Incandescent bulbs are last century's technology and are on the way out. They draw a ton of power and like a right-wing pundit on talk radio, emit more heat than light. In both the home and the studio, traditional light bulbs will soon be replaced by either fluorescents or LEDs. I'm sure you've heard a lot about fluorescents (I use them in my studio), but LEDs are much more interesting in the long term and my guess is that fluorescents are just an intermiate technology. Still, LEDs are not mainstream yet and here's why.

Brightness

The first problem is brightness. Small, low-power LEDs don't produce much light, not surprisingly. This means that you either need special and expensive lamps or you need to cram a ton of lamps into a single fixture. For video lighting, you probably need to do both. It doesn't help that LEDs are frequently described as "super bright" (What the hell does that mean?) and that manufactuers have discovered that cramming dozens of lamps into a single fixture makes it seem like the light must be bright. Like K-Mart telescopes that do 900x and camcorders with 100x Zooms, 100 LED flashlights often aren't as bright as you think.

Color Temperature

LED color temps are all over the board, except white. The problem is that unlike incandescent bulbs and sunlight, which actually emit light in a broad spectrum, LEDs are designed to emit light in a very, very narrow spectrum. LEDs come in red and green and especially blue, but white is really tricky. So while incandecents tend to center around 3200K "soft" or "warm," LEDs tend to be up in the 5000K blue range. You can, of course, find fluorescents in that range as well and daylight video lights can run as high as 6500K, so color temp issues are not unique to LEDs, it is a special problem for video. And trying to figure out the color temp of LEDs from Chinese OEMs can be, well, challenging. 

Chinese Quality

Ultimately, the first two issues (brightness and color temperature) are the result of the final problem: Chinese Quality. This is not a slam on the Chinese, by any means. Chinese engineering at its best is as good as any on the planet and Chinese manufacturing is second to none. However, Chinese factories will give you exactly what you ask for and not more and, so often, we ask for cheap crap. To complain that we got what we asked for is not fair.

The best place to browse for the State of the Art (or at least the State of the State) is ebay. It seems like every small Chinese factory and Hong Kong distributor has set up a little shop on eBay. Without hands-on reviews or sold marketing claims, it can be very difficult to figure out what is being sold. Here's a short survey of what I found on eBay this morning.

Flashlights

There are tons of LED flashlights on eBay which are basically useless for video, but they do illuminate the primary problem: Some flashlights are really cheap and some are expensive and without a little inside knowlege, it's hard to know why. The problem is not the number of bulbs, but the quality. For example, this 32-bulb brushed-aluminium beauty is only $7:

So why is this single bulb $16?

Yes, that's $16, just for the bulb. No brushed-aluminum housing. No battery pack. This thing won't even work without modification. Of course the answer is "quality" and brightness, too, but how would you know without experience?

Light Bulbs

One of the most exciting areas of LED innovation is the movement of the technology from the DC battery-powered world of hand-held flashlights and into the AC powered realm of the home and home studio. It's coming, but, once again, quality is a mystery without experience. For example, here's a really interesting plug-n-play (OK, "screw-n-play," but this is a family-friendly Website) light bulb I found this morning for $5:

This is a really interesting buy from LED Wholesalers , actually. The 24-bulb lamp screws into a standard socket, $5 to your door (shipping included) and the distributor is in California (although they certainly are a Hong Kong storefront of sorts). The color temperature is warm white (so probably 2700-3100K), unlike most LEDs which push well into the blue. Downside? Brightness. The bulb is rated by the seller at 51 Lumens, which sounds about right. Your typical100w incandecent bub is going to throw well over 1,000 Lumens, so that means that this light is little more than a nightlight. Dang. But it does hint at a brighter future.

Fixtures

Complete fixtures are even more problematic, since it is pretty easy for a Chinese manufacturer to create a fixture that looks really good, toss 100+ LEDs in it and slap a pricetag on it. This fixture looks really interesting:

Looks like a 500w halogen work light, it has 130 LEDs AND it's rechargeable! Price is about $40, but I expect to see these everywhere pretty soon and the price will drop. As you can guess, however, the brightness is probably somewhere around that of a 25w incandescent, but it's hard to say, because the "specs" on the product only say "super bright." I'd also bet it's blue, which would be find for outdoors.   

Professional Fixtures

There are professional LED fixtures for video and stage that are becoming more and more interesting everyday. For example, Chauvet has some really interesting kits for stage and club lighting.Their emphasis is definitely color and strobes and movement and control, which isn't really what you need for video, but I've heard of people using this in video applications and getting great results. The price is reasonable, the white color temperature is good and I think this is the future. Another example is the FloLight from the PrompterPeople, which is 500 lamps, "rated" at 500w and costs $500. Easy!

I'd bet it does what it says it does and is worth the money, especially when you consider it's probably indestructable (I sob a little everytime I break a delicate $3 CFL).Still, the color temp is 5200K, which is niether here (3200K indoor) or there (6500K outdoor), so while it is very workable, it isn't perfect. And it's still a tad spendy.

References:

• LED Wholesalers
• Chauvet
• Prompter People