The Litepanels Astra 1x1 Panel lineup now consists of eight models, with the latest being the Astra 1x1 Soft Bi-Color LED Panel that was announced at NAB 2016. The Astra 1x1 family is known as being extremely portable, which DPs know means faster lighting setups and potentially more scenes completed in one day. They are also extremely flexible due to their bi-color settings, battery options, and light modifiers.

Litepanels' Astra series is designed with premium quality, high CRI, surface-mount LEDs, which are paired with custom designed TIR (total internal reflection) optics. The design follows the one square foot form factor of many popular Litepanels models.

ARRI's range of LED lighting has expanded with their SkyPanel fixtures, and Megan covered some of the updates at NAB this year.

The Sekonic SpectroMaster C-700 color temperature meter provides data to determine a light's color temperature and compare it to other lighting instruments.

I stopped by the ARRI booth at Cine Gear to speak with Mike Wagner, Senior Product Manager, about the new SkyPanel, a fully tunable LED soft light that compliments Arri's L7-C fresnels.

Last month we celebrated our 25th anniversary as a company with a party at our LA location. Over 400 people attended the event, which included raffles, a silent auction, a Phantom Photo Booth, lunch and a bar, as well as a number of panel discussions on different topics, from technology to craft.

During this year's NAB show, Jon Miller of Hive Lighting stopped by our booth to tell me about the new BEE light, and he recently brought it by the LA office to give us a closer look.

In our industry, most people hear LED lighting and think of small low-power lights that can be mounted on a camera or stashed in a corner. What does not generally come to mind is "high output," as most people believe that large tungsten or HMI units are still the only choices for real punch.

At our recent AbelCine EXPO: Innovations in Lighting, cinematographer David Mullen, ASC spoke about the more unusual lighting challenges from some of the feature films and television series he has photographed. In the excerpt above, David explains how he dealt with the stylized photographing of an exterior daytime landscape that was actually a huge indoor set while shooting The Smell of Success.