to accentuate the light’s spread. This includes a ring-shaped Rabbit Rounder mount for the Kosmos Snapbag that interfaces with the rectangular, instant snap-up Snapbag. DoPchoice’s pyramid baffle is sewn into the center, which enables the interior silver sidewalls to reflect illumination outward for a spot-free, even spread, per DoPchoice.

DoPchoice’s 30-degree and 40-degree Snapgrids are designed for light direction and can be snapped up instantly for their flat bag and positioned in front of the fixture. 

There is also the spherical Lantern for Kosmos, a round softener that comes in 39x39x31 inches and weighs 4.19 pounds. It comes complete with two 90-degree skirts that hook and loop on to control spin, Magic Cloth diffusion and a black bag for transport.

For more information, visit www.dopchoice.com.  

Bridgeville, Penn. – Dec. 10, 2019 – Brightline, a leading manufacturer of energy efficient lighting systems, today announced it now offers technical support through Zoom for its resellers, integrators, and clients. The cloud-based videoconferencing system allows Brightline to program light fixtures remotely, re-focus, visually diagnose potential issues, and perform other troubleshooting.

“Zoom service is ideal for time-critical issues,” explained Kathy Katz, Brightline managing partner. “You don’t have to struggle through a phone call without visuals or schedule onsite service. Zoom gives us ‘eyes’ in the room.”

Beyond its new Zoom-based technical support, Brightline offers project design and consultation, and through its network, turnkey installation and commissioning services.

“In addition to being a fixture manufacturer, we strive to provide lighting solutions for our partners and clients,” Katz added. “From broadcast studios to large auditoriums, we have the right system and the right people to ensure ideal lighting integration.”

To request a free Zoom technical call, contact technical support at techservice@brightlines.com.

About Brightline
A leading manufacturer of energy-efficient lighting systems for broadcast, videoconference, eLearning, and government, Brightline’s mission is to enable communication through clarity. With more than 5,000 customers in over 35 countries, Brightline specializes in enhancing the presentation of visual images by providing high quality, environmentally responsible, and cost-effective evolutionary lighting solutions. Get enlightened at brightlines.com.

CADILLAC, Mich.—The 24-hour news Diginet NewsNet debuted its new on-air look from its new studios, the headline news channel announced this week.

Broadcasting from a new facility under construction since May, NewsNet has deployed a variety of new technology, including LED lighting that changes colors for different dayparts, multiple video monitors and a state-of-the-art weather center, which will allow for more in-depth forecasting, the broadcaster said.

As part of its makeover, the broadcaster has revamped its “NewsNet Mornings” morning show, which is hosted by Samana Sheikh.

“The new ‘NewsNet Mornings’ provides an even fresher, more energetic look at the morning’s headlines than our previous ‘Morning Edition,’ but we’re just getting started,” said NewsNet President Eric Wotila, “In the coming weeks and months, we plan to show off even more of the features of our new facility, all of which will allow us to bring viewers even more news, more often than ever before.”

The broadcaster also has changed its afternoon lineup. Previously, “NewsNet Midday Edition” aired from noon till 7 p.m., but now airs from noon till 4 p.m. EDT. “NewsNet Continuing Coverage” now airs from 4 p.m. till 8 p.m. EDT, the broadcaster said.

“Charlie Tinker will continue to cover the latest national headlines throughout the afternoon hours, but both ‘Midday Edition’ and ‘Continuing Coverage’ have a whole new look thanks to our new set, and a new graphics package which debuted today,” explained Wotila.

Besides its national broadcasters, the new NewsNet facilities will make it possible for the network to produce local news cut-ins for affiliates—many of which have limited of no news production capabilities.

“With the launch of our new facility, we’ll soon be expanding on the local content production services available to our affiliates—making it extremely economical for small stations to add not only 24/7 national news to their subchannel lineups, but create their very own, localized 24/7 news channels as well,” said Wotila.

Stations interested in learning more about NewsNet affiliations or subscriptions can request information by emailing: email affiliates@yournewsnet.com.