Author Topic: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?  (Read 496 times)

Husky_stuff

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So im a fairly new owner of a Chronos 1.4 and videogaphy in general. But I'm quickly falling in love with the hobby.

I built a little battery powered LED array using 6x 100 watt cool white LEDS for testing and it works well.
So now im trying to deside how many more I should make to fully utilize the Chronos? Also, I will be doing all the filming inside.

I was going to just keep making LED arrays until I was happy but then I thought asking here would be very informative.

I bet someone is going to say, " you can never have enough light" but at some point I'm going to run out of the LiFe batterys to power the LEDs.

So from experience, is 2kw of modern LED power enough or should I go for 3-4kw of LED power. right now my battery stock pile would only give me about an hour of 3.2kw but I can always make some more battery packs.

Thanks for the help!

Nikon1

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Re: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2025, 03:58:00 AM »
That largely depends on the Area you trying to light, the Aperture of the Lens and Framerate you trying to shoot at.
 Also the Distance the Lights are away from your Subject to shoot.
 for Hand-Sized Objects, you can get pretty good results from 200 to 600W of LEDs often, if you Trying to Light a whole Room and maybe even shoot higher than 1000fps, then you will need 1500+W of LEDs (or Sunlight) or a lens with a very large Aperture.

Husky_stuff

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Re: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2025, 05:09:06 AM »
Here is a picture of my set up. I do need to do the research into a differnt lens as this one has a very small depth of view.
I remember some stuff from when I took photograph way backing high school, and I think I need a lens with a higher f-stop

Husky_stuff

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Re: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2025, 05:10:27 AM »
Oh and here is the light reading that I'm currently getting.
Do far I have been filming at about 2,500fps

lyly19

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Re: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?
« Reply #4 on: February 14, 2025, 06:07:03 PM »
That largely depends on the Area you trying to light, the Aperture of the Lens and Framerate you trying to shoot at.
 Also the Distance the Lights are away from your Subject to shoot.
 for Hand-Sized Objects, you can get pretty good results from 200 to 600W of LEDs often, if you Trying to Light a whole Room and maybe even shoot higher than 1000fps, then you will need 1500+W of LEDs (or Sunlight) or a lens with a very large Aperture.
With frame rates above 1000fps, if there is no sunlight, is there a better solution than 1500W LED to ensure brightness without generating too much heat?
« Last Edit: February 14, 2025, 06:09:38 PM by lyly19 »

Nikon1

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Re: How much light is a good amount of light for slow motion filmography?
« Reply #5 on: February 14, 2025, 06:39:20 PM »
[...]
With frame rates above 1000fps, if there is no sunlight, is there a better solution than 1500W LED to ensure brightness without generating too much heat?

 You could use a very high Powered Flash for very fast Events, as the Duration of the Flash can be long enough to light the entire Event.
 This does also generate a lot of heat, but only for a Brief Moment. Not really an Option tho, if you trying to shoot anything thats going on for much longer than some Fraction of a second