Film Jams
Top of the mornin' film jammers!
Now the ARRI Skypanel and the Litepanels Gemini are two popular lighting fixtures for film and cinema.
Are you ready to see these two legends of light go face to face in the ultimate LED monster truck show down?!
What?
So LED technology has really evolved in the last few years. LEDs are very popular on set now,
especially with the introduction of the ARRI Skypanel in 2015 and the Litepanels Gemini which came in a little later in 2017.
One of the great things about LEDs is that they put out a lot of soft light while consuming
relatively little power. You can run four of these Skypanels or five Geminis on one standard 20 amp circuit,
compared to just one 2k soft light. Let's take a closer look at these two LED fixtures.
Andrew here is gonna help us out. He's a professional gaffer,
he's worked in the lighting department for movies like Disney's Tomorrowland, Parker with Jason Statham and just a few weeks ago,
Kilroy Was Here. So you were a gaffer on Kevin Smith's last movie. Yeah, it was a good time.
We used two of the ARRI Skypanel S60s. We used them in strobe mode, we used them in daylight, tungsten.
Did you and Kevin go canoeing or anything like that together? No.
Great.
Let's talk weight. You're gonna need a combo stand to mount either of these lights. They've both got junior
pins on the bottom, and
now the Skypanel has a separate ballast so you can take off some of the weight of the stand. The Skypanel weighs in
at 29 pounds without a ballast and the Gemini is 22 pounds with the ballast.
If you go on and add the ballast to the Skypanel it gets up to around 36 pounds.
So the sky panel is a bit heavier. It does have more powers so that makes sense,
but for the one-man band and smaller crews, the integrated ballast on the gemini and the lighter weight are pretty nice.
Battery power. So both lights have the ability for portable power.
The Skypanel has either V mount or gold mount adapters, and it's powered by two batteries.
Litepanels announced their battery plate at NAB 2018, but at this time it's still in the works.
So if you need portability of the V mounts, the Skypanel is it.
Yeah with the Gemini you can power off the 3 pin XLR
with the larger brick battery, but these can be expensive. Much more than the V mounts.
The Skypanel has quite a bit more range in the top end than the Gemini in the kelvin spectrum, and the Gemini just eeks
out the Skypanel in the lower end. The Skypanel having the extra color range on the higher kelvins does make it more versatile,
and more suited for creative applications. Skypanel also has x and y-coordinates for dialing in exact color schemes.
So you can be extremely precise with color matching. The Gemini does have HSI, RGB and CCT modes though.
So both of these fixtures are really powerful tools.
Panel surface area is important for light wrap around your subject.
The wider the surface area the more wrap you'll get. Skypanel wins out here and is slightly wider,
but the Gemini is very close.
More light, equals more love. And
you need a lot of that.
Footcandles are a measurement of light intensity.
We're gonna do a test on each fixture to see how much light each one puts out at 10 feet.
It's the gang symbol for 10 footcandles!
So the Sekonic C-700, it gave us an accurate reading of 115 footcandles,
which is actually what ARRI rates the light at as well, so pretty close to what the settings were. We're gonna now try a tungsten.
So we're 10 feet away from the Skypanel we're in tungsten now, and we've got a couple different readings.
We took a few just to make sure we averaged them out. We got one in 114 one at 116 right? Yep.
And one at 120. So the readings we got are very similar to what
ARRI's speccing their light at. The Skypanels going down. We did our test with that and we're gonna put the Gemini up.
Alright so with the Gemini in daylight mode
5600 Kelvin we're getting 97.5 footcandles at 10 feet.
So now this is what's nice about this light; your presets. So 32 you push number two and it goes right to 32.
Tungsten
3200 Kelvin on Gemini, we're getting 94.9 footcandles.
So both fixtures are pretty similar,
but the Skypanel has a bit more output. One interesting note, when the optional Skypanel intensifier panel is added,
it's almost double the output of the Gemini. How many candles you got? What do you get for twenty foot candles?
One parsec. Parsecs isn't that Star Wars? Yeah. Then it doesn't exist.
Front panel.
