LED Lighting for Photography: Kirk Tuck

Why LEDs? And what was I thinking?

The "classic."  A one-foot-by-one-foot panel from Litepanels. One of the few U.S. companies making LED panel products. Also, one of the very first.

By Kirk Tuck

So. I finished writing four books and I was ready to take a break. Then I ghost-wrote a marketing book for a friend and I was really ready to take a break. But my publisher was insistent. Didn't I have something I wanted to write for them? Well, I did have one thing I was keenly interested in, but I wasn't sure anyone else would really care. I pitched the people at Amherst Media on a book about LED lights, and they went for it.

Once I signed the contract the reality of what I'd done kicked in. With my previous books I could fall back on a rich library of past assignments done with flashes and various cameras. I could fall back on twenty-odd years of experience divining just how best to use the lights of the day. I could steal from the best, like Jon Falk, who really was so instrumental in turning us all on to portable lights, homemade battery packs, and off-camera lights.

But when it came to LED lights I was as naked and uninitiated as the next guy. In fact, when I pitched the book, I'd only done a handful of commercial assignments with the lights and just a couple of small, industrial videos. But I had a nagging sense that LED lighting equipment, mostly small panels, was poised to change photography. And video production. With that in mind, I spent a year experimenting and playing and learning everything I could about the lights. Then I sat down and pounded out my book.

Since every studio has an equipment cabinet full of electronic flashes in the form of monolights, pack-and-head systems, and battery-powered flashes, why would anyone care about a relatively low-output light source that needed some color correction intervention? Why indeed.

But as I looked over the photographic landscape I noticed a few things that gave me pause. Since everyone was using essentially the same kind of lighting and the same kinds of modifiers (flash, with umbrellas and softboxes and grids) everyone's work was starting to look like everyone else's work. Sure, some few photon workers had some post processing they'd throw into the mix for a bit of differentiation but the foundations of the images all cloyed together like visual and cultural mud.

And when I looked at the professionals a couple of generations younger than me I saw a group of people who could swim back and forth between video and stills with a fluid effortlessness that made me envious. These were people who could shoot both sides of the divide without missing a beat. But they were trained by people like me who were already mired in the sticky status quo of photographic tradition. We made sure they knew how to flash. What they needed now weredual-purpose lights. Lights that could do still life, portraits, product shots, and movies and videos without changing a thing. They were pushing for them. And I realized that was exactly what LED lighting was all about. It could go either way.

Here is the "behind the scenes shot" of the lighting set up of a product shot. Always on means always visual.

The shot from the setup above.

After two years with the LEDs I am more comfortable shooting a portrait with a continuous light source than a flash. We've started to light stuff more like DPs on movie sets and less like 1970s portrait studios.

I've done some research and I've found that my subjects are more comfortable too. Seems that repeated flash causes the pupil to contract and expand over and over again. That causes optical fatigue and headaches. It affects both the shooter and the models. Flashes also encourage blinking because people subconsciously gird themselves against the popping onslaught of photons. (Are they waves or particles? Or waves of particles?) The continuous light allows use to become habituated. Comfortable in a way that flash never does.

Soft, directional light is important to my portrait style. So are quiet poses. Nothing the output of a few inexpensive LED panels can't handle. 

I've assembled enough LED power to put a prodigious amount of lumens through a big diffusion panel and still get exposures like ƒ/5.6 at 1/250th at ISO 400. With a good camera I can push the ISO higher and get even more action stopping exposure settings. And it seems natural.

In the course of writing the book I've come across dozens of experts who tried an LED panel or two back in the early part of the century. They came away with the permanent prejudice that the lights were all over the map color-wise, and not nearly powerful enough to use with the still cameras of the day. (I remember how bad the high ISOs were on cameras like the Kodak DCS 760.) That's all changed. And the days of being dependent on using ISO 80 to get good quality are long gone.

There are compromises. They will change. Right now only the most expensive LED panels have real CRI's (color rendering indexes) of 90 or more; 90+ is thought to be the gold standard for getting really accurate color spectra. Most of the less expensive imports advertise CRI's of 80. But most of us don't shoot under "gold standard" studio conditions anyway. We've learned to shoot well in mixed light, florescent light, and combinations of daylight and artificial light.

