Anthem One LED (an HMI replacement)

Paul F said:
But it says the warranty is void right in your quote from Paul Lears.

"Tools Needed for servicing" followed by a big exclamation point and the notice "Please note that self-servicing Anthem One ... voids any warranty"
The only thing I find attractive about it is the replaceable chips. The form factor and features just aren't there as Paul pointed out.
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I think that is just a potentially confusing graphic.

The FAQ on the kickstarter clearly says that changing cards does not void the warranty:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-lighting-for-film-photography-and-so-mu/faqs
 
traviswears said:
My personal experience w/production products purchased via crowdsourcing is there are always delays, broken promises and quality control issues that negate any discount gained by pre-ordering.

Cool product. I'll wait until there's a version two to consider.
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Normally I'd agree with you, I've heard some horror stories.
This isn't one of those cases.

The light I demo'd was a finished product - complete with full packaging, manual, etc.
As I understand it the kickstarter is being used more for marketing than anything else - raise awareness.
This isn't a case of raising money to finish R&D or to figure out manufacturing - it's a finished product ready to go.

The last video on the kickstarter link goes into bit of detail on the supply chain and manufacturing of the light.
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Normally I'd agree with you, I've heard some horror stories.
This isn't one of those cases.

The light I demo'd was a finished product - complete with full packaging, manual, etc.
As I understand it the kickstarter is being used more for marketing than anything else - raise awareness.
This isn't a case of raising money to finish R&D or to figure out manufacturing - it's a finished product ready to go.

The last video on the kickstarter link goes into bit of detail on the supply chain and manufacturing of the light.
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Wow. The whole project and product looks super slick. I'm pissed I missed the 1299 deal!
 
It doesn't seem to be anything truly new. How many lights do you know that don't come with an adjustable yoke? The magnet idea is plonkers. How useful is a light that can only work parallel to the floor or wall, and those lenses aren't a new idea.ETC had add on lenses for their Parnels years ago and sorry to bang on about this, but I couldn't care a rats bum about lumens what is important is lux, or even old foot candles - because that measures light at the other end - when it lands on things, and not what the LED produces. Lumens does normally get calculated with a sphere, but with an LED only emitting forwards, it distorts the figures. There's also the quality of light - as in why spend thousands if the Ebay special LED flood can do the same thing - illuminate. What matters is beam quality, and square emitters do not produce a circular beam. I bet my old real Fresnels (not those plastic things) produce a nicer and softer beam that will blend with others.

Nothing in the advert shouts quality light too me - sorry!
 
paulears said:
It doesn't seem to be anything truly new. How many lights do you know that don't come with an adjustable yoke? The magnet idea is plonkers. How useful is a light that can only work parallel to the floor or wall, and those lenses aren't a new idea.ETC had add on lenses for their Parnels years ago and sorry to bang on about this, but I couldn't care a rats bum about lumens what is important is lux, or even old foot candles - because that measures light at the other end - when it lands on things, and not what the LED produces. Lumens does normally get calculated with a sphere, but with an LED only emitting forwards, it distorts the figures. There's also the quality of light - as in why spend thousands if the Ebay special LED flood can do the same thing - illuminate. What matters is beam quality, and square emitters do not produce a circular beam. I bet my old real Fresnels (not those plastic things) produce a nicer and softer beam that will blend with others.

Nothing in the advert shouts quality light too me - sorry!
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The combination of size/output/build-quality/price is most definitely something new. I haven't seen anything else like it, ever.
Like I said earlier in this thread, you can find something that puts out more light, or that is smaller, or less expensive -
but you are not going to find something at this size putting out this much light for this price (and definnitely not built like a tank, like this is).
The combination of metrics is incredibly impressive.

Perhaps you simply have to see it in person to appreciate it, but when I first lit it up on set everyone started asking questions immediately.

