I own two of the standard 1x1 panels there fantastic I own two aputure nova 300s as well, I would say I use the Geminis more due to there lite weight and almost silent fan. And in around sets I find the Geminis 2x1 are far more user friendly than the arri s 60, but I work on a lot of fast turn around drama and speed and portability are paramount.
Thanks so much for the detail and in-depth look at the Menu system. The System Test function is something I would love to see other companies start including in their products. Such a valuable asset to know the condition of the interior and firmware at any time.
THANK YOU Andrew! @24:36 you clearly explained a problem I had with my 300d II and some cheaper V-mount batteries. Excellent review as always. Always the thorough one and it shows. Others may just run through features or specs but your on-set experience and eye for detail has yet again set apart your review from others. btw, lol at 34 Volts typo.
Positive Duv values above 5000k are a good thing. The Sekonic 800 meter uses the Black body Duv curve for the entire CCT range. It doesn't switch to the Daylight Curve at 5000k. Real Daylight(mid-day) is actually a little bit green, measuring approx +0.0030 Duv on the Daylight curve and about +0.0020-0.0015 Duv in real measurements
The Kosmos 400 (testing for review) tracks the plankien curve from 3000 to 4000, then goes slowly deviates up to the Daylight curve and tracks that from 5000 Kelvin. Its the first light I've seen that tracks the daylight curve, not the plankien curve in daylight Kelvin's
Thanks very much for the review. It was great to see that you took the time to look at the brightness of the Red, Green and Blue colour emitters. I also found with my Litepanels Gemini 2x1 that the RGB colours are much less bright than the CCT white light mode. The 2x1 version also seems to desaturate in a linear mode, because the saturation of colours disappears very quickly. Great to see Litepanels now give you the option of the Log curve for desaturation! One final point of interest. I have found the Aputure Nova P300c to be incredibly bright with it's saturated colour emitters compared to the Litepanels products. I could swear it's Red, Green and Blue are just as bright as the white light CCT mode. A huge bonus for people doing a lot of colour work that need that sort of brightness... so worth a mention. Cheers!
@@gaffergear For sure, I do remember you pointing out the difference in saturation. I was more trying to point out the difference in brightness of the colour emitters. I found the Nova was not only more saturated but also much brighter with its colour modes. Cheers
Hey there I was really looking forward to this one - thank you! I have a question for you. I'm struggling to decide on how practical an RGB light is in practice. The only RGB light I have is the Titan tube and whenever I use those colors it's highly stylized. For most cases, color contrast is usually just tungsten and daylight. I often wonder if my lighting approach could be more dynamic if I add more dynamic colors (RGB). However, looking at inspiration most people use them in a very overdone and tacky way. Perhaps it's used more often than I realize but the real masters are incorporating them so subtle that you don't notice it. So I'm wondering, do you find you use the RBG colors much in your line of work? Or is it a very specific and rare application?
Mostly on backgrounds, if I have a dominant white wall I will add some colour to it. Just to take it off white, but not very saturated. Where I play with colour is at night in an urban environment. Often amber through a window to simulate a street light. But day to day not often.
Just to make your life more difficult, you should add SSI comparisons to other RGBWW lights(Nova, Skypanel...etc) to see how well they match with this light at 3200k, 5600k.
Dear Andrew, really appreciating your authoritative review. The dual set up looks to be a interesting option and might rival the output of a Nanlux 650c. Prices and feature sets compare - have you any experience with these interesting soft lights?
I love this little unit because it is so light weight. The Nova gives you more punch but is heavy. Comes down to what you need out to f those two things, but it's nice to have a super powerful light weight option.
@@gaffergear what is the relative brightness between the Nova and gemini at a comparable beam angle (whichever modifier on the gemini most matches the Nova)? Also see my other q ^
Great vid, would you use this to punch through windows or would you still leave that up to HMI/Fresnel LED's? I know you touched on the shadow quality but could hard shadows be achieved?