This outside shot, done in open shade, shows that small panels can be pushed into service as fill lights. It also shows a decent color match between the fill light and the ambient daylight.

LED panels, especially the inexpensive ones, have some rough edges. They could be brighter. And almost all of them suffer from a treatable green spike (or magenta dip) in their overall spectrum. But now they are easily correctable with appropriate magenta filtration. And when using a camera like the Nikon D3s or the Canon 5D Mark III, you'll have more than enough clean ISO to do just about any kind of photo short of filling in shadows in direct sunlight.

I think they have their place in providing a new way to shoot. I'm particularly happy with the portrait work I like to do in black and white. The tonality is different from other light sources, and the subdued magenta makes for better skin tones. I like the calmness of working with them when shooting people who are unused to a traditional "flash" studio experience.

Black and white image of Amy made with one 1000 bulb LED panel "pushed" through a six-by-six-foot diffusion scrim.

So, I wrote the book and discussed what I'd found. I tossed in 250+ samples and examples and I talked about using the lights for video as well. If you've been curious about what's out there beyond flash, this book might be for you. The video guys have pushed the "new tech" market hard. There's innovation and value pricing everywhere. It's all to our advantage. The push of efficient lights with better and better rendering characteristic means we photographers pay much less for good LED lights than ever before. It may be time to stick a toe in the water and see what it's all about.

Kirk

Kirk's new book, LED Lighting: Professional Techniques for Digital Photographers (U.K. link)

Kirk's Recommended LED Products
Fancier 500 LED Light Panel ($179.99). This is the basic 500 LED light. It's got four switches on the back to ratio power. It's bare bones. No color control or battery adapter. But it's cheap and rugged.

Fancier 160 Dimmable LED Camcorder Light ($59.99). These are my favorite cheap, battery-powered LED Panels. We use them for everything. Even put them in jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. They use AA batteries or cheap, generic Lithium batteries that are a copy of the Sony camcorder batteries. They have a stepless control for power. No color control, but a slot for supplied filters.

Litepanels 1x1' 3200K/5600K Bi-Color LED Flood (pictured at the top of the post) ($2,329.95). This is definitely the high-priced spread. This is what they use in the White House News Room. And in network TV. And in the photo studios of the still photography demigods. It's the Litepanels 1x1 LED with two set of colored bulbs, daylight and tungsten. By cross fading between the two sets you can shift color balance from 3200–5600K. These are the "gold standard" of the industry. (Kirk says, "I want four. Hello, Santa?")

Fotodiox 1000ASV Still/Video LED Light Kit ($429.95). Kirk's big favorite. Here's a light that is dimmable with a rotary knob and, with a separate knob, will cross-fade between tungsten and daylight bulbs to hit any color temperature between 2300k and 5600k. It comes with an AC power adapter and is wired and plugged to accept Sony V-type 12V batteries for location use. For the price it's pretty astounding. You'll still need to add in a bit of filtration for the green spike.

Fotodiox 312AS Still/Video LED Light Kit ($158.95). And here's a smaller, lighter unit that does the two-color cross-fade along with the stepless dimming control. Comes with two generic Sony-type camcorder batteries, a charger and a set of color filters. I'm buying one right now, today, before this post goes up, so I can be sure to get one for myself [me too. —Ed.]. A perfect size in a nice kit.

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Gerry Morgan: "I've just finished reading Kirk's LED Lighting book and it's superb. The little I knew about LEDs before reading it I had gleaned from Kirk's blog. The book was a fun read and a great primer. Armed with Kirk's technical information (and safety warnings—don't stare at those LEDs), I now feel ready to get started."

Featured Comment by Rick: "...Me too! Thanks, gentlemen—I never really looked into this, as a quick search made it look like $X,XXX to get into this. But I'm now on my way.... :-) "

Featured Comment by Mike Plews: "Great piece. I'm a TV news shooter and we keep Fancier 500A fixtures in our cars for live hits. In the last year we started going from traditional live trucks to IP-based live reporting. TVU backpacks if anyone is interested. The problem with this is the loss of a full truck with its generator to run a couple of Lowel lights.