As far as only working parallel to the floor, I'm not sure what you mean. My camera doesn't have a yoke and I've never had an issue tilting that or aiming it where I need.
A ballhead is all I ever used on set with the Anthem One and it worked great.

As far as the quality of light - I can tell you that everyone I worked with was impressed with both the strength and quality of the beam.
It was even, no fringing at the edges and the color rendition was absolutely gorgeous on the card we were using (the Ultra Color).
 
If you go to the Arri site, or one of the other big name video lighting companies, you will see detailed photometrics. They don't even use the correct word, and have virtually no beam data. I find the notion of a lighting product that cannot be hung in a studio bizarre, and the idea of the magnets for suspension is totally out of the question in a world where safety is an issue. Many studio have rules on secondary suspension. It isn't a legal requirement to have them, but where would you attache the safety bond to? You cannot, in today's litigious world have a product hanging above people's heads attached by magnets in case somebody trips over the cable and it comes down. The lack off professional suspension systems, silly gadgets, plastic lenses, no proper beam information and an expensive price just makes me suspect it - and frankly, wonder about the pedigree of the people who designed a light that has to be attached to something else to hold it up.

If I need a light source then I'd like a beam adjustment knob - not have to swap lenses. Everyone hated the ETC Parnels for exactly this problem years ago.

I'm glad you like yours - I just cannot see anything special about it. Few people will swap the LED board, heatsink compound means it's not exactly plug and play - so people just buy the CT version they need. LED boards are not that clever - it's the LEDs in them that are. Most reputable manufacturers have stopped the 50,000 claims because they're totally rubbish. I currently have two failed LED units that have had nowhere near that amount of hours.

When my broadcast camera colleagues read the blurb - they smiled. Their first question was where's the photometrics. Followed by there's no yoke, there's no DMX, there's no safety bond point, but the best question was about the ¼" support. Nobody with heavy pro cameras trust the damn things - they say "A steel 1/4-20 threaded bolt can support over 700 pounds" - then can, but only in tension. Shear failures are much more common, when they bend, then shear. Pro cameras have two ¼" sockets of they don't use the bigger ones, because if the bolt comes a bit loose, then tilting the things can bend the stud.
 
Interesting product, & I wish them well.

But like Paul I have some reservations. The single 1/4-20 thread is a put off, & think it should be upgraded to at least a 3/8-16, probably two. And are the Kensington Ports strong enough to safely tie off a 7.4lbs head?

They’ve put a lot of work into the website, & it’ pretty slick, but the Hipster-esque User Manual illustrated with cartoons is a bit of a turnoff. Worst yet is marketing to Professionals with disingenuous lines like, “Say goodbye to softboxes, speed rings, flag carts, c-stands and silking. Anthem One stays cool to the touch, allowing users to insert 140mm (5.5 inch) square gels, silks, paper or fabric into the 40mm (1.5 inch) focusing bezel”.

But I won’t pass judgement on the actual product without handling it first. Do you know if they’ll be showing the Anthem at CineGear?
 
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My reaction to this light is the opposite of the reaction I've had to the Elation KL range. http://www.elationlighting.com/kl-fresnel-8

Proper photometrics, proper glass Fresnel sense, professional features including pole op if you want it. DMX control of everything - flicker free, and even remote zoom if you want. proper colorimetry and a very different product in different powers to bland in with real tungsten lighting. It's even cheaper - the brightest and biggest is only $1200. Looking at the specs (proper ones) I'd put my money into these rather than these Anthems - sorry guys, but I'd buy one of these cold with confidence, the Anthem did nothing to convince me it a workhorse product at all.
 
That KL thing... what do they mean when they write "compatible tungsten halogen models"...? I really miss that manufacturers skipped the whole lumens BS and instead did meter readings at 2-3 distances with specific settings. That's the only thing that matters in the end... I dont' care how much light they believe it puts out, I want to know how much light will reach my subject.
 
