Aputure Amaran Tri-8c LED Panel Light Review

Aputure has produced some very impressive panel and single point LED lights over the last couple of years and now thy have a new addition to their Amaran (entry level) LED panel lights: The Amaran Tri-8 series. This new series includes daylight and color tunable versions. The color quality scores nicely in our tests relative to a good old-fashioned tungsten light, we didn’t find any flicker (an issue with some LED panel lights) and found this to be a great little light to act as a fill, a hair light, an accent light, or even a key light.

Gear used to record this episode:

Aputure Amaran Tri-8 LED Panel Light

Aputure C120d (daylight hard light)

Aputure Light Storm LS1 Panel Light

Sound Devices MixPre-6 Audio Recorder & Mixer

DPA 4017b Shotgun Microphone (my pro-level outdoor mic)

Panasonic GH5 Camera

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens (1st Generation)

Lifecharge USB Battery (for powering the MixPre-6)

Copyright 2017 by Curtis Judd

Affordable LED Light Panels: CELADON 2XL and 2XL Pro

Need some portable LED lights for your video or photo shoots? CELADON offers the 2XL and 2XL Pro which are small sized LED panels which you can mount on top of your camera, on a stand, or anywhere else you might imagine.

In this review we take a closer look at the color quality, build quality, battery life, beam angle, and light output. Overall, these LED lights are a great portable lighting option for a very good price.

Gear used to record this episode:

CELADON 2XL PRO (160 SMD LED Light Panel - this is what I used as the key light in this episode)

CELADON 2XL (280 LED Light Panel - this was the rim light in this episode)

Panasonic GH5 Camera - My new favorite little camera

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens (1st Generation)

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 Lens (talking head shots)

Audio Technica AT4053b Microphone - My go-to microphone for recording dialogue indoors

Sound Devices 633 Audio Mixer/Recorder - My "Pro Level" audio recorder

Copyright 2017 by Curtis Judd

Aputure Mini 20C LED Fresnel Light - NAB 2017

Aputure keeps cranking out high quality, reasonably priced lighting gear. In this announcement, Ted from Aputure runs us through the features on their new Mini 20C. The light features a focusing beam, including barn doors with an infinity ring, controls for dimming, changing color temperature between 3200 and 5600 Kelvin, and focusing the beam angle between 20 and 80 degrees (flood and spot). One other nice feature is the ability to power with 5 to 18V DC power so you can use a USB battery pack, Sony NP-F style batteries, or even a big Sony V-Lock or Anton Bauer Gold Mount battery.

I've been working with an early copy of the daylight version of this light for a few weeks now and it works great as an accent or hair light.

Apologies for the wild camera work. I had the clever idea to go super light without a tripod at NAB this year. Lesson learned. My brother Cary Judd was kind enough to suffer through shooting. Thanks bro!

Gear used to record this episode:

Panasonic Lumix GH5 Camera

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens

RODE Reporter Microphone

RODE iXLR Audio Adapter for iPhone

Copyright 2017 by Curtis Judd

Aputure Space Light and Light Dome Mini - NAB 2017

Aputure keeps cranking out high quality, reasonably priced lighting gear and their latest announcement includes two new modifiers for their COB lights (or any LED light with a Bowens mount). These include the Space Light and the Light Dome Mini. Let’s have a quick look at both and talk about when you might choose to use each.

Looking forward to getting our hands on these for review!

Apologies for the wild camera work. I had the clever idea to go super light without a tripod at NAB this year. Lesson learned. My brother Cary Judd was kind enough to suffer through shooting. Thanks bro!

Our Vlogging setup:
Panasonic Lumix GH5 Camera - the in-body stabilization saved us because I had the "clever" idea to travel light and not bring a tripod this year. That was a mistake but the IBIS in the GH5 did a pretty nice job!

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens - This is the original version of this lens. The new version is a bit pricier but evidently works even better with the GH5 to smooth out camera motion.

RODE Reporter Microphone - great at managing handling noise. I didn't hear any in this recording.

RODE iXLR Audio Adapter for iPhone - Yes, recorded this audio to my iPhone. Pretty good for a phone recording on a noisy show floor.

Copyright 2017 by Curtis Judd

Aputure COB300d First Look at NAB 2017

Aputure keeps cranking out high quality, reasonably priced lighting gear and their latest announcement is for the impressive COB300d - an LED light that is roughly equivalent to a 2k tungsten. That’s a lot of light output. This one is daylight balanced (6000K) and a tungsten version will follow. All the same accessories that fit their smaller COB120 lights also fit this including the soft box, fresnel lens and other bowens mount accessories available on the market like barn doors and beauty dishes. The color quality is rated at a TLCI of 98 which is very high.

Can’t wait to get our hands on one of these for review!

When might you use a light this powerful? The first two scenarios that come to mind are though a window to simulate daylight (so you can shoot a daytime scene at night or just when you want to make it look like a different time of day) or when you want to bring the ambient light levels up in a larger space. Aiming this as the ceiling could do an impressive job lifting that ambience.

Apologies for the wild camera work. I had the clever idea to go super light without a tripod at NAB this year. Lesson learned. My brother Cary Judd was kind enough to suffer through shooting. Thanks bro!

