The Art of Soft and Diffused Light: An Exploration with LED Panels

When it comes to softening light and creating a flattering, diffused effect, photographers often turn to LED panels. But what sets these lights apart from other options? In this article, we'll delve into the world of LED panels, exploring their unique characteristics and features that make them a valuable addition to any lighting kit.

The Favorite Things Video: A 10-Inch LED Panel Takes Center Stage

For our recent "Favorite Things" video, we were sent a 10-inch LED panel to try out. This compact light is perfect for remote shoots and small subject lighting. With its sleek design and lightweight construction, it's easy to take on the go. The soft, even light produced by this panel makes it ideal for capturing portraits, product photography, and other applications where a flattering, diffused effect is desired.

But what truly sets this LED panel apart from others is its unique design. Unlike traditional LED panels that feature multiple small LEDs pointing outwards, this one features a ring of LEDs along the outer edge, pointing in towards the center. This clever design creates an even, soft light that's free from harsh shadows and hotspots. When we first noticed this feature, we were struck by how much more even and diffuse the light was compared to other LED panels.

The PhotoDeo Flapjack Series: A 18-Inch Monster Model with a Twist

Next, we had the opportunity to try out an 18-inch version of the PhotoDeo Flapjack series. This light is part of a new line from PhotoDeo that offers a unique take on traditional LED panels. The first thing we noticed about this light was its compact size and lightweight construction. Weighing in at just under 10 pounds, it's easy to toss into a bag or backpack for travel.

But what really sets these lights apart is their design. As mentioned earlier, they feature a ring of LEDs along the outer edge, pointing in towards the center. This clever design creates an even, soft light that's free from harsh shadows and hotspots. When we turned this light on, we were immediately struck by its soft, gentle glow. The light quality is truly comparable to high-end LED panels, making it a valuable addition to any lighting kit.

Dimmability and Power: A Game-Changer for Remote Shoots

One of the standout features of these LED lights is their dimmability. With both models, we were able to adjust the power levels from 3200K to 5600K, allowing us to fine-tune the color temperature to suit our needs. This level of control has been a game-changer for remote shoots, where it's often difficult to achieve the desired lighting effect.

In addition to their dimmability, these LED lights are also fully portable. With both models featuring Sony MPF batteries, we can easily power them on the go without needing an outlet. The compact size and lightweight construction make them easy to take with us wherever we shoot, whether it's a short film or a product photography project.

The Benefits of LEDs: No Heat, No Hassle

One of the most significant benefits of using LED lights is their low heat output. Unlike traditional lighting sources like tungsten bulbs, which can get extremely hot and require gloves to handle, these LED lights remain relatively cool to the touch. This makes them much safer to work with, especially when shooting in tight spaces or working with delicate equipment.

In addition to their safety benefits, LEDs are also incredibly versatile. With their compact size and lightweight construction, they're perfect for traveling professionals who need a reliable lighting source on the go. And with their dimmability and color temperature control, we can fine-tune the light to suit our needs, whether it's a bright, daylight-balanced effect or a soft, warm glow.

A Real-World Example: Using LEDs on Set

To demonstrate the capabilities of these LED lights, we recently shot a short film directed by my friend John Finger. The shoot was incredibly small-scale, with minimal lighting requirements. We had one main light source – a 10-inch LED panel – which we used as both a fill light and a key light.

By cranking up the power on the LED panel, we were able to create a stunning wash of soft, diffused light that filled the entire frame. This effect was perfect for capturing our subject in a warm, inviting atmosphere. And because the LED panel is so compact and lightweight, we easily moved it around the set to adjust its position and achieve the desired lighting effect.

