 Hey, what is up? My name is Rubidium. I have something a little special for you today on the crimson engine We're gonna look at a light, but not just any light a very special light this one the Hudson spider eight-limbed Transforming LED array That is incredibly versatile. That's incredibly bright. It has a 400 watt power output It comes with two or three different ways to conform it. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. I met the guys Tim and Sarah at NAB and their Australians here Tim's a DP and he basically created this light out of need He was working on films and commercials and he always needed a big soft source That was light that could be mounted high that was easy to carry But also one that didn't spill So the way you would traditionally get this is use a use a bank of four by four LEDs Or use a bank of four by four Kino flows, but it doesn't give the same effect as a circular source It's not as pretty in the eye. It's not as pretty With the reflections so he threw many prototypes and with his team created this Hudson spider That transforms and adapts to all sorts of wonderful ways I first learned about it on one of Matt workman's podcasts and have really wanted to check it out It's become a kind of go-to high-end LED source for, you know, working cinematographers So i'm going to swap from the Hudson spider over to an LED panel so I can show you exactly how it works So when you pull this light out of the box It looks like this Only weighs a couple of pounds Each one of these eight arms collapses in on itself. So so it's very compact and transportable Then you can mount it to a light stand or a c stand and then you start to open up the different limbs and possibilities and ways to configure this light So by loosening it in the c stand knuckle, um, it can rotate So that lets you open up The first stage of each arm Once you've done that you can open the second stage of each arm So I set it to 10 percent so you can see, uh, basically how it works Um, you just have to now that it's plugged in you have to watch the cable that it doesn't twist up But essentially there's Arrays of LEDs in the arms that are joined by a hinge and it means that uh, you can make the light Smaller or bigger by manipulating the the legs of the spider. So the next thing you do is put on a Softbox like an octobank That drops the you can if you don't have issues with spill you can use it entirely like this The next step in configuring it to be used on set is to add the softbox, which is what I'll do now So you can kind of drape this over And each of the legs fits into a little pocket as you rotate the light Then once you have your softbox on it attaches by a zip at the back So it's pretty easy to configure and this softbox Then serves to hold the diffusion and has the advantage of still revealing a lot of the, um Structure of the spider legs inside the light so that it breaks up the perfect Kind of two perfect circle in the eye of the subject But um, I'll stop I'll turn off this light and I'll stop down the camera and I'll measure the output So at uh full power at about three feet away from the front of the um diffusion I'm getting uh 600 foot candles, which is about 6200 lux the difference between this and other bright leds is This isn't too bright to look at it's not, um, it doesn't burn the eyes of the talent even at full power because the uh the parabolic Formational light is what's giving the throw and not necessarily, um the pure brightness of the leds. So you might be thinking, uh You know three three foot diameter is great, but I want bigger sources I'm shooting full body shots like we are here and this is only going to cover the top half of my talent Well, the spider has you covered and now you have what's probably a four and a half foot source, but You can go bigger again So you start by adding this um initial layer of diffusion and then I'm gonna have to move this back. I'm not even going to fit it on camera. You bring out This thing which looks like it fell off a spaceship. So now we have a Six foot uh light source and yes, there's diffusion for this So now we have the full six foot version of the Hudson in its diffused light source So I'm going to slide the Panel out the way move this to where it was when we started and I'll show you what that looks like So now I'm being lit by this huge diffused source Like I said, it's still in it 50 power. Um, it can go much brighter. It's by color It all packs up into a tiny little hard case travel case Um, and you can even run it off batteries. So, uh, I mean The Hudson spider as far as configurability as far as Transportability as far as um the way it's designed and the way it's meant to be used is like the future of lighting It is going to be seen a lot more. I think on sets a lot more on um high-end budget feature films tv commercials tv shows It's just a really versatile awesome tool instead of having to bring a whole array of different lights in different colors with different powers different sizes Uh, suddenly you can bring one light and it can do, you know, 90 percent of the things that you would typically want after I met them at nab I went out to their factory Uh, just outside of los angeles here in california, you know, they make everything there They test everything there. That's my look at the Hudson spider. Thanks very much for watching Leave you questions in the comments and I will see you next time