DIY super-bright LED video light

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By Collin Cunningham
Posted 2008/10/27 @ 2:35 pm
Category Photography & Video

Michael from ProdMod designed a high powered version of his photo light using a Luxeon LED with heatsink -

The following project is a neat way to make your own high powered video light to attach to your digital camera or camcorder. I called it the NightVlogger 160 after I read the term on this article of someone willing to use this type of light to allow him to take paparrazi style video at night. At 160 lumen it is very bright and fits in a slim AAA battery holder using only 3 batteries.

He’s also considering releasing a kit for the device. Head over to the site for more info – ProdMod Night Vlogger 160

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6 Responses to DIY super-bright LED video light

cde on October 27th, 2008 at 3:29 pm said:

Try ditching the white leds for IR and you have a IR camera with IR source, and a el-cheapo nightvision camera.

Also, by adding a little slot in from of the leds (So they are recessed a bit), you could add little colored gel cutouts and turn the white leds to color spots in a jiffy. Heck, you could even use different color gels and create a rgb light source. But not for the luxen cause it will probably melt them.

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meh on October 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm said:

Ideally placing a filter/lens in front of a high power LED won’t be a problem. The main source of heat will be from the heat sink on the back of the LED. National Semiconductor has an excellent two-part video podcast where they cover LOTS of supa-brite LED specifics.

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prodmod on October 27th, 2008 at 8:29 pm said:

thanks for the comments. If you take a look at my article you’ll see that I use a Warm CTO filter and a frost filter to change the color temperature of the LED, or to soften the light. That is one of the reasons I chose this low profile LED so that I can keep the lens inside the casing. I can tape the filters right over the hole and it works great. The filters dont melt. They are intended to be used in high heat situations anyway.
I do agree it would be better if I slide the filter in from the top somehow instead of using tape.

Actually it would be best if I had room for a color wheel or a way to hold all filters in the case so I can choose any color I want at any time.

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ToddV on October 28th, 2008 at 11:26 am said:

I didnâ€™t have a 2 ohm 1/2 Watt resistor so I used a pair of 2.5 ohm 1/4 watt resistors, which when twisted together form a parallel circuit of 1.9 ohms at 1/2 Watt.

By my quick calculations (aka dividing by 2) you created a 1.25 ohm resistor. To get 1.9 with with 2 resistors in parallel you’d want 3.8 ohm.

Or if your doing E12 resistors – then 2 3.9 ohm resistors in parallel will give you 1.95

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prodmod on October 28th, 2008 at 9:27 pm said:

thanks for catching that mistake on the math but I think I am not getting the resistance I expect anyway.
The resistor color bands I used are red red gold. Which means its supposed to be 2.2 ohms for each resistor. The tolerance band is also gold which is 5%. if I measure the resistance using a multimeter I actually get 2.5 ohms per resistor. Then i put them in parallel and I measure 1.5 ohms. So don’t know what that means. 1.5 is half of 3 not 2.2 or 2.5. Either way my 1.9 is wrong so i’ll change that.

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prodmod on October 31st, 2008 at 8:44 am said:

I have a new demo video and parts kit available on my site. I found some LED and heat sink parts that do not require any cutting to fit into the battery holder.
http://prodmod.com/2008/10/31/prodmod-nightvlogger-160-demo-video-and-parts-kit/

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