ikan News Blog

For those of you who’ve been interested (or dogged us) for Kelvin rating and luminosity output for our Studio LED lights–the ID400, ID500, ID1000, Multi-K XL–and haven’t been able to get the answers you need from our product videos, I’ve updated some detailed charts for you. We recently collated our in-house testing data for your education and disclosure (in case you thought we were hiding something We also ran the gamut with our On-Camera LED lights, to make sure all bases are covered.

I share this information with you for a few specific reasons. For any confusion about flourescent-to-LED conversions in your studio or lighting kit, you should realize how LED panels need to be used to achieve maximum results–and not be disappointed by spending x cash and feeling burned. Also, based on the current technology, any company that claims numbers significantly different from these that follow, I recommend, proceed with caution. You may be surprised when you set up for your first shoot if you rely on some outstanding numbers.

Also, if you’re interested in reading or watching reviews, usage shots, etc. regarding our LED panels, our customers have been reviewing via video, flickr, or tweets with satisfied results. Start HERE.

Now, let’s get down and dirty with the deets:

For this experiment we used:

• BK Precision 615 for the lux rating (as it gives conservative, consistent results)
• Sekonic c-500 for the color temperature ratings (because we are not cheapskates when it comes to hardcore tests).

More product info on the:

• ID400
• ID500
• ID1000
• Multi-K XL

If you have any more questions, feel free to email support@ikancorp.com or leave us a comment. Also, feel free to share this information with your friends, tweet it, and link it as you feel useful or necessary.

Missed your ikan tip of the week at all? I actually did.

I believe it’s still a great creative outlet for applying ikan gear in various, effective ways, considering the innumerable configurations available to you via the ELEMENTS line, esp with the EV2 series now available.

This week, I’m going to don this product the “Universal Rim Light”–not because it shines on the entire universe (though it’s darn bright)–but because it’s so light (couldn’t help it) you can clamp it securely to nearly any platform or medium. With the spot or flood option, you can get a focused rim light or more diffuse hairlight, varying from gentle to blindingly bright.

This configuration includes (read: you win all this if you participate in our little giveaway at #GVEXPO:

1 x LED ONE – (spot or flood bulb)

1 x MA210 10″Articulating Arm

1 x ELE-PN Pinch Clamp

1 x ELE-CHSR Senior Cheese Stick

1 x Panasonic DV battery & AC107 Battery Plate (which includes screws)

Let us know if you’ve done this before, or choose to do so, and how it works for you! Otherwise, if you come up with any neat tips of your own, send ‘em over to me (ryan@ikancorp.com) or post an image to our twitter, and maybe you’ll get featured.

Jay P. Morgan and the guys over at The Slanted Lens have put together another one of their informative series of videos.  In addition to their coverage of how to light things with simplicity and elegance, they discuss using camera cranes. I’m a big fan of having cranes around for several reasons. In fact, I own two of them personally and at each of production companies I’ve owned or worked for, it was usually one of the first pieces of support gear I had brought in. Even at the college where I teach–as soon as we got the budget, guess what we bought. I don’t recommend owning a jib over 4 feet. Anything over that the size, expense transportation and storage hassles make it best to rent to meet the shooting needs for that production. I guess many people would call the long versions “cranes” and the short ones “jibs,” but so often I see the terms interchanged it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.  To me a 4 foot jib is priced affordably enough to own and long enough to accomplish most of the things you would want to do with a crane. What are those things you might ask?

You can accomplish several things with a jib. As Jay P. Morgan mentions in the video, a jib can add production value.  The sweeping moves with swings and dips have a different look than a simple pan or tilt you get with a tripod. Since the camera moves in space the lines of convergence in the frames shifts and changes as the camera moves in a manner that is much different than a simple head pan or tilt from a head on a tripod.  This adds a depth of movement that adds value to the production.  The second thing he mentions is what I call a two-for-one shot. You can create two separate “thoughts” or messages with one shot without an edit.  In their sample video you have an establishing shot of the morgue then the “surprise” shot of the dead guy waking up. Traditionally with static shots you would show the establishing shot then cut to the shot of the John Doe toe tag, linger long enough for the audience to get bored and then surprise them with the sudden waking up of the dead John Doe. Doing the same shot with a moderately slow jib move adds to the floaty mystery feeling and slows down the audience’s tempo and pace connection with the scene, setting up a contrast for when the dead guy suddenly sits up. Couple that with the silence of the morgue and his loudly gasping for breath as he sits up and your guaranteed to make more than a few viewers jump.   A third reason I love jibs is the speed of camera positioning. If I’m in a location and know I will be moving the camera around for lots of little shots moving , rising and lowering the tripod over and over can slow things down. A jib allows me to quickly reposition and fine tune the camera’s placement in an infinite number of static shots very quickly. I frequently used a jib this way if I was shooting training video where parts had to be assembled or some time s shooting commercials in a shop where I had to shoot a lot of displays.

