GROUP TEST
LITEPANEL GEMINI £3576/ $4218 gemini.litepanels.com
SPECIFICATIONS Size: 63.5x16.5x31.7cm/25x6.5x12.5in Weight: 10.1kg/22.2lbs Power: 325W CRI: 97 daylight, 99 tungsten Colour temperature: 2700-6000K Battery: Battery compatible via 3-pin XLR HOW IT RATES Features: 8/10 Good white-balance range, a nice colour offering and lots of pleasing design elements Performance: 9/10 Great performer and has a high colour rendition quality Handling: 8/10 The all-in-one capability really makes this an easy light to handle Value for money 8/10 Not cheap, but worth it for the quality of the build and performance PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 8/10 Pros: Lots of features and a nice range of light options Cons: A tad on the weighty side
Brought out in competition with the Arri Skypanel, you can tell that a lot of thought has gone into the design of Litepanel’s Gemini. It’s an all-in-one unit, so there’s no independent control box, and it’s most definitely a studio light, its primary purpose is to hang from a rig so the positioning of the interface on the underside makes perfect sense. There is a huge amount of customisation available. For example, the menu screen can be dimmed if it’s affecting lighting on set or flipped 180 degrees if the light is upside down. The cooling fan is automatically monitored by default but can be turned up, down or offmanually. The light is DMX-ready and can be daisy chained and used as a master or slave, and it can also be controlled wirelessly with DMX or Bluetooth. The Gemini also comes with six pre-loaded colour temperature pre-sets on track A, which is a useful feature if you want to jump to a specific colour temperature along the 2700-6000K range. Track B provides the opportunity to customise a further six pre-sets, which again could be a helpful way of quickly changing the lighting to pre-determined configurations on set. The whole interface is very intuitive and pre-sets can be set by dialling in a desired look and holding one of the pre-set buttons down for three seconds. The Gemini has the capacity to incrementally add in magenta or green in white mode. There are also two colour modes: HSI (hue, saturation and intensity) for up to 360 colours; and Gel, which provides scores of old-school gels to match with legacy lights such as HMIs, which might be using physical gels to create particular hues. As with most LEDs, Litepanel claims that at any frame rate or angle you shouldn’t have to worry about flickering. The light can be powered directly or via the XLR port on the back, with a 28V battery. It has a standard Junior pin configuration and a removable yoke that integrates with other grip equipment. At 5600K it pumps out 8.88 foot- lamberts at full output from 1.8m/6ft with a CRI reading of 95.7, which is a very high colour rendition. The intensity dims down to 0.1% so the drop-off is virtually invisible. Mounting brackets on the grooves at the top and sides put the finishing touch on a really nice piece of kit that’s one of the best in its class.
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SUMMER 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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