We decide to upgrade our lights in the workshop to ones that are more suitable for filming and also more energy efficient. Video is sponsored by Valtavalo that gave the Led tubes for us free valtavalo.fi/t...
Thanks for new lights to Valtavalo! They are really good and I think I could replace all my filming lights just with these :D For more information about G4 LED tubes valtavalo.fi/tuotteet/g-sarja/g4-led-valoputket/?lang=en And here is video about Valtavalo as an company and some footage of their ultra modern factory ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HePxS8OUNsM.html
Greetings from Down Under! Wow, those lights make a huge difference! I was wondering A & L, now that it is getting colder in Finland, would you be able to keep an eye on the lake and let us know when it begins to freeze, how long it takes to get thick enough to drive on, etc? Cheers 👍
You're not going to save that much money until you replace the fixtures with all the old ballast in them. A friend just did this in a horse stable and indoor training rink he used fewer lights and got more light. He used fixtures with a lot more LEDs in them.
CORPORATE SHILLS!!! Selling out your channel for a quick buck!!! Jk, cool to see an upgrade to the channel no matter how it happens. Keep up the good work.
@ClickThisToSubscribe : normally for those durability tests they compare the wear and give the lamps (or anything else tested) a higher stress level etc. They've maybe run it for 1 year or 2 and check the wear of the internals to scale it up how long it will take to finally break. maybe something like that. Most times it's still just a calculated theoretical value to estimate something and make a good advertisement. But they'll give you 7 years warranty and i guess they wouldn't do that if they expect a lower lifetime ;-) (guess the Lights will be mostly used in companys and those often run 24/7)
@ClickThisToSubscribe The company has only been in existence since 2008 and I was thinking that there was probably something in the advertising print reading" 125,000 HOURS" with some small print that says "not in a row" My small brain imagined they probably have done calculations of temperatures based on 8-10 hour shop days and the number of cycles available BUT that's not the case. I went to their site and found that they actually warranty their bulbs for 7!! SEVEN years, which if you had them lit 24/7 turns out to be 61,320 hours which is still pretty amazing!! Not made in China and as should be they're proud of it!! valtavalo.fi/wpro/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Valtavalo-LED-tubes-in-an-operational-test-of-20-000-hours-ENG.pdf
These new lights seem much better. I don't know if you realise this, but if you need to keep using the filming LED's, you can pretty easily make your own "gels" to soften the lights. Just use regular white oven/baking paper, cut it to size, and put it in front of the lights. If one isn't enough, use more than one layer. That should give a much more pleasant light. Obviously, use the white stuff, not the yellow/brown stuff. :) Alternately, you can also use some fine grade wet sanding paper, sand down a piece of acrylic, and then put that in front of the LED's. That's a more durable solution, that can also be cleaned, and that shouldn't discolor over time, but not really adjustable, as it is with the paper solution. :) Just a friendly tip, in case you still need the harsh filming lights.
Every project needs its supervisor, and here it was only you doing that important job, on most street construction sites it's one man with the shovel and four men watching, so you had the job of 4 people to do alone there :D
at first i thought _"just another LED tupe replacement promotion"_ But **REALLY NO FLICKER** (even at 40k) and high CRI at the same time: I did not expect that!
fluorescent doesn't have "really shit CRI" at all - standard triphosphor fluorescent lamps that you can readily get today have a CRI start at 85. The old halophosphor lamps (which you can still get, but they are the markedly cheaper option) range from around 50 to 75. As for the lamps in this video, the light quality and lack of flicker looks good but I highly doubt many (or any) of them will last the rated lifetime; while LED lighting products have got a lot better in the last 10 years they are still woefully overmarketed on false promises. LED street lighting was a complete embarassment right up until only a couple of years ago, so the technology is still maturing. Fluorescent is tried and tested, and with traditional fluorescent lamp and gear the maintenance overhead is typically very low.
Very nice!! I am an electrician in a hospital and we are slowly converting everything to LED. Half the energy consumption, better light, better life and they work better in unheated areas like the parking garage.
