Low Degree Lighting with Lume Dice

Authentic Lume Dice 1.0 1.6″ x 1.6″ (about golf ball measurement)

Lighting with Lume Dice. This November marks the fifth 12 months anniversary of Lume Dice, the wonderful little firm in San Diego, California that began a photographic lighting revolution. The preliminary idea got here to life by way of a Kickstarter Marketing campaign. Their highly effective little LED lighting cubes have been rugged and waterproof, making them good for GoPro digicam customers who wished so as to add lighting to their journey sports activities movies and nonetheless photographs. Cellular phone digicam customers {and professional} photographers additionally began adapting the Lume Dice for his or her wants. As soon as the dice began to rise in recognition, requests started to pour in for equipment to make them extra helpful in quite a lot of lighting conditions. Authentic equipment included a snap-on filter holder that allowed magnetic diffusion filters and numerous colour filters to connect in entrance of the sunshine.

Slightly too brilliant! At 1500 lumens (750 LUX @ 1M), the Lume Dice was very highly effective for its measurement. Manually adjustable by way of an influence button on the highest, it may do 10 completely different brightness ranges in 10% increments, from 100% to 10%. This energy vary works nice for my common picture tasks, particularly as fill and accent lighting for outside portraits. Nevertheless, even 10% was too brilliant for Low Degree Lighting (LLL) of some shut nightscape foreground topics.

Dimming down the Lume Dice: Early customers of the the Lume Dice discovered they’d to make use of a number of layers of fabric or tissue paper to filter-down the depth. A few of these identical customers discovered that Lume Dice’s early cell phone app may remotely scale back the unique Lume Dice depth even additional (the above picture was lit with the early Dice lowered to 1/32 energy). The present Lume-X iPhone/Android App will wirelessly management the unique Lume Dice 1.0 and the brand new 2.0 model from 60 ft away (each are Bluetooth enabled gadgets). The app permits distant brightness changes in 1% increments, all the way in which right down to 1 %!

Moon Caves (slot canyon) in Cathedral Gorge lit with moonlight and a Lume Dice, with a diffusion bulb and a CTO warming gel connected to the entrance of the sunshine. Brightness @ 50% strolling into the cave. Lowest brightness strolling out of cave ~ © Royce Bair

The NEW Lube Dice 2.0 is LLL prepared! On the skin, the newly redesigned Lume Dice 2.0 would not look quite a bit completely different than the unique, however inside, it’s filled with some nice new options and expertise. For Low Degree Lighting customers, essentially the most thrilling is its new 2 button management system to extend and reduce brightness manually. Though you should use the Lume-X app to remotely go to decrease gentle ranges, now you can manually allow the LOW LIGHT MODE by holding down each buttons. This enables tremendous fine-tune low-level brightness management from 1%-10% proper from the Dice’s buttons! Worth is $89.95 per unit.

2.0 with included equipment

Mild modification equipment included: The two.0 additionally comes with a Magnetic Softening Diffuser and a Magnetic Warming CTO Gel for warming colour temperature (Down from 5600K to 4500K), plus a Modification Body for mounting these and different equipment it’s possible you’ll selected to buy afterward.

Longer operating and higher gentle high quality: Full energy gentle output from the two.0 is identical 1.0, however runtime has been elevated to a tremendous 1.5 hours (I used to be getting solely about 20 minutes with the unique)! In fact, if you decrease your brightness right down to 10% or much less, you can get a number of hours of runtime, which is ideal for timelapse work. Mild colour high quality has gone from a considerably bluish 6000K to the extra pure 5600K, and from a 91 CRI to a 95+ CRI (whereas this will likely not imply quite a bit to panorama photographers, portrait photographers will love the higher pores and skin tones).

Different included options: 5 different options I like within the 2.0 are 1.) wider 80º angle beam protection vs. the older 60º beam; 2.) sooner USB-C charging; 3.) the brand new cost indicator gentle that extra clearly reveals energy situation of your battery; 4.) a brand new 360º optical sensor for slave flash functionality; 5.) and the brand new aluminum physique that’s way more rugged and sturdy.

