(lo-fi hip hop beats)
- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson
and my current favorite light for lighting
receptions at weddings is this, the Practilite 602.
But at $960, this is definitely not a cheap light
and I've had a lot of people ask me
for more affordable options.
Enter the Aputure 120D mark II, it's $745,
it is still quite expensive but definitely
a step down in price from the Practilite.
Today I'm going to be reviewing the Aputure 120D mark II
and I'm gonna be telling you
if you should purchase this light for wedding filmmaking.
Of course, I will also be comparing it
to the Practilite 602.
And I'm gonna start off this review
by spoiling the conclusion.
For those of you who don't wanna watch me ramble
for a while about lights.
If you film weddings primarily, I think
that the Practilite 602 is the perfect light
for wedding receptions.
But if you film weddings as well as other things.
Commercial shoots, advertisements, talking head interviews,
YouTube videos, anything else like that,
then I would wholeheartedly recommend
the Aputure 120D mark II.
Wanna know why I say that?
Well you need to watch the rest of this video.
Let's continue with this review of the Aputure 120D Mark II.
We'll start off in a bit of a strange place
with this review, the packaging, why?
Because most of the lights that I've bought,
you're lucky to get anything more than just
the light in the box.
When you buy the 120D, you get this swanky
hard-sided foam bag, look how fancy this thing is.
It holds the light, the dish for the front of it,
the control box, the remote, all the cables.
I love that this is included when you purchase the 120D.
For comparison with my Practilite,
it came in a cardboard box, with a power cord
and the barn doors, that's it.
When I bought the Practilite, I also purchased
a pelican 1450 case with foam to store it.
Which added about $125 to the overall price.
With a cost of over $200 more than the 120D,
I really wish that the Practilite
came with some sort of carrying case.
Moving on, let's talk about one of the first things
you probably noticed about the 120D, the size.
Straight out of the box at almost five pounds,
the 120D is not a massive light
but you will need to make sure that you buy
a decently sturdy light stand to hold it.
I would also make sure you use a sandbag
to keep it from falling over.
I wouldn't buy some super cheap light stand
and expect it to support this light.
I will link to light stands that I recommend
as well as all the lights and accessories
down in the video description, next to the light button.
Keep in mind that the physical light
isn't the only part of the 120D.
You are also gonna need to be able to run
a cable down to the not-so-small control box for the 120D,
which is how you handle powering and dimming the light.
Thankfully, it does come with a nice strap
that you can use to hang it from your light stand.
In comparison, the Practilite 602
doesn't require a control box
and all the controls are built into the side of the light,
making it noticeably more compact to transport.
You should also know that this light's five pound
starting weight is not even its final form.
In fact, one of the reasons people love this light
is its near infinite level of versatility.
Aputure makes a lot of useful modifiers for this light
and because it uses a Bowens mount,
you can actually add a ton of accessories
from other manufacturers to this light as well.
This versatility is going to come at two costs though.
First, the 120D really is going to get significantly
larger and heavier when you add these accessories.
Second, this versatility has a literal cost.
These accessories are not cheap,
so you're gonna need to be ready to spend some money
to kit this light out.
Straight out of the box, you get a small beauty dish
to put on the front of this light,
which leaves the front LED chip exposed.
If you want to use this light to brighten up
a reception dance floor, you are going to need
to purchase accessories to cover up this chip,
unless you want to do deal with wedding guests
complaining that you are causing actual blindness,
using this light because it's so bright.
And this is the point where the Practilite 602
really starts to shine as a wedding filmmaking tool
over the 120D in my opinion.
Out of the box, the Practilite comes
with a Fresnel lens on the front.
It has a beam focusing knob on the back.
It comes with barn doors that you can use
to block the light from spilling off
onto the dance floor and the light will accept
Profoto light modifiers.
Oh and you can adjust the color
temperature too, which is amazing.
Let's compare these features to the Aputure 120D.
As I said, you do get a nice big case to store it,
with a beauty dish for the front.
There is no way you can focus the beam
of this light out of the box though.
There's no Fresnel lens either.
Thankfully, Aputure makes an accessory Fresnel lens
with a focusable beam you can put on the front for $120.
Want barn doors so you can control
the light spill on the dance floor?
Those are an extra accessory as well that sell for $60.
Out of the box, the 120D costs $745,
whereas the Practilite 602 costs $965.
But to get the Fresnel lens, focusable beam
and barn doors, you're gonna be adding