Unlike drama and commercial shooters, the news and documentary shooter usually needs lights that run off domestic lighting circuits (or batteries). Litepanels, Dedos, Kinos and flex lights are routinely found in the kits of factual shooters. If you need more kick then you might add a HMI or one of the newer LED HMI replacements like those from Lupo, Zylight, Litepanels, JAB or Nila. But what if you really need a lot of light?
Traditionally you would need to get big generators and trucks to go with them – this is the Hollywood solution. But if you have a spare $13,999 US, then the new Mole-Richardson Tener 10K tungsten equivalent LED light might be a solution for you.
It does away with the truck and should be able to run on many regular lighting circuits. The new light has a 13A load running on 110V, and a 7A load at 220V. It should be bright enough to bring an artificial sun to the dimmest of locations.
The Tener certainly isn’t small and realistically isn’t going to be used by many news people, but it does show the direction in which lighting technology is heading. The quality of the light output has steadily improved to the point where LEDs are now being used to replace even the biggest traditional fixtures. Cool running and low draw makes them more practical in many situations.
Of course there are still die-hard fans on traditional tungsten and HMI lights, but when Mole Richardson launches tech like this the overall direction seems clear.
The Tener should be available this month and comes in either daylight, or tungsten versions. For more details visit the Mole-Richardson website.
