The Age of LED is upon us and it's now possible to not just have a few LED units in your kit, but to build your whole lighting package out of powerful, simple, durable LED units. The Boltzen line from CAME-TV comes in three sizes designed to offer a wide array of options for the video shooter on the go.
The smallest units, available in 30 and 55-watt powers, are only 7" x 3" x 3" and are perfect for accent lights, special little flourishes of color that require hiding a light in set or rigging it up in an out of the way place. The middle units are available up to 100 watts in power and are compact at 9" x 5" x 5", with the biggest units offering up to 150 watts of power in the still compact 9" x 7" x 7" form factor. All units offer a very high CRI of over 98, meaning your skintones and product shots are going to look accurate and pleasing with no mysterious color casts.
Credit: Charles Haine
Design
The Boltzen line is built around single Chip-on-Board designs, which is a newer form factor for LEDs as opposed to the traditional discrete LEDs that we tend to associate with large flat panel LED units that have an array pattern. The benefits of CoB designs are numerous for the manufacturer, but for the end user you end up with a unit with a compact form factor and a "punchier" light than we are traditionally used to getting from LED units. Of course, you can still soften the unit with diffusion, but with a Chip-on-Board light you aren't stuck with only soft light, and have the potential for hard light as well if needed.
Credit: Charles Haine
Bi-color or Daylight
One of the best features of the CAME-TV Boltzen line is that you can choose to purchase either Bi-Color or simple daylight units. Since most sensors are natively daylight-balanced, and many home lighting fixtures are increasingly not tungsten balanced either, the frequency of needing tungsten-balanced movie lights are decreasing. If you want to build a larger lighting package on a budget, you can simply stick with the daylight-balanced units, which will satisfy the vast majority of your needs without spending the extra money for a feature that you don't necessarily need as often as you used to.
Credit: Charles Haine
One way to tell if you need the bi-color feature is by looking at how frequently you have been using the orange CTO gel that likely comes with your low-cost, on-camera LED type unit. If you can't remember the last time you put that to use, it might be time to consider saving yourself money and going daylight only.
Pop-up softboxes
Another great innovation of the Boltzen range is the pop-up softboxes. Available in sizes ranging from 15" to 31", the best feature is that they fold together or pop open in a spring style fashion similar to collapsible reflectors. This makes setup a much speedier operation than comparable setups from other manufacturers that can involve the time-consuming process of inserting arms and mounting the tent material.
Credit: Charles Haine
With the addition of an affordable and easy to use softbox, you can quickly get a flattering light out of the small LED units without a lot of effort. For the amount that you might spend on just a complicated softbox from another vendor, you can get a powerful light unit and softbox from CAME-TV. Purchase of a softbox includes rosette kits to help the yoke support the weight of the softbox precisely without drooping—yet another detail that shows the thought that clearly went into the design process of these tools.
Flexible power supply & Wi-fi adapter
Modern productions like to keep their power supplies flexible, and the Boltzen line fits right in here offering a variety of power options. All units ship with AC power adapters, of course, and even with a North American 120V power supply, you should be able to plug in 13 of the 150-watt units into a single circuit without tripping a breaker.
However, if you are working in a car, or in an exterior location without accessible power, it's great to have a battery as an option, and many of the Boltzen units can be powered with the Sony NP, which is practically an industry standard for powering lights. CAME-TV also manufactures V-mount battery adapters that can be mounted easily and securely on your light stand for using the larger V-mount batteries that will give you a longer duration charge for your light. Best of all, CAME-TV manufactures their own batteries and chargers, allowing for a single purchase that you know is guaranteed to work as a unit.
Credit: Charles Haine
One final detail that will be appreciated by many filmmakers is the optional USB Wi-fi adapter. Wi-fi control of lights is an extra perk that is occasionally nice to have but not a constant necessity for most filmmakers, thus, separating it out to an optional unit makes sense allowing filmmakers who don't need the feature to save themselves the money, or add it on later at a future time when they discover the need.
Our overall take
The three-light kit has long been a mainstay for filmmakers just starting out on their filmmaking journeys and for the run-and-gun doc style interview kit. CAME-TV offers several options for a 3-light kit including stands and a hard case that make them a great choice for anyone from a filmmaker first exploring the basics of the three light setup all the way up to an experienced ENG crew considering moving away from tungsten but wanting to avoid the large cost of HMI.
The light comes with both D-tap and DMX cables.Credit: Charles Haine
Tech Specs
- High CRI (Ra96 or above)
- AC power, with Sony NP or V mount options
- 30W to 150W options available
- Daylight or BiColor (Daylight & Tungsten)
- Fanless or Fan cooled
- USB Wifi Adapter
- Softboxes available in 15" to 31.5" sizes
- All lights come with soft carry cases or optional hard case for protection
Credit: Charles Haine