Thanks for all your great reviews! I'm interested in purchasing this light for it's color accuracy and power output. I would use it for on location interviews, both indoors and outdoors, for broadcast news where I have very limited rigging time. Has you seen anything similar/better being released since that I should have a look at? Slightly smaller/lighter would be preferable, even if I have to sacrifice some output. But I would prefer a light with +/- green to be able to match white in any environment.
Interesting to note that over the years of your reviews, when the technology was nascent gen 3, you went from comparing output of LEDs to HMI's to where now you don't even bother. Maybe because current era is late gen 3 or is it gen 4?
I had my first LED panel lights back in 2008 so I'm on my 7th gen now. I had two of the original gen one 1x1 Litepanels, and two of the smaller brick lights. The 4 lights cost just under $10,000 AUD back then. The Astra 6x is literally 6x brighter than my original gen 1 mono colour panel.
@@gaffergear I refer to the current newest crop of lights (late era such as Aputure with mesh technology and greater than 95% color accuracy at 3200 &5500k) as gen4, with the first go round of Litepanels as gen 1's (poor color, fringing, small emitters, but battery powered). Maybe you have time for a segment on led, their probably generations, and looking forward? One of the issues with the plethora of LED systems is how to readily classify them - a system like is done with fighter jets would be handy.
Thanks for a great in depth review, I’m curious to know how you measure the colour vectors, is it with a sekonic c800? If so I wasn’t aware it had that function. I will check when I’m reunited with mine. Thanks again Dirk
Seconic c800. But you have to be sure you set the desaturation standard, such as D55 or D65. On the main text screen hold down a section of screen (CCT or example) and other options will appear such as hue and saturation.. I think white point is in the set up menu, I can't check as my metre is back at Sekonic for calibration
With the dome difusion it losses to much punch I would love to see this light with the médium diffusion same aste the soft version to see how many lux has at 3ft (gemini soft has 6800 lux at 3ft with médium diffusion..
Andrews measurements are taken at 3 meters not 3 feet. The Gemini hard is still very bright with the dome diffuser installed (about as bright as the Gemini 2x1). If you measure the brightness of gemini hard with the dome diffuser in daylight at 3 feet it will be around 9000 lux - so quite a bit brighter than the gemini soft with medium diffusion at the same distance. Cheers
I really hate the marketing term 'HARD" for this fixture, its not useable as a hard light without a modifier unless you like the look of cheap look with multiple shadows. This is the more expensive version of their 1x1 with better color accuracy. Litepannels dropped the og 1x1 price because the Aputure nova sold so well and offered more output, better color reproduction, a case, more rgb output, dmx like control for free, all for a better price. The selling point of the new fixture is that they changed their LED lenses? I'd just get a creamsource, or digital sputnik fixture at that point if i wanted multiple shadows from a "hard light". Litepannels was ahead of the curve with led especially the 2x1, but has fallen behind nanlite, and aputure, and fiilex. This "Hard" 1x1 has a disappointing price for a midrange product. I'd be willing to spend maybe $8-900, less for a used unit.
I just bought some Anton Bauer titan sl 150 (143wh/14.4 vdc/ maximum load : 10a/ 10a continues draw / peaks 12.5 for 5 seconds ) to power my Litepanels Astras . my question is will the Anton Bauer dionic xt150 ( 156wh/output voltage : nominal :14.4 vdc/operating :10.0 -16.8 volts/maximun load 12a/12a constant current capability/20a for 2 seconds ) give me a more powerful light for longer periods of time ? I can still exchange for the Anton Bauer diontic xt150 is the diontic xt150 a better investment ?
@@gaffergear ok I was thinking same thing go more power . Thanks so much this helps alot . What are benefits of Anton bauer dionic xl over their titan series ?
@@creativegreats6924 I'm not really familiar with those brands. For me I just go the biggest I can get so I don't need to worry about battery changes. But if you are running cameras some of the more modern batteries may be handy, especially if they have lots of D-taps
@@gaffergear the anton bauer xl I think it may be able to recharge more Times giving it a longer lifespan . the anton bauer xl is a 12a constant current vs the titan 10a constant current . on a lightpanel I dont see how the extra 2a would help much maybe on the nova 300. how can an extra 2a help when it comes to lights ?
