The daylight-to-tungsten tunable color model is the first in the company’s new ASTRA line of panels, with additional fixtures in the series set to debut later this year.
“The original Litepanels 1×1 has been used on thousands of sets and shoots worldwide since hitting the marketplace,” said Chris Marchitelli, vice president of marketing for Litepanels. “We’ve always known that our next generation panel would need to push the performance envelope, so we approached our new ASTRA line very thoughtfully. We took our time, drew from our wealth of experience building professional LED fixtures, and accessed the wonderful feedback we’ve gotten from our loyal customers.”
The ASTRA 1×1 Bi-Color panels are designed with surface mount LEDs that are paired with custom designed TIR (total internal reflection) optics. The fixtures offer a tunable Bi-Color output, allowing users to adjust color from daylight to tungsten as needed. The high CRI LEDs have also been formulated to consistently deliver accurate color temperatures and visually pleasing color reproduction. Tightly binned LEDs and fine-tuned optics give the new ASTRA 1×1 a higher intensity, a longer throw and a wider effective beam spread than the company’s original 1×1 fixture. This allows the panel to compete with strong exterior light sources or illuminate a large area effectively with a single fixture.
The ASTRA 1×1 offers both passive and active cooling modes. The passive cooling mode provides a completely silent operation, while the active cooling mode relies on a fan module, but can deliver double the light output. An internal microprocessor monitors the temperature, minimizes fan speed, delivers smooth dimming from 100 percent to zero with no noticeable color shift, and ensures a flicker-free performance at any frame rate or shutter angle. With the addition of an optional communications module, the brightness, color temperature and cooling mode of the fixtures are all controllable via DMX512 protocol.
The ASTRA 1×1 Bi-Color panel is expected to ship in the summer of 2014.
