UPDATE: I have one of these, and like it as an economical, small unit for a film backlight, like for a rail. I have found a power supply for only $10 at Amazon. Note that this light requires additional diffusion to use as a backlight to even out the hotspots caused by the individual LEDs.
LED lighting is a fast-moving product landscape, with prices plummeting and quality increasing faster than anything I’ve ever seen in photography.
I was over at B&H last week getting things all set up for my September 13 presentation at the Event Space. I took the opportunity to look at the LED lights on display. I found a nice little unit from Dracast that should be great for camera scanning transparencies on a rail system. At $68, it looked well made. Even better, it listed a CRI number of 95, which is a very high quality light for the price.
I was talking to Gary on the sales floor, and I wondered if this light was really 95 CRI. He smiled and said he’d be back in a minute. When he returned, he had a $2200 Sekonic C‑7000 SpectroMaster Color in hand. “Let’s find out” he said. We took readings of the light, and, sure enough, it showed a CRI over 97.
I’m going to buy one of these lights and take it for a spin. Note that because this light is designed to be used on-camera, it does not come with an AC adapter. I checked with the company and they tell me it takes a 12 volt 10 watt power supply. I have a bunch of old 12 volt power supplies lying around, so I’ll test with these when the light arrives.
Note, there are several variations of the Camlux light from Dracast. For camera scanning, I’m not interested in the bicolor, but they would be useful for shooting. These come in daylight or bicolor. Here they are linked.
160 LED Bicolor $69
160 LED Daylight $68
160 LED Bi-color with battery and charger $89