How does a spotlight work?

Other Types of Lights LED Spotlights
1

Ok, bare with me here folks.

I have some old Cine Quartz Lights, that I used for Filming. I’m trying to re-thingio them, into Led Spotlights for filming.

Now, I have to gut the insides out of them and basically rig the insides with Led Strip lights (5050’s), yes… The ones from Ebay.

However, being as stupid as I am, I’m wondering how the “beam” works.

From gauging normal torch spotlights and the guts of the Quartz light as it is, I ‘guess’, that the beam comes from the light hitting a convex shaped reflective surface, that projects the light to it’s desired path.

Ok, I guess this is it.

But how am I going to work that with Striplights?

2

Some pictures of your light and reflector would be helpful, I can’t find it on google. :slight_smile:

Also, the larger your light source (like a strip light) the more spill you’ll get, and the harder it gets to achieve a proper focus.

3

I think if you use one high-powered LED instead of those strips you will have a nicer beam, better efficiency and probably less work.

And you can even choose a tint that is suitable for your purpose.

4

Surely one high powered LED wouldn’t be as luminous as 300 independent LED’s.

Surely?

5

Oh yes, my friend...it can.

6

Please kind sire.

Edify and/or inform me?

7

Shauno,

you really should post some pictures of the light you have. Without knowing how the innards look like it's hard to come up with an idea how to mod it.

8

Those superbright LEDs generally have a max current of ~30 mA and a single XML can easily handle 3000mA and is much more of a point source which is a necessity when constructing a spotlight. Angle of incidence = angle of reflection right? But with a large source the light reflected from one spot can come from many different angles and ends up going in many different directions. The larger the reflector is in comparison to the size of the source, the smaller the difference in angles of incidence become and the better the light will be focused. The overall width of the beam is dependent on the diameter of the reflector so the the lumens produced by the source that end up focused and not spilled or absorbed are spread over the width of the beam. A dim, spread out source like a bunch of low power LEDs is simply a poor choice to use as a source for a spotlight.

9

If the light source comes from behind, or at the back of the reflector, then the reflector catches the light sent out from an LED at various angles to focus it into a forward beam. Most flashlights use this method.

If the light source comes from in front of the reflector (recoil), then it works like a satellite dish to capture the light and focus it. I believe this method generally has lower efficiency in terms of focused light in the beam.

Another approach is some lights depend heavily on a special lens that focuses the light into a tighter beam. In this case, the distance from light source to lens will be important.

You can get a little info on some of the terms above and more at:

http://flashlightwiki.com/

10

Ok, so here is my can.

http://www.nofrillsphotos.com/photos/i-S4Lq7bM/0/O/i-S4Lq7bM.jpg

Quite a big picture, so just copy and paste it into a window to see it.

As you can see, there’s a can and there’s a convex?

11

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