High Power LEDs – an alternative light source?

In some of my posts and comments you may have read me banging on about how I use primarily LED lights for my photos. I like LEDs – they’re quite different from your conventional light bulb. Being an awkward little bugger I decided I only wanted to use such systems for photography and put up with any of their draw backs. I’ve been using standard off the shelf LED bulbs for a while now – the ones with clusters of many LEDs.

The biggest disadvantage of these LED bulbs is their directional and relatively low light output – compared to a standard and equally priced halogen/florescent bulb. So in order to get more light output I decided to investigate high power LEDs – plus it’s a good excuse to put my electrical engineering skills to the test again. Ultimately though it’s worth remembering it’s how you use the light that makes a picture; I just thought I’d share with you my in-development high power LED lighting set-up. Who knows maybe you too might give LEDs a try, or maybe it sparks an idea that you might want to try.

It’s also worth stating I’ll be going into a bit of detail about the circuit I’ve assembled. If you don’t have a clue what voltage and current are you’ll probably not have a clue what I’m blabbing about. I’ll try my best to keep things simple, let me know in the comments section if you followed.