New Aputure Amaran COB Lights

Run&Gun said:
I pre-ordered the fresnel and barn doors from B&H last night, as well.

I guess it’s just a waiting game on all of it and especially my light. All of the reviews I’ve seen on Youtube appear to all be V-mount versions. It seems a lot of newer companies prioritize V-mounts, now. It’s like they think that’s all that anyone uses. Thank you very much, RED.
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It's because the indie revolution/post 5d world has gone in that direction. I don't see any of the lower end budget film makers using Gold. For the latter, I see mostly more experienced, older, higher budget, bigger crew, etc. I mean, there are sooo many cheap no-name v mount batteries now to go with all of the cheap lights. You're not gonna see falcon eyes and all of these other chines lights offering Gold, so it's vicious circle that has made it the #1 cheap battery solution.

It's my first choice as well, for all of the reasons above...even though I much prefer the secure connection of a Gold mount.
 
ozmorphasis said:
It's because the indie revolution/post 5d world has gone in that direction. I don't see any of the lower end budget film makers using Gold. For the latter, I see mostly more experienced, older, higher budget, bigger crew, etc. I mean, there are sooo many cheap no-name v mount batteries now to go with all of the cheap lights. You're not gonna see falcon eyes and all of these other chines lights offering Gold, so it's vicious circle that has made it the #1 cheap battery solution.

It's my first choice as well, for all of the reasons above...even though I much prefer the secure connection of a Gold mount.
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Oh yeah. I was just kind of venting on the obvious. I mean V-mount has been around since at least the late(r) 90's, but in the US, it was no where near as popular as the "Gold Standard" Gold Mount. You rarely seemed to see them outside of "Sony Shops", and even then it still wasn't that widespread.

And of course, looking back, you can see how it has become so popular. RED chose, to go with V-Mount for their battery mount and around the same time was when you started to get the big influx of "Cheap Chinese Knock-Off" Li-ion batts and the indie and low budget guys who had only shot on DSLR's and the like migrating and aspiring to RED and probably didn't know any different(you still see a lot of people who think that all bricks are V-mounts or generically refer to all batts as V-mounts). So it was kind of the perfect storm. Just look at today. For about the last five or six years even Anton Bauer and PAG have been making their batteries available in V-Mount, as well.
 
Liam Hall said:
Looks like Aputure just killed all those Aputure killers lol! Hope those of you who bought a magenta tinted Godox don’t feel too down-hearted.

https://www.aputure.com/families/amaran/
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Not me, my five crappy Magenta-tinted Godox (three VL300s and two VL150s I got from Adorama for Black Friday) are doing great and making me good money the past few months.
The slight Magenta bias is a non issue unless you cannot color correct. We've been live streaming with them and the images and skin tones look wonderful, clients have even specifically
commented how great talent looks, even with some of the crappy, low end BMD Studio cams we used at a TV studio last weekend or our old Sony PXW-X70s I used the other night. vMix has
color correction controls, it took just a hair of compensation to make talent look great.
 
So does the 200X have the same cruddy bi-color tech as the 300X? That is, it only uses half of the wattage for 3200 and 5600 so is essentially a 100w LED light except when shooting at 4300k. I don't understand how many companies such as Litepanels have figured out how to do bi-color without losing 50% of the light's brightness (Litepanels only loses like 10% brightness at 5600k and 3200k) while Aputure and some other companies fail so hard here.

At 100w, the 200x is similiar wattage to the Practilite 802, but cheaper and with what appears to be worse build quality. Also, they advertise no dangling power supply, but there is a dangling power supply. It's smaller and lighter, yes, but it's still a dangling power supply. They should really make a way to easily mount the power supply to the light. Again, Litepanels has done well with attaching their power supplies to the LED light itself. The Practlite 802 which I have has a small dangling power supply and it has been a bit of a pain. Same with the Luxli Timpani.

