Old vs New Movie Lights (Tungsten vs Led)?

Is there a difference between Tungsten and Led technology in light quality? On paper yes, but does it apply to real-world applications?
Watch the video to find out.
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[@alextempletYT]

You know this video only told me "if you wanna save a lot of money when starting out filming, and have the space, strength, and power requirements to run them, tungsten lights are a great option to save a ton of money on good quality lighting."

[@UbiquitousBooks]

The shot at 3:02 looks great: composition, lighting, colour. The whole thing is nice! Great work.

[@Visualsthatgohard]

Riiiiiiight, it’s so beautiful

[@thundering1]

Something that doesn't get mentioned a lot is that film and tungsten lighting co-developed together for over 50 years. This "newcomer LED lighting" was doing its best to pump out as much light as tungsten (halogen) and be a certain color temperature - but the way it reacted to surfaces in falloff didn't react the same as tungsten. There was definitely more green in there. It's gotten a LOT better these days, to where - yeah - a more fine-tuned color correction eliminates almost every difference, making them so slight as to be practically nonexistent. I still have a 600w Arri, and 2 250w units, that I will likely NEVER get rid of, but they stay on the shelf more and more. They make the set hot, and often uncomfortable, and use more electricity on location - and I can use more units that are LEDs to light up an area and have Amps to spare in comparison.

[@PerroneFord]

There are two very specific things about tungsten that I love. Early LED lights had flicker. Especially if you were shooting for slow motion, or using odd shutter angles. I believe the newer LEDs have solved this problem. But one thing an actor told me always stuck with me. with tungsten they could literally FEEL when the light hit them in a certain place and they knew they were on their marks. LEDs just don't give you that feedback. Don't get my wrong, I have numerous LEDs and am investing in more. I skipped HMI as I never really liked them, but did do some fluorescents. LEDs are getting very powerful, are efficient, can be lighter weight, are safer, etc. I've got Aputure, Godox UL150s, and some Nanlite as well. Lovely stuff. but I use my Mole Richardson Tungsten lights any time I can. :)

[@craigrryan86]

Everything matters! The feeling of the heat from tungsten light is akin to the sound of film running in the mag. It commands respect and attentive filmmaking. It was better.

[@Skapo]

I have tested the Aputure lights a few years ago for flicker. I had to go above 18,800fps to see any flicker at full blast. At lower brightnesses I could see flicker above 10,000fps or so. Was using a Phantom v1611 along side a Phantom MIRO LC321s. Some of the newer LEDs are rated above 200,000fps flicker free (I believe it was Nanlight advertising that but I may be misremembering). Needless to say flicker is a non-issue on basically any of the new cinema LED lights. Especially if you use Aputure & above from a brand quality perspective.

[@TheHateClub]

interesting comparison, thanks!

[@Pierorocks]

I love how tungsten looks, but every year with the increase in LED tech it becomes harder to vouch for them. I still prefer a tungsten bulb practical all day every day, but for an output to energy use level LED's allow me to use more lights for less power consumption which I like. But yes you are right tungsten lights just give you that good stuff for skin tones, can't wait for LED's to hit that 100 cri point haha

[@gabrielvalverde6133]

as a indie filmmaker living in a hot environment, i always hate how tungsten lights make every set a oven

[@barisdemiray]

Really helpful one! Thanks

[@nshea3286]

Tungsten lights also have a ton of IR pollution, in addition to being hot and power inefficient. Any green/magenta shift now, is largely the result of the camera. It expects to see a Tungsten spectrum and the color transfer curve of the camera may read the LED spectrum as slightly green or magenta. White balance is the easy fix. Take any new LED at 3200k, above 90 SSI, white balance and you'll be hard pressed to see any difference.

[@nativestrong7253]

The differences are blatant

[@LizNeptune]

definitely have a lot to learn about lighting!

[@lonniesshow]

Thanks for the keen insights!!! : )

[@samaBR333]

it's not identical but it works very well. i prefer to work with LED, usually it's more portable. the rent prices here in Brazil are not that different from one to another. great video and ligthing! keep up

[@jimmyonfilm]

Definitely! LED, at the end of the day, is so much more convenient! Thanks man!

[@cokebottles6919]

I love the look and affordability of tungsten. They're easy to look past with the advent of so many great LED options. RGB LED's, light mats/tubes, and tiny battery powered LED's have really changed the game... But if you need a strong pointed source, don't want to worry about green/magenta color casts, and have enough power, Tungsten is every bit as useful today and they're incredibly cheap. I picked up 3x used 1k par can's for $12 each. In narrow spot, they can imitate warm sunlight with enough intensity to keep exteriors properly exposed +20 feet away. Add in a dimmer and some gels, and it's still less than renting an LED capable of that...

