1 of 2
2 of 2
At barely 11 pounds with yoke and barndoors, the F8 can be readily handled by most crew members, pans and tilts smoothly, and can be packed up fully assembled, immediately after use, without a cool-down period.
LED lighting has come a long way in the past decade from the early days limited to daylight-balanced panels of LED bulbs.
While these panels generated enough light for interviews where the subject and lighting were fairly close together, multiple panels crowding the subject were often needed to light larger spaces, especially with limited ambient light. An alternative was to create larger LEDs with several smaller ones. LED Fresnels came later, but were quite bulky, costly and cumbersome on location.
But today we are in the throes of an LED revolution, including focusable, Fresnel-style lighting. Zylight's F8 is a prime example of these new brighter and lighter LED-illuminated Fresnels now available, and suitable for a wide range of production needs.
Description
Weighing in at slightly less than 11 pounds (with barndoors), the F8 delivers the equivalent of 1,000-watts of (tungsten) illumination, while drawing only 100 watts of power, a 10:1 efficiency ratio.
The LEDs in the F8 are the latest generation and are designed to last upwards of 50,000 hours, even with extended continuous operation.
Carl Mrozek
Reviewer.
This also translates into cool power i.e. plenty of light output with minimal heat. In general, at least 85% of the energy of LEDs is emitted as light, while the rest as heat. With most tungsten lights, only 15% of the lamp's energy is emitted as light—with 85% of it being wasted as heat. This lack of a heat problem also makes it feasible to eliminate fans, thus reducing bulk, weight and noise in one fell swoop. One benefit of reduced heat is longer lamp life. The LEDs in the F8 are the latest generation and are designed to last upwards of 50,000 hours, even with extended continuous operation.
The F8 not only has impressive light output, but it boasts an impressive color rendering index (CRI) of up to 94 (of 100) at 3,200K and 92 at 5,600K. In practical terms, this means that the light it produces yields very rich, natural-looking colors. It also features a comparatively broad beam spread, ranging from 16-70 degrees. While comparable Fresnels zoom in a bit tighter, few are as broad. The F8 is also fully dimmable, from 100%-0% and boasts single shadow beam shaping with clean edges. Moreover, it is one of the few LED Fresnels to offer a DC-powering option utilizing 14.4 V, V-mount or three-pin gold mount camera batteries. Even more importantly, it is one of the very few Fresnels to operate silently, without noise from a cooling fan, etc. This makes it ideal whenever audio performance and recording is paramount, such as during services. This also enables the F8 to be placed fairly close to subjects without changing their behavior.
The fixture itself is made of a lightweight but sturdy aluminum and measures 10 x 10.5 inches on the back, while the lens is approximately eight inches in diameter. Fully compressed it is less than five inches deep (excluding focus knob), but it stretches to nine inches when fully extended in spot mode. The F8 comes with an adjustable yoke for attaching it to an overhead light grid or on standard light stands where the yoke makes panning and tilting smooth and easy. A rubber-coated safety chain is provided to secure the F8 and barndoors to each other and to the grid, for safety, in the event of them loosening and falling off while being adjusted.
Overall, I found the F8 was truly a game changer by providing more-than-ample additional (daylight) illumination far beyond the capabilities of a tungsten light drawing 5-10 times as much wattage. In my opinion, it is in situations where AC power is very restricted or not available that the F8 can truly be a game changer by providing studio-grade lighting with minimal power requirements. Initially, the F8's lack of a dedicated power switch caused a minor panic until I found the answer in the manual: depress the dimmer switch for several seconds. The same was true when switching modes via the adjacent mode switch. As it turns out, getting the time right is important, since if it is off substantially, nothing happens—until you get it right.
This is a good place to point out that the only mode that doesn't require an extra device to utilize is the local mode, aka “manual” mode. For example, to use the Zylink protocol, with 10 wireless channels, you need a remote control unit , or additional Zylight fixtures. DMX is included in the fixture, however, if you wish to daisy chain your DMX signal, use the optional DMX interface Box. There is enough tension on the dimmer dial so that it won't shift values accidentally, yet it's loose enough to quickly ramp up or down by 50% in a second or so. Even though the readout isn't very large, it is bright, contrasty and quite legible, at least from a few feet away. The focus knob is bigger and “knobby” to enable firmly grasping it since the resistance level is much higher than for the much smaller dimmer and mode dials. Adjusting the F8 Fresnels lens is more like focusing an old 8 x 10 view camera with bellows than a modern lens.
Conclusion
In summary, the F8's overall design prioritizes efficacy, efficiency and ergonomics with a clean single (shadow) beam that can be concentrated or diffused within a beam range of 16-70 degrees. Although it draws only 100 watts, its peak output is equivalent to the illumination from a 1,000-watt tungsten light, a 10:1 efficiency ratio. It is also readily and fully dimmable from 100%-0%. Its CRI of 92%-95% ensures rich, natural-looking colors balanced at either 3,200K or 5,600K, depending on the model.
At barely 11 pounds with yoke and barndoors, it can be readily handled by most crew members, pans and tilts smoothly, and can be packed up fully assembled, immediately after use, without a cool-down period. With barndoors and yoke attached it can be packed into a padded gym bag, small hard-shell case, or Zylight's optional ATA-approved, steel-reinforced soft case. It can be powered anywhere in the world via 14.4 V pro video (camera) batteries or with AC sources from 110-220 V+ with the global AC power adapter and the appropriate power cord and (wall) plug.
Zylight's F8 is not a lighting solution for tight budgets, but is reasonably priced, given its projected lifespan of 50,000+ hours of operation without a bulb change, even outdoors with rain, snow and dust swirling around.