The one thing that every jib guy needs no matter the length is a good monitor. On the original cranes mentioned by Jay, the operator looked through the eyepiece or viewfinder as if it was on a tripod and traveled with the camera. On a small jib or crane with the range of movement looking through the viewfinder is not possible and an external monitor is necessary. I used a few different type of monitors in these situations. A small monitor mounted to the jib positioned near the where I was placing my hands allowed me to watch the frame as the jib moved.  In the video Jay uses a VX 7E  mounted near the tilt controls.  For this use the operator is looking at framing and not really concerned as much about exposure and color, so a simpler monitor like our V5600 or the newer VL7 or VH7 are pretty cost-effective solutions.  I also like to use larger monitors like our V17 in a field configuration in situations where I have to pay more attention to focus or wide sweeping moves. I can mount the V17 on a C-stand on one side if the jib and I stand on the other near the pivot point. I can move a wide swing and watch in the large monitor. If I did this with a small monitor I would have to move my body to follow the monitor increasing the likely hood of the unwanted jiggles and jostles showing up in the frame. If you guys want, let me know and We here at ikan might just make our video on using jib with monitors …

Anyway, go check out Jay’s most recent video at The Slanted Lens or visit their youtube channel. Make sure you tell them the guys at ikan sent you when you thank them for their cool work.

As promised last week, I am serving up a few more BTS pictures of the music video shoot from the third week of May.  And as with last week’s tip of the week, this one centers on some of the gear we used for the shoot.

Now, I am sure that there are a great many folks who will read this article and will feel that tungsten lamps or HMI should be a go-to choice rather than LED.  And in some cases, I would tend to agree.

However, having both tungsten and HMI instruments as part of our lighting package, I still found that we continually pulled out the ikan ID-1000 lighting units.  We had two on the shoot and to

be honest, the only reason we had those units was because the ID-500 (which I had requested) were impossible to lay hands on.  ikan cannot keep those units in stock for anything.  The units are just too popular!  But as the time for the shoot drew nearer, I went ahead and opted for the larger units, figuring we could always dim them down or decrease the number of active banks.  Even diffusion was a possibility.

And it ended up being a perfect solution for our needs.  The ID-1000′s had just enough punch (even in daylight situations) to provide the necessary fill for several key scenes.  However, I also could tell you that having three of them would probably not have been necessary.  After all, we had tungsten 1K’s and a 1200 watt HMI on standby.  And that brings me to the purpose of this week’s column… building your own custom LED lighting kit.

Now, this is definitely not a standard tip of the week… it’s not a neat little piece of tech to utilize our products, but rather a helpful nudge to tell you to contact ikan’s second-to-none customer service & sales dept with your own custom requirements.

Sure, ikan has pre-assembled kits listed in dealer networks and the website, but who’s to say that’s all you can purchase?

Why not look through the catalogue of offerings from ikan’s LED line and pick and choose the instruments that most fit your shooting situation?

For me, I found that packing 2 x ID-1000′s and 2 x ID-500‘s, plus a Multi-K and an ILED-144 would give me the perfect mixture of sizes to have in a small grab and go kit.  But who’s to say yours needs to be anything like this?

Why not call Lindsay or Daniel or Ryan at the ikan office and ask about purchasing 1 x ID-500 and two ILED-312 units, which would be a highly effective run n gun kit.  Throw a pro battery plate on the back of the ID-500 and you’re ready to go, completely wireless!

Or, you could go for the full enchilada and order 3 each of the ID-1000, the ID-500 and the ILED 312, which would provide you with every possible combination of LED lighting unit you could ever hope for?

In reality, your specific production needs can be met perfectly by spending less than an hour perusing the ikan website and then calling the office at 713-272-8822 to ask a few simple questions.

So, what are you waiting for?  Your perfect kit awaits!

