For a long time I have been in doubt about getting a ‘photography’ HUD, for pics I make indoors and when I miss the ability to have shadows (I am in LL Viewer and cannot derender a roof or a wall for that purpose..). I am not a fan of facelights, and tried to create my own projector (fail and meh)…but this Sunday I went for it and purchased the LumaLite HUD, from Toran Babenco & Colleen Criss – as I had seen some images on Flickr and well, the price (LS 1495) seemed more reasonable, for me and my budget, than the other ones I have seen (LumiPro being a wellknown – but being LS 6995 quite pricy – one, Strawberry Singh showed stunning results of using the LumiPro in her Monday blogpost) and it promised it was easy to use.
For the record, I have never used or tried the LumiPro so I cannot give an honest opinion about it, other than its price kept me from purchasing it.
So. The LumaLite it is for me.
After purchasing I joined the LumaLite group, for support and all and joined their Flickr Group as well, received a notecard with tips and tricks from Toran and then I felt like experimenting!
I went to Basilique, the new “Harvey’s Wine Bar’ as this is a stunning location, but: indoor and tricky with lights when depending on windlight only. I could not rez in this Bar, so no playing with the projector, but I could use the ‘face-lights’ as you wear these.
The HUD is indeed as easy to use as I hoped. Sure, I fiddled around a bit, but soon I found out how to change the colours of the lights, the intensity and position. Heck, if even I can do this…it must be simple eh!
I took his picture and was pleased with the result, I think I managed to ‘light myself out’ just enough and showing off the materials of the dress without making it look like rubber?
Of course I also wanted to experiment with the ‘projector’ and Becky came up with a great idea after I told her I was going to do some pics in the (also indoor and darkish) Bathhouse in Basilique: she arranged her new Hosts Juliet and Paul (they are her ‘bots’ or ‘NPC’s) and we decided to both get a lovely massage in the bathhouse by the two hosts.
(Tip: read all about Becky and her ‘robots’ in her blogpost – The Robot and I, they are amazingly real!)
Due to the somewhat NSFW nature of the pic, I had to put it under a restricted filter on Flickr, but you can find it here. So this is a part of it, showing the shadows the projector, (I was allowed to rez in the bathhouse) Becky and I also wore the facelights, and giving it a more spectacular image!
In order to make the HUD work you need to enable advanced lighting, shadows and all that and enable ‘attached and local lights’. The latter I usually have disabled, so err…well it took me a 5 mins to realise why the HUD didn’t work…oops! Once you have it all set, really: it is easy and I can only say that I LOVE this HUD, but think in my case it will be something for indoor shots, as for outdoor I quite enjoy using windlights and haven’t missed extra lightsources, but who knows!
If there is one thing I would like to see a tad different on this HUD : the size of the fonts is a bit small…yeah yeah..I have reading glasses, but still..ahem. /me wipes nose-prints from monitor…
Cait's World 
:) Thank you Cait for a nice review of the HUD as well as the constructive feedback! We are hoping those who buy will help us improve on the HUD. The photos are so awesome ! I have always been impressed with how you use lights. Again, thank you so much.
Thank you for the review on Lumalite :) I will attempt to change coloring on fonts, That should back you nose away from the screen :) Keep up the good work on your SL photography and use of LumaLite lights.
Ooh thank you for reviewing this, awesome post! I’ve been considering making this purchase and I’m super happy to see that it indeed does the job! :)