The problem we've had is that LEDs can produce EMI which can disturb sensitive medical equipment. A good example is MRI. My hospital has mains voltage halogen lights in the MRI scanner room, but following the EU ban on halogen lights, replacements have not been available to buy and stocks have been depleted. LED retrofit bulbs have been tried, but there are two problems: 1. the bulbs disturb the MRI scanner and corrupt the images, and 2. the energy pulses from scanner disturb the electronic power supplies in the bulbs and cause flickering. I don't have complete details, but I think low EMI solutions will require installation of DC powered LED light fittings with DC wiring in the room, and separate LED driver units.
Actually come to think of it our MRI scanner rooms have DC power supplies to the lights and accept only a 150W or 200W standard incandescent lamp which are still readily available here.. I do not think LED would be feasible in that environment without a lot of re-working of the fixtures and power supply.
I'm impressed by the high-speed footage of the lamps. No flickering at all, very nice! If they really work 125000h is another story. I'm sure you will update us if one of the lamps fails. ;) Some useless (or maybe interesting) facts for people who can't stop reading: The 100Hz flicker is directly related to the frequency of power line. On 230V AC the voltage rises from 0V to 325V, back to 0V and then to -325V and back to 0V to complete one cycle. Those two zero-crossings cause two flickers for every cycle, in this case 100Hz on 50Hz line frequency. But flicker isn't everything. The old lamps use UV light to excite the fluorescent material on the inside of the tube. It is a mixture of different fluorescent substances that emit light in different parts of the spectrum. The mix influences the color rendering index and the color temperature. But there is the next problem. This mix of fluorescent substances changes its spectrum all the time while it goes through the flickering. You won't see it with your eyes and seldom with a camera, but sometimes you can take an odd picture where everything looks green. The 50Hz frequency from the power grid is also not constant. If there is a high load on the grid, the generators will slow down and so will the frequency. Then they have to shovel more coal into the power plant (or let water flow down a mountain) until the speed increases again. If the load suddenly drops, the speed will rise and they have dump the energy somewhere else (pumping water up the mountains) until they reduce the power in the power plant again. All of this causes constant tiny changes to the power line frequency that are synchronized across whole countries. Those changes of the frequency are precisely recorded and saved for later use. Cameras tend to pick up that flicker even at low framerates (aliasing is no problem if you know the frequency you want to know is around 100Hz). Also audio recorders and telephones (band limited to 300-3400Hz - but if there are distortions on the power line, you will have some harmonics in that pass-band too) will record it. This can be used to test if some video or audio has been tampered with or if it was recorded at some specific time. I don't have any further useless (or maybe interesting) fact about flickering lights and the line frequency. But maybe someone else knows something I haven't mentioned. ;)
Maybe mention that the peaks are not given as the voltage, but that it is actually the root mean square of the sine wave that people know. Also, the voltage change for example 660V or 480v etc. are nominal only.
Jon: I hope the following is what you wanted me to mention. But I have no idea where you take the 660V or 480V from. I have given the peaks as a voltage, they are the peaks of the sine. If we say 230V AC, we mean the RMS value but the peaks are at 230*sqrt(2) and -230*sqrt(2). Google can be used to calculate it: www.google.de/search?q=230*sqrt%282%29 But 230V AC isn't fixed, it in the EU we have 10% tolerance. 10% are 23V, so 207V AV and 253V AC are the allowed voltages of the power line. 253*sqrt(2) = 358V peak, that is why you'll find 400V capacitors on the primary side of average switch mode power supplies (and capacitors with a much lower voltage rating in crappy power supplies;)).
Jessica: Yes, a "rolling shutter" in combination with flickering fluorescent lights is especially bad. With some combinations of exposure time and flicker you can get still images that go from normal to green. Or when there are very short bursts of light (explosions, lightning, photo flash) and it isn't synced with the rolling shutter, then you have a picture where one part is overexposed. But I can't remember to have seen such effects on any of the HPC or Beyond the press videos. Also the high speed cameras don't use a rolling shutter. They all have an electronic global shutter, so no rolling shutter effect with them.
You may also see flicker on DC lights if they use PWM to control brightness (turning on and off quickly). I unfortunately have the superpower to see this with my naked eye. It actually really sucks and I don't want to buy a new car because the dashboard flickers (as do a lot of the running lights, etc). Also I'm quite picky about what bulbs are in the house. Also frequency should not change on your power supply, but voltage does.