@@gaffergear ok I understand. I’m a starting with music video and only have a Flexible bi color led pannel for now. I’d like something easy and portable to get great versatiliy. Do you think it’s better to get some tubes rgbw?
With an LED like this that has +/- green control is it relatively trivial to dial in the adjustment needed to offset the DuV and get back to the planckian curve or are there other factors that make that a poor way to fix any tint?
+/- green is to match location lighting, such as a supermarket. Actually I mostly use it when lighting through car windows to neutralise the green tint in the glass.
@@gaffergear So one couldn't dial in a small amount of green using the +/- green knob to counteract the -.0024 DuV at 2700K and achieve a more accurate white that way?
@@marcuslalande1284 at the low end Kelvin's you don't have enough colour emitters running to vector into a white point accurately. The light is very dependant on a single emitter, usually the warm white or an amber. So dialling in a +/- green would most likely change the Kelvin.
Professional review is an understatement
Your attention to detail in your reviews has no parallel !👏🏾🙏🏾
I love it when I see a Gaffer and Gear video that's in the 35-50 min bracket. I'm just revisiting this one and it's such a good time.
I own two of the standard 1x1 panels there fantastic I own two aputure nova 300s as well, I would say I use the Geminis more due to there lite weight and almost silent fan. And in around sets I find the Geminis 2x1 are far more user friendly than the arri s 60, but I work on a lot of fast turn around drama and speed and portability are paramount.
Thanks so much for the detail and in-depth look at the Menu system. The System Test function is something I would love to see other companies start including in their products. Such a valuable asset to know the condition of the interior and firmware at any time.
THANK YOU Andrew!
@24:36 you clearly explained a problem I had with my 300d II and some cheaper V-mount batteries.
Excellent review as always. Always the thorough one and it shows.
Others may just run through features or specs but your on-set experience and eye for detail has yet again set apart your review from others.
btw, lol at 34 Volts typo.
Been waiting for this one. Thanks, Andrew!
Positive Duv values above 5000k are a good thing. The Sekonic 800 meter uses the Black body Duv curve for the entire CCT range. It doesn't switch to the Daylight Curve at 5000k. Real Daylight(mid-day) is actually a little bit green, measuring approx +0.0030 Duv on the Daylight curve and about +0.0020-0.0015 Duv in real measurements
The Kosmos 400 (testing for review) tracks the plankien curve from 3000 to 4000, then goes slowly deviates up to the Daylight curve and tracks that from 5000 Kelvin. Its the first light I've seen that tracks the daylight curve, not the plankien curve in daylight Kelvin's
Thanks very much for the review. It was great to see that you took the time to look at the brightness of the Red, Green and Blue colour emitters. I also found with my Litepanels Gemini 2x1 that the RGB colours are much less bright than the CCT white light mode. The 2x1 version also seems to desaturate in a linear mode, because the saturation of colours disappears very quickly. Great to see Litepanels now give you the option of the Log curve for desaturation!
One final point of interest. I have found the Aputure Nova P300c to be incredibly bright with it's saturated colour emitters compared to the Litepanels products. I could swear it's Red, Green and Blue are just as bright as the white light CCT mode. A huge bonus for people doing a lot of colour work that need that sort of brightness... so worth a mention.
Cheers!
The Nova has about double the saturation, same with Astera products. The Nova at 50% sat reads as 100% on a spectrometer
@@gaffergear For sure, I do remember you pointing out the difference in saturation. I was more trying to point out the difference in brightness of the colour emitters. I found the Nova was not only more saturated but also much brighter with its colour modes. Cheers
@@cagf2013 the red on the Nova is super powerful
Thank you for doing such a thorough review. Quite apart from being incredibly informative, I found it extremely interesting as well!
Nicely done Andrew.
Great content! I’d love to see how this light compares to the soft version as well as the astra 6x lights. In intensity and in beam pattern.
