Like the 500, this unit has 500 bulbs, but 250 are daylight balanced, 250 are incandescent. Figure 4. The Adorama Flashpoint 500C LED dimmable light.

Given the improved mounting options and fit and finish, Jan Ozer reports that hed buy it in a heartbeat if it offered all daylight-balanced bulbs.

It was the first time that Ive worked with LED lights, and now Im totally sold on LED lighting--so much so that Ive put my bulky CF softboxes up for sale.

The Flashpoint lights themselves had some issues, which I detail below.

Lets start with some background on how inexpensive lighting has transitioned over the last decade or so.

Some Background About 10 years ago, when I started serious shooting, I didnt have the budget for a 1,200 light kit, so I did what many others did at that time: I bought a shop light from Lowes or Home Depot and made it work.

These shop lights generated copious amounts of light, but the power required to create this light was also significant, and I popped more than one circuit breaker during my various shoots.

The light was also a hard light that that you had to diffuse to use.

Of course, these shop lights came with no gel holders so you had to make your own, which usually involved wooden clothes pins and diffusion filters that often became so hot they started smoking, which never failed to impress the client, who didnt like the light in the first place because they were so damn hot ( Figure 1, below ).

The lack of attachments also made it difficult to focus the light, though that was generally OK, since flat lighting was the best technique for streaming anyway, and as long as the light was sufficient and diffused, the ability to focus the light became secondary.

Then, in about 2009, compact fluorescent (CF) light kits hit the scene, providing sub-200 entry into the fluorescent light kits that many of us had coveted over the years but couldnt afford.

These CF kits ( Figure 2, below ) didnt produce the same quantity of light as the shop lights, but because they ran cool, you could put them much closer to the subject and run them longer without fear of flaming.

Figure 2. My compact fluorescent softbox-based light kit.

Fluorescent lights are soft by definition, and the CF kits came with softboxes that helped focus the light a bit with additional diffusion covers available if required.

Unlike tungsten, which is yellowish in color so very seldom matches the light flowing in the window, often you can use CF kits in conjunction with daylight without fear of hosing your white balancing.

Of course, you couldnt use your CF kits with your shop lights without some kind of gel, since the color temperature didnt match.

Though the positives far outweighed the negatives, CF lighting did have some negatives.

Inexpensive kits offer no focusing options, so if you need to focus the light-say, to function as a back or hair light--its difficult to do.

Softboxes are big and ungainly, so are tough to fit into tight spaces while shooting, and inconvenient to store when not packed up.

LED Lighting: The Best of Both Worlds Enter LED lighting, which combines the compactness and (much of the) power of tungsten lighting with the best characteristics of CF lighting, producing a soft, daylight-balanced light with minimal power consumption or heat production.

As you can see in the following two figures, both Adorama units come with barn doors for focusing, which is very difficult to do with CF softboxes.

Theyre also both small, so are easy to fit into tight spaces, and though they dont come with cases, easy to take on the road.

This light is shown in Figure 3 (below ).

Figure 3. The Adorama 500 LED dimmable light.

The second light was the Flashpoint 500C LED, which is shown in Figure 4 (below).

Like the 500, this unit has 500 bulbs, but 250 are daylight balanced, 250 are incandescent.

Figure 4. The Adorama Flashpoint 500C LED dimmable light.

Adorama Flashpoint Support