Fluorescent lights were a migraine trigger for me in the building I used to work in, but since we've moved to a new location, with LED lights, I'm feeling pritty guud!
Lauri and Anni I am so happy you have something else that makes you happy with the new lights. It makes me happy to see you happy. You bring much joy to me with your videos and knowing you. Much love.
Very nice that they were a direct replacement for the fluorescent tubes without any changes to the fixtures. I had friends who owned a store. A few years back they changed from regular fluorescents to a high efficiency version, and that necessitated changing all the ballasts as well.
Just watched that Valtavalo testing video, those LED-tubes are ridiculously durable. And a really good idea from them to team up with HPC, that'll get them loads of visibility. I know what lights I will choose next when my old tube lights start to go out. ;)
8:26, Lauri, it is normal for ordinary fluorescent tubes to flicker at 2x the grid frequency, as in each cycle there is a positive peak voltage and a negative peak voltage, so two instances or peak brightness. The new ones look pritti guud! Dammit! Looking towards the end of the comments, someone has already explained this! :D
That company is gonna have a huge influx of sales for a moment and when everyone has bought the lights, they will go out of business because no one needs to buy new ones for like 30 years.
"normal" lamps flicker at 100Hz since they have two peaks in brightness during every period (positive and negative half-wave of the sine) so 2x 50Hz = 100Hz
I recently changed all the lights in my college manufacturing laboratory to LED's and it was a good decision. Much brighter and no buzzing from the previous mercury vapor lights. They also turn on and off instantly with no warm up delays. Plus, the energy savings is expected to pay for themselves in about seven years.
From what i've seen, it is true that the LEDs themselves last a long time, but their integrated power supplies do not. Coz the power supplies have electolytic capacitors etc which tend to wear out over time.
Yes, I work in the LED lighting sector in a technical capacity. It's rare to see an LED (or 'chip' as they are known) fail in itself. It's usually a driver failure but if a chip does fail it's usually poor wiring or an unsuitable driver which causes it. Incidentally, almost all LED chips are manufactured in China, with development work done in Japan. This has no bearing on their quality, most on the market now are somewhere between very good and excellent.
Did the same in my workshop and house last year. Total change over from Fluro's to LED. Switched on and wow the difference is amazing. The power consumption has dropped dramatically.
some of the flickering will make me light headed like I want to pass out.. I hate those lights.. Don't use them any more in my shop.. I use halogen lights instead...they are a bit warmer and don't last as long but the shop is bright as day.. I am going to go and check there site.. maybe I Will change over to a longer lasting light like those.. thanks guys.
Valtavalo's factory is located in my home town here in Finland. They manufacture for industry and public places, so price is higher than consumer versions. Factory was first in China, but they moved to Finland. Production is highly automated.
I just did a large machine shop in philadelphia with high bay LED and 4' and 8' LED lamps. The 4 and 8 footers are direct drive/ bypass ballast.& replace the tombstones/lamp sockets with non-shunted ones. I think a comment here talks about disconnecting the ballast. The ballasts on flourescents use the power with or without lamps , maybe not the same amps but use more power than direct drive or driver type ballast
Yes Lauri, we do like BIG machines. Nice view from the lift too. A similar viewpoint as outdoor drone footage. Maybe mount a Go-Pro looking down toward the front of the large press for a new viewpoint of an HPC video showing exploding items that fly out of the press.
Wow this is cool! I have huge problems with migraines and some led lights (some car headlamps, Christmas lights etc) - I must look into these more! Thanks! [EDIT] Valtavalo please make these available to regular people for home use!
Worse is flickering lights, then you find that sometimes moving stuff appears to be not moving, or only moves slow, and you get hurt by the apparently stopped part.
Such an amazing video. These LED tubes are definitely the game changers in LED lighting sector. Brighter and flicker-free in comparison to old incandescent tubes. Understanding the features & benefits of commercial LED lights, I replaced my warehouse's old incandescent lights with LED T8 tubes. I sourced these LED tubes from SeniorLED. They look & perform the same. Besides being highly energy-efficient & flicker-free, my LED tubes are also packed with auto dimming features, high CRI , longer lifespan (up to 50000 hrs), and lumen output of 160 lm/w. Keep uploading awesome content. I am going to subscribe your channel.