The two advantages to a separate power supply are reduced weight on the light head, ability to use the power supply as a sand bag, and ability to control the light from the power supply instead of from up high on the stand at the head. In the case of the 200X, none of these advantages are present as the power supply is not heavy enough to use as a sand bag, the weight is not significant enough to not want that extra weight in the head of the light, and there are no light controls on the power supply, so no benefit there. I wonder why a company then chooses to have the small and light power supply be not integrated into the light head. Perhaps a technical limitation.
 
Litepanels only loses like 10% brightness at 5600k and 3200k) while Aputure and some other companies fail so hard here.


I was told once that litepanels and the like build a fixture which can manage X watts of heat, they then put in the LEDs which are then tuned (power throttled) to be giving out that heat at max brightness at any colour temp.

Its an interesting design choice.

If one considers a light that is full bright at 4500 K - because all yellow leds and all white leds are full power the fixture must withstand the heat generated at that setting... a setting that is rarely used vs ful white or full yellow

The upshot is the case/cooling needs to be overspecced versus the 'typical use case' which is not a way to deliver good mass/price/brightness/cost ratio in the 'typical use cases'.

Other designers go the other way make the case to withstand the full LED output.
 
Like Rob said, these measly photometric reports are not particularly enlightening...

Im pretty sure that the spread of course hugely affects the single point reading of the nature nLUm at xMeters

nLUm at xMeters is basicaly useless

Usually watts leads to a good comparitor.

(yes a spotty light will be 'brighter' at a specific distance, but not better for illuminating a space as it has to be moved back to gain coverage (spread) which lowers the brightness!)

Ive tested this with my godox vs my lupo but cant see the images right now.
 
So you're saying the Litepanels are really no different? But they deliver a weaker between-daylight/tungsten color temp?

That would make sense to me.
I dont know how you do bicolor except by having some of each and selectively dimming them or shutting them off, right? And similar with RGB?
 
It's pretty obvious that the motivation for these fixtures is a response to all of the Godox, Clar, Weeylite (yes, that too is a thing!), Genaray, that having been coming out in huge numbers, with very low price/watt ratio.

If you can provide even better price/watt, move it through your very popular marketing engine and community relations, and (this is critical IMO) integrate the fixtures into the Sidus app control, then you are going to make a lot of sales and pull that segment of the market into the fold. I'm sure they will sell very well.

That said, I'm going to cancel my order of two 200x fixtures. No battery support without a large 48 volt powerstation that has to be purchased separately for each fixture, striped bicolor chips, those are the main two reasons why I'm not sold on these....at least the bicolor versions.

The daylight versions seem reaonably solid if you just need to augment the number of daylight fixtures you have available on a shoot and want to keep it in the app controlled family for mains power scenarios. I may still get a couple of those for that reason.

That said, the Practilite that Eric mentioned has been my main hair light/scratch workhorse for several years now on smaller interview shoots because: 1) color is great, 2) bicolor, 3) I often place behind talent in small quarters with a v mount on the floor and one simple cable to the fixture which eliminates having a bunch of extra cables running across floor around talent, 4) great app control so that I can tune in level and color from behind camera without having to call out adjustment requests to my assistant, 5) small size.Of course, it's also almost $1k, for a small light that is not really worthy of key duties.

I would have been very happy with $500 fixtures that didn''t have any of the issues I mentioned above so that I can have bicolor with the Sidus app control, easy battery option, etc. Or $600. Whatever, just something that is in the ecosystem at a lower wattage than the 300x for non-key duties. For key, yes, I wish my 300x was as bright as my 300d mk2, but most of the indoor situations where the practicality of a bicolor is critical, I've not had huge issues with being underpowered AND the color is nicer on skin than when I gel my 300d mk2, so that is also very useful.

For hair, scratch, BG accents, The LS60x may still fulfill that role in a way that I wanted these amaran bicolor models to handle. We'll see. Just wish it was more in the 100 - 200 watt range vs 60.
 
morgan_moore said:
Litepanels only loses like 10% brightness at 5600k and 3200k) while Aputure and some other companies fail so hard here.


