Korean lighting manufacturer Aurora Lite Bank has announced the C-Lux, a handy multi-purpose LED lamp for photography and video lighting.
It is a circular, 10-watt, 40-LED panel with a built-in 1000mAh USB-chargeable battery pack, a tripod mount and a coldshoe foot.
Aurora has cleverly designed the C-Lux to integrate with their Firefly series of collapsible beauty dishes. Attach it to the centre rod and it does double duty as a replacement deflector—thanks to the silver back panel—and as a modelling lamp. You can also mount it backwards as an indirect light source; this way the LED light spreads more evenly around the softbox, though you might have to watch out for light spilling out of the back.
This kind of configuration lets you preview the lighting from your speedlight softboxes before you take a shot, showing where the shadows fall and so on. It’ll also boost the light output a bit, if your shutter speed is slow enough to capture continuous light.
Outside a Firefly, you can use the Aurora C-Lux handheld, on a light stand or in your camera’s hotshoe as a general-purpose video lamp. There are only two power settings: full and half, controlled by a simple switch on the side. Apparently the battery has the capacity for up to an hour of usage at full power.
Colour rendering index (CRI) is specified as “over 95”. No television lighting consistency index (TLCI) is given.
Pricing looks to be about €130, available this month. Aurora products are distributed in Austria and Germany by Hensel. No sign of this in the US, yet. For more information, visit the Aurora Lite Bank web site.