The lights do flicker specifically at twice the mains frequency, because the light goes dark when the voltage is at zero, which happens twice per cycle
its usually stated as L E D (the letters) not as a word (LEAD) Most cheap LED's flicker because they are not rectified. so they literally turn on and off as the power phase flips through its cycle. good for xmas lights (makes them shimmer like jewels and use half the power since they are only on for half of the cycle) but NO LED should flicker if its fully rectified. Those are some really nice lights. love the color crispness. I am curious. what was the little "module" you took out and replaced between the bulbs in the fixture? none of the FL units I have used (not in a long time all LED now) have anything like that.
+Nerys That is the fluorescent starter that he removed. Not all fluorescent lights have them, some may have electronic ballasts that don't require them. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-K3wu2r1RWpA.html home.howstuffworks.com/question337.htm
Only LED lights that are supposed to have variable brightness flicker because they have some optimal power at which they are most effective and if you want to change the brightness you just make them flicker instead of decreasing the voltage. You can probably see the flickering in flash lights or head lights that have variable brightness.
You guys are awesome congrats on the lights and hopefully even brighter ones will come soon then you will get the experience I have in my work space no shadows or blind spots it’s truly magnificent
This is so cool! Yes if you have health problems or seizure disorders/other brain disorders, the flickering of fluorescents can be really bad. You can't go anywhere with those type of lights for very long, which sucks because most stores use them.
Gas atoms (ionised) are accelerated in one direction during the first half of the sine and into the other direction during the second half of the sine. That makes two intensity peaks in 20ms thus 100 Hz (+ higher harmonics).
It's interesting that East and West are unifying to 5 000 K LED light; West normally use much warmer light (deriving from incandescent) that is 3 000 K to 4 000 K, and East (actually East Asia) prefers cool white of fluorescent tubes which are 6 500 K. And all decently priced LED tubes and panels have either 5 000 K or 5 800 K colour temperature. Personally I also love our home's new 5 000 K LED panel lights.
I like 5000 - 5500 since it matches the daylight and most filming lights. It's really hard to film when you have some 3000k light mixed with 5500k. I am not sure would 5000k keep you wake at evenings more than warmer light but that doesn't matter on workshop :D
Typically we see 4000 - 5000k for work areas, 2700 and 3000k in domestic areas. For example, you wouldn't normally want 4000k in a bedroom, but 3000k is ideal.
I love you both and I actually think this is my favourite channel because I have watched you for so long. My only request is that you make an episode where you both have a painted on unibrow on your face. Thank you.
Looks good. The speed-up of changing the light made me flash back to old computer games for some reason and I knew you would check for flicker. Even brought up one of the topics I like: visible light and biological effects. Optics in general is a fun topic, even without biological effects or optogenetic modifications. Ahh, science.
Why didn't you remove the ballast in those lights when you changed to LEDs? Keeping the ballasts is what makes LEDs lights lose their efficiency. When I changed fluorescent lights to LEDs, I removed the ballast and straight wired the LEDs.
This was a very"enlightening"video Lauri and Annie,these will make a"night and day"difference in your videos too. It will put a really big dent in your electric bill as well.
3:04 - I'm not familiar with fluorescent bulb housings, so I looked into the references. The part he's replacing there is the starter. Fluorescent bulbs are finicky. You have to create electrical arcs at the ends of the bulbs first to vaporize the mercury and make the bulb viable, which is the role of the starter. That's why sometimes on really long bulbs you see them glow first at the ends. The circuits are actually doing something different at the very beginning.
Sort of. You have to heat the cathodes at the end of the tube. This enables the electrons to escape. This is done by shorting the two cathode to line voltage with the "starter switch" through the ballast. When the starter opens it collapses the magnetic field from the ballast that causes a big potential difference across the length of the tube to allow the mercy vapour to conduct. The ballast then limits the current in the circuit. The tube fails when the paste wears out or falls off the cathodes or the starter welds shut. 🙄 The new "switch" is either just plain link or could be a fuse link to keep line voltage across the tube. It would be best to remove ballast and capacitors for maximum savings. Still heating a lot of iron unnecessarily. 😬🙄
Those are pretty impressive lights! It's a good idea in a workshop, flickering lights could cause a strobe effect on lathes, which could cause a spinning object to look stationary, which is a really bad idea!