I was told once that litepanels and the like build a fixture which can manage X watts of heat, they then put in the LEDs which are then tuned (power throttled) to be giving out that heat at max brightness at any colour temp.

Its an interesting design choice.

If one considers a light that is full bright at 4500 K - because all yellow leds and all white leds are full power the fixture must withstand the heat generated at that setting... a setting that is rarely used vs ful white or full yellow

The upshot is the case/cooling needs to be overspecced versus the 'typical use case' which is not a way to deliver good mass/price/brightness/cost ratio in the 'typical use cases'.

Other designers go the other way make the case to withstand the full LED output.
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With the LitePanels Astra power supply and numerous other recall disasters of the past few years, this doesn't suprise me.
I wouldn't call that design choice interesting, I'd call it flawed.
 
puredrifting said:
With the LitePanels Astra power supply and numerous other recall disasters of the past few years, this doesn't suprise me.
I wouldn't call that design choice interesting, I'd call it flawed.
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Litepanels was just one example. You have Arri Skypanels, Hive LEDs, Practilites, Luxli, Lupo, etc., who all don't lose 50% brightness at 3200k and 5600k. If all these companies can pull this off, I don't know why Aputure cannot as well. Then again, maybe there's a reason a Skypanel or Hive 575 costs three times as much as an Aputure 600D.
 
ahalpert said:
So you're saying the Litepanels are really no different? But they deliver a weaker between-daylight/tungsten color temp?

That would make sense to me.
I dont know how you do bicolor except by having some of each and selectively dimming them or shutting them off, right? And similar with RGB?
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Remote phosphor like an area 48 does it in a less convenient way where you swap out panels e.g. 3200k or 5600k except you retain the same brightness across the different colour temperatures. Not exactly what you're talking about but I'm sure why some companies went down the remote phosphor path during the "early days".
 
rob norton said:
Remote phosphor like an area 48 does it in a less convenient way where you swap out panels e.g. 3200k or 5600k except you retain the same brightness across the different colour temperatures. Not exactly what you're talking about but I'm sure why some companies went down the remote phosphor path during the "early days".
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Isn't that just like kinos? But you cant do in-between values right? Like 4000k, 4400k, 5000k? I find those very useful for mixed light scenarios where you're averaging light or letting the daylight/tungsten sources be just slightly off. Or in general if you want a slightly cool or warm accent
 
ahalpert said:
Isn't that just like kinos? But you cant do in-between values right? Like 4000k, 4400k, 5000k? I find those very useful for mixed light scenarios where you're averaging light or letting the daylight/tungsten sources be just slightly off. Or in general if you want a slightly cool or warm accent
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panels come in 2700, 3200, 4300, 5600, 6500, 10000, chroma blue and chroma green.
 
Area 48 now has an RGB panel light that is not all that much more expensive than the remote phosphor light, and it advertises the same color accuracy without the need to deal with panels, so aside from the small price difference I think the original remote phosphor model may be a bit outdated now.

The Area 48 used to be my dream light, but was always steep on the price for what it is, and I ended up going the Litepanels route, for better or worse.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Area 48 now has an RGB panel light that is not all that much more expensive than the remote phosphor light, and it advertises the same color accuracy without the need to deal with panels, so aside from the small price difference I think the original remote phosphor model may be a bit outdated now.

The Area 48 used to be my dream light, but was always steep on the price for what it is, and I ended up going the Litepanels route, for better or worse.
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I'm still a huge fan and will keep using it for as long as I can, but yeah I wouldn't buy the regular version again and wouldn't consider the RGB panel anymore either.
 
