Need a light for filming/videography to mount on camera.... Suggestions?

Preferably something with good flood and minimal artifacts. I'm a tad concerned that most LED's will be putting off too white of a light. I don't want it to be too unnatural. Not sure what other factors are important to take into consideration.

Would love to hear suggestions...

I'm not sure of the color temperature on LED's, there are others here who know better than I do. However, I do shoot a lot of photography, and color temperature is very important for still photos. I'm assuming it is for video as well. If a light is too cool it will create a blue hue to your shots, unless you adjust for color balance. Too warm, and it looks like you shot everything at sunset during a wildfire. I primarily use strobes which are balanced at 5200K to give me a daylight look. If I am shooting outside, and don't have my strobes, I use a halogen light with a 5200K balanced bulb. I'm guessing using an led outside as a fill light will make your subject much cooler than the surroundings. If it is the only source of light, it easy to adjust for though. Hope this helps!

Things to consider:

1. Color temperature: Halogen bulbs have been the standard for years due to their ability to render colors well. LEDs tend to have a very narrow spectrum, and can be a bit one dimensional...... however....... with a slight bit of filtering, possibly light amber or magenta, you can begin to achieve natural skin colors. Check out the LEE filters website. They will often send, for free, a 'filter swatch book' which contains virtually all of the their colored gels, and which happen to be the perfect size for several 1" filters for an LED flashlight.

2. Variable brightness: A common mistake is to think that you need a lot of light for the on camera light, when what you actually need most of the time is a fill light. The idea is to balance the light output of the on camera light to give a natural feel to the scene, that is, so that it doesn't particularly look like there is a light on the camera. Too much light and the background will become a sea of darkness as the camera's aperture shuts down to compensate for the extra brightness from the on camera light. So, you want to balance the light on the camera to match the background lighting, both in color of the light, and level of brightness.

3. Flood: Soft, soft, soft. Keep the light diffused and you get much more pleasing results. Here again, the 'swatch book' from LEE filters has a bunch of excellent diffuser screens to help any light, but of course, if you select a floody light to start with, you will have less do with the filters/diffusers.

So..... which lights do this. Well, my NovaTac is superb for this application, as it has an excellent tint to start with, and 22 brightness levels to choose from. I've also fashioned a filter holder by cutting out the center of a water bottle cap. It slips right over the end of the light, which fits in a mic. holder attached to the top of my camera. I got some excellent diffusion material from FASTCAR which works well too.

But just about any small AA or CR123 light will work with the proper diffuser and color filtering. Remember, video and film is a gaffers game. Experiment, play, try lots of different things to see what works for you and your situation. Have fun.

Depends on the camera, but if it's something nice like a Canon D-series, I would recommend what is meant for it, like a speedlight.

wow. Awesome replies. Excellent information!

any video camera or digital still camera can "balance" out for the blue, but they cant do nothing to bring back the RED, that is severly missing.

there are some 5mm leds that are used in cheap consumer cameras, and they seem to have more red? i donno how they got it in there, but they arent these extreeme efficency leds, which have extreemly lousey spectums.

ya need to add in red, the tiniest bit, but some at least, to your average lux or cree things, or your colors and "warmth" of the picture is funkey, even the auto white balance will get funkey acting. they dont have "LED" mode for white balances yet , manuel white balance still doesnt see the red.

course i use 3 chip cameras, that need colors of each of the RGB.

any ol led will work as Light, but for color, which can be critical on electronic light/color collection chips, you need a bit of each color, not Blue with a bit of yellowish amber tossed in.

I've had good luck with amateur production using a Surefire L4. Mine has a warm tint and decent color rendition. The floody beam is great for overall even lighting without too many hotspots... even doing on-camera interviews. Drawback is that you only have about an hour to work with so always have batteries on standby.

I'd imagine that for any decent video you would want bounced and diffused light. Look into some light umbrellas.