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How to Plot and Control Your Lights with this Updated Smartphone App

If you want to truly reach that Deakins-level of cinematography (or, you know, a working career level), there are a lot of sub-arts of DPing that you’ll need to master. And we all know that lighting is perhaps the most important cinematography element of them all.

That’s why it’s quite helpful to make use of all of the resources available to you to help you understand, optimize, and simply use the lights available to you for your projects. One way to help you do this is to make use of apps like Nanlink, which just released an updated version of their Nanlink APP 2.0.

Let’s take a look at this revamped and optimized version of the Nanlink APP and explore how this 2.0 offering can help you plot and control your lights more effectively and efficiently.


The Nanlink APP 2.0

As we’ve previously covered, the Nanlink APP is meant to partner with NanLite’s different lighting options (like the Nanlite Forza II and PavoTube II which we covered before). The Nanlink APP has proven to be a helpful tool that can help users as a control interface via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

While it was quite capable, to begin with, this new 2.0 version is set to provide a completely revamped user interface with better visual representations overall, plus some nice additions like its controllable light plot. Users have given feedback and the Guangdong Nanguang Photo&Video Systems Company has listened to provide these improvements.

These new features are accessible via some simplified icons and should be quite intuitive for users to get set up with and start implementing the status and parameters of the lighting fixtures in the app.

Let’s take a look at the light plot in particular though.

The Nanlink APP Light Plot

u200bNanlink APP Light Plot

So, the killer feature of this new app is a “light plot” tool that allows users to navigate lights inside a graphical map interface. This innovative addition should help DPs be able to light plot their sets by creating scenes, adding different lighting fixtures, plus working with other modifiers and props.

These light plots can be shared with other team members too to help get everyone on the same page as to what the lighting plots and plans might be.

There are a ton of other smaller tools and features contained within, but if you’re a DP (or AC, camera PA, G&E crew member, etc.) looking to streamline and save time with your productions, this could be a great way to get everyone on the same page before you actually show up on set.

Price and Availability

The Nanlink APP 2.0 is free to download and is available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android systems.

Author: Jourdan Aldredge
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.

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