Meet the world’s first sun spectrum, HDR, waterproof, wireless DMX, 2000 lumen 5-color LED, mount-anywhere, lightweight flexible production and cinema strip light at NAB 2024. Yes, Atomos may have all its Ninja, Shogun and Sumo monitors to show in Las Vegas, including the new Ninja Phone solution, but now the company also as an LED strip light, named Sun Dragon!
The Atomos Sun Dragon is, says the company, “the world’s first 99% sun spectrum-accurate (CRI:99, TCLI:98), 5-color HDR LED production lights in LED strip form. Maintaining a super bright 2000 lumens end to end, the 16ft (5m) high density lighting system comes with wired DMX and ethernet and wireless RF, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity for control and configuration.”
With Sun Dragon, filmmakers can adapt their lighting to any set or live event, indoors or outdoors, precisely bending the flexible lighting for both HDR and SDR shooting. Instead of a conventional fixed, heavy, and cumbersome form factor, it is a malleable strip of ultra-dense 5-color LED lights. The incredible density avoids annoying micro shadows – which can require diffusers on regular thin LED light strips – and increases the relative brightness to extremely high levels.
According to Atomos, “it’s easy to flex Sun Dragon to any shape, carefully controlling reflections and shadows with a precision that’s simply not possible with traditional fixed-shape lighting. If you still need a panel source, simply coil the Sun Dragon in a spiral, and it behaves like a panel light source. Wider spirals make a wider light throw, and denser spirals form a closer, more intense beam. Each Sun Dragon comes with a spiral carry case, with metal mounting options on the rear, and magnetic removable diffuser covers for more traditional light panel use.”
Traditional LED strips are typically not accurate in color and brightness due to poor LED quality, and the end-to-end accuracy drops off significantly, resulting in varying performance on set. Sun Dragon solves these issues, Atomos claims, “with its precision 5-color arrangement and accurately maintains an amazing 2000 lumens end to end, giving faithful color and brightness reproduction. It’s strip lighting you can trust.”
To ensure that there’s no limit to this new-found versatility, Sun Dragon is fully water-resistant, dust proof and waterproof to a depth of one meter. That means rain, spray and accidental spillage pose no threat to these all-weather lights, which can easily cope with desert or beach environments. Sun Dragon is incredibly lightweight, weighing just 1kg: a 10x to 20x reduction compared with standard panel lights.
“Atomos has always focused on maximizing performance for an affordable price, and that’s absolutely the case with Sun Dragon, which is a production and cinema lighting system with a difference,” said Jeromy Young, CEO and Co-Founder. “Conventional cinema lights come in the shape of point sources, panels, or linear strips, but Sun Dragon changes everything with its novel form factor, its technical advances in LED density and its advanced controls. It’s a new dimension in flexibility and performance.”
Sun Dragon’s affordability and flexibility, Atomos continues, “doesn’t come at the cost of performance. The lights are made from densely packed high-quality LEDs for an even light without any need for diffusion. They’re punchy, powerful and have an output that’s 99% of the full sun spectrum. That means you can rely on authentic colors on set that perfectly match your camera sensor calibration, without missing any parts of the spectrum. Our provisional measurements suggest they have an outstanding CRI (Colour Rendering Index) of approximately 99 and TCLI (Television Lighting Consistency Index) of 98. This means that no correction is needed in post-production.”
Power is nothing without control, so Sun Dragon comes with an active controller with a large display and wireless/wired DMX remote control. Basic setup (Brightness, Color, Hue, etc.) is available via Atomos AirGlu RF devices. Sun Dragon is also Bluetooth compatible for DMX control from iPad and iPhone apps and can be battery or mains powered. Whatever control method you use today, it will work with Sun Dragon!
The new lights can be controlled by Atomos monitor-recorders and the brand-new Ninja Phone, allowing shots to be set up quickly and accurately. This is a revolution in lighting control where immediate visual feedback eliminates checking and re-checking, which is especially important for HDR.
“Wherever there are cameras, there are lights. We’ve always wanted to make a production and cinema lighting system, but we didn’t just want to replicate what’s out there, and we wanted to have them controlled from our monitor-recorders,” added Young. “So, we’ve taken advantage of the very latest technology and our innovation DNA, to create something that’s completely new. We can’t wait to see how creatives use them! These lights are genuinely different, adding an extra dimension to illuminating a shot. There’s never been a production and cinema lighting system with such an extreme combination of affordability, flexibility, and sheer performance.”
Sun Dragon will be available in June 2024 with an expected price of USD/EUR 999, excluding local sales taxes. The lights can be seen at the Atomos booth at NAB 2024 (C4391).