CAME-TV Boltzen Perseus Two-Tone 55W SMD soft road light is a great solution for those who want a compact, economical, self-contained road lighting kit.
These lights have a unique brace that allows them to be folded, making it easy to stack the panels together. This allows you to fit three lights and accessories in a relatively small hard case.
If you travel a lot and work as part of a one-man band or a small group, it makes sense to be able to stack three lights that can be powered by flight-safe batteries in a relatively compact package. I’m not sure why we don’t see more manufacturers making lighting kits for this reason.
Back in 2012, I bought a Litepanels Sola ENG lighting kit and traveled all over the world with assignments. This is a self-contained set of three lights that comes in a hard case and can be powered by flight safety batteries.
Road lighting kits are often a compromise between size, power consumption, and power output. You can’t usually eat cake at the same time.
So let’s see if the CAME-TV Boltzen Perseus Bi-Color 55W SMD Soft Road Light can be a great road lighting solution. In this review, I will review the P-1800B-3BATTERY kit.
The idea is to make panel lights affordable, with good color quality, good power output and travel-friendly.
They require low power consumption so that they can operate for long periods of time on flight-safe batteries. They also needed to come up with a design that would fit multiple lights in a travel case.
The build quality of the CAME-TV Boltzen Perseus Two Tone 55W SMD Soft Travel Light won’t win any awards.
While the case looks pretty solid, the dial and buttons are cheap to manufacture and not very tactile.
The locking mechanism and yoke are good and strong, but because of the way they work, I think you will need to tighten them with a hex wrench from time to time.
When it comes to folding yoke design, there are two things to keep in mind. First, you need to loosen the two locking mechanisms to adjust the angle. Secondly, the range of movement of the yoke is extremely limited. If you place the yoke on the stand in the normal upright position, you won’t be able to tilt the light down at all.
If you want to tilt the lantern down, you must place the yoke on the stand in a horizontal position.
Now you should be aware that if you lay the rocker horizontally on a light stand and use the V-lock battery on the light, the ultralight light stand may not be able to support the weight.
To save weight, CAME-TV obviously had to cut corners. Having said that, I still think these lights will withstand the rigors of field use, but it’s impossible to know without using them for a few months.
The cable to the power supply is not long enough that you cannot put the light up and put the power supply on the ground. I would like the company to put lanyard hooks on the power supply so you can attach them to the stand.
The LED display is not very good and the information that appears on the screen is not even direct. Attention to detail and consistency from one light source to another is often not found in “budget” fixtures.
At first glance, the Boltzen Perseus Bi-Color 55W SMD Soft Road Lights look like most other small LED panel lights, but as I mentioned earlier, they have a clever yoke design.
The biggest problem with packing headlights is usually the yoke. Yes, you can remove a lot of yokes, but that won’t do much to reduce the overall footprint.
Thanks to the clever yoke design, you can fold the lights so that three of them fit in the small Pelican case.
As far as the actual design of the fixtures, they are individual fixtures and they are all built in. This is important for road lights where you may not have much time to set up. Being able to take the flashlight out of its case, put it on the stand and turn it on will save you a lot of time.
One Boltzen Perseus Dual Tone 55W SMD Soft Travel Light weighs 1.9kg/4.18lbs. This means that you can use them on a light and small stand.
Boltzen Perseus Two Tone 55W SMD soft road light kit includes 3 lights, 3 power supplies, remote control, 3 CAME-TV Mini 99Wh V-mount batteries, custom foam. Weight is 10.4 kg / 22.92 lbs. You still need to consider the weight of the Pelican Pelican 1510 or 1535 hard case. The Pelican 1510 will add an additional 5.4 kg/12 lbs. It is important to remember that there is no light stand included, but three lightweight light stands can be squeezed into a tripod bag/tripod, etc.
If you are testing this combo while flying, you must remove the three Mini 99Wh V-Lock batteries. Speaking of batteries, I have already looked at them on the website and found them to be well made and reasonably priced.
The Boltzen Perseus Bi-Color 55W SMD Soft Road Lights consume only 55W, so they are easy to use over long distances with flight-safe batteries.
There is a built-in V-panel on the back of each lamp. Unfortunately, CAME-TV does not make an AB Gold Mount version, however, if required, you can simply purchase a third party AB Gold Mount V-mount adapter plate.
