The team behind the Pixelstick solution for light painting is back with Colorspike, presented as a video shooter’s secret weapon that photographers will also want to carry around.
Colorspike is born from its creators search for a solution. Bitbanger Labs members, Duncan and Steve wanted to have a creative light allowing them to dial in a ton of interesting effects, great for both video and stills, in studio and on-location, controlable through an app and built to be linked together into an easily controlled multi-point lighting system and… what’s essential, bright enough to be useful.
Some of the solutions available on the market fulfilled some of the requirements, but not all of them, so the team decided to develop their own solution. Two years later they have working prototypes and created a Kickstarter campaign to go ahead with production, so the Colorspike turns into a reality March 2018. The Kickstarter campaign ends in one week, but 469 backers have already pledged $247,398 pledged of $120,000 goal, so the Colorspike will become reality.
Built to be professional grade, the Colorspike uses a rugged anodized aluminum body which protects the internals while dissipating heat silently without need of a fan. The bar form factor is perfect for going handheld while the dual side channels make mounting Colorspike to a stand (or anything else) a breeze.
The ultra-bright, flicker-free LEDs are capable of displaying millions of colors and are packed tightly into a single row to reduce shadowing and produce clean lines when light shaping. This was a big sticking point for the team as too often LED lights produce strange multiple shadows and fringing. Since starting the campaign and following requests and suggestions from backers, the team confirmed that Colorspike will have ultra bright, high CRI white LEDs specced at 95 CRI, meaning it becomes an alternative to white-light-only tools.
Colorspike was originally designed to be mainly a color light, using RGB LEDs to dial up the desired color, including a nice range of whites at various temperatures, but due to the nature of mixing red, green and blue evenly to create white, these types of LEDs typically have a low Color Rendering Index, meaning that although the white light created is pleasant enough to the eye, it is missing portions of the full spectrum that you might need to render your scene. The upgrade to Colorspike means that the final product will be more expensive than initially suggested, but will be a better all-round product. The images used to promote the campaign reveal the potential of the light.
Colorspike is a video shooter’s secret weapon. Designed to be fully usable without pairing it with a mobile device, its full potential is reached using the feature-packed companion app. To demonstrate the results achieved with the light the team created a series of images during a single shoot, dialing in custom patterns for campfire, police sirens, a broken fluorescent light, pulsing submarine light, flashbulbs, and prom lighting.
The app is ideal to create visual effects that help realize your vision and drive narrative. Whether you need to simply try a variety of different color washes on a scene, dial in some deliberate off-camera effects, or even use it as a practical lighting source, Colorspike is up to the task. The app takes it to a whole new level, allowing anything from managing your collection of patterns, to tweaking and creating new ones, to controlling multiple units simultaneously.
Colorspike runs from the included DC adapter, or from the internal battery when you’re on the go. This is handy for those times when you simply don’t have access to an electrical outlet. A lot of our outdoor shoots wouldn’t have been possible without the ability to unplug Colorspike and keep working. Battery runtime will vary greatly based on the brightness and LED usage, but even at extreme cases should provide better than 45 minutes of continuous light.