GEAR. BIG LEDS
“Everyone’s talking about the Nanlux Evoke 1200... a single-source, fully dimmable light”
the diesel bill was something like $50,000 a week – not to mention the air conditioning. It’s not unusual for a production to have 400-500 two-by-one LEDs on any stage, or 1500 across multiple set-ups. With Sonara you can use fewer, as they’re more powerful.” This sort of distributed lighting was a good early target for LEDs, before the intricacies of cooling very concentrated point sources had been worked out. “The first real LED spacelight goes back to around 2012 or 2013, a product called Ohm – a white, tunable spacelight which I designed. It was made for PRG in the US by Gekko Technology,” notes Amphlett. LIGHTER LIGHTS Since then, the burgeoning capability of LEDs – and the wave of high-end production in
the UK – has provoked large- scale change, benefitting not only power consumption, but also labour and transportation costs. “I think Panalux used to have about 4000 spacelights at 6K or 4.8K, depending on what bubbles you populate them with. I’m going to guess we’ve probably got 2500, maybe closer to 3000 of the Skypanels, Litepanels Gemini and Sonara LEDs that you use in an equivalent way. A Skypanel is 500W, give or take, and a Gemini 300W; a spacelight is maybe 6K. You are saving a lot of power, and heavy mains cables are reduced dramatically. You’re adding control cables, so there’s still infrastructure to put in, but it’s a lot lighter than it would be.” Meanwhile, making that kilowatt-plus power level available in a point source hard light is a more recent innovation. Ossie Jung, director at Prolight Direct, puts it simply: “The one everyone’s talking about is the Nanlux Evoke 1200. It’s 1200W of LED, basically the equivalent light output of a 2.5K fresnel or M18. This is a single- source, fully dimmable light in daylight or tungsten versions.” The interchangeable modifiers common on modern lights have also grown in size, in order to better handle higher power. Nanlite’s very large fresnel lens is a case in point. “What makes this light special is the fresnel. Having it open face is nice – and it’s very good – but I have a general rule. Never point an open face at a person, because the beam isn’t
quite nice and perfect. They’re great for bouncing off poly or putting through a trace frame, but when you want to create a nice, clean beam of light, it’s always better to use a fresnel.” LOCKDOWN PROJECTS “Having the fresnel on the Evoke is a game changer,” Jung confirms. “That’s why it’s so big. Other companies tried to put their small fresnels on 1200s, not realising that the larger the source gets, the bigger everything has to be. All these COBs have a 2.5 to 3in light source; the fresnel must be big to manage that size of light source.” Prolight’s interest in scale goes a lot further than that, though. Luxor, a five-by-four cluster of
GRAND PLAN Death on the Nile used over 1000 Skypanels – one of the largest ever jobs in the UK film industry (above right)
SHOWSTOPPER The Luxor (bottom left and right) really puts big LEDs on the map – with 20kW of power
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