Our Vlogging setup:
Panasonic Lumix GH5 Camera - the in-body stabilization saved us because I had the "clever" idea to travel light and not bring a tripod this year. That was a mistake but the IBIS in the GH5 did a pretty nice job!

RODE Reporter Microphone - great at managing handling noise. I didn't hear any in this recording.

RODE iXLR Audio Adapter for iPhone - Yes, recorded this audio to my iPhone. Pretty good for a phone recording on a noisy show floor.

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens - This is the original version of this lens. The new version is a bit pricier but evidently works even better with the GH5 to smooth out camera motion.

Copyright 2017 by Curtis Judd

Can You Mix Lights with Different Color Temperatures?

A few weeks ago we reviewed the Aputure Light Storm COB120d, an incredibly versatile LED light for video and photography. One specification of the COB that is a little unique is that its color temperature is cooler than others at 6000K. Many people have asked whether it is possible to mix this light with other daylight balanced lights which are rated with a color temperature of 5500 or 5600K.

In this episode, we look at cases where it is probably ok to mix them and other cases where you may not want to mix them.

In short, if you use each light to illuminate a different thing or different sides of a thing, you're probably ok to mix them. If you use two lights with different temperatures to light the same thing (e.g., one as a key light, the other as a fill), things can start to look at little strange unless you use the cooler light as the fill.

Gear used or mentioned in this episode:

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Aputure Light Storm COB120d LED Light (6000K color temp)

Aputure Light Storm LS1s LED Panel Light (5500K color temp)

Photo Basics Barn Doors confirmed to fit the Aputure COB Lights

Panasonic GH4 m4/3 Camera - Still my main video camera

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 Lens

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 Lens

Dracast LED500 Light Special Pricing

If you're in the market for an LED panel light which can be powered via Sony NP-F style batteries, B&H has special pricing on the Dracast LED500 for the next few hours. $200 for a color-tunable LED panel with barn doors, good build quality, and a CRI of 95. Looks like a good, affordable, flexible lighting instrument.

Practical Lessons from a Paid Location Shoot

This week's episode is a different than our usual episode: I spent the last 3 days on a shoot in a different city. I was primarily the sound guy and my brother Cary was primarily the DP. The job was for a documentary corporate video. We learned some lessons with this experience and wanted to share those here.

We didn't get to talk about lighting much but the short story is that the producer did not want large imposing lights and we needed something we could transport via checked baggage on our flight. We opted to use the Aputure LS1s LED panel and a Kamerar BrightCast flexible LED panel, both shot through Kamerar D-Fuse soft boxes. These both came in my pelican case and traveled well. They did a great job in the varied lighting situations we encountered for the interviews.

Gear mentioned in this episode or used in the shoot which we did not have time to discuss:

Aputure Light Storm LS1s LED Panel Light - easier to transport than Aputure COB120d and the producer did not want large, imposing lights.

Kamerar BrightCast Flexible LED Panel Light - again, easy to transport and even lighter than the LS1s with about 1/2 the output power but the ability to color tune between daylight and tungsten.

Kamerar D-Fuse Soft Box for LED Panel Lights - super light. Not the softest of soft boxes, but small and easy to transport.

Sennheiser G3 Wireless Lavalier Microphone System (G3 ew119p) - my new favorite wireless lavalier system. Takes a few minutes to set up at the start of a shoot, but holds a signal even when out of line-of-sight which is better than the digital wireless systems I've used.

Nikon D750 DSLR Camera - Good old DSLR, but a good option in this case since we had two of them and needed two cameras for the interview shoots.

Varizoom Jib - Reasonably priced jib which travels well and allowed us to get some good camera movement

Atomos Ninja II HDMI video recorder. An oldie but goodie. The screen is not amazing but the ProRes files it records are great to work with in post production.

Lighting for Video: Hard and Soft Light

When lighting your video, understanding the difference between hard and soft light can help improve the look of your video dramatically. It is also important to understand how to make light hard vs. soft, and know when to use which. We cover the basics here.

In this episode, we used the Aputure COB120 lights which are nice because with the add-on accessories, you can use this as a soft or hard light source. Here we used the Light Dome, the new fresnel lens, and some barn doors on the front of the lens.

Kamerar BrightCast LED Light Panel Review

LED lights have finally improved in quality and come down in price to make them more accessible to enthusiast filmmakers. This new light from Kamerar called the BrightCast V15 is a flexible LED panel with 256 color tunable LED chips and can be powered via battery (Sony v-mount style batteries) or via AC. Color quality was a big problem on sub-$1000 LED lighting instruments in the past, but the BrightCast has a CRI of 97 and our tests confirm that the color quality is very good. This means you won’t end up with video footage which looks all funky in terms of color. Overall, the BrightCast is a great, compact, light-weight option for location work or shooting in very small spaces like many of us do. I give this one two thumbs up!

Like most LED panels, in some cases you can run into an issue where there are multiple shadows because the panel has 256 light sources. You can easily fix this by diffusing the light coming out of the panel. One way that works great is to use Kamerar's D-Fuse softbox which works nicely with the BrightCast.