Litepanels Astra Compared to 1st Gen and other lights

J

Jon Roemer

Well-known member
I went ahead and did blog post/mini review of the Astra Bi-Color light. Basically, I wanted to confirm what I seeing from the get-go - that the improved color rendering is noticeably better when compared to the 1st gen 1x1's or some of the other LED light models.

Blog post is here: Hitting the Astral Plane

Disclaimer: The tests in the post were quick and some may feel the situation wasn't controlled enough (e.g. I can't block all daylight in my studio, so the background has ext. daylight ambient.) I also realized afterward it probably would have been better to use a 1st gen 1x1 flood instead of a spot but... I also test each light diffused through a Road Rag diffuser and that pretty much even ups the spread of the light.

To me the color rendering of the new light, the Astra, is very noticeable. The skin tones look more realistic, color especially in the red/orange/yellow hues is better represented.

Two videos within the blog post:


 
This is a good thing.

Safe to say that now you can actually throw a readily available LED product on your shoot and just not have to worry about it.

The Astras are still moderately expensive but man....what a relief, you know what I mean?

Perfect? Of course not.
But very close.
Certainly close enough for "comfort".
 
DPStewart said:
This is a good thing.

Safe to say that now you can actually throw a readily available LED product on your shoot and just not have to worry about it.

The Astras are still moderately expensive but man....what a relief, you know what I mean?

Perfect? Of course not.
But very close.
Certainly close enough for "comfort".
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'm getting that - each light in the test required a custom WB? So to shoot without worrying, every light on the shoot needs to be the same model?

I suppose tungsten is the gold standard of "every fixture, same temp"... but if your main light needs a WB of 6000k to look correct, and you also have a couple kinos or something in the mix... I guess you break out the gels after all?

Almost all of my "affordable" daylight stuff (HID and biax) needs some sort of gelling to get right around 5200k... I've just got all the gel combos recorded and get on with the shoot, usually end up tossing some 1/8 minus green or 1/4 CTO on **something** to dial it all in. If time is tight, I just bring quad and dual biax and WB to that. (I get it that LED panels are easier to pack than a quad biax though!) If the astra's the new standard, it's still going to need 1/4 to 1/2 CTO to play nice with everything else... at least the test is telling me that. Or am I reading this wrong?

(Disclaimer, I don't do anything that seems to require an LED panel... if I were doing hasty run & gun interviews away from power outlets, I guess I'd buy three of the same thing. For now biax, kino or kino knockoffs, and a 150 HID fresnel, fit my workflow well enough for now. When I have setup time and want "real pretty", it's 400 HID moguls in Starlite softboxes. That's a lot of pretty light!)
 
Michael Carter said:
I don't know if I'm getting that - each light in the test required a custom WB? So to shoot without worrying, every light on the shoot needs to be the same model?

I suppose tungsten is the gold standard of "every fixture, same temp"... but if your main light needs a WB of 6000k to look correct, and you also have a couple kinos or something in the mix... I guess you break out the gels after all?

Almost all of my "affordable" daylight stuff (HID and biax) needs some sort of gelling to get right around 5200k... I've just got all the gel combos recorded and get on with the shoot, usually end up tossing some 1/8 minus green or 1/4 CTO on **something** to dial it all in. If time is tight, I just bring quad and dual biax and WB to that. (I get it that LED panels are easier to pack than a quad biax though!) If the astra's the new standard, it's still going to need 1/4 to 1/2 CTO to play nice with everything else... at least the test is telling me that. Or am I reading this wrong?

(Disclaimer, I don't do anything that seems to require an LED panel... if I were doing hasty run & gun interviews away from power outlets, I guess I'd buy three of the same thing. For now biax, kino or kino knockoffs, and a 150 HID fresnel, fit my workflow well enough for now. When I have setup time and want "real pretty", it's 400 HID moguls in Starlite softboxes. That's a lot of pretty light!)
Click to expand...

Michael - none of the lights "required" a custom WB per se. That's just the way I did it. And no, I'm not saying that every light in the kit needs to be the same model.

I was just looking at the color rendering of all these lights so it made sense to do a custom WB for each (neutralize any color shift to see the range of colors each light can produce.) I set the Astras to full daylight but they don't have to be run that way and obviously, if you are mixing lights, you'll need to run some tests to see where they fall relative to each other.

The 6000 K is where the C300 pegged the WB after doing an in-camera custom WB. Most LP 1x1's, full daylight, are 5600 K so it may actually be that if read on a color meter. I'll need to check.

The main point for me is that these new lights are much more full spectrum. If you run them on their own you'll get much more lifelike color and if anything they'll be much easier to mix than the prior generation with any other full spectrum light.
 
My point is about specifically the Astras themselves.
They are monstrously better than what came before. And while they still don't hit the high standard of true tungsten or daylight, they now come close enough that they can be considered workable. Whereas in the past I had entire shoots that needed to be redone because of green casts that couldn't be corrected enough for the director's taste.
That part is something I think we can consider "behind us".
Now if I have a situation where someone says "we've got a set of Astras" for cool lights, then I think I can feel a lot more confident about their results to the point where I don't have to make a whole separate plan for poor light quality compensation.
 
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I gotcha... I guess when I test daylight, my first step is to see what it takes to get them around 5200-5500 and how they look gelled. I've been messing with HID for some time, and 6000-6500 seems to be the current sweet spot as far as availability. So I have plenty of stuff that looks much better when custom balanced, but that will throw off other fixtures or existing light.

That said, for indoor interviews, 6000 or so is usually where I want to be - window light is usually going to go a little blue so 6k warms things up. I probably use as much CTB as CTO indoors, nice way to end up with everything warmer once balanced.
 
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