Are Bulbs Burned Out?

Something that has come on strong in the last few NAB’s is lights that use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of bulbs. Their advantages are great – they are lightweight, use little power, and generate almost no heat. Their disadvantages are big, too, the main one being that they are relatively low-output devices. You have to aggregate a lot of LEDs to get a usable amount of light. A new twist on the LCD camera light is provided by Zylight, which was showing two models, the Z90 and the Z50. Their hot feature is the ability to instantly produce either 3200K tungsten or 5600K daylight equivalent light – WITHOUT FILTERS – or, with the twist of a few knobs, almost any color inbetween! (This would have been great for that reporter I used to work with that always demanded a red backlight.) While not inexpensive – the Z90 kits are in the $1000 range, the Z50 around $800 – it is a good example of what a little innovation can do to a product as common as a sungun. Zylight also offers a list of accessories that can make their lights usable in many different applications.