On par with comparable I guess? Typo presumably. The bigger one has the spec missing, bu the next power down has useful beam data

PHOTOMETRIC DATA
6,837 LUX 635 FC @6.6’ (2m) (14° Full ON)
1,791 LUX 166 FC @6.6’ (2m) (30° Full ON)

That's not as bright as the Arri 650W, and not quite such a wide beam range. However, the Arri LED 5C which is the same colour temperature reads 2120Lux at 2m with the same beam angle - and is double the price? I suspect the bigger version will compete with the Arri 7 range?
 
From the KS page: "Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator on February 21".

The reason:

"Thank you all for backing us! We reached nearly 200% of our original goal. That is fantastic and we appreciate your support for Anthem One!

We've managed to raise significant capital from private investors. This allows us to get Anthem One to you even sooner! If you've backed us, we'll still honor the Kickstarter Discount. Email us at info@anthemone.com with a screen shot of your canceled pledge..."
 
paulears said:
My reaction to this light is the opposite of the reaction I've had to the Elation KL range. http://www.elationlighting.com/kl-fresnel-8

Proper photometrics, proper glass Fresnel sense, professional features including pole op if you want it. DMX control of everything - flicker free, and even remote zoom if you want. proper colorimetry and a very different product in different powers to bland in with real tungsten lighting. It's even cheaper - the brightest and biggest is only $1200. Looking at the specs (proper ones) I'd put my money into these rather than these Anthems - sorry guys, but I'd buy one of these cold with confidence, the Anthem did nothing to convince me it a workhorse product at all.
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I'm sincerely not sure what you're seeing, or why you're comparing that light to this one.

The light you linked to says "Specifications coming soon," so I'm not sure how big that light is or how much it weighs.
But looking at the rest of the site it looks like the KL Fresnel 4, which is only a 50watt model, is larger and heavier than an Anthem One already - so I can only assume the KL Fresnel 8 is going to be much larger and heavier.

The CRI on these looks good, but as far as light output the KL Fresnel 8 you linked to say it has a lumen output of "6400+"
Am I seeing that right? If so, the Anthem One puts out about 4.5 times MORE light than that unit.
So yes, the elation is a little bit cheaper... about $300 dollars less for less than 1/4th the output while being presumably much larger and heavier.

I'm not trying to sell you on an Anthem. If it's not for you that's fine, obviously.
But again, let's compare apples to apples.
 
Luis Caffesse said:
As far as the quality of light - I can tell you that everyone I worked with was impressed with both the strength and quality of the beam.
It was even, no fringing at the edges and the color rendition was absolutely gorgeous on the card we were using (the Ultra Color).
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Luis, can you post any samples of the footage you used it on?

I've been intrigued by this light since hearing about it, but cant find enough real world examples, samples or reviews of it. Granted it is new, so I guess I will wait, but for what I need it for, it has peaked my interest(and helps that the company is from my city).
 
brianartka said:
Luis, can you post any samples of the footage you used it on?

I've been intrigued by this light since hearing about it, but cant find enough real world examples, samples or reviews of it. Granted it is new, so I guess I will wait, but for what I need it for, it has peaked my interest(and helps that the company is from my city).
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Hey Brian - unfortunately the project I used Anthem on is something I can't post footage from (it was used on a feature film set in Austin for a project that is not mine and hasn't been released publicly yet).

I can only imagine you'll have a few real world examples to see soon (on top of the demo video that I posted at the start of this thread). From what I know there should be a few reviews coming out soon, and the light is now carried by B&H - so it's only a matter of time before more people get some hands on experience with it.
 
I reached out to them to try and demo the unit in the EU... they reached back and sounded open, but the EU rep didnt pitch in although he received the same emails... so... would love to know that very same thing as well.
 
I wish them luck, but it's not a serious lighting tool, and my reading of the specs suggests that the light from the elation does the job better, and would be a workhorse rather than a niche boutique product.
 
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