One of the secrets to shooting great video is lighting; it makes or breaks a video shoot. However, most times it's looked at as a necessary evil, something you have to have but would really rather not mess with. Let's face it, conventional studio lights are big, bulky, heavy, and hot. Taking a full light kit on location usually requires another trip unto itself.
When you are shooting at someone's house down the road that is really just an inconvenience, but how much worse is it if you're shooting in someone's house in another country? If your church does mission work, then there is a chance you have sent someone with a video camera to a mission field to shoot a video to help the congregation understand what it is the church is accomplishing. This is arguably one of the more powerful uses of video in the church, and if you are not doing this, you should be. That said, from a production standpoint, typically these types of shoots are a nightmare.
Case in point
Here is the scenario: your church is working to build a church in Uganda. Your resident video expert goes over to shoot footage of people building the foundation and walls. Now if you have ever seen someone carry gear for an on-location shoot you know where this is going. In the best-case scenario your video guy is going to carry camera, tripod, lights, stands, audio gear, and possibly a slider dolly and a backdrop. This is more gear than one person can conceivably carry. Now add to that the fact that this location is in a foreign country. This gear has to be carried on an airplane, to a country that may have different power standards, if they have power at all. How much of this gear is going to get left at home? Pretty much everything bigger than a carry-on will not be making this trip.
Litepanels is trying to combat this situation with its recent release of the new Sola ENG flight kit.
If your on-location shoots involve air travel, then this is a no brainer. This is the kit for you.
However, the best part is that this all fits in an FAA-approved, carry-on-sized Pelican flight case. The Sola ENG lights have LED lamps, which means you get all the standard LED benefits: lower power-consumption, bright light, longer lamp life, no heat, and a smaller foot print.
Upon inspection …
LED lights have really come into their own in the past few years with the introduction of the flicker-free LED, and in our studio tests we tried every combination of shutter speed, frame rate, and dimming we could and we were unable to make these lights flicker on our DSLR.
The housing of the light itself is solidly built, rubberized on most surfaces, most notably the dimmer and focus rings which make up the majority of the 4x4x5-inch light. They weigh a whopping 10 ounces each (sarcasm intended), and will run on standard power or 10-20VDC ENG batteries via two-pin D-tap power, making them completely portable, if necessary.
The kit comes with a softbox, barn doors, and gels so it has many options for softening, shaping, and coloring the light. One of my personal favorite things about this light is because of the LED lamp, none of these accessories gets hot. Imagine never burning your finger on a barn door again. Also if you need another gel on the light you can gaff tape it to the barn door or the housing with no worries that it will melt or burn.
All this sounds great, but let's face it, there is always some downside to every piece of gear, and the Sola ENG is no exception. To start with, they are LED lights so you have all the cons of standard LED: not as bright, cooler color temperature, more expensive. Moving the lights closer to the subject, which is possible because the LED lamps are not hot, can compensate for the lack of brightness issue. That said, our studio tests produced far more dramatic-looking scenes as a result of two things: distance and sharpness. The fixtures are also harder edged, even with the soft box, so to get really soft light requires more diffusion, thus cutting off more of the brightness, as well. This led to a juggling act with diffusion, brightness and distance trying to achieve the look we wanted. The cooler color temperature is compensated with the provided CTO gel, which just clips right in to the barn door—no clothespin required. The expense unfortunately can't really be mitigated. But at $2,845, the kit is not out of the price range of traditional lights.
There were a few other anecdotal issues that should be noted. The lights themselves have small jumpers that attach the light to the power supplies. This allows them to be flexible on how they receive power. However, perched on top of a fully extended stand, the power brick hangs up off the ground and is heavy enough to unplug itself from the light. Also, one of the biggest things this light has going for it—its small size—can also work against it. These lights are very easy to knock over. Because they weigh so little, even a slight brush of the stand will put them on the ground.
However, if you find yourself needing a three-point lighting kit on-location often, this kit may be just for you. If your on-location shoots involve air travel, then this is a no brainer. This is the kit for you. Litepanels has packed a lot of light in a small rugged form-factor, and stored it in an easy travel case.
Mark Hanna is video director and Josh Hancock is lead video producer at Hope Community Church in Raleigh, N.C.