Impressive review and impressive light. Thank you!
Fantastically detailed. Great work.
Great review.
Hey there I was really looking forward to this one - thank you! I have a question for you. I'm struggling to decide on how practical an RGB light is in practice. The only RGB light I have is the Titan tube and whenever I use those colors it's highly stylized. For most cases, color contrast is usually just tungsten and daylight. I often wonder if my lighting approach could be more dynamic if I add more dynamic colors (RGB). However, looking at inspiration most people use them in a very overdone and tacky way. Perhaps it's used more often than I realize but the real masters are incorporating them so subtle that you don't notice it. So I'm wondering, do you find you use the RBG colors much in your line of work? Or is it a very specific and rare application?
Mostly on backgrounds, if I have a dominant white wall I will add some colour to it. Just to take it off white, but not very saturated.
Where I play with colour is at night in an urban environment. Often amber through a window to simulate a street light. But day to day not often.
@@gaffergear this was what I was thinking. Thank you so much.
Just to make your life more difficult, you should add SSI comparisons to other RGBWW lights(Nova, Skypanel...etc) to see how well they match with this light at 3200k, 5600k.
Dear Andrew, really appreciating your authoritative review. The dual set up looks to be a interesting option and might rival the output of a Nanlux 650c. Prices and feature sets compare - have you any experience with these interesting soft lights?
Golden as always. Between this fixture and the nova C300, which one would you recommend?
I love this little unit because it is so light weight. The Nova gives you more punch but is heavy. Comes down to what you need out to f those two things, but it's nice to have a super powerful light weight option.
Piggybacking off this.. Can you control what CCT you desaturate to with the Nova in HSI?
@@gaffergear what is the relative brightness between the Nova and gemini at a comparable beam angle (whichever modifier on the gemini most matches the Nova)?
Also see my other q ^
@@LittleFjords the dome would be the closest match. I would be guessing about 50% but you can run the numbers from the Aputure web site.
@@LittleFjords via DMX only
Which light is brither?
Astera gemini, Apture Nova p300c, Luxli Taiko, Nanltie mixpanel
Great vid, would you use this to punch through windows or would you still leave that up to HMI/Fresnel LED's? I know you touched on the shadow quality but could hard shadows be achieved?
You could, but it would not look like direct sun for example
Thanks for all your great reviews! I'm interested in purchasing this light for it's color accuracy and power output. I would use it for on location interviews, both indoors and outdoors, for broadcast news where I have very limited rigging time. Has you seen anything similar/better being released since that I should have a look at? Slightly smaller/lighter would be preferable, even if I have to sacrifice some output. But I would prefer a light with +/- green to be able to match white in any environment.
Nothing smaller with this fire power. This is a constant rental for run and gen interview shoots
@@gaffergear Thank you for replying! I will go for it. The output sure is useful outdoors.
Interesting to note that over the years of your reviews, when the technology was nascent gen 3, you went from comparing output of LEDs to HMI's to where now you don't even bother. Maybe because current era is late gen 3 or is it gen 4?
I had my first LED panel lights back in 2008 so I'm on my 7th gen now. I had two of the original gen one 1x1 Litepanels, and two of the smaller brick lights. The 4 lights cost just under $10,000 AUD back then.
The Astra 6x is literally 6x brighter than my original gen 1 mono colour panel.
@@gaffergear I refer to the current newest crop of lights (late era such as Aputure with mesh technology and greater than 95% color accuracy at 3200 &5500k) as gen4, with the first go round of Litepanels as gen 1's (poor color, fringing, small emitters, but battery powered). Maybe you have time for a segment on led, their probably generations, and looking forward? One of the issues with the plethora of LED systems is how to readily classify them - a system like is done with fighter jets would be handy.
Thanks for a great in depth review, I’m curious to know how you measure the colour vectors, is it with a sekonic c800? If so I wasn’t aware it had that function. I will check when I’m reunited with mine. Thanks again Dirk
Seconic c800. But you have to be sure you set the desaturation standard, such as D55 or D65.
