Run&Gun
Veteran
I mentioned in another thread that I was buying a set of the Astera LightDrops. They came in at the end of last week and I took them with me on my shoot out-of-town the last two days, so I have gotten a chance to use them in the real world, now. At least on one shoot...
https://astera-led.com/ax3/
I'll cut to the chase. Two of my friends that I was shooting with, both in the business probably 15 years longer than me, both said "I've gotta get a set of those" after I pulled a few out. And both of them had received quotes for their own sets from our sales rep before the shoot was over and one of them ordered the same 8-light set that I have, today. On the way back to the hotel, the first day, the producer said "those are a game changer". I'm pretty sure I just replaced my Hive 100C's and possibly my 200C's, for almost all things that I was using them for. For a lot of my interview situations, I would feel 100% confident walking in with just my two Gemini 1x1's in their case and the case of Astera's(about the size of a large briefcase).
Ok, now the rambling... The Astera LightDrops are roughly hockey puck sized RGBW lights that have internal batteries and are wirelessly controlled with one of the most versatile, powerful light control apps that I've ever used. The control that you have is astounding. Litepanels system is crapy to begin with, but in comparison to Astera's, it's kindergarten child's play. And that's IF you can get it to work. Hive's is better than LP's, but still doesn't touch this(and its range and connection is short and dicey). The heart of the system is the AsteraBox(optional, but necessary to fully utilize the system to its fullest), which is the go-between radio system between the app(brains of the system) or DMX consoles, W-DMX, CRMX, LumenRadio systems and lights. The AsteraBox and your phone/tablet app(iOS and Android) communicate via bluetooth, but the Box and the lights communicate over much more robust and long range UHF/2.4Ghz (they state 300m). I believe the lights can also receive directly from wireless DMX/Lumen Radio systems. It's a full-fledged professional lighting system. There's also a small "credit card" remote that can do basic functions, but my rep forgot to order it, so I can't comment on it, yet.
You aren't just going to pull these out of the box and go the first time, There is some set-up involved, but once you get that done and play with the system and start to understand it, it's pretty easy. You don't have to re-pair and set-up from scratch every time. After the initial set-up, subsequently you can just pull them out of the case, turn them on, fire up the AsteraBox and hit the app and be off to the races. One of the biggest things that attracted me to the system, is that that it's all battery powered/self-conatined(lights ABox), so I can just throw them where I need them without having to run power to them. AND that you can get them in a case that not only caries a set of eight of them, it also charges them. Just plug in one standard(supplied) EIC power cord to the case and it charges all of the lights simultaneously. They just make it all SO DAMN EASY.
As I mentioned earlier, the lights are RGBW(not RBGAW or RGBWW like Gemini's), so they are extremely versatile. So, they can obviously do basically any color, CCT "white light" from 2000K to 10000K with +/- green but they also have a pretty exhaustive/(almost?)all-inclusive selection of "gels" from Lee and Rosco that go over both tungsten and daylight. Plus you can also enter color coordinates and make your own colors. They're also, of course, fully dimmable. And something else that I don't believe I've seen before in lights like this, they have an 'anti-flicker' function that lets you set the frame rate and/or frequency so that you don't get flicker on-camera.
Do I need to get into the effects and grouping functions?
What else...? You can get all of the specs on their website and there are video's of them in use, but... They're 15watt LED's, native 13 degree beam, but come with 30 and 120 degree lenses. I also ordered the "wallwash" lens which actually acts like a barn door slash and can rotate the slash by turning the lens, and the diffuser dome.