This week, country came home for me when I DP’ed the first music video for a new country singer, Neil Austin Imber. Today we wrapped shooting after a very brief two day shoot that incorporated a ‘General Lee’ replica (remade as a souped up big-wheeler), a brief stop at the Firehouse Saloon in Houston, TX and a leisurely stay in LaGrange, TX.

It was a smaller production, with a crew of 5, so staying lightweight and affordable in the gear we carried was high on the priority list.  For instance, the largest lighting unit we went in with was an Arri 1.2K HMI, which actually didn’t get brought out after all.

That being said, ikan gear was definitely present on the shoot, with monitors, lights and Elements pieces all in use.  In the coming weeks, I will touch on one or two of the pieces we used, but in this week’s tip, I wanted to focus on a single, specific piece in the arsenal… the ILED 144.  This little light ended up being a life-saver in a variety of situations.  Inside a vehicle, in a dark corner of a room, outside under an overhang… the brightness, combined with the size and the long-lasting battery allowed us to drop the light into a wide variety of situations, always giving just the right amount of light, thanks to the dimmer switch.

In the past, even when working at ikan, I didn’t always use the lights in the field.  Sure, here and there, but during this two day shoot, the iLED 144 must have been brought into play at least a dozen times, if not two dozen.  It’s use had always been a thought, but as we kept moving, it was far too easy to snag it, tweak the dimming knob, adjust the color temperature and position it for a quick shot.

Whenever the music video itself goes live, I will make sure and post it here, but I did want to spotlight three key spots when it was vital to our success.

1) Lighting the Interior of a Vehicle: Almost every vehicle had one of these inside to help brighten certain angles.  We carried a Manfrotto Metal Flex Arm and several Super Clamps, but actually consistently just used it handheld to execute the shots.  At a couple of points, the talent even held it in place.

2) Providing Fill for Talent’s Faces: Coffee shop, car wash scene and more… the ILED 144 got held in place for several key close-ups, providing a tiny extra kick.

3) BTS Flashlight:  A quick turn away from a scene and a level could be read or a key found.  Why break out the mini mag-lite?

More later, but make sure and check out the ILED 144 and it’s big brother, the ILED-312!

The Elements from ikan.

For many, they signify a series of kits that are made up of various parts from a larger ikan catalog, not really meant to be considered as individual parts, but rather as kits to choose from.

Coming out of a production background in which customizing your rig to suit your exact needs is a way of life, the Elements have appealed to me for quite some time.  With their continued evolution, the ability to mix and match parts is invaluable for one seeking a their own ‘perfect rig.’

As I continued to build up my own rig, I found myself needing a few parts that I could not find anywhere else, at a budget range to quality ratio that made me comfortable.  Of course, one can always spend $400 a find a beautiful bracket for their needs, but who wants to spend that much just to attach a piece to 15mm rods?  Instead, I found the following solution to be extremely helpful:

Taking an ikan Quick Release Rod Adaptor (ELE-15QRA) and attaching a standard ikan Cheeseplate (ELE-PT) gave me a stable, quickly removeable platform for an accessory I had purchased a while back, but not yet found a way – to my liking – to attach to my rig.  My Sewell-Direct HDMI Splitter and the small custom battery pack ($1.95 at an electronic parts outlet in town) mounted via Velcro tabs fit nicely to the Cheesplate.  Popping off the top of the Sewell splitter and inserting two rivets through the body was no problem and within minutes, the HDMI splitter itself was permanently fastened to the Cheeseplate.  This gave me a flexible piece that could securely lock onto my rod system, but still be removed with minimal fuss, if need be.

This “accessory platform” can be underslung as well, providing for multiple ones to take up less space, if need be.  This is especially useful for those using on-board audio solutions.  A wireless lav or H4n Zoom can be attached and ride up top while an HDMI splitter or other accessory rides below.

This solution seems to be pretty solid.  The dual outlets of the Splitter have some overlap on their side, to allow me to fasten down each connection, hopefully preventing any snags or jerks that could hurt the outputs on the splitter.

All in all, the Elements accessory platform, with HDMI splitter, seems to be pretty solid.  I am looking forward to testing it out on a shoot next week, and that should – hopefully – provide some notes.  My own application aside, there are a lot of possibilities with the Elements line, apart from the standard kits.  In my eyes, the growing collection of kits are just a starting point… a springboard, if you will.  From there, the  various combo’s one can create are literally endless.