LED Strips for (hopefully decent) Lighting: Rosco LED Tape Exploration

 baldengineer recently discussed his lighting setup, which was causing issues due to color temperature. A few months back, I too was having lighting difficulties for a different purpose and worked on a project which would benefit from nice lighting! This blog discusses the approach I'm taking with LED lighting strips.

After talking to a friend, they mentioned that one possible solution could be to use LED lighting strips intended for TV studio type of deployments. 

I managed to get hold of LED strips by a firm called Rosco (they are well-known in the television industry and by photographers). This blog post shows some photos of them, before I put them to use! I should mention that I have no idea how good these LED strips are. Please don't consider this to be a review because I have not tried them yet! However, so far, I am impressed at the build quality.

The LED strips are called RoscoLED Tape Static White, and it comes in 5-meter lengths in a range of color temperatures from 1800K (very warm, like candlelight) to 5600K (cold, approaching daylight). (There's another solution for even colder light, see further below).

They come in ESD-safe pouches with a bit of information on the cover. It is nice to see there's a 3-year warranty on them; I wasn't expecting that! 

They are going to be pretty bright.. 1000 lumens per meter. I think that's well above average, however, there are a few more powerful LED strips from other manufacturers, but I don't know how their light quality will compare since the Rosco ones are specifically intended for purposes where good lighting is essential. If I can obtain some other lighting strips at a reasonable cost, then I'll do a comparison. Any genuine honest feedback about which ones to avoid or to consider would be great!

The tape comes pre-fitted with a molded 2-pin connector with a blue rotating ring to secure it. These connectors are made by a manufacturer called Chogori. A mating 2-pin socket is supplied, attached to a short length of wire. This can be joined to a power supply or lighting controller. Since these connectors may be hard to obtain, I might chop them off and replace them with (say) Molex Mini-Fit Jr, which can easily handle the current too.

Since the tape will output a _lot_ of light, a lighting controller will be fairly mandatory, I think.

There are 60 LEDs per meter, and the tape can be cut after every sixth LED if desired.

Some cheaper LED strips such as the one below are single-sided. There is copper on only one side:

Fortunately, the Rosco LED tape is double-sided, which should help provide more consistent lighting across longer distances.

Incidentally, there is also another variety of tape called VariWhite. It contains two different LED types on the same strip (and more densely packed I think), allowing for adjustable color temperature from 1800K to 6000K. It was out of stock, so I don't have any photos of that.

The next question is how well do these LED strips perform? Are they any good?

I cannot begin to comment on that, because I have not tried them yet : ) They literally arrived today. I still need to figure out how I will control them (it will be a DIY solution). I'll write an update blog when I've worked that out. I also need to obtain some sort of lighting fixture (I have seen a suitable one from another manufacturer, but that too is out of stock).

Thanks for reading!