[@DuncanDimanche-sreview]

great review

[@DanielScottFilms]

Great vid! I started out with a couple of small tungsten lights. But after two lights burnt out on me on the same project, I gave up. These days high quality led lights are so good in terms of quality of rendition and are coming down in cost every year. Having a lower power draw means that I can plug my lights into a battery power inverter and shoot for hours.

[@RavinderSingh-ft5dw]

Superb

[@FitsTube]

Nice video

[@samuelluscher819]

Thankfully Aputure lights have way less of a green tint, especially compared to the Godoy unit in the video - quality costs though

[@akpevbe]

The Godox light he used in the video is Daylight and not tungsten. He had to use a gel in front of it to try get it to look tungsten.

[@jmbaillard7015]

I was all a tungsten guy but now there are powerful LED COB RGBACL, I’ve changed my mind.

[@chrisjenkins9978]

The advantages of LED over Tungsten make the choice easy.

[@craigrryan86]

They're all paint brushes; in most applications tungsten is the superior light source for cinema.

[@cbgaming08]

CRI my man

[@dam55ian]

so with modern day sensors do we still need the bigger lights for most things? i got a 4 kit of dedo's and a 300w arri and tbh i can do alot with it indoor as long as i dont need to fight the sun so that puts a twist on things as where u would use a 1k a 650 or even 300 might be enough now and the smaller lights sure still get hot but cool down faster and u can run more of them on house power so i believe there is gonna be a small move to start using these lights again as they produce the og film qualities that we like and ofc they are not that expensive to rent na d for film students i think its better to have a few 150/300/650's instead of maybe 2 aputures

[@atindrabiswasDP]

Thanks for this video dude . I've been searching for a Tungsten and led cob light power output comparison from a long time .👏👏 Can you also tell me what will be the approximate equivalent Tungsten fixture in comparison to a Nanlux evoke 1200b and 2400b . Thanks 😊

[@prestonsmith783]

Television in the US has changed to almost all LED lighting. Now skin tones on news and evening talk shows is not very good. Everybody looks pasty and cold. It seems to be something that the studio cameras can't balance out. I'm guessing it is poor CRI on big studio lights.

[@TheVefIt]

I think the shots at 4:15 still have plenty of difference, the tungsten looks way better IMO. Plus, that's considering you had the reference of the tungsten shot for your adjustments. Considering the price difference from tungsten and LEDs(professional ones that is) I still believe tungsten is very competitive, specially for low budget, and also if you plan on buying your lighting equipment.

[@hagridmedia]

during your comparisons your practical lights look beautiful. I am assuming they are tungsten (2700k?) What was your white balance here in camera?

[@jimmyonfilm]

Thanks man! Yeah the practicals where around 3000k light bulbs (and the lamp shade lowers that number a little bit). The camera was set to 3200k :)

[@jaffsotelo]

Good

[@BlaineWestropp1]

Love tests like these! Where in Italy are you?

[@jimmyonfilm]

Thanks! I’m in Milan :)

[@gsanchez922]

Just curious. You wasn't able to get rip off the green tint by add a bit of magenta tint?

[@jimmyonfilm]

Yeah I added some magenta in Davinci Resolve with printer lights and the 2 images turned out to be basically identical

[@dpixvid]

Tungsten gets hot...back in the day your always brings your gloves for teardown. Plus obviously interior space gets warmer for better or worse

[@eliegattegno5103]

If I may (15 years as electrician/gaffer), you probably should compare the two lights without bouncing. The muslin affects the quality of light. If there is a difference between Tungsten and LED, I think you will find it out with direct light (I'm honnestly not sure, LED have made huge progress those last years). And please, be a gentleman, light your model a little bit less from the side.

[@ezrarichardson279]

I don’t think that would change anything personally. If there both being bounced off the same surface then there both going to be corrected/filtered in the same way. So in theory it shouldn’t make a difference since everything else stays the same.

[@eliegattegno5103]

​@@ezrarichardson279 (Sorry for my english) I would agree on a theorically perfect bouncing surface. But all boucing surfaces will give back most light lengthwaves and absorb some others (it is why it always heats up at some point, even a mirror). In tungsten, the light spectrum is continuous and is composed with all visible light lengthwaves. Not LED. So you have no way to know that the missing lenghtwave on the model (wich is not necessarly a bad thing) comes from your LED source or the muslin.

[@ezrarichardson279]

@@eliegattegno5103 I get what you mean. I can see how that might cause differences. Most LEDS nowadays are mostly continuous though and some even surpass there tungsten counter parts (although not this one). So I don’t think it would make that big of a difference. Though, it would probably be better to remove everything that might differentiate between the two.

[@eliegattegno5103]

@@ezrarichardson279 If there is a LED source that surpass tungsten in terms of quality of light, I'm quite curious about it... As far as I know, the best LEDs goes to 97-98 CRI.

