F&V ultra-color LED panels – CRI = 95 !!!

by Sebastian WöberApril 19^th, 2013

The respected lighting & accessories company F&V just updated their LED panel line-up. Additionally to their good quality affordable large and compact LED’s they’ve added ultra-high CRI (color rendition) panels to the mix. Nice!

We’ve been following the development of F&V lights very closely over the past years and this has several reasons:
– Even their affordable LED lights the F&V K4000 had very good CRI values (85). The 3 light kit for example
– Their lights have very strong light outputs.
– Their lights are very affordable. The 3-light kit for example goes for $1000 (LINK)
– The lights might not look supercool, but their built quality is solid and lightweight.

With a single panel costing $400 we were very curious to see their newest generation of panels which have a CRI value of 95. Panels with lower CRI values (most LED’s nowardays have below 80) cannot reproduce all the colors on your camera accurately thus resulting in weridly tinted skin tones or colors. Especially when working in combination with other light sources like the sun (CRI: 100) adding a low CRI LED in the mix can be problematic.

For people who want the light quality they’ve gotten used to before LED got big these new lights offer a great lighting quality. The soft distanced milky layer in front of the LED’s will make your light even and soft, avoid multi-shadows and blinding of your talents.

The high CRI panels will come at a price though: With their included DMX module they will cost around $1900.

The good news is that some of their other, smaller panels will also be updated and not see a price increase:
Z180 – $369
Z96 – $169

The new panels should become available in their stores within the next months:
US F&V Store: LINK
European F&V Store: LINK