Who thinks they can make one of these?

On a recent film set I was working on, the DP had one of these in his kit: http://www.litepanels.com/ .(Talking about the mini flood, not the ring light) They are extremely useful, and have a runtime of an hour +. Supposedly there are already gaffers that keep these on their belts so that whenever a scene needs a little bit of light here or there, they can just drop it into the scene and forget about it. Also would be good for working under cars...low profile, wide flood.. Being the led enthusiast, I figured someone here could surely build something like this, probably at a lower cost. Anyone have any ideas as to what it would take? Anyone built anything like this already? Better yet, anyone wanna try making one? :naughty:

It looks fairly easy to make, since it's just a series of LEDs.

I think I cound make one for substantially less than the $750 that they quote.

It looks like about 18 LEDs across by 7 or 8 high.

You could probably do quite well using warm white luxeons (5 at $20 each) instead of the smaller 5mm that appear tto be in the litepanel.

I am sure gadget lover and I could build you some for MUCH less than the asking price of those things. Nice package, but does not appear to be nearly $ 1000 worth.

Don't get me wrong its a very nice product in person, small knob on the side to dim the light, nice snap on battery or ac use...It just seems that it could be done alot better for a lot less...Hopefully this is the start of using led based lights in the film industry. There is no reason someone couldnt design a fan cooled cluster of lux III or V's that could sit behind a lens in place of the ballast driven HMI lights used today...but thats off topic, so...Anyone think something similar to this could be pulled off in the $400-$500 dollar range? I really need to sit down with one sometime and open it up...

I got to play around with one of the micro pro models this weekend, and I must say that they are impressive. I do agree that pelican is going in a better direction by using fewer high powered LEDs, but pelican is going for a completely different market.

Lighting for film and video needs to be very precise regrards colour temperature and evenness of illumination, especially when it is used alongside other light units. And it has to retain these properties when dimmed too. I think one element of the high cost is largely due to ensuring this accuracy. Quality lighting for movies and stills does not come cheap - just like tools in any other industry you get what you pay for.

For a home built general lighting unit though, you would probably be quite satisfied using leds just as they come off the reel.


Colin.