Extra lighting equipment: The Lume Dice 2.0 and the unique 1.0 have many different lighting modifiers obtainable to them by way of the Modification Body. As soon as the body is snapped onto the entrance of the Lume Dice, any one among these filters or diffusers (and combos in stacks) can magnetically connect to the body. System objects may be bought individually or in bundles for higher financial savings:

Ought to I purchase the inexpensive Lume Dice AIR? The Lume Dice AIR is $20 lower than the Lume Dice 2.0, and is a good product. It’s a little smaller and lighter, nevertheless it has lowered options that might not be the very best gentle product for some photographers, particularly these doing LLL nightscapes. Listed here are among the main variations between the AIR and the two.0:

• AIR doesn’t have the “Low Mild Mode” characteristic
• AIR solely has 4 brightness ranges: 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%
• AIR doesn’t have Bluetooth, so won’t work with the Lume-X app
• AIR’s 1000 lumens (400 lux @ 1M) at full energy is 33% much less brilliant than 2.0
• AIR’s helpful magnetic again is an issue for drone use (can intervene with GPS)
• AIR will not be a rugged as the two.0’s aluminum body

NEW Lume Dice Panel! I’ve saved this wonderful new product for final. It is quick changing into my favourite gentle. The Lume Dice Panel is a bi-color LED panel gentle and likewise capabilities as an influence financial institution to recharge my cell phone! It is extremely small—concerning the measurement of my cell phone, or about 1/4 the dimensions of different panel lights I’ve been utilizing prior to now for my LLL. That includes an intuitive LCD display screen on again, the Panel not solely permits you to modify colour temperature and brightness, however offers you quick suggestions on how lengthy the sunshine will final at every brightness setting. Though its compact and smooth design permits it to suit properly on high of your digicam, the place I exploit it as a fill gentle in my portrait, macro and video pictures; I usually use it off-camera (on a light-weight stand), particularly for my LLL work, so I can create extra modeling, texture and drama in my foreground landscapes. Worth is $149.95 per panel.

Click on to enlarge and look at options

LUME CUBE PANEL Specs:

• Shade Temperature: 3200K – 5600K
• Brightness Vary 5%-100%, adjustable by 5% increments 
• Max Brightness: 400 Lux @ 1M
• CRI: 96+
• Run Time on 5% Brightness: 7.5 Hours
• Run Time on 50% Brightness: 3 Hours
• Run Time on 100% Brightness: 90 Minutes
• Rechargeable by way of Micro USB and USB-C
• Constructed-In Li-Polymer Battery: 3.85V 4040mAh
• Energy financial institution Output: 5V 2A
• Dimensions: 151x80x9.8mm
• Weight: 180g

How does the Lume Dice Panel evaluate to different panel lights I’ve used? For a few years I’ve used the Z96 LED Panel Lights that I’ve talked about on this weblog and in my Milky Approach NightScapes eBook. This is among the oldest and most compact panel gentle designs, but it’s about 2X bigger and heavier than the Lume Dice Panel. This outdated design requires magnetic snap on CTO filters to alter the colour temperature from 5600K to 3200K (and there aren’t any in between colour temperatures obtainable). Energy comes from 5 replaceable AA batteries (about 15-20 minutes of run time at full brightness) or snap on Sony type NP-F Li-ion batteries (bigger NP-F batteries sizes provides you with longer run instances). Batteries will not be included, and the NP-F batteries can get fairly expensive. The real F&V Z96 model will value you $159. Chinese language rip-offs on Amazon often value underneath $100. F&V has a more moderen bi-color Z180S panel gentle design, that permits you to dial in your colour temperature just like the Lume Dice Panel, however this can value you $365.

Earlier than the Lume Dice Panel, I used the Genaray LED-6200T 144 LED Variable-Shade On-Digicam Mild once I wished a bi-color panel gentle. It is about 4X bigger and at the very least 20% heavier (relying the battery measurement you purchase) than the Lume Dice; and it’ll value you $139. The Genaray solely makes use of the snap in NP-F batteries (a small NP-F550 is included). Full energy brightness is about 25% higher than the Lume Dice panel, however minimal brightness stops at 10% with the Genaray, whereas the Lume can go all the way in which right down to 1%. Two large drawback I see with most gentle panels is that 1.) none of those different panel lights have any kind of a battery meter, and a couple of.) almost all use a low-tech analog dimmer knob with no brightness reference markings. The Lume Dice has a digital LED brightness readout that may be precisely referred to or repeated in future picture setups, they usually have a terrific battery meter with correct projections as to how lengthy the battery will final on the present brightness.

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