VK...you read my mind. I was just over at cool lights reading their articles on LED. Basically said that CRI>80 was not possible....then again, the blog was from '09. That said, the reason I'm researching LED panels is that I'm interested. Especially the 1000 LED panels. Looking at purchasing a couple of good quality panels and these look great.

Btw, anyone is interested in LED based Fresnel lights?

LED Fresnel would make a nice universal portable light. Panels are not good for portraits where a narrower beam is necessary. Well, it's affordable, but not cheap.

I'll give the fresnels a try as well. This legal action against Chinese LED import is interesting. I wonder if it will effect the price of existing stock of LED panels.

>Any progress VK?

Please be patient.
I am working on it.

@Hazna

I'll ask them after holidays.
Fancier do not produce any LEDs, they just rebrand them.
In contrast we try to work with manufacturers or companies close to them (if manufacturers work with big dealers only).

@LPowell
Thanks for the (re) focus & the link.
back on the right track, now!
Thanks to LPowell...

>Because I have one of such light sets :-)
Me too, and while they can give beautiful light, they are not very handy outside of studio work. Carrying the bulbs, setting everything up gets annoying ect. That's where LED's are much more practical.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev - "Bulbs are very easy to break, btw. "

Yes, fluorescents do require careful handling. The 23W lamps I linked above are the sturdiest daylight-balanced fluorescents I've found that produce enough high-quality light for practical use. As shown in the photo below, they're made of a small coiled unit encased inside a sealed glass floodlight diffusion reflector. This makes them much more safe and reliable than bare coiled fluorescents. For example, the compact coiled lamps in the following link produce twice as much light even more cheaply, but they are far more fragile:

http://www.greenelectricalsupply.com/42-watt-spiral-cfl-day-light.aspx

For storage and transport, I keep the lamps stored in their protective retail boxes, eight of which happen to fit perfectly inside a lightweight plastic container with a latched lid that I found at a hardware store.

In the photo, I assembled four of the lamps into one of the 4-way fixtures I use them with. The lamp sockets in these cheap Chinese fixtures are really flimsy and I permanently installed socket extenders to avoid putting any wear on them. To accommodate the width of the circular floodlamps, I use long extenders in diagonally opposite sockets to offset the height of adjacent lamps.

The virtue of this lighting rig is that the individual components are cheap, lightweight, and easily replaced. Light stands are so prone to on-set accidents that aside from secure, ceiling-mounted units, I'm reluctant to invest in expensive high-quality equipment.

I just used the Lightpanel ones with a color balance dial and a dimmer. Very nice and easy to use. great for fill or broad soft light. I also used their fresnel which seemed way under powered so we ended up just using regular 2k fresnels and then color balancing the panels to match. I do like the pannels though and it's always nice to work with lights that aren't hot. We were shooting music videos with the kids at Camp RED in their studios. Fun using the Epic X ; )

That looks cool!

Must be lower than $1000, I'll let you know soon.
But not cheap.

@Psyco

Deal is almost ready.
Most probably, will be on since Monday.