GEAR! I love gear, if you start asking questions about cameras and lens or really anything video production related, hope you're ready to buckle down for a while. This will probably be an ongoing series where I talk about gear that I'm working with, interested in, or just want to ramble about for a while.
There's three three main questions I ask myself before I invest in a piece of gear. What does the gear provide quality wise, how often am I going to use something, and how expensive is it? I'm looking for anything that's going to increase the creative possibilities available to me or to make it easier for me to get the look I want. On top of that, if I'm going to actually invest in something, it should be something that I will be using on a consistent basis to make it worth the money.
Which brings us to me making kind of a gut instinct purchase on two of these Ikan lights. They were on sale at B&H and I thought "Ehhhh why not". They seemed pretty neat, bi-color, battery operated, LCD readout, pretty light weight, and bright. Good chance they'd be a very portable light I could throw in my kit and could put pretty much anywhere. Way easier to handle than my other larger LED lights and I don't have to worry about having power nearby. Cool, let's do it!
Here's a few pics of what they look like.
Build quality wise, they're fine. The plastic doesn't feel the cheapest and the dials and knobs have a nice feel. We'll see how they hold up over time. The case it comes in is not bad, layout is logical and I think it'll be easy to grab the set for a quick shoot.
I set up the lights for a quick demo and noticed a few things.
- They're actually pretty bright.
- The barn doors are not as effective as I would have liked.
One of the main issues with the barn doors is that they create kind of a striation pattern on the wall. Since each LED is a point source in itself, each row is getting cut off at a different angle, causing a weird pattern to show up on the wall. Not the first time I've seen this happen before but I forgot this would be a problem with this kind of light. Also, I don't love the way they lock into the unit itself. There's a tiny little lock that holds it in place, was hoping for something a little more secure.
Here's what they look like for a two light set:
Was moving kind of quick, pretty sure the settings were 24fps, 1/48th shutter speed, 400ISO, T2.8 on a C200. Was happy with how bright they were in a completely dark setting. Thanks to Steve Szmed for giving an A+ model face turn.
Are they worth the original list price? Maybe, but probably not. Unless you're doing a shoulder rig ENG style set up, I wouldn't put them on camera, definitely not a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The build quality is fine, nothing to write home about. Barn doors are a nice idea, but at the end of the day, the fact that it's an LED panel means it's very difficult to actually shape the light like you would with a Fresnel. The included accessories aren't bad, but again, don't really blow me away (although the included ball head is actually a little bit better in build quality than I was expecting, we'll see how long it lasts).
BUT, for the price I got them, I'm actually pretty happy. I can see them being very effective for an on the go video interview setup. Get an extra set of batteries for the both of them and I can quickly get a two light set up that can go pretty much anywhere. No cords or cables, just the lights. Also, I can pretty easily add some extra rigging to the barn doors to make it easy to throw some diffusion in front of it. Now, there are dozens of other lights that will perform a similar function to these lights, Westcott's ice lights are one of them as are the off brand Younoung's, but stuff like the LED readout, the bi-color capability, and the ability to attach diffusion right on the barn doors makes it worth it to me.
I'm still looking for a more affordable LED light that's a little more controllable, but these will do well for now I think. Good chance I'll write an update after I've used them some more (or haven't haha).