GEAR LED LIGHTS
SMALL WONDERS
Starting with the most compact and affordable lights, the Astera Pixelbricks are battery-powered uplights with five different beam options. Multiple can be connected to form clusters and shapes. Just 10cm long and weighing 1kg, each Pixelbrick can be fitted with a small dome to change the output from a beam to a softer look. Moving up the scale, but sticking with Astera, the FP6 Hydrapanels are small yet feature-packed LED panels and deliver consistent, flicker-free performance. Astera’s Trucolor technology calibrates the light for consistency and exact reproduction of colour temperature and filter gels. You can dial in CCT with a green/ magenta tint to get white exactly right, HSI numbers or a range of gels such as Rosco’s. The lights are silent and relatively powerful. If you want more, they are available in a kit of four and together put out 1300 lumens. Lots of accessories are included in the kit. Another high-end lighting manufacturer producing small panels is Rosco DMG Lumiere with the Dash pocket LED kit. This brings a massive spectrum of colours to a portable, handheld unit. It uses the same six-chip LED set found in all of the company’s larger Mix LED light banks. That means the Dash can be set to recreate more than 130 colours that match Rosco’s colour gels – as well as white in all temperatures and hues, plus colour matching to most popular light sources. While many small LED panels are made out of plastic, the Dash is solidly built in a rugged, all-weather aluminium housing. The unit is just 128x80x28mm in size, yet can pump out up to 380 lux at 1m/39in. Output is rated to 95+ CRI and 90+ TLCI. A similar form factor comes from Aputure, the brand that went a long way to popularising the affordable, pocket-sized LED light panel with its MC20. The MC20 Pro is four times as bright and has more connectivity options, an IP65 rating to fend off weather and RGBWW capability.
ASTERA HYDRAPANELS
ZHIYUN MOLUS G60
This features an upgraded optical design and brand-new LED chipset, a colour temperature range from 2000 to 10,000K with G/M adjustability and a tighter beam angle of 45° for increased control. As it’s full colour, it can be a mini practical light, portable fill or accent light. It is controlled via the onboard colour display, wirelessly using the Sidus Link app on a smartphone, or via advanced wired and wireless methods including DMX/RDM and LumenRadio CRMX. Going up in size, British firm Rotolight offers the Neo 3 Pro which puts out continuous light in all colours and has a High-Speed Sync flash in RGBWW. Just dial them in, giving you a flash in any one of 16.7 million colours or with 2500 digital filters, with virtually zero recycle time. The Neo 3 Pro is the brightest on-camera LED light ever, around 25%
WIDE GAMUT From mini LED panels to compact COBs, the choice of low-power units is diverse
FLEXIBLE FRIENDS Small panels can be camera-mounted or fit with mini diffusers and used as practicals
more powerful than the standard Neo 3 that sells alongside it. There are also quick-access kelvin presets in CCT mode and special FX settings
ROSCO DMG DASH
“Aputure went a long way to popularising affordable, pocket-sized LED light panels with its MC20... and the new MC20 Pro is four times as bright”
APUTURE MC PRO
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PRO MOVIEMAKER
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