By technical editor Matt Allard:
One of the favourite products that we came across last year was the flexible LED panels from Korean maker Aladdin. In fact we liked it so much our team at IBC awarded it Best news gathering innovation and Best lighting product in our show awards. The Flex LED panel is 25x25cm in size but unlike a conventional light fixture it is in the form of a thin mat. It is both flexible and waterproof and can be shaped around objects, rolled up or attached to surfaces by Velcro. It is perfectly suited to being hidden in a scene and is light enough that it can be carried almost everywhere.
Westcott Lighting is the exclusive North American and Australian distribution of this new cutting-edge LED technology. The fully-bendable Westcott Flex features a 10” x 10” surface lined with 256 LED diodes and outlined with a moldable, quarter-inch, black frame and weighs in at just 5.29 oz. Its compact design allows it to be easily hidden on-set or location and allows for easy travel. A dimmer comes standard with each Flex to adjust output from 5% to 100% for precise control. A flexible mounting bracket and water-resistant extension cable are also available for mounting in any environment. The whole kit takes only a couple of minutes to assemble.
I was very keen to get my hands on these lights and try them out in a real world shooting environment. For the type of work that I do I require lights that are highly portable, power efficient, provide a good quality of light and are easy to travel with. Traditional panel lighting solutions such as the popular Litepanels 1×1 and Astra are great, but because of their physical size they are hard to travel with and take up a lot of space in a case. The Flex lights can be manipulated into any shape and because they weigh almost nothing they are perfect for one man band operators.
The other advantage of them weighing only 5.29 oz (150grams) you can mount them anywhere and to anything – even if your not carrying light stands. They come with a collapsible frame which is attached to ball mount that then has a clamp attached to that. This gives you a good range of adjustment for angling the light into the position you want to have it at. If there is no place to attach the ball mount you can simply Velcro or gaffer tape the Flex to a wall or ceiling, making it perfect to use in situations where conventional lighting solutions won’t work.
The Flex surprised me with the light that it produces. The output from the Flex is anything but small. The tungsten version offers an impressive 1,600 lux output at 1 metre with a 98 CRI, while the daylight-balanced model offers a slightly brighter 1,900 lux output at 1 metre with a 95 CRI. To put that in perspective a Litepanels 1×1 daylight flood outputs 1,045 lux at 1.2 metres). It comes with a dimmer that allows you to precisely control the level of illumination (although once you try to dim the light below a certain point the output doesn’t change). I actually wish that you could dim the light a little bit more for those times when you really just need a very tiny amount of light. That said, I had no problem using the Flex light as my main key light in interview situations. When used with the optional 1/4 Stop Diffusion it produces a beautiful soft lighting source. It is easy to control the spill as you can manipulate the light into any shape you light when not in its frame.
So far it all sounds like a dream light, but there is currently a catch. Presently there is no portable battery solution from Wescott – you have to run the light off mains power. For me this is a real issue. The original Aladdin version can be run of a battery solution due to the use of a standard barrel power connector, Westcott chose to change the connectors for the US and Euro versions and this does not make a lot of sense to me. The whole idea of having such a super portable lighting solution is that you don’t have to run them off mains power. I would have used these lights a lot more on a recent shoot if I had been able to power them off a battery. Thankfully Westcott have told me that they have a lot of new improvements coming to the Flex light at NAB – including a battery powered solution.
For news and documentary crews, or just about anyone else that requires a highly portable solution that provides a good quality of light, the Westcott Flex light is almost the perfect system. If a good range of battery solutions becomes available then I can see these lights being part of just about any operators lighting kit.
They are currently available at B&H for $699 US.
