Lightweight LED Soft Panel Helps Realize Photographer's Artistic Vision

By Carlo Terenzi I have been enamored of the visual arts ever since I was a child, and I recall discovering photography as a field when I was 10. Now I'm a professional working in the field, with nearly two decades of experience behind me.

In every photography project I do, light and lighting are essential; I need tools in my kit that allow me to maintain precise control over both the quality and the quantity of artificial light as I shoot. Fortunately, through my existing relationship with TransAudio Video, the official Italian importer of Litepanels, I discovered Gemini.

Litepanels' Gemini 2x1 RGB-WW soft panel combines daylight, tungsten, and red-green-blue LEDs to provide the precise yet flexible color adjustment I require for my work. While I also appreciate how well it produces true full-spectrum white light, I actually chose Gemini because of its quality and the peace of mind I enjoy while using it. With Gemini I have all I need at hand. I find everything I need easily and quickly, whenever I need it.

I use my Gemini soft panel for portraits and projects in my studio. Gemini allows me to fine-tune every aspect of the light temperature, brightness, colour, saturation and I can easily define presets for my favorite lighting configurations and then quickly recall my preferred setting for a particular type of shoot. Gemini relies on a daylight-to-tungsten light foundation and supports color adjustments around a full color wheel, which in turn makes it easy for me to match ambient lighting conditions and achieve lovely contrasts or soft shading on the subject.

Gemini's menu interface simplifies this process with LCD screens in three lighting modes: Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) mode, for bicolor with +/- green adjustment; Color Mode, offering hue saturation and intensity (HSI) control; and Gel Mode, which features a variety of popular gels. As a result, I m now able to adjust the temperature, the saturation, and the color directly from the panel, without needing gels or mechanical aids. Depending on the type of shot, I can also create light effects easily, immediately, and I always have full control over hue, intensity, and saturation. With the ability to reliably achieve exceptional color and realistic skin tones, I can spend much less time and money after a shoot working on color correction.

In one example, a shoot for a modeling agency, I used the Gemini panel as the only light source and kept the temperature at 3000K (around half of the light's full intensity). Since the shot was to be used in an advertisement for a gym, I wanted it to have strength but also elegance, so I placed the Gemini really close to the subject to make the light soft and diffused.

In another example, I was going for a completely different effect lighting that was harder and sharper. Gemini allowed me to achieve that with a green setting that is both cold and diffused; however, the base light is white, which allowed me to preserve the original skin tones almost entirely. This kind of flexibility is one of the aspects I appreciate the most about Gemini.

Another quality of Gemini that I really value is its extremely light weight and portability. With its internal ballast and onboard power supply, Gemini is one of the lightest soft LEDs on the market, which makes it easy to transport anywhere and rig any number of ways, even from a boom or stand.

The quality of light and lighting is critical to the quality of my work, and Gemini has met this challenge superbly while bringing welcome efficiency to every shoot. The service I've gotten from Litepanels and from TransAudio Video has been great precise, punctual, solid. In short, they offer the best solutions in terms of artificial lighting for photos and video.

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Carlo Terenzi is a renowned professional photographer based in Italy. He began his career in photography in 2000 when he took his first steps into music photography, taking shots of singers from Italy and beyond. For his work he has earned the OIPA first-place prize in 2011 for best campaign, and he has been mentioned in national and international events, such as Genova's SaturArte. More recently, in 2015, Terenzi was chosen as official photographer of the Eurovision Song Contest, the world's longest-running international television song competition.

Another quality of Gemini that I really value is its extremely light weight and portability. With its internal ballast and onboard power supply, Gemini is one of the lightest soft LEDs on the market.

Carlo Terenzi

LINK:	http://www.litepanels.com:80/en-GB/Explore//lightweight-led-soft-panel...
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