[@ezrarichardson279]

@@eliegattegno5103 based on a data base I found online there are several LEDs that have better cri’s then some tungstens with very similar spectral graphs. To me it seems like if you were to take the average LED and pair it against the average Tungsten then in general the LED will be slightly worse, but the difference would be fairly negligible (like in this video). I think most of the difference could be solved by simply paving a white card on set as reference to remove any green or magenta biasing. But even cheap video light LEDs now have a continuous spectrum and a CRI of 80+ with no absent areas. Household LEDs still have a CRI of 67 on average though lol.

[@w500nm]

You should rent an HMI and compare that to LED light quality

[@Veypurr1]

I burned my hand on a Arri T1, it hurt.

[@eliapavoni2275]

I think nowadays not using LED lights is just a matter of habit, LED are lighter, more portable, easy to use, fast to pack and unpack and most of all they are not a weapon of mass destruction, as always: honor the past but for the love of god embrace the future, i'm from Italy and here the future always comes with a huge delay, everybody is too much old school

[@craigrryan86]

LEDs are not lighter.

[@craigrryan86]

It's also a fallacy that LEDs are more environmental. Please explain to me what happens when an LED fails and needs to be thrown away? What happens to the electronics? All that plastic? Also, where are they made? Under what environmental laws?

[@eliapavoni2275]

@@craigrryan86 with "weapon of mass destruction" i mean they run very very hot, you must handle them with gloves etc and they are a pain to use because you have to wait for them to warm up and then cool down, also they warm up the environment so if you use them in a closed set in summer like i had to do last week you have to turn the AC on and also use every fan you can find in order to fight it, also the talent start to sweat a lot if the light is pointed at them and the make up department get crazy, we switched to LED the following day and the day got easier . While for the weight it ebviously depends on the model itself, for the ones we used LED turned out to be slightly lighter, and when you have to carry 4 of them that "slightly" become more convient every meter hahaha

[@eternalproductions]

Yeahhhh ...but tungsten is prettier

[@eliapavoni2275]

@@eternalproductions They are maybe worth it for big production, but for the average filmmaker it's not worth it, especially considering the modern competition

[@Dehancer]

Hi, how can we get in touch with you? We have a collaboration idea

[@jimmyonfilm]

Hi, you can email me at [e-mail]

[@sondp]

Very good video bro, this kind of comparisons are rare on KZbin.

[@EntropicStarEdits]

Godox UL series is the cheaper end. The VL and Knowleds are so much better color quality

[@zagabry7]

Are you in Italy?

[@shueibdahir]

I just realised the ul150 can outpower the arri if it had the fresnel lens

[@dam55ian]

maybe i have a 300w arri fresnel and an amaran 200x and d with the fresnel but imo sure the 200's outperform the arri in output but i find the fresnels on leds verry focussed to begin with copared to flood on an arri fresnel so 17% output with fresnel on amaran in flood mode was comparable to the arri 300w but the fresnel was a small dot of light compared to the really wide throw of the arri

[@shueibdahir]

@@dam55ian try attaching the fresnel to the amaran and you'll find the output boosted

[@dam55ian]

@@shueibdahir thats what i had in this comparison amaran with fresnel 2x at flood and arri at flood

[@OBLIVION0027]

The key grip doesn't care about lights because the key grip doesn't work with lights....

¡Jum! yo trabajé con tungsteno durante toda la carrera universitaria. Son el infierno. Se necesitan conexiones eléctricas con gran resistencia, el calor es insoportable, el sudor aparece y te arruina todo. Sobre el color: si necesitas mezclar con luz de día introduce la necesidad de filtros... todo se va complicando.

[@brianmcquain3384]

why not just get a bi colored GVM650

[@lanic3869]

Tungsten light is easy on the eyes.

[@mcadam2804]

The Key Grip has nothing to do with lighting....see Gaffer.

[@bernardo1133]

LED is future indeed, and is better for slmost everything

[@TheLatsiomichael]

I see why they laugh at the LED

[@edvardb-mh7jh]

Led has no soul

[@user-zv7lm8uk7h]

Man that girl looks beautiful in the utngsten light, then you cut to LED and she looks horrible!

[@MichelArens]

This is really misleading bcs you test a budget LED vs a real good tungsten light so pls don’t trust this video guys

[@jimmyonfilm]

Thanks for your comment. But I think the comparison stands even more because of the fact that I compared a cheap Led to a good tungsten light. And I showed that the cheap led had a slight green tint that can be very easily corrected in post. I meant to show that even a cheap Led can do a very good job. And an expensive Led like for example an arri sky panel, where you can actually input chromaticity coordinates, can only do better job. Have a good day :)

[@djentlover]

What exactly is misleading here?

[@nativestrong7253]

LED does not produce the same light. These RGb lights on set are an embarrassment to the production. Learn your craft and stop taking short cuts.