I know I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff, but I've been up for almost 20 hours today, so my brain is getting kinda mushy. Oh yeah, you can tell the lights the minimum amount of time you need them to run and it will automatically adjust the power to keep them running that long(of course you will be sacrificing maximum brightness the longer you need them to run, which is up to 20 hours). You can also remotely put them into and take them out of standby to conserve power, both manually and by setting On and Off times in the app. I need to verify which it is, because I think I've seen two different specs for standby. I thought I read in one place that they use about 5% power per day in standby, and I thought I saw it stated that they'd last three days in standby.
https://astera-led.com/ax3/
I'll cut to the chase. Two of my friends that I was shooting with, both in the business probably 15 years longer than me, both said "I've gotta get a set of those" after I pulled a few out. And both of them had received quotes for their own sets from our sales rep before the shoot was over and one of them ordered the same 8-light set that I have, today. On the way back to the hotel, the first day, the producer said "those are a game changer". I'm pretty sure I just replaced my Hive 100C's and possibly my 200C's, for almost all things that I was using them for. For a lot of my interview situations, I would feel 100% confident walking in with just my two Gemini 1x1's in their case and the case of Astera's(about the size of a large briefcase).
Ok, now the rambling... The Astera LightDrops are roughly hockey puck sized RGBW lights that have internal batteries and are wirelessly controlled with one of the most versatile, powerful light control apps that I've ever used. The control that you have is astounding. Litepanels system is crapy to begin with, but in comparison to Astera's, it's kindergarten child's play. And that's IF you can get it to work. Hive's is better than LP's, but still doesn't touch this(and its range and connection is short and dicey). The heart of the system is the AsteraBox(optional, but necessary to fully utilize the system to its fullest), which is the go-between radio system between the app(brains of the system) or DMX consoles, W-DMX, CRMX, LumenRadio systems and lights. The AsteraBox and your phone/tablet app(iOS and Android) communicate via bluetooth, but the Box and the lights communicate over much more robust and long range UHF/2.4Ghz (they state 300m). I believe the lights can also receive directly from wireless DMX/Lumen Radio systems. It's a full-fledged professional lighting system. There's also a small "credit card" remote that can do basic functions, but my rep forgot to order it, so I can't comment on it, yet.
You aren't just going to pull these out of the box and go the first time, There is some set-up involved, but once you get that done and play with the system and start to understand it, it's pretty easy. You don't have to re-pair and set-up from scratch every time. After the initial set-up, subsequently you can just pull them out of the case, turn them on, fire up the AsteraBox and hit the app and be off to the races. One of the biggest things that attracted me to the system, is that that it's all battery powered/self-conatined(lights ABox), so I can just throw them where I need them without having to run power to them. AND that you can get them in a case that not only caries a set of eight of them, it also charges them. Just plug in one standard(supplied) EIC power cord to the case and it charges all of the lights simultaneously. They just make it all SO DAMN EASY.
As I mentioned earlier, the lights are RGBW(not RBGAW or RGBWW like Gemini's), so they are extremely versatile. So, they can obviously do basically any color, CCT "white light" from 2000K to 10000K with +/- green but they also have a pretty exhaustive/(almost?)all-inclusive selection of "gels" from Lee and Rosco that go over both tungsten and daylight. Plus you can also enter color coordinates and make your own colors. They're also, of course, fully dimmable. And something else that I don't believe I've seen before in lights like this, they have an 'anti-flicker' function that lets you set the frame rate and/or frequency so that you don't get flicker on-camera.
Do I need to get into the effects and grouping functions?
What else...? You can get all of the specs on their website and there are video's of them in use, but... They're 15watt LED's, native 13 degree beam, but come with 30 and 120 degree lenses. I also ordered the "wallwash" lens which actually acts like a barn door slash and can rotate the slash by turning the lens, and the diffuser dome.
I know I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff, but I've been up for almost 20 hours today, so my brain is getting kinda mushy. Oh yeah, you can tell the lights the minimum amount of time you need them to run and it will automatically adjust the power to keep them running that long(of course you will be sacrificing maximum brightness the longer you need them to run, which is up to 20 hours). You can also remotely put them into and take them out of standby to conserve power, both manually and by setting On and Off times in the app. I need to verify which it is, because I think I've seen two different specs for standby. I thought I read in one place that they use about 5% power per day in standby, and I thought I saw it stated that they'd last three days in standby.