"The Fancier runs just fine off a cigarette lighter inverter or a 12v battery. The 500A also has a dimmer in addition to the individual switches. That means on night hits you can set up the camera to get the background where you want it then stand the talent in place and use the dimmer to balance it all out. You can do the same thing by feathering the lights or walking them back but when you are up against it just being able to spin a knob is very cool.

"We also put Litepanels micro instruments on top of all our cameras for run-and-gun shooting. If you want to get cute you can pull the light off and hold it at arms length to get nice off-axis light when working in the dark.

"The progress in LED lighting in the last couple of years has been amazing. You can really get a lot of light for not much dough these days. That's a good thing."

Comments

[Harvey Bernstein]

What a great post!

It gives me info, suggestions, and gets the creative juices flowing.

Thanks, Kirk, and thanks, Mike, for inviting Kirk to post it.

[David]

I have a dumb question. For something like the two lower priced models recommended, are there circumstances for which they could be used instead of traditional speedlight flashes for similar money? Still images, of course is what I'm referring to. I don't know how wattage translates to a guide number, nor if the light is focused? Thanks.

[John Parascak]

Thank you for the information. I can see these units being very handy. I took a quick look at the Fotodiox website but couldn't find information on the brightness of these units? Does your book contain any measurements like Lux, footcandle or ISO f-stop/shutter speed light meter readings?

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Does anybody think the size of pupils as shown in portraits matters much? Wider pupils allegedly show "interest". (I'm by no means convinced it makes a difference in people's perceptions of the portraits, but I've seen people saying it does.)

(This being the only draw-back of bright continuous light for portraits compared to flashes.)

[kirk tuck]

I thought I'd answer a couple of questions about output on the units. Before I start please remember that these are continuous light sources and they'll never match the intensity of a single burst of light. Don't think of them as a replacement for a powerful flash in dark night club but as a movie light for boosting illumination in most scenes. You have to use them with a different mindset. The same mindset that seems to welcome high ISO cameras with open arms....

Here's my quick test procedure. I set up three lights in a dark room.
They are all five feet from my Sekonic 758 light meter. I have the meter set at 400 ISO because that's where I seem to end up. A lot. I set the meter at a fixed shutter speed of 1/60th.

From five feet away I measured each light in turn.

The first light is the smallest and cheapest of the LED panels, the Fancier160 LED battery powered unit. Here's what I get: 1/60th, f2.8+2/10ths of a stop.

The second light is the 500 LED unit. A cheap, plug in the wall workhorse. Here's what I get: 1/60th, f4 +4/10ths of a stop.

The third light is a 1000 LED unit, without switchable color temperature, from Fotodiox. Here's what I get: 1/60th, f6.3.

All of these are measured without modifiers of any sort. The room is about 600 square feet and has 12 foot ceilings.

When I need more power I gang them together. When I use a 6 by 6 foot scrim, for example, I might use two 1,000 LED panels and a 500 LED panel to get the spread and the level I want for a nice soft spread and a workable aperture. YMMV but I like to work at f2.8 and f4 for portraits. I like to have a quick transition to "out of focus" in the backgrounds. That's my style.

When used with a Canon 5dmk2 I don't really mind shooting some stuff at ISO 3200 and in those cases I get 1/500th at f2.8+2/10th out of even the smallest panel.

It's not flash. It's an alternate universe.

We've mentioned mostly mainstream panels but if you have the budget and the need there are panels from companies like Nila that make powerful LED fixtures for the movie industry. You can even go toe to toe with sunlight if you've got the budget.

If you're shooting video these lights are perfect to meld into a typical home or office scene while blending LED with existing light. The LED's, in those applications, tend to be used to add character to flat light or fill to contrasty light.

And it's fun to do WYSIWYG without singeing yourself.

[Jim Bullard]

I'll vouch for the book. I'd been looking at LEDs but hesitating until I read your book. Now I have three small ones (most of my work is natural light and they will be used as supplemental light) and I have a dimmable ring ling light on order for macro work. Thanks for your great advice Kirk.

