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I just don't understand why all movie set lights haven't instantly been replaced by their LED equivalent. Why do people still use these things that are crazy ex

I just don't understand why all movie set lights haven't instantly been replaced by their LED equivalent. Why do people still use these things that are crazy expensive to run and can set things on fire?

usefulcat 3y ago
Color temperature, I would guess.
rtpg 3y ago
Can an LES array nicely reproduce similar color spectrums? If I had to guess I imagine the film lamps emit a pretty broad range of color.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
Light quality.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
The cost of running them isn't relevant. What is relevant: being able to get more light from a limited amount of house/set/generator power, and the control over them. They don't require a dimmer pack, just power and DMX (wired or wireless) to control their brightness, color temperature, activate special in-light effects like flickering/strobing, etc. Some directors prefer the spectrum completeness and profile from tungsten (or the ultimate, carbon-arc, which is virtually indistinguishable from the sun.) I also think there are levels of light that aren't really feasible except with carbon arc because LEDs don't like heat and that limits power density. I don't remember what movie it was, but there's a photo of an enormous balloon light - larger than an entire house - over a farmhouse somewhere in the midwest, at night. Pretty sure it wasn't LEDs as the source, but I could be wrong.
- _kb 3y ago
  Possibly the set of Nope: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xmdx0o/lighting_up_the_set_of_jordan_peeles_nope/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xmdx0.... Not a balloon, but a big diffuser with a whole bunch of Cineo 410 LED sources.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ComputerGuru 3y ago
Spectrum continuity and spikes, flicker, active cooling, ridiculously short lifespans at ridiculously high levels of brightness, and a sprinkling of “the old way is the only way”?
strogonoff 3y ago
Ever heard how painters hunt for pigments? Sure, if you run out of orange you can just mix red and yellow, but the end result will reflect different frequencies than when you used a dedicated orange pigment—meaning some oranges in your final work would look ever so slightly different (and sometimes very different under some light conditions or angles) from other oranges or from what you would like, especially over time. The situation can also be flipped and apply to light sources, and those by definition are key in photography. In case of LED light, its colour balance can be declared to match some reference Kelvin number, but because it is “fake”, a mix of spikes in the spectrum (roughly at R, G, and B for RGB LEDs, phosphorus-covered white LEDs have the spectrum more even but its own gaps and bumps), and materials of various colours can reflect inbetween those peaks, or right at those peaks, those materials can look 1) different from scene to scene and from light to light or 2) plain wrong in post production, compounding variance between camera sensors or films (which create colour from their own mix of R, G, and B), lenses, etc. Added to other flaws of LEDs, such as longevity (of cheaper units), issues with brightness and colour reproduction consistency, PWM, etc., they make a poor choice for a variety of situations[0], but in photography particularly so, particularly where colour reproduction and continuity matter (TV and film). By contrast, black body radiation—hot and more energy intensive—is a solid spectrum of even light, without spectral discontinuities or flicker at any brightness. [0] In some situations those flaws are considered acceptable. You may have noticed how two identical OLED iPhones displayed at an Apple Store, even fully reset to defaults, can have obviously different white point when you look at them side by side—that’s colour reproduction/emission variance and/or degradation over time. Similarly, you can often spot PWM flicker if you reduce brightness and squint at an OLED phone with your peripheral vision. These things don’t matter much, since 99.99% of the time we look only at our own device and our colour perception and flicker tolerance is adjusted to it. Not so with photography; you can’t afford colour variance between two different lights even in cases where it’s not noticeable to the naked eye in the moment, whereas PWM restricts your FPS and shutter angle options.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  White LEDs do not produce three narrow spectral peaks. That's only RGB LEDs, which are a very specific thing and not the norm. LED lighting uses phosphors and produces a broad spectrum. Take a CD / DVD (if you can find one in 2023) and look at the spectrum from your phone flash, or any other LED lamp, and observe the broad spectrum. They all have some sort of blue peak, but it's very small in "warm white" lights.
Aardwolf 3y ago
Bad color rendering index.

