LED Fresnels: Two Takes on Design
For location lighting, moving around a lot, and travel, the Fiilex LED kits offer amazing capability and flexibility in a small and light package. Designed for use as a fixed solution, for a small sound stage, or grip truck, the Gus 41 makes a perfect solution. It is very wide and soft or small and focused as needed.
Stands & Case
I used one of my own Lowel stands for the fourth light, as there are only three stands in the Fiilex kit. The stands are similar to Lowel stands with the legs folding up over the base of the stand, but the design was not as well engineered as the Lowel stands, so one leg of the Fiilex stand couldn't fold up all the way. The Fiilex stands had protected feet so they did not scratch the wood floor. That is a nice touch.
More compact when folded, the Lowel stand holds more sections, and yet packs tighter.
It would be nice to see the same attention to detail the lights have be applied to the stands--enabling them to fold up tighter, and then we could get a fourth stand into the case. Some of the kits come standard with four or more lights so only carrying three stands creates challenges the moment you open the case. And if they redesign the stands, I'd like to see them extend higher than about eye level.
Even pushing down the legs to eke out more height, the Lowel stand goes way higher.
The stands also demonstrate one other issue I found. The stands can hold the light higher than the power supply can reach. So the weight of the AC-DC brick ends up hanging off the back of the light. It's not a huge issue since the cable uses an L-plug to connect to the lamp head, but something that one more foot of cable could have easily avoided. Also, using a standard IEC AC cable rather than a rounded one would make it easier to find a replacement when one gets damaged or lost.
When I tried to get more height, the power cable was too short.
Another surprise I encountered was that, while the lights can point straight up, they are limited in tilting down. The light hits the U-bracket that supports the light. For stand-mounted lights, this hindered their usability a bit. You really couldn't use them for close work because they simply couldn't tilt down enough. Creating a bracket with a slight forward tilt would solve this issue and they'd still fit into the case perfectly.
While no fresnel can point straight down with the doors on, angling the U-bracket forward would have given me more tilt.
The Fiilex kits come in a Pelican-like molded plastic case with interior dividers, padded sections, and a bag in the lid. This is quite a nice bit of kit in and of itself, but if you wanted to redesign the layout to squeeze more heads or accessories in, you'd have to basically start from scratch because it's designed to be used as is. It does look as if it would protect the lights if the case was dropped--a test I didn't perform because I had to return the kit in good working order at the end of the review.
Custom foam molding and packing keeps everything in place.