[kirk tuck]

David, Most photographers use fairly bright modeling lights on their strobes in the studio and on location. The pupils will pretty much be the same. The only time you'll get the "heroin addict" pupil look is shooting with a flash, no modeling light, in a dark room.

[Alex Bier]

I don't know if this is completely off-topic, but LEDs have been quietly revolutionizing a few other markets as well--bicycle headlamps are one of them. The spectrum out of them is awful, but the lumens-per-pound is hard to believe. NiteRider makes a 3000 lumen system that will throw more light than an automotive headlamp. The weight is under two pounds and it'll run at full power for an hour and a half...or a day and a half if you turn it all the way down.

[Chris Lucianu]

About time a real photographer wrote a real book about real work with LED lighting, and who better than Kirk Tuck to do it.
I've been using LED lights, mostly rings, with all their imperfections, for macro field work since Nikon introduced the SL-1 LED ring for their 9xx Coolpix series way back when. Many people don't realise what a relief LED lighting can be: there are many situations in the field where flash simply is not an option, and conventional studio lighting not practicable.

Having committed every rookie mistake, I now think I have both enough motivation and experience to learn from Kirk's book how to do it right.

An LED aside for the energy-conscious: after my field experience with LED lights, I converted my home over the past three years to 100% LED lighting, using quality high-output LEDs. Ambiental light has increased by over 30% where required, whereas electric energy consumption for lighting is now between 17% and 28% of the previous level, which already included CCFL and high-efficiency halogen for more than half the lights. All investments will be recouped in another 36 months through energy savings. And winter SAD, to the extent that light can prevent it, is now a thing of the past:)

[Gerry Morgan]

Kirk, I notice that you always use either a DSLR or Micro Four Thirds camera for your shots. Because still photography is important to you, that makes sense. But for someone who will only be shooting video (and who also cares about sound), do you think it's better to go for a DSLR or MFT camera, or to choose a dedicated video camera in a similar price range.

[RohithT]

Kirk - what do you think of the Westcott ICE Light? It looks pretty interesting since it's a battery-powered daylight balanced LED stick, but isn't exactly cheap at $500.

[ault]

Anyone else a bit put off by the way the rectangular-ish specular highlights that these produce in the subject's eyes?

[Matthew Miller]

Take a look at the new "Color Quality Scale" developed by NIST to replace CRI. Unfortunately, CRI doesn't correspond well to human perception in some critical situations — like, with skin tones, or anything highly saturated. This gives LEDs higher scores than they maybe should get, so I'd beware of those 90+ ratings. I'm not saying Kirk is wrong (because clearly he's able to do impressive work this way, and that's what matters), but LEDs do have a ways go to yet on color reproduction. See more at http://www.nist.gov/pml/div685/grp05/vision_color.cfm

[Keith I]

Thanks, Kirk! I have had your book in my Amazon wish list for a while, so I finally pulled the trigger on that and the 312AS, plus another book Mike had recommended a while back.

[don marc]

I'm sure led will rule the world soon. A friend of mine did a reportage shoot, night portraits at natural settings, recently using a bicycle led lights, and the results were impressive.

I think more photgraphers should try lighting with Kino Flos and other similar fluo tube continous light. They'll be surprised.

[Ed]

I would like to light macro (cheap, dirt cheap and cheaper if possible) without relying on the fision reactor humans call Sol, any ideas? Macro needs a point light source and a coldlight would be an option but that would set me back at least half a grant and that is not concidered cheap (were I come from at least).

Now mr. Falcon eyes offers this:

http://www.falconeyes.eu/nieuws/new-slpk-2120ltv-led-shooting-table/

For about 200 dollars (cheap even from my point of view). Would that be usable for macro mr. Tuck, or does anyone else of the crowd have some sound advice based on experience?

Greetings, Ed

[Michael]

I have one panel purchased 4-5 years ago its ok and have used it a lot, its a Chinese light I bought in SIngapore, colour balance - forget it but that can be fixed up in PS I have been looking for others After reading this I started to look further as I have wanted another for sometime and found this gem. It's Australian designed by Jerry Ghionis but made in the USA by Wescott its called an Ice light and it looks brilliant (lol) Used in conjunction with panels it has wonderful possibilities ...