The rear LCD screen is very, very simple, it just shows the light intensity percentage and the color temperature in Kelvin. The screen looks like a Nintendo device from the 80s. While this doesn’t affect the operation or performance of the light, it still worries me. As you can see, the screen is not even positioned correctly and it is not straight. As I mentioned in the build quality section of this review, you will often find a lack of attention to detail when using many inexpensive lights.
I like that there are two dedicated buttons for setting the 3200K and 5600K. It’s also nice that you can adjust the color temperature in Kelvin with the +/- buttons and a dial.
With good lighting, you don’t need to read the manual to learn how to use it. You should be able to open it and use it right away. In this regard, CAME-TV is as simple as possible.
The menu is pretty simple, but you can set up various FX modes, change the remote’s channel, and turn on WiFi.
I found installing and connecting the app frustrating. It took me several times for the flashlight Wi-Fi to show up on my phone. I constantly have to turn the lights on and off, unplug the power cord, and restart WiFi mode on the flashlights. If you’re going to use an app, it should be easy to set up and use.
After connecting to the WiFi network created by the light, you need to go to the Boltzen app and select the light.
If you select CT, you can adjust the Kelvin color temperature and light intensity level. You can also turn on/off the light/
You can also enter delay mode while using the app. I can’t figure out how it actually works, no matter what I try, it doesn’t do anything.
There is also a timer mode where you can choose a specific time when the light will turn on or off. Again, I tried this, but nothing seems to work.
Another big issue I had with the app was that when I turned the lights off and on again, the Wi-Fi signal dropped out again. I had to go through the whole process from scratch to get it working again. If you are using multiple Boltzen lights and have disabled all of them, you will have to go back and set up all the lights individually again in order to use the app. Lighting control shouldn’t be too complicated, but the Boltzen app isn’t easy to use. Manual fixture setup is much faster than trying to use the app. CAME-TV informed me that a new app will be coming out in November.
The remote you get in the lighting package is the same remote that CAME-TV has been using for years. It’s unnecessarily complicated and unintuitive to use. I would avoid this because you will be very frustrated trying to figure out how to set it up and use it.
The FX model allows you to recreate 6 lighting effects that may come in handy in some scenes. Effect:
These luminaires do not have built-in fans, but are passively cooled. They do not overheat even with prolonged use.
The lack of a fan means the lights are completely silent, which is nice. If you plan on using them as interview lights, you’ll need to match them close enough to your talents.
So now let’s look at the photometric results. I always test lamps in such a way as to compare them with other lamps. The results only tell part of the story and should never be used alone to evaluate light. In years of testing, I have found that some lights with good photometric results don’t always look good, and lights with poor photometric results sometimes look better than their results suggest.
It is very important not to judge light by a set of tests. You need to see all the photometric data in order to correctly evaluate the light.
I tested the Boltzen Perseus Bi-Color 55W SMD Soft Travel Light at various Kelvin color temperatures with a Sekonic C-800 spectrometer to see how much light is emitted and how accurately the Kelvin color temperature is reproduced. All readings were taken at a distance of 1 m (3.28 ft) in a controlled environment.
Above you can see that CAME-TV recorded an output of 1730 lux (160 fc) when set to 5600K. That’s not a lot of power, but it’s still pretty good for a wide beam light source that draws only 55W.
In comparison, the PILOTCINE AtomCUBE RX50P RGBWW I reviewed on the site earlier puts out 1510 lux at 1m when used at 5600K. This lamp consumes 60 watts.
Above you can see that the light output when set to 5600K and running on battery is 1730 lux (161 fc). This is the same output as when working from the network. This shows me that the light can still run at full power when running on battery.
In the image above, you can see that the light output at 3200K is 1580 lux (147 fc), which is 9.49% lower than the light output at 5600K.
In terms of color temperature accuracy in Kelvin, it recorded a fairly accurate reading of 3245K. This tells me that when it comes to Colin’s 3200K and 5600K color temperature accuracy, the light is very stable.
These results show that light output varies within the Kelvin color temperature range, but not much. It has the most power when used at 5600K and the least power when used at 3200K. Output power varies from 3200K to 5600K by only 9.49%.
The results also show that the light is very accurate in terms of reproducing Kelvin color temperatures at 3200K and 5600K. If you go beyond 3200K or 5600K, the Kelvin color temperature accuracy of the lamp will not be as good.
Post time: Oct-13-2022