So on the Skypanel ARRI allows you to switch out your diffusion panel for different levels of diffusion,
or you can add an intensifier panel. The Gemini has a more permanent diffusion panel.
So if you want the ability to swap out the panels, the Skypanel is more versatile here.
So it's like the Leatherman of lights. He's got a prop.
Okay, we're gonna test the color temp accuracy of the lights at 3200 degrees Kelvin, Tungsten, and
5,600 degrees Kelvin, Daylight. We'll be using a Sekonic C-700 color meter to test each fixture. One of these you mean?
Okay, that's not a toy. Aww.
So the CRI value, the RA value which is the average of
all these collective colors, is
coming in at 94.8 for daylight and then tungsten was around 94.8 as well. Pretty even.
Pretty accurate between daylight and tungsten.
The Gemini actually comes in at 98.4 CRI
So the Gemini according to our readings here has a better CRI than the Skypanel of about four points.
96.7 on the daylight. So the Gemini is a couple points higher in daylight mode as well.
Not quite as high as when it was in tungsten, but still a couple points higher than the Skypanel.
Flicker. So the Gemini is supposedly rated for higher speed slow motion filming,
but we tested both the Skypanel and the Gemini at 2,000 frames per second and didn't have any issues.
So both fixtures are usable for high-speed filming.
This is a great improvement over older generation LED fixtures,
which often had flicker when filming slow motion, as well as standard tungsten fixtures,
which typically flickered if they were under 2,000 watts. So you remember when those lights used to flicker?
Those old days? Back in the day? Yeah. And then we'd be like
"Woah son, Get me a 5k!" Yep.
So one thing that it always comes down to is the cost. So I know Andrew you were like "oh
I want a quarter-pounder with cheese," but then you were like, "wait a minute. What's on that dollar menu?"
The Skypanel is currently $5700 while the Gemini is $4300.
So at around $1400 cheaper, the Gemini is a good option. I agree.
I agree. And I will say that as a rental company
we do get more requests for the Skypanel, but for the owner/operator types,
I really think the Gemini is a great and cheaper alternative. It's similar in features and output and the lighter weight is a definite benefit.
Gel modes and effects modes. Both fixtures have really powerful effects and color options.
You can achieve very similar results. Some of these effects include police sirens,
Firelight,
You have a lot more variables and control with this fire versus the SkyPanel. Lightning,
TV flicker,
And paparazzi.
The menus on the Gemini are more intuitive and quicker to navigate, but both give you a lot of creative freedom.
Alright, Andrew final opinion. Skypanel or Gemini. Um, I like both lights.
The Gemini is definitely easier to rig just due to the weight difference.
Yeah a lot lighter. The Skypanel does have match color temp modes and things, match sources,
so it's easier to mix color temperatures and match temperatures. I like the, also, the ease of use on the Gemini.
I mean using those little menus is really nice and it's intuitive. It's a lot more intuitive than the Skypanel.
Yeah, the Skypanel
I still every time I'm using that kind of trying to find out how to you know.
Yeah when I'm on set messing with all those knobs you never get it right the first time.
Fun Fact! Blade Runner 2049 used a hundred Skypanels in that one shot where they're in the room and the the lights like
panning over them as they're walking down the stairs.
I heard Star Wars The Last Jedi used over a thousand Skypanels. What would you do if you had a thousand Skypanels?
Here's our final comparison chart for the Skypanel
S60 and the Gemini. While the Skypanel has a wider color range, more light intensity and front panel options,
the Gemini more than holds its own with a higher CRI rating, lightweight body with customizable preset buttons on the fixture and
effects options, as well as it's lower price.
Let us know in the comments which light you think is better and of course like and subscribe for more enlightening tips and tutorials.
So I was like check out my belt and she was like "really is that like, is that all brass?" *Police Sirens
Holy crap, dude, the cops are here. Run! No, that's the Skypanel cop effect.
At the Copa. You know Barry Manilow's coming to town?
No. What did you write about McDonald's and a double what the -- Just wait, it's gonna be great. Ready? You're an idiot.