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BUYERS’ GUIDE
CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING! WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH LED THERE BE LIGHT The latest crop of chip-on-board LEDs provide lots of power and are available to suit all budgets M ost filmmakers nowadays understand the need for lighting to really boost their work. While there’s a place for light panels, tube lights and or tungsten, with green-magenta adjustment. Some offer not just full-colour RGB but extra colours like lime, amber and cyan so you can dial in the precise colours you need.
Many lights are all in one, plugging right into the mains, while others use a separate power ballast block to make the head more compact. Full Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, app or even DMX control gives versatility, and many can be powered by a range of batteries to keep you going when there is no handy mains socket to plug into. For this buyers’ guide, we survey the COB light landscape to work out which ones most deserve your hard-earned cash.
practicals, the most popular are COB LEDs. This is because they not only come in a massive range of sizes, power ratings and prices to suit all, but also offer incredible flexibility. By adding modifiers, a COB can turn from a hard light into a massive softbox, a super-tight focused beam or even a projector unit complete with cookie cutters and gels. Many offer more than just daylight colour too; they might be bicolour to match daylight
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