The LED Panel That Does Not Lie

Not that I am suspicious of every lighting accessory that I come across but it pays to be wary in the studio. A little time taken setting up means a lot less time sitting at the computer moving sliders. The Phottix Nuada panels were new in the store room so I bagged one and brought it home in the latest test batch. They are intended for portable video lighting but the temptation to turn one onto a model car was irresistable. Students of geometry on the tabletop will calculate that this panel is roughtly like having a giant softbox in a portrait studio. It pumps out far more light than the standard IKEA planet lamps. The battery is the familiar Sony-style NP-F550 with a battery charger that plugs into a USB port. I only gave it about 10 minutes juice but had enough in it by then to go up to full power for the table shoot. The specs say that you could get 100 minutes on a full charge at 100% power, so that is pretty impressive. The panel has a screen at the back reporting battery charge and colour temperature. I ran it up to 5600º Kelvin and set the camera to this as well to see if it was actually doing this or just bluffing. The result was perfect, so it's likely that the other adjustable temps down to 3300º Kelvin will also be accurate. It's well-built but light enough to clap on the top of a DSLR or mirror-less rig for video. I am well pleased with the way that Chinese products of this sort have increased in sophistication in the last 5-6 years - the cruder ones have vanished and we can actually get useful work out of the smaller products now. Note - if you want to power the panel for a longer time than with the battery ( ! ) it has a 12V DC socket in the back.