Lighting Technology in Transition
An Extended Q&A for American Cinematographer
In 2026, American Cinematographer invited me to contribute to a feature on the evolution of LED lighting in film production.
The conversation focused on how LED technology has changed the day-to-day work of the lighting department, from fixture design and power consumption to colour quality, wireless control and large-scale exterior lighting.
Below is an extended version of the original responses I provided during the preparation of the article. The published feature was edited for the magazine, while this page preserves more of the technical detail behind my answers.
LED fixtures have now been part of the standard toolkit on film sets for several years, with all the advantages and limitations that come with them.
In practical terms, they have largely replaced fluorescent tubes, while also making it possible to light certain situations in a much more efficient and flexible way, especially thanks to the arrival of smaller and lighter units.
In my view, Astera Titan tubes were a real turning point. They changed the way we work and made tablet-based control part of everyday practice. That shift also helped expand the use of CRMX, and once reliable transmitters and receivers became widely available, it became much more common to have a desk operator even outside studio work.
Because most modern LED fixtures can produce both warm and cool light, and blend the two with precision, they have almost eliminated the need for correction gels. On top of that, many fixtures now include RGB capability alongside the traditional 3200K and 5600K settings, which makes the use of colour in narrative lighting much faster and more accessible.
This has had a major impact on set-up times. You can move from a daylight look to a dusk look in seconds, with very accurate colour-temperature control. Compared with productions from 15 years ago, that kind of speed can save a considerable amount of time over the course of a shoot.
In recent years, LEDs have become viable in almost every lighting situation. In some cases, for example, we have used Nanlux 5000B units in place of 9K HMIs with very strong results.
One of the early weaknesses of LED fixtures was their fragility outdoors, especially in rain, snow or damp conditions. But since the arrival of fixtures like Creamsource’s Vortex8, I think it has become difficult to justify designing serious new LED units that are not weatherproof.
About three years ago, I worked on an international production shot at night in February at 3,000 metres in the Italian Alps, Heart of Stone. We lit around 2.2 kilometres of ski slope using Vortex8 units mounted on 6-metre vertical truss towers. Those fixtures were exposed to snow, freezing wind and temperatures down to -19°C for around six weeks, and all of them worked flawlessly throughout. Control was handled via roughly 2.5 kilometres of fibre-optic cable.
LEDs are also unquestionably safer than many traditional sources when working in water or close to it.
Weight is another major advantage. Fixtures such as Rod Light are excellent in that respect: light, solid and fast to rig. In the past, creating the same kind of soft or shaped source now available from products such as LiteMat panels or cylindrical LED fixtures required more space, more time, heavier rigging and far more electrical power.
Low power consumption is another huge benefit. It is now increasingly common to run fixtures from lithium batteries in situations where getting mains power to the unit would be difficult or impractical. Lower power draw also means lower heat output, which is another significant advantage on set.
That said, there are still areas where the LED and CRMX ecosystem could improve.
From a technical point of view, one thing I would really like to see is fixtures with built-in CRMX signal repeating. That would make remote control by tablet or console much simpler, especially on large exterior sets.
Here in Italy, LumenRadio’s Stardust is very popular. It is a four-universe CRMX control system and works very well on small and medium-sized jobs. On smaller productions, I also find RatPac’s AKS paired with the Blackout app on a tablet very effective.
On very large exterior sets, however, these systems still have limits. Managing many LED fixtures over Wi-Fi with CRMX across a wide location can become quite complicated, especially when several control points are needed to ensure full coverage.
So overall, while LED initially replaced fluorescent tubes, it has become much more than that. It is a technology that allows us to work faster, with greater flexibility, and to solve lighting problems in ways that were much harder in the past.
Yes, I would definitely like to see more powerful LED Fresnels than the ones currently available. I am very fond of the Fiilex Q8 and Q10, but their output is still a little limited. I expect that, as the technology continues to evolve, we will soon see more capable fixtures in that category.
At the same time, cinematography itself has changed, and Fresnels are now used less often than they once were, with many productions favouring softer sources such as SkyPanels or fixtures like the Vortex8. As always, though, it depends very much on the project and on the DP’s visual taste.
I have been doing this long enough to have grey hair, and I still have a real affection for multi-lamp PAR64 units — in Italy we call them Jumbo and Tornado — as well as Wendy Lights, whose incandescent globes are now almost disappearing from the market.
De Sisti, working with Vittorio Storaro, introduced the Muse of Light series, which I think is a strong alternative, and I would be very happy to see that concept developed further in waterproof versions.
Yes, colour quality is extremely important for us, and that absolutely includes LEDs.
I use a colour meter regularly and I always keep one on my belt. Many professional fixtures now offer very good colour rendering, but some still produce unwanted shifts at lower dimmer levels, and those need to be managed carefully.
With RGBW fixtures, it is sometimes possible to correct or improve the result from the console. In other cases, we still go back to the old reliable tools — gels, and often a touch of 1/8 plus or minus green to control a cast.
I can also confirm that LED Fresnels tend to produce a slightly softer light than traditional tungsten Fresnels.
The emitting surface of an LED engine is physically much larger than a tungsten filament, so I think this is fundamentally a matter of optics and source geometry.
That is why I still say that LED is an excellent technology, but that from a purely technical point of view it has only truly replaced fluorescent tubes so far.
That said, the pace of development is extremely fast. At every industry trade show, there seem to be new manufacturers bringing genuinely interesting tools to market.
On the current project I am working on — as 2nd Unit Gaffer on The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection: Chapter II by Mel Gibson — we are using almost entirely LED lighting.
The fixtures we have relied on most are Vortex8 units, Titan tubes and Evoke 5000B units with Fresnel lenses, alongside the powerful 18K Arrimax units and Tornado lights.
This mix reflects the way I see the current transition in film lighting: LED has become the main tool in many situations, but traditional high-output sources still have an important role when their power, beam quality or optical characteristics are the right choice for the scene.
This extended Q&A is based on the original responses I provided during the preparation of the American Cinematographer feature “Into the Light — Lights to Diode For.”
The published article brings together different perspectives on the evolution of LED lighting in professional film production.
Read the article on American Cinematographer
Original responses by Elvis Pasqual. Edited and expanded for this website from material originally provided to American Cinematographer.