usefulcat 3y ago

Color temperature, I would guess.

rtpg 3y ago

Can an LES array nicely reproduce similar color spectrums? If I had to guess I imagine the film lamps emit a pretty broad range of color.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

Light quality.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

The cost of running them isn't relevant. What is relevant: being able to get more light from a limited amount of house/set/generator power, and the control over them. They don't require a dimmer pack, just power and DMX (wired or wireless) to control their brightness, color temperature, activate special in-light effects like flickering/strobing, etc. Some directors prefer the spectrum completeness and profile from tungsten (or the ultimate, carbon-arc, which is virtually indistinguishable from the sun.) I also think there are levels of light that aren't really feasible except with carbon arc because LEDs don't like heat and that limits power density. I don't remember what movie it was, but there's a photo of an enormous balloon light - larger than an entire house - over a farmhouse somewhere in the midwest, at night. Pretty sure it wasn't LEDs as the source, but I could be wrong.

_kb 3y ago
Possibly the set of Nope: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xmdx0o/lighting_up_the_set_of_jordan_peeles_nope/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xmdx0.... Not a balloon, but a big diffuser with a whole bunch of Cineo 410 LED sources.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ComputerGuru 3y ago

Spectrum continuity and spikes, flicker, active cooling, ridiculously short lifespans at ridiculously high levels of brightness, and a sprinkling of “the old way is the only way”?

strogonoff 3y ago

Ever heard how painters hunt for pigments? Sure, if you run out of orange you can just mix red and yellow, but the end result will reflect different frequencies than when you used a dedicated orange pigment—meaning some oranges in your final work would look ever so slightly different (and sometimes very different under some light conditions or angles) from other oranges or from what you would like, especially over time. The situation can also be flipped and apply to light sources, and those by definition are key in photography. In case of LED light, its colour balance can be declared to match some reference Kelvin number, but because it is “fake”, a mix of spikes in the spectrum (roughly at R, G, and B for RGB LEDs, phosphorus-covered white LEDs have the spectrum more even but its own gaps and bumps), and materials of various colours can reflect inbetween those peaks, or right at those peaks, those materials can look 1) different from scene to scene and from light to light or 2) plain wrong in post production, compounding variance between camera sensors or films (which create colour from their own mix of R, G, and B), lenses, etc. Added to other flaws of LEDs, such as longevity (of cheaper units), issues with brightness and colour reproduction consistency, PWM, etc., they make a poor choice for a variety of situations[0], but in photography particularly so, particularly where colour reproduction and continuity matter (TV and film). By contrast, black body radiation—hot and more energy intensive—is a solid spectrum of even light, without spectral discontinuities or flicker at any brightness. [0] In some situations those flaws are considered acceptable. You may have noticed how two identical OLED iPhones displayed at an Apple Store, even fully reset to defaults, can have obviously different white point when you look at them side by side—that’s colour reproduction/emission variance and/or degradation over time. Similarly, you can often spot PWM flicker if you reduce brightness and squint at an OLED phone with your peripheral vision. These things don’t matter much, since 99.99% of the time we look only at our own device and our colour perception and flicker tolerance is adjusted to it. Not so with photography; you can’t afford colour variance between two different lights even in cases where it’s not noticeable to the naked eye in the moment, whereas PWM restricts your FPS and shutter angle options.

HPsquared 3y ago
White LEDs do not produce three narrow spectral peaks. That's only RGB LEDs, which are a very specific thing and not the norm. LED lighting uses phosphors and produces a broad spectrum. Take a CD / DVD (if you can find one in 2023) and look at the spectrum from your phone flash, or any other LED lamp, and observe the broad spectrum. They all have some sort of blue peak, but it's very small in "warm white" lights.

Aardwolf 3y ago

Bad color rendering index.