I can't officially go on the record about any non-shipping LED light in pubic, but for those hot and bothered about pre-ordering new stuff from any manufacturer, there's a good chance I've already seen it and have some feelings about it. You are welcome to contact me at Hot Rod for the straight line.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Litepanels was just one example. You have Arri Skypanels, Hive LEDs, Practilites, Luxli, Lupo, etc., who all don't lose 50% brightness at 3200k and 5600k. If all these companies can pull this off, I don't know why Aputure cannot as well. Then again, maybe there's a reason a Skypanel or Hive 575 costs three times as much as an Aputure 600D.
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True. I have been guffawing at all of the posts on the boards about people saying the LS600 "costs a lot", and "Wow, that's an expensive light!". Are these people that clueless? They don't know what an expensive light is obviously.
Aputure, based upon the ones I have owned, is just ok, mid-level Chinese stuff. Works well, is cheap but long term reliability is leagues away from Arri or other high end lighting. My Aputure M9, the front diffusion panel is cracked
from only using it few times, just from heat and age I guess, I've never dropped it. My LS-1S, the control box went dead recently and I am hunting around for a replacement controller that won't cost 2/3 of what the light cost.
Two of the tie down knobs stripped out, took me months of dealing with Aputure in China to get them to load some onto AliBaba so I could buy replacements. Aputure is not an investment type light like an Arri is.
 
morgan_moore said:
They only pull it off by throttling the 4500 setting. You would not get a brighter light if they throttled too.
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This has always been my understanding of how LP does their bi-color Astra’s and the Gemini’s. They didn’t figure out some magical way to get “more” out of their LED’s at 3200K and 5600K than other manufacturers, they just dim the LED’s as they mix them together. It’s very easy to see. Just look at an Astra as you roll it through the color temp range. You can see individual LED’s dimming up and down.
 
Run&Gun said:
This has always been my understanding of how LP does their bi-color Astra’s and the Gemini’s. They didn’t figure out some magical way to get “more” out of their LED’s at 3200K and 5600K than other manufacturers, they just dim the LED’s as they mix them together. It’s very easy to see. Just look at an Astra as you roll it through the color temp range. You can see individual LED’s dimming up and down.
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And how is that bad? If a light peaks at 100w, I'd much rather have a light that maximizes 3200K and 5600K and reaches 100w at those Kelvins while dimming itself at 4300K in order to avoid going beyond it's capable wattage, rather than a light that does 50w at 3200K and 5600K and does not dim at 4300K where it can reach it's full 100w potential.

What I'm saying is, the majority of pricier light manufacture's do not lose 50% brightness at 3200K and 5600K, but then you've got some like Aputure and Dracast who have been known for losing 50% brightness at those Kelvins. Is it just cheaper to manufacture that way hence the cheaper price tags? Or is it just poor design?

The list can go on of other companies that don't lose 50% brightness...Area 48, Creamsource, Cineo, Astera, Etc fos/4, and Rotolight.

I feel like Dedo's LEDs may have lost 50% brightness at 3200K and 5600K. Not sure. That may have been why I never bought any. They're not cheap, so at those price points I would expect more.

I had an Aputure 300D on a shoot a couple months ago. Sure enough, we had need for 3200K, but the guy who brought it didn't have a gel handy for it (I had some gels handy somewhere, but I guess not on hand), plus I always hear how gelling LEDs results in bad colors. The Zylight F8-200 has round and hard pre-cut gels that slide in; I imagine they're also designed for that light to get the best color when CTOing. Does Aputure not offer such? A hard slide in gel that can attach on magnetically or going into a frame is so much easier to deal with than using say a Rosco gel and C47ing it onto the light. I don't feel like I've seen such an accessory from Aputure.

I've got two Aputure 600Ds on pre-order, and I ordered two Clar 500w and one Clar 350w lights which are on backorder. That's $6,000 worth of 5600K lights. Or, I could cancel all of that and get a single Hive 575w RGB light.

Guess I can't use a single Hive 575 as an M18 replacement, but I wonder how much I'll miss having good bi-color lights. I use 3200K on my key lights maybe 20% of the time, which is still a fair amount, and I use RGB for unpaid short films pretty often, and we all know that unpaid short films are where one should really invest their gear money toward.
 
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