NAB Spotlight: Litra Talks Torch 2.0 and Pro Grade Lighting

Transcript

Anthony: Hello there my name is Anthony Burokas, I am here at NAB 2019 for Streaming Media Producer. We're here with Andrew in the Litra booth and you guys make lights, but last year we talked about this little Torch light but now you've got an update to this thing.

Andrew: We have an update, it's the torch 2.0.

Anthony: So what is different between the Torch and the Torch 2.0? 'Cause it looks the same.

Andrew: It looks a little different look at the face there's now 16 LEDs instead of eight. And we'll get to our Pro Light, but we took the precision optic lens from the Pro, added it to the Torch so that there's less glare. We changed the beam angle to 70 degrees from 80 to get a little more throw.

Anthony: Okay.

Andrew: We increased the CRI, so the color balance is much better, it went from 78 to 94.

Anthony: Wow, that's a huge difference!

Andrew: It's a huge improvement. Puts it into pro grade lighting. Then we increased the waterproof rating from 30 to 60 feet.

Anthony: 60 feet. My camera wouldn't survive the depth, but I'm glad my light could survive down to that depth.

Andrew: It's the same housing, so the same dual quarter twenties and the magnet on the back, and the accessories, all right there. The accessories all still fit the same so if someone has a original Torch and they want to upgrade their color filters or the Smartphone mount, or any of the accessories they've purchased will work with the 2.0.

Anthony: Now you were talking about better color balance, I think we should say we actually added, we swapped out our normal lights so you're looking at the Torch, no not the Torch.

Andrew: Litra Pro.

Anthony: The Pro, is illuminating us right now and the Litra Pro we're using through this softbox, which I think is a really nice advancement as well, because you can have a small point source of light, but a lot of the times you just want to soften it out a little bit

Andrew: Absolutely.

Anthony: I think this softbox really does make the little light perform like a much bigger light.

Andrew: The idea is to have a very small light that's rugged and durable, and everything needs to match that. So this, not only is it lighting us well, but it breaks down so this all comes apart very easily and all these blades pull out, and then it would pack flat. We provide a little bag with a padded divider to protect the screen.

Anthony: Okay.

Andrew: But this breaks down to be about a half-inch thick, and that size. So throw it in your backpack and go, when you get there you can set up, put this thing together. Just pop these blades back in and put the cover back on just like this, think we'll face the camera.

Anthony: You're taking the concept of a very compact solution and carrying it through to the accessories as well.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Anthony: Now one of the things that I really liked about the Pro is it's, you wouldn't say bicolor but it's...

Andrew: It's bicolor in the tungsten range from 3000 to 6000k, adjust it in 1000k increments. You can also adjust the output in five percent increments as far as brightness. So right now the one you're holding is at five percent, that's 60 lumen.

Anthony: This is five percent?

Andrew: That's five percent, that's 60 lumen. If you zip it up to 100 percent, you're at 1,200. So quite a bit of light. Now I'll hold this--

Anthony: And you were saying you could actually do this remotely via an app.

Andrew: Yes, so you'll hold that and I'll show this so the camera can see it. This is the app, and that light's at five percent you might want to tilt it away from your face a little bit, and I'm gonna turn it way up to 100 percent, 1,200 lumen. I'm gonna dip it back down and right now he's very tan that's 3,000k. I'll bring it up to 6,000 so we'll get a very cool 6,000. Pump it back right here, we're at daylight right there. And now I have my settings saved, and maybe this is on a light stand up high or something, I wanna put it to sleep, I just hit blackout. I've turned the light off, the LED display, if you tip it towards the camera, is stored by settings and also stored here so when I turn it back on, it's gonna go right back to where it was. Also on here I have my battery indicator so if this is on a light stand, I know what the battery life is in the light.

Anthony: Oh that's slick.

Andrew: And this has a much larger battery than Torch 2500 miliamps versus 1400, so this light will run at this setting for 10 hours, at the mid setting which would be about here would run five hours, and at high, which I'll do for a second will run for 50 minutes. So almost an hour at 1,200 lumen.

Anthony: So that is you don't have to connect external batteries to it, that's really nice. And can the app talk to more than one light?

Andrew: The app can talk to seven lights or you can group them all seven in one group to control them so independently or in a group, and you can actually do three separate groups, so if you wanted say three in the front, two mid, two rear, you can create mid, front-mid-rear groups, name them.

Anthony: You can have just back lights, just a hair light and just talk to the hair lights and have something in the front as well.

Andrew: Absolutely. And then controlled separately, and this light is waterproofed to 90 feet. So it'll go much deeper than your camera, like you said but if someone wants to take it scuba diving with a GoPro.

Anthony: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew: They can do that.

Anthony: That is very cool. Well, thank you for giving me the walkthrough of the new lights.

Andrew: You may have seen behind us, we won.

Anthony: Just a few awards.

Andrew: We won a few awards yesterday. We took best in show in government video, best in show in digital video, and then the British Columbia Professional Videographers Association gave us an innovation award.

Anthony: That is very cool.

Andrew: So we're getting well recognized and we brought a whole van full of gear thinking we'd bring some back and put it back in our warehouse, and we sold out early in the show, so we've had a really good response.

Anthony: It goes to show you that people really do value the innovation and the compactness and the ease of use. Here we are at NAB 2019 in the Litra booth. You can check them out, what's the web?

Andrew: Litra.com.

Anthony: My name is Anthony Burokas here for Streaming Media Producer, thanks for watching.

Andrew: Thanks Anthony.