Effective, Compact, Affordable Lighting
Review by Dave Williams
It seems too good to be true: lighting so effective, yet so compact and affordable. The team behind Litra has been busy creating broadcast LED lighting solutions for eight years, and their depth of knowledge has resulted in the creation of an innovative solution to small lighting.
LitraPro is a full-spectrum, bi-color light, marketed as the first of its kind: a compact video and photo adventure light. It’s rugged, made of aluminium, and waterproof to 90′. LitraTorch 2 is, as the name suggests, the second generation of the smaller version. LitraTorch 2 features 16 LEDs and boasts a waterproof aluminium body.
Both the LitraPro and the LitraTorch 2 can be used to provide good-quality continuous light in tandem with your phone, action camera, DSLR, or mirrorless camera, or in a studio environment. To review Litra in just a couple of words, I’d say, “It’s lit!” It offers bright, even light, and with the included diffuser, it’s easy on the eyes. There are, of course, other products out there offering similar capabilities, but what makes Litra different is its fantastic balance of light offered by the LEDs, rather than one source of light.
LitraPro is a step up from LitraTorch 2 in that it has Bluetooth connectivity, allowing the user to take complete control of the brightness and temperature of the light from a smartphone. You can also use the built-in controls, which reflect their settings on the OLED display mounted on the top, where it also shows the battery state.
With either version, there’s an array of accessories available, including mounts and supports, barn doors, honeycomb grids, a soft box, and colored filters. The Litra range really does take everything up a notch, combining fantastic performance with portability. If, for instance, an adventure vlogger and photographer were to take a camera with a Litra lighting rig, the light, filters, and other accessories would only take up as much space in their bag as another camera. For what you can get out of it, that’s really something!
For my work, traveling and regularly shooting landscapes, the value of a good-quality, compact light is something high up on the list of priorities when it comes to my gear, and the Litra can give me a kick of light on a scene right out of my pocket, solving a problem in a very straightforward way.
The LitraPro and LitraTorch 2 offer an entirely new level of rugged, compact, quality, professional lighting. Weighing in at 6 oz. and 3.2 oz., and laying down 1200 and 800 lumens of light, respectively, the Litra range would be a fantastic addition to the inventory for a whole realm of photo and video specialists. ■
