Litepanels Astra 3X is 3x Brighter Than Original 1x1

This first look at Litepanels Astra 3X explores how this new panels improve on the first Astra and Litepanels 1x1 models, brightness, color temperature range, weight and form factor, and more.

Stjepan: I'm here with Joe from Litepanels, we're talking about the new Astra 3X from Litepanels that just came out. Joe, tell us a little bit about it.

Joe: It's three times the brightness of the original Astra that was out there, and so you have a Bi-Color that you have to punch when you need it, and then you can also back it down. It's always good to have a lot more light, but you can always turn that down so you can do your shot the right way and be able to mix that light so that if you’ve got inside light or incandescent light, you can mix that because those two lights go in together. You can mix that and match whatever you're shooting inside. Whatever the environment is, you can match it perfectly.

Stjepan: Tell us about the color temperature range.

Joe: You’ve got anywhere from 3200 all the way up to 5600 Kelvin. If you've got something that's about a 4400, maybe you're inside and you've got the fluorescents that are about a 4400 Kelvin rating. You can match that 4400 and have the same light, so you can match everything, so you get no shadows, you get no different colors, so it works out really well.

Stjepan: Weight-wise, how does it compare to the older models?

Joe: Weight-wise, this is actually probably a little bit lighter than the older models because the older models was a 5mm LED and the way the housing was, so this one uses composite materials in there and so it's about the same, maybe just a hair lighter than the other models. But you get a lot more light output. This model has the ability to have both the power supply on here and the battery at the same time, where on the older models, you can have either one or the other. So now you don't have to worry about which one to take on a shoot. Now you can have both at the same time and you can go battery or AC just by switching connectors. Everything's there, ready to go.

Stjepan: Form factor design-wise, Litepanels has stayed true to the simple design, which I love, but these things can actually do some pretty well in studio environments.

Joe: A lot of times when we're switching over studios or we doing something with studios, they're putting these up on a lighting rack or a lighting grid because you don't need as many so you can put these in different spots. So because it's a 50-degree flood, now what you're doing is just lighting your whole studio or you're lighting the whole set that you're working on. Where, before you had fresnels and those could be a spot or a flood, with these, the light output and the way it spreads it, you have a nice, even coverage and so for every ten feet you need three lights. And so if you think about that from the old days, you needed quite a bit more lights than every ten feet, but here, ten feet that's all you need is three lights.

Stjepan: I see that there are barn doors included on this demo version. Do they ship with the product?

Joe: No that's an accessory. The barn doors that are here are from the original 1x1 and so those are something you might have if you had the original 1x1s and you had them laying around. The only thing you really need to do is buy the adapter frame (about a $90 option), and so then you can put that on and that will work with any of your old accessories--your honeycombs, your barn doors. But we are going to come out with a whole line of accessories for the Astra and that should hit in the same time when these release.

Stjepan: Awesome. Thank you for your time. Where can people go to learn more?

Joe: You go right to the website, Litepanels.com.