I never really thought much about CRI until I replaced the lights in my studio with some decent LEDs, and was suddenly going "where did all these colours come from?".
Electrickery is flickery. We used to have 150w sodium bulbs in our factory and I could see some of them flickering badly all day and it gave me headaches and ruined my eyesight, giving me involuntary eye twitches. I was the only one who could see it so it wasn't taken seriously. Now, years later we have LED bulbs and although they are not flickering visibly anymore, I still go home every evening with really sore eyes. I can also see up to about 100Hz flicker on a CRT monitor. Any form of artificial light source has always made my eyes sore from LED monitors and televisions to phones but I think dryness and a lack of rest is the problem.
I'm gonna buy these for my workshop and I might use a few of them to replace my old fluorescent softboxes that I can't really use for decent photography.
The 100Hz flicker on the fluorescent lights would indeed be a multiple of the mains being at 50Hz, because mains power comes as a sine wave, and sine waves go to zero twice every cycle! The Valtavalo lights being LEDs like to run off of DC rather than AC (or at least like to not have the current reverse) so the rectifier must also be doing some very good smoothing. I wonder what sort of capacitors they are using?
I SEE the flicker. Not only on video (that too) but in person. THANK GOD they are making non-flickering LED's! It's annoying when 99% of people think you are complaining about something they can't see! Now they need to ban creepy 'picture smoothing' on new TVs....because that shit's creepy too when you see with a higher frame rate!
You don't have to remove the fluorescent ballast box to use these LED Tubes? The retrofit kits in the States, you have to disable or remove the ballast to run the new LED tubes..
230V area the ballast is a simple choke type rapid start, not the complex US magnetics that have to step the voltage up to run the lamps. Leaving the old ballast in place actually here helps keep the lamps from experiencing mains transients, as it reduces them, while only using a tiny amount of power in doing so. the starter replacement is probably only a simple fuse, as these LED replacements are typically designed to short the one end pins, and have power at the other end, so as to be a drop in replacement. you get fittings designed for LED tubes though, having the wiring only to the one end, and you install the LED tube in it so the label end is getting power, as they all have this as standard.
I live in the USA, I bought both styles, drop in replacements and ones where removing the ballast was needed. For the hassle, I'll pay a bit more for the drop in style.
Super cool to see the work shop from above, but it made me uneasy, because I am terribly afraid of heights! I might have to work on that :D Anyway: Hooray for better lights!
Actually, high quality fluorescent lamp with electronic gear have the same efficiency as a led and also no flicker. Plus not die at high temperature. But if you need a lot of hi-quality light use hi-pressure metal-halide lamp with electronic gear.
Lights that flicker at a particular speed can making spinning tools look as if they are not moving, which is dangerous. So flicker-free LED lights are much safer. Not all LED lights are flicker-free, though, because some of them drive the LED from the mains with a simple capacitor dropper. (See numerous videos on bigclive.com)
I remember from photography class that on film or even digital cameras, the old fluorescent lights have a weird green color to them and makes everything on camera look like some alien spaceship or something. Lol The new ones look a lot better
Noin isossa mittakaavassa ledeihin siirryttäessä kannattaa tarkistaa valaisimien kompensointi, koska loistehon määrä muuttuu merkittävästi. Olen törmännyt tapauksiin, joissa ylikompensoinnin takia sulakekoko on meinannut loppua kesken ledeihin siirryttäessä.
The problem with all these "energy efficient" lights including LED bulbs is they never last nearly as long as what's claimed. The LED's themselves last super long but it's the electronic circuity which drives them that burns out prematurely. Overall a nice light upgrade though in your shop :)
The drivers have gotten better. If you want quality you need to press the manufacturer's to specify higher quality and prepare to pay for the increased longevity.
This is true especially in 'value engineered' LEDs with minimal heat-sinking and driving at 100%. I suspect that these may be engineered to a higher standard. Hard to know without tearing one apart.
I have 40-watt fixtures with magnetic ballasts. I found LED “tubes” that work with the old ballasts and use about 20 watts. No flickering yet though I don’t take video - the old ones were flickering in real life, often. 6500K, which I like but might be unpleasant for some people.
