New at NAB 2008
 Once again HD products and the upcoming digital television conversion stole the show at NAB 2008 in Las Vegas Innovations in lighting were few but nevertheless significants. Convertible lighting, fluorescent fixtures and LED lights were the most evident innovations on the exhibit floor.  Convertible Lights Convertible lights are those fixtures that can take different types of bulbs for various purposes, mainly to convert color temperature from indoor to daylight and also to create a softer light source. Photoflex is one of the many companies that are offering this system. 
  
The Starlite fixture with three different bulbs. On the left the light has a Starlight lamp and a soft box ring mount. In the center allws to use standard tungsten bulbs. On the right the light is equipped with a large Starllite Coolstart 150 fluorescent bulb providing daylight color temperature.
 
A standard octagonal soft box can be converted into a large open face light by removing the diffusion and fabric grid.
 The constellation 3 can take as many as 3 independently controlled bulbs for even higher output. 
Westcott use multi-bulbs system, some with as many as five bulbs including screw-in strobe units.
  
Lowell ExChange Rifa lights can be changed from single or multiple fluorescent bulb to conventional tungsten.
Kino-Flo has on display a prototype of LED light with adjustable color temperatures and density.  
The light comes equipped with a very sophisticated control panel. No price was announced.   FloLight had a few LED on display   The output of these lights is controlled by a number of switches that power different banks of LED bulbs.     An inexpensive self contained LED ring light internally powered by AA batteries can be mounted on the camera microphone 
Lowel had a clever prototype of a LED on camera light on display. The "Blender" blends two bank of LED lights, one 3200K and the other 5600K. To achieve the desired color temperature there are two knobs that adjust the individual density.
    Zylight introduced a remote control for their Z90 LED on camera light. The remote can set color and density on several lights. 
 
Frezzi was showing a specially engineered optical gel for their soft box. The filter will expand the angle of coverage to accommodate 16:9 camera formats. 
Arri has redesigned the 1K Fresnel light (right) The new design has a focusing knob in front and in the rear of the unit, better ventilation and a much larger lens.
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