Broad-Spectrum Solutions

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Panalux’s proprietary innovations, extensive inventory and breadth of support enable cinematographers to bring their visions to light.

“When you’ve got a big job, Panalux has to do it,” says cinematographer Ben Smithard BSC. “I know they’ll always have what I need.” The lighting provider’s massive rental inventory includes solutions from all the major manufacturers backed with state-of-the-art services such as engineering support, textile manufacturing, and an unrivalled transport and power-generation fleet. Additionally, the company offers a range of proprietary innovations developed in-house and purpose-built to meet cinematographers’ creative needs, including the Panalux Sonara family of variable-white LED heads.

Available in 4:4, 3:2 and 4:1 form factors, Panalux Sonara incorporates an innovative LED array to provide incredible accuracy and control across a colour-temperature range of 1600K-20,000K. “What really sets Panalux Sonara apart are the quality of the whites and the breadth of the spectrum,” says Dave Amphlett, technical director for Panalux. “The unique LED array we use in Sonara produces much warmer and much cooler whites on the black body locus, enabling extremely precise control and accurate skin-tone rendering.”

Panalux Sonara 4:4 units being rigged for a large soft box.

Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC and gaffer John “Biggles” Higgins were among the first to put Panalux Sonara 4:4 through its paces when they used the fixtures on All the Old Knives, and Higgins was quick to re-enlist the fixtures when he teamed with Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC for the period feature Empire of Light. “We used the Sonaras for a very big night exterior,” Higgins says of the latter project. “If Roger wanted to make it cooler, make it warmer, we had it, and the [native LumenRadio CRMX] links worked at an amazing distance.”

In addition to CRMX and a detachable handheld local control, Panalux Sonara offers wired DMX and Art-Net, as well as a range of operating modes, including CCT, HSI, Gel, and x y coordinate. As Higgins notes, “If you have a practical light in shot and the cinematographer wants to continue that mood to light the actor, you just take your reading from the practical in x y, and you change the Sonara to that colour. It’s remarkable how accurate that is.”

When shooting the feature Allelujah on location in northern England, Smithard used Panalux Sonara to match the ambient daylight. “There were lots of scenes that lasted 3 or 4 hours with fairly big interior locations,” Smithard recalls. “Gaffer Mark Taylor suggested the Sonaras, which provided us with the spread we needed. The fact that the Sonara is powerful and lightweight makes it very flexible.”

Lightweight Panalux Allegra LED heads are quick to rig for any shooting scenario.

Panalux Sonara’s soft, even spread, slim profile, and dedicated soft box and egg crate were also a boon to Ben Davis BSC and gaffer Onx Narang, who used 4:4 heads in place of space lights within the tight confines of the stage on the feature My Policeman. “We decided to use Sonaras for the ‘studio’ part of the shoot, which was actually a hangar at Farnborough airfield,” Narang explains. “We were able to light the sets to look like night or day or whatever time we wanted to achieve.”

The Panalux Sonara family’s unique LED array includes two amber and two warm-white channels, benefitting a wide range of applications. For example, when emulating candlelight or firelight, “effectively you can ‘ripple’ or ‘pulse’ between the channels for a more nuanced flicker than other lights allow,” Amphlett notes. “There’s a greater level of control and subtlety.”

Panalux’s proprietary LED solutions also include the lightweight Panalux Allegra range of full-colour and bi-colour heads and controllers. The full-colour Panalux Allegra C — available in 4:2, 4:1, 2:2 and 2:1 form factors — features a unique eight-chip LED array with five phosphors to produce an extremely wide gamut and extended tail on warmer CCTs, setting the lights apart from other LED sources on the market. The precise control and incredible accuracy of the Panalux Allegra and Panalux Sonara ranges underscore the technical expertise Panalux offer to support cinematographers’ artistry without compromise.