On the main text screen hold down a section of screen (CCT or example) and other options will appear such as hue and saturation..
I think white point is in the set up menu, I can't check as my metre is back at Sekonic for calibration
With the dome difusion it losses to much punch I would love to see this light with the médium diffusion same aste the soft version to see how many lux has at 3ft (gemini soft has 6800 lux at 3ft with médium diffusion..
Andrews measurements are taken at 3 meters not 3 feet. The Gemini hard is still very bright with the dome diffuser installed (about as bright as the Gemini 2x1). If you measure the brightness of gemini hard with the dome diffuser in daylight at 3 feet it will be around 9000 lux - so quite a bit brighter than the gemini soft with medium diffusion at the same distance. Cheers
Gemini hard vs Gemini soft w/diffuser removed?
I don't think you can remove the diffuser on the soft
I really hate the marketing term 'HARD" for this fixture, its not useable as a hard light without a modifier unless you like the look of cheap look with multiple shadows. This is the more expensive version of their 1x1 with better color accuracy. Litepannels dropped the og 1x1 price because the Aputure nova sold so well and offered more output, better color reproduction, a case, more rgb output, dmx like control for free, all for a better price. The selling point of the new fixture is that they changed their LED lenses? I'd just get a creamsource, or digital sputnik fixture at that point if i wanted multiple shadows from a "hard light".
Litepannels was ahead of the curve with led especially the 2x1, but has fallen behind nanlite, and aputure, and fiilex. This "Hard" 1x1 has a disappointing price for a midrange product. I'd be willing to spend maybe $8-900, less for a used unit.
I just bought some Anton Bauer titan sl 150 (143wh/14.4 vdc/ maximum load : 10a/ 10a continues draw / peaks 12.5 for 5 seconds ) to power my Litepanels Astras . my question is will the Anton Bauer dionic xt150 ( 156wh/output voltage : nominal :14.4 vdc/operating :10.0 -16.8 volts/maximun load 12a/12a constant current capability/20a for 2 seconds ) give me a more powerful light for longer periods of time ? I can still exchange for the Anton Bauer diontic xt150 is the diontic xt150 a better investment ?
Not much difference between the two in terms of run time.
My last battery purchase was 20 X 310WH. I just go big.
@@gaffergear ok I was thinking same thing go more power . Thanks so much this helps alot . What are benefits of Anton bauer dionic xl over their titan series ?
@@creativegreats6924 I'm not really familiar with those brands. For me I just go the biggest I can get so I don't need to worry about battery changes.
But if you are running cameras some of the more modern batteries may be handy, especially if they have lots of D-taps
@@gaffergear the anton bauer xl I think it may be able to recharge more Times giving it a longer lifespan . the anton bauer xl is a 12a constant current vs the titan 10a constant current . on a lightpanel I dont see how the extra 2a would help much maybe on the nova 300. how can an extra 2a help when it comes to lights ?
How even is the beam - with the Dome on - compared to the Nova P300c?
Same
Hi, would you pick this over the Nova P300C?
I don't like to give my preference because my situation may be different to yours.
@@gaffergear ok I understand. I’m a starting with music video and only have a Flexible bi color led pannel for now. I’d like something easy and portable to get great versatiliy. Do you think it’s better to get some tubes rgbw?
With an LED like this that has +/- green control is it relatively trivial to dial in the adjustment needed to offset the DuV and get back to the planckian curve or are there other factors that make that a poor way to fix any tint?
+/- green is to match location lighting, such as a supermarket. Actually I mostly use it when lighting through car windows to neutralise the green tint in the glass.
@@gaffergear So one couldn't dial in a small amount of green using the +/- green knob to counteract the -.0024 DuV at 2700K and achieve a more accurate white that way?
@@marcuslalande1284 at the low end Kelvin's you don't have enough colour emitters running to vector into a white point accurately. The light is very dependant on a single emitter, usually the warm white or an amber. So dialling in a +/- green would most likely change the Kelvin.