By technical editor Matt Allard:
Photon Beard- Quality Of Light. from Matthew Allard ACS on Vimeo.
Photon Beard have been around for 131 years. You might not know the name, but if you have been in film or video production for a few years you will instantly recognise the tungsten Red Head lights which the company is synonymous with. While several companies make Red Heads Photon Beard have a strong claim of being the inventors.
The importance of good light:
Photon Beard say they took a long time to enter the LED market because they believed that a lot of the LED lights did not offer good enough light quality. They spent a lot of time perfecting their LEDs and the result is the PhotonBeam 80 LED. Based on remote phosphor technology the new fixture offers a near full spectrum and a high CRI light output. Interestingly from the outside it looks like an old school redhead – they have adapted their PhotonBeam Redhead casing to offer an LED solution. Consuming just 80W it provides similar output to a 300W openface Redhead. The unit can be powered from mains or 11-17 Volt DC. The PhotonBeam 80 can operate on standard V or Gold mount camera batteries with an additional battery plate that connects to the unit.
A 1×1 with a difference:
Products that look familiar but are now what you expect seems to be the norm at Photon Beard. The Square One light they showed looked just like a traditional 1×1 LED light. The difference is that it is in fact a fluorescent fixture that utilises 12” long 5/8” tubes. It shares the high CRI and soft lighting with which good quality fluorescent fixtures are known for. There are none of the spectral limitations typically associated with similar LED-based fixtures.
Unlike most other Flo lights though the Square One draws only 64W. This means it can be mains or battery powered. One provides more light than comparable fixtures pulling 100W and weighs 2.5kg. A removable set of barn doors are included which can be used to house honeycomb grids, diffusions panels, colour filter gel etc.
For more info go to http://www.photonbeard.com
