Softpanels

 

Kevin Baxter and Ken Fisher are at it again. Kevin was CTO at Litepanels. Ken was President of Litepanels, and before that, founder of Fisher Light (huge, soft sources that were great for studio car lighting) and the the Fisher LED Ringlite (gorgeous Obie that encircled the lens).

Now they are making SoftPanels LED Lights — innovative, big, soft lighting fixtures with a built-in color meter that matches this light to any other source–or all sources– on set or location.

Here’s a chance to get in on the ground floor via Kickstarter.

Softpanels-Rear

There are several unique things about Softpanels:

  1. There’s a built-in color meter in every light.
  2. Push the AUTO button, and SoftPanels can match available light on location, light coming in through a window, ambient interior light, or any other tungsten, HMI, or LED light on set. This can save time, especially with multiple fixtures.
  3. You can also manually set the color temperature. The readout is the actual color.

Kevin explains, “Our new lights offer Precise Manual Color Mode with verified color temperature accuracy. Conventional variable-color LED lighting fixtures often provide a numerical readout of the color temperature that the fixture is supposedly producing.Their preset buttons often approximate a fixed color temperature like 5500ºK or 3200ºK. But these are usually estimates which can be off by a lot, and can introduce substantial color errors that can greatly affect the quality of ones work. These color errors are magnified when you mix multiple LED lights in the same setup.

“SoftPanels lets you adjust to a precise and verified color temperature anywhere between 2700ºK and 6500ºK using the built-in LED/ambient color metering system.”

Softpanels-AccuColor-Skintone-Enhance

The SKIN tone enhance button is used after setting Autocolor and White Balancing the camera.

 

 SoftPanels specs

  • Variable color adjustment from 2700K to 6500K
  • Dimming: 100% – 1% dimming
  • CRI: 95 CRI
  • 3 sizes – familiar to users of soft boxes:
  • 3 x 4 ft (90x120cm)
  • 2 x 3 ft (60x90cm)
  • 1 x 2 ft (30x60cm)
  • Can be mounted either vertically or horizontally.
  • Depth of all fixtures: 5 in. (130mm)
  • The 3x4ft LED unit draws 600 watt, which is equivalent to the output of a 5,000-watt tungsten soft light
  • Plugs into an ordinary household power outlet.
  • Flicker-free
  • Silent operation
  • 2x3ft and 1x2ft units can be run off camera batteries.
  • All SoftPanels come with a honeycomb grid, gel frame, and soft case

Ken Fisher adds, “Just having the color temperature setting on the back of the light actually match the light output is a major step towards reducing color correction in post. This is joint project that Kevin and I are doing. I think that bigger is better — big, broad sources are softer and more pleasing.”

There’s one week left on the Kickstarter campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/softpanels/softpanels-led-lights-with-autocolor-for-cine-vide

 

 

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