At DV Expo I had the chance to play with Litepanel's Sola 600. The is a direct competitor to Arri's LED fresnels and you couldn't have two more different design philosophies.
The Sola 600 is made of carbon fiber/plastic material and seems like it's not as well made as the Arri BUT (and notice that's a big but) it's much lighter than the built-like-a-tank Arri. The Sola 600 weighs less than 10 pounds while the Arri weighs 14 with active cooling and a whopping 24 pounds using passive cooling! The Arri would be great in the studio but there's no doubt I'd be taking the Sola out on location. Plus, the Sola seems to burn cooler and you can easily handle it when it's powered.
The Sola 600 also has a nifty little LCD screen in back to tell you what's going on but it would be useless if it's hanging in the air. Up in the grid the Sola can be controlled through DMX.
One of the big differences between the Arri and the Sola is color correction. Arri has a tungsten balanced Arri L7T, a Daylight balanced L7D and on the Arri L7-C color temperature can be change electronically at the head or through DMX. The Sola's daylight balanced and requires color correction filters.
The Sola 600 has the light output of a 600 watt tweenie and it has a great spot/focus range from 70 degree flood to 10 degree spot (Arri is 15-50). At $2850 it costs about 4 times as much as a Mole Tweenie but you can run 6 Sola 600's on the same amount of power as 1 tungsten tweenie, you'll never have to buy a new bulb for it and you'll never burn your fingers.
Litepanels also has a Sola 400 that is priced at $1500 bucks... but no fancy LCD screen.
The Sola 600 is made of carbon fiber/plastic material and seems like it's not as well made as the Arri BUT (and notice that's a big but) it's much lighter than the built-like-a-tank Arri. The Sola 600 weighs less than 10 pounds while the Arri weighs 14 with active cooling and a whopping 24 pounds using passive cooling! The Arri would be great in the studio but there's no doubt I'd be taking the Sola out on location. Plus, the Sola seems to burn cooler and you can easily handle it when it's powered.
The Sola 600 also has a nifty little LCD screen in back to tell you what's going on but it would be useless if it's hanging in the air. Up in the grid the Sola can be controlled through DMX.
One of the big differences between the Arri and the Sola is color correction. Arri has a tungsten balanced Arri L7T, a Daylight balanced L7D and on the Arri L7-C color temperature can be change electronically at the head or through DMX. The Sola's daylight balanced and requires color correction filters.
The Sola 600 has the light output of a 600 watt tweenie and it has a great spot/focus range from 70 degree flood to 10 degree spot (Arri is 15-50). At $2850 it costs about 4 times as much as a Mole Tweenie but you can run 6 Sola 600's on the same amount of power as 1 tungsten tweenie, you'll never have to buy a new bulb for it and you'll never burn your fingers.
Litepanels also has a Sola 400 that is priced at $1500 bucks... but no fancy LCD screen.
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