Conclusion

LED panels have come a long way since their introduction to the market. With their unique design features, dimmability, and portability, they're now an essential tool for any serious photographer or lighting professional. By exploring these lights in more depth, we've discovered just how versatile and powerful they truly are. Whether you're shooting portraits, product photography, or just need a reliable lighting source on the go, LED panels like the ones featured here are definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's Norm from tested and Joey from tested Joey our producer here we've had them on a couple times to go behind the scenes and show you how we make our content here now in the past we've talked about some of the cameras you've used and tested and also some of the audio equipment but today we're going to talk about lighting now lighting it's actually a complex topic everyone does it a little differently and you have a lot of considerations that you'd use and you've practiced with um but just to lay out some terms you know lighting there's a primary light that you use that you think about yeah when you think about like the most basic lighting setup you think about uh three-point lighting that's your key light your fill light and your back light um that's kind of how we approach this so we're a small crew so we generally approach like that we use one key light maybe one fill or maybe two fills and then a you know a rim light or a back light and then a background light which lights up the background and for those different roles we actually have used different types of Lights yeah uh we have used two primary lights for most of our setups you'll see these here the kinof flow and the Airy tungsten lights these are two very different lights uh The Kino is all fluorescent based and it's it just kind of floods out light and you control that with like egg crates or diffusion silks that that soften up that light and then the Aries which are all tungsten Bas that just blast light out of these forel lenses up front and you can spot or flood those but that's a much more hard light and um you need like silks and some diffusion gels to really kind of control that the way you want to well to best illustrate how this lighting set up and what you do to light each of our shots I thought it'd be fun for you to give the viewers out there a little bit of a walking tour of our set and different setups we have and then you can explain to them how you like those environments it sounds good all right Welcome to our set this is the uh this is the live and podcast set that you've probably seen in tons of videos and podcast uh we'll start here with the the keno lights that I've used to set up so I talked about the Kino flow the the fluorescent lights that kind of just pour light out and um for this set we had some trouble because we're so close to this background here uh that we actually did something kind of different and used reverse key lights with these Keynotes we'll start front here so if you look up here we got two quad Banks and we got one big double bank and that's all just pouring down daylight uh and Daylight's important because we do a lot of like cell phone and tablet stuff and the light that those push off are more or much more cooler and and kind of give this bluish tint if you're if you're balanced for tungsten which is a warmer light that the Aries push off then you'll get this really blue glow so we wanted to we wanted to compens save for that by putting all daylight bulbs into our uh Kino flows so the light that these pour off are very even and kind of light everything up in this flat even way uh but like I said we're so close to the background that it spills a lot over there and that tends to make the whole image look a little flat so what I did was I added these two Kino flows as what's called reverse keys and what those are doing is they're aimed at the subject who are sitting here most likely looking this way to talk to each other and that light is going to come and and even or and give them some nice highlights on this side of their face and also some highlights in the hair also that highlight will help separate the separate them from the background uh with the background I left the spill there and I did add two airy 350s that are just shining a little bit of light on the poster and on this tested Banner here and that helps give it some Shadow give these give these things in the wall some Shadows against the wall which again we're going for depth and some contrast there so that helps with that and then I black taped or black wrapped all those lights up there to kind of reduce the spill in the background so that's all the live set for the standup stuff that you've seen us do we do a like a mixture of both it's a uh it's we use the the Aries as our key lights and then the kyos as our fill um so this actually isn't an area but this is the same type of bulb there's a there's a Tungsten bulb in this this big box here that's has a diffusion basically a diffusion cloth in front of it and then a blue gel to make that daylight balance cuz tongue by by by Nature are going to be tungsten base which is a much warmer temperature so this will be acted as a fill or as our key this gu our Phil and then we use Aries for some Rim lighting and some back Lighting on the subjects again to separate them from that background and if you're actually interested in hearing more about how I lit this setup uh I actually wrote a whole blog post about it with a little bit of video on kind of where I place the lights and how I defuse them and uh you can check that out the third light we use on the floor of conventions most often is uh LED lights and that's these little guys here so LED lights is kind of like the third style of light and what those are are panels of if you look closely it's just tons of little LED lights that all shine out kind of hard light usually people put little diffusion gels in front of it because because of the hard lights and also because every single one of these light sources are adding a little Shadow to something and those Shadows kind of look a little funky if they're if they're left unchecked uh and this actually leads pretty well into our next light that you saw Adam Isaac review back in December which is an LED panel that does some interesting stuff with the technology to eliminate that um that look of like multiple light sources adding more shadows and it it diffuses it in a way uh that's pretty interesting so we'll go there now and talk about that light all right Adam I love these lights you brought in uh that one that you showed last December yeah that's awesome and getting this big one in has been like just a lifesaver for like remote shoots and just the various subject lighting so now that you've had a chance to play with both of them like what have you been using guys for mostly yeah so this is the one that I brought in for the favorite things video this is a 10in LED panel and this is the one that photo Deo sent us to try out it's an 18in monster model what these are