LED lights present a number of advantages -- they tend to be more energy efficient, don't give off as much heat, and should (in the future) have the ability to replicate various color temperatures without the need of gels. But they also have their cons, primary of which is the difficulty in mixing them with existing tungsten lights and other incandescent lighting, and a tendency to cast a blueish tinge. With that in mind, Art Adams, over at the ProVideo Coalition blog was approached by PRG to do a LED light shootout that compared a variety of LED lights with a standard tungsten light. The results are pretty interesting for anyone interested in seeing the state of LED lighting vs tungsten:

First off, to see the results, you'll have to go to the PRG homepage, and click on the "How does it look? Compare TruColor on camera" image on the bottom left. It gives you a series of "MacBeth" charts with the upper half (I believe) representing the color under the tungsten light, and the bottom half showing the color under the given LED. They also provide a color rendering index (CRI) score.


The results? Well... not too surprisingly, PRG's TruColor Foton gets the highest CRI score. Adams points out that this was done objectively and independently, even if it was paid by PRG, and you can check out his full post for the details on how they tried to do that. Ultimately, regardless of the CRI score (which can be a problematic standard in its own right), Adams points out:

Having done some rudimentary color science work on the Kelvin Tile I can safely say that color itself is a form of witchcraft, and getting it right in an LED lamp is extraordinarily difficult. It can really only be judged in reference to something else as our brains quickly neutralize color shifts. Also, while any of these lights might be adequate on its own the game changes completely when a wonky light source is mixed with anothers. That’s when the color differences really stand out, if not by eye then on camera.

So even if most of the LED lights don't mix well with Tungsten, you may still have a pretty good light as long as you mix with other LEDs. Of course, as Adams states, testing with your own equipment is the best way to figure out how best to correct for these discrepancies.

Have any of you tried going for an all LED lighting set up? Have you found particular LED lights that mix well with existing lighting? Share below!

[via ProVideo Coalition]