Starting out in church video production often entails buying the Amazon Prime special. Think a couple of soft boxes over LED lamps for key and fill light—bare basics that look OK and only cost a couple hundred bucks, tops. Probably less. But if it’s going well, things are growing, and it’s time for an upgrade. We at Church Production would like to introduce you to Nanlite, as well as Tony Mellinger at The Crossing Church in St. Louis, who got to take Nanlite’s Forza 60c and PavoTube II 30C for a spin.
“When I got the equipment, I was really excited about the entire package and just the versatility with the Forza 60C’s, they’re so small and so light you can stick ‘em in places that we just couldn’t do with other lights that we had, which made it really nice. I really, really liked some of the soft boxes that I was able to use with these Forza 60C’s and it just made it a small compact kit and honestly it was a three-pack that I could take on as a carry-on if I really needed to. The Forza 60C’s are really good small key lights, or for a fill or hair light,” Tony says.
Tony loved the PavoTube II 30C’s as well, “With the tubes. They sent me a newer generation that I wasn’t familiar with, and I feel like they fixed everything that I had complaints about [from the earlier generation], which was really nice. So, I just really appreciated the next-generation PavoTubes. It felt like a more solid high-end product that they fixed a lot of things that I was looking forward to. The way that we typically use them is for accent lights or to light up the background or to light up a specific area in the set.”
The Forza series nails a CRI rating of 96 and the PavoTube II’s come in at 97, which is pretty wild considering the lights are $699 and $951, respectively. Nanlite is offering the sort of deal you can’t refuse, here. Tony makes their point, laying down just how versatile the lights are.
“So, the Forza 60C’s are great for a smaller application. If you’re a church that’s just building out your kit, these are really good lights.... They’re going to be able to light up a talking head really well or a small to medium set or to use as an accent light to light up an area of your set that you might not be able to stick a larger light in. If you’re a church that’s a little bit more established, these make great lights for portability. The PavoTube II 30C's are great lights to have to build out your kit. These aren’t going to be lights that you’re going to use for your main lights, but they’re going to be able to add color, they’re going to be able to add some accents. You’re going to be able to stick them in places that you might not typically be able to set other lights. One example is that we used them behind some big pillars to light up a back wall, and it worked out really well, and it looked beautiful on set and you couldn’t even see that we had supplemental lighting on set just because they’re battery powered and they’re very vertical and thin, so you can stick ‘em in random places.”
Check out the whole video for Tony’s full experience with Nanlite. You can head here for the full rundown of Nanlite’s Forza 60C, and you can here for the PavoTube II 30C.
