LitePanel

Mary Lou asked about the LitePanel I mentioned. You can also get a glimpse of it in Tom Stettner’s picture of the main show room at the Chicago Botanic Garden. It’s turned on and lighting up my blue foam core board at the left edge of his picture. The manufacturer’s name is Litepanels, Inc. in Hollywood, California. There are several models, and I was using the smallest one, the LP-Micro. It runs on 4 AA batteries and puts out continuous light (until the batteries die). Intensity is variable, so between the continuity and variability, I can adjust the brightness until I’m satisfied that I’m not over or under filling the shadows. It would not be so good as a sole light source. It is supposed to be 5600 degrees Kelvin which means it is daylight balanced. I’m still looking for portable, soft lights for photographing daffodils that can be packed and checked as airline luggage. The LP-Micro is definitely portable. It’s an array of 48 light emitting diodes, but it’s not very soft (diffuse). It’s possible that using two of them might yield a natural looking image of a daffodil. I’ll have to try that. The other problem is that the light is concentrated on a small area so that it doesn’t work well on a collection of daffodils.
Kirby Fong