called is the photo deox Flapjack series which is kind of whatever okay we'll go with it uh but um they're really great lights and so what makes them interesting is that unlike the other LED panel that Joey showed you these aren't uh populated with a bunch of LEDs pointing out yeah it's the first thing I noticed was like there are no visible light sources tiny little light sources they were yeah and so what they have instead is a ring of LEDs pointing in along the edge along the outer edge and so it's pointing in to um the rest of the panel which is just filled with diffusion material and so what you get is this really even light like soft soft even light and you don't get any of the extra Shadows that you get from the multiple little LED Point sources and and they're also super small small like like when you start talking about diffusion you start thinking of like dim light like these get really bright yeah so we can sort of they're fully dimmable this one is daylight balance this one is a dual color model and so you can you can adjust it um all the way from from 3200 to 5600 so yeah tun into daylight yeah uh and you can plug them in to the outlet or you can run them on these Sony uh mpf batteries it looks like the big ones got like a vmount slot so you can use like big production batteries on it just two of these Sony so they've been super versatile and I mean you can they're they're I think what we've been using the most for is when we're traveling outside of the studio yeah like Adam shop we had it set up just in the side just to give out some like nice light through that because Adam shop strange because you have you have your natural light from the Skylight and you have available light from his his workbench lights and also so if you have to fly with lights um it's a miserable experience usually but this you can just sort of throw in a bag yeah it was super easy to travel with I dpd on a short film directed by my friend John finger and it was a very small set and because of the the form factor I was able to squeeze that light into very tight areas or just take it off the light sand completely and just hold it and like place on the floor and and bounce that up we use it as both a fill light for certain compositions but also I was able to crank up the power and use it as just the main key light I I think that the light quality is going to be sort of similar to like the Kos where it's going to be soft um compared to um like the tungsten bulbs one huge thing about LEDs is just that they don't get hot I mean they get slightly warm but compared to other older lights you can turn these off and throw it in the bag like right away you don't need to wait 20 minutes for everything to cool down you don't need gloves they're getting a little warm rather than burning your skin so they've been great uh I'm really happy they sent us this one to play with I guess that's the thing the the the the main drawback is that you have so fewer LEDs because they're only around the outside and so it's just there's going to be less light uh compared to an LED panel that had it populated with just like hundreds of LEDs pointing out so they're not going to put out as much light but this one puts out enough light for pretty much everything we've needed for yeah I shot with this over the weekend I shot a little stop motion thing on a table and we just had it on a SE stand Gobo armed over and just just cranked it up on tungen we had another tungsten light doing our key light and just it just gave us like a wash over the whole thing that was real nice to work with so they've been great yeah thank you for bringing them in I'm glad we have this big one now and hope to use these a lot more in the future uh so thank you guys for watching And subscribe to the channel and we'll see you guys next timehey everybody it's Norm from tested and Joey from tested Joey our producer here we've had them on a couple times to go behind the scenes and show you how we make our content here now in the past we've talked about some of the cameras you've used and tested and also some of the audio equipment but today we're going to talk about lighting now lighting it's actually a complex topic everyone does it a little differently and you have a lot of considerations that you'd use and you've practiced with um but just to lay out some terms you know lighting there's a primary light that you use that you think about yeah when you think about like the most basic lighting setup you think about uh three-point lighting that's your key light your fill light and your back light um that's kind of how we approach this so we're a small crew so we generally approach like that we use one key light maybe one fill or maybe two fills and then a you know a rim light or a back light and then a background light which lights up the background and for those different roles we actually have used different types of Lights yeah uh we have used two primary lights for most of our setups you'll see these here the kinof flow and the Airy tungsten lights these are two very different lights uh The Kino is all fluorescent based and it's it just kind of floods out light and you control that with like egg crates or diffusion silks that that soften up that light and then the Aries which are all tungsten Bas that just blast light out of these forel lenses up front and you can spot or flood those but that's a much more hard light and um you need like silks and some diffusion gels to really kind of control that the way you want to well to best illustrate how this lighting set up and what you do to light each of our shots I thought it'd be fun for you to give the viewers out there a little bit of a walking tour of our set and different setups we have and then you can explain to them how you like those environments it sounds good all right Welcome to our set this is the uh this is the live and podcast set that you've probably seen in tons of videos and podcast uh we'll start here with the the keno lights that I've used to set up so I talked about the Kino flow the the fluorescent lights that kind of just pour light out and um for this set we had some trouble because we're so close to this background here uh that we actually did something kind of different and used reverse key lights with these Keynotes we'll start front here so if you look up here we got two quad Banks and we got one big double bank and that's all just pouring down daylight uh and Daylight's important because we do a lot of like cell phone and tablet stuff and the light that those push off are more or much more cooler and and kind of give this bluish tint if you're if you're balanced for tungsten which is a warmer light that the Aries push off then you'll get this really blue glow so we wanted to we wanted to compens save for that by putting all daylight bulbs into our uh Kino flows so the light that these pour off are very even and kind of light everything up in this flat even way uh but like I said we're so close to the background that it spills a lot over there and that tends to make the whole image look a little flat so what I did was I added these two Kino flows as what's called reverse keys and what those are doing is they're aimed at the subject who are sitting here most likely looking this way to talk to each other and that light is going to come and and even or and give them some nice highlights on this side of their face and also some highlights in the hair also that highlight will help separate the separate them from the background uh with the background I left the spill there and I did add two airy 350s that are just shining a little bit of light on the poster and on this tested Banner here and that helps give it some Shadow give these give these things in the wall some Shadows against the wall which again we're going for depth and some contrast there so that helps with that and then I black taped or black wrapped all those lights up there to kind of reduce the spill in the background so that's all the live set for the standup stuff that you've seen us do we do a like a mixture of both it's a uh it's we use the the Aries as our key lights and then the kyos as our fill um so this actually isn't an area but this is the same type of bulb there's a there's a Tungsten bulb in this this big box here that's has a diffusion basically a diffusion cloth in front of it and then a blue gel to make that daylight balance cuz tongue by by by Nature are going to be tungsten base which is a much warmer temperature so this will be acted as a fill or as our key this gu our Phil and then we use Aries for some Rim lighting and some back Lighting on the subjects again to separate them from that background and if you're actually interested in hearing more about how I lit this setup uh I actually wrote a whole blog post about it with a little bit of video on kind of where I place the lights and how I defuse them and uh you can check that out the third light we use on the floor of conventions most often is uh LED lights and that's these little guys here so LED lights is kind of like the third style of light and what those are are panels of if you look closely it's just tons of little LED lights that all shine out kind of hard light usually people put little diffusion gels in front of it because because of the hard lights and also because every single one of these light sources are adding a little Shadow to something and those Shadows kind of look a little funky if they're if they're left unchecked uh and this actually leads pretty well into our next light that you saw Adam Isaac review back in December which is an LED panel that does some interesting stuff with the technology to eliminate that um that look of like multiple light sources adding more shadows and it it diffuses it in a way uh that's pretty interesting so we'll go there now and talk about that light all right Adam I love these lights you brought in uh that one that you showed last December yeah that's awesome and getting this big one in has been like just a lifesaver for like remote shoots and just the various subject lighting so now that you've had a chance to play with both of them like what have you been using guys for mostly yeah so this is the one that I brought in for the favorite things video this is a 10in LED panel and this is the one that photo Deo sent us to try out it's an 18in monster model what these are called is the photo deox Flapjack series which is kind of whatever okay we'll go with it uh but um they're really great lights and so what makes them interesting is that unlike the other LED panel that Joey showed you these aren't uh populated with a bunch of LEDs pointing out yeah it's the first thing I noticed was like there are no visible light sources tiny little light sources they were yeah and so what they have instead is a ring of LEDs pointing in along the edge along the outer edge and so it's pointing in to um the rest of the panel which is just filled with diffusion material and so what you get is this really even light like soft soft even light and you don't get any of the extra Shadows that you get from the multiple little LED Point sources and and they're also super small small like like when you start talking about diffusion you start thinking of like dim light like these get really bright yeah so we can sort of they're fully dimmable this one is daylight balance this one is a dual color model and so you can you can adjust it um all the way from from 3200 to 5600 so yeah tun into daylight yeah uh and you can plug them in to the outlet or you can run them on these Sony uh mpf batteries it looks like the big ones got like a vmount slot so you can use like big production batteries on it just two of these Sony so they've been super versatile and I mean you can they're they're I think what we've been using the most for is when we're traveling outside of the studio yeah like Adam shop we had it set up just in the side just to give out some like nice light through that because Adam shop strange because you have you have your natural light from the Skylight and you have available light from his his workbench lights and also so if you have to fly with lights um it's a miserable experience usually but this you can just sort of throw in a bag yeah it was super easy to travel with I dpd on a short film directed by my friend John finger and it was a very small set and because of the the form factor I was able to squeeze that light into very tight areas or just take it off the light sand completely and just hold it and like place on the floor and and bounce that up we use it as both a fill light for certain compositions but also I was able to crank up the power and use it as just the main key light I I think that the light quality is going to be sort of similar to like the Kos where it's going to be soft um compared to um like the tungsten bulbs one huge thing about LEDs is just that they don't get hot I mean they get slightly warm but compared to other older lights you can turn these off and throw it in the bag like right away you don't need to wait 20 minutes for everything to cool down you don't need gloves they're getting a little warm rather than burning your skin so they've been great uh I'm really happy they sent us this one to play with I guess that's the thing the the the the main drawback is that you have so fewer LEDs because they're only around the outside and so it's just there's going to be less light uh compared to an LED panel that had it populated with just like hundreds of LEDs pointing out so they're not going to put out as much light but this one puts out enough light for pretty much everything we've needed for yeah I shot with this over the weekend I shot a little stop motion thing on a table and we just had it on a SE stand Gobo armed over and just just cranked it up on tungen we had another tungsten light doing our key light and just it just gave us like a wash over the whole thing that was real nice to work with so they've been great yeah thank you for bringing them in I'm glad we have this big one now and hope to use these a lot more in the future uh so thank you guys for watching And subscribe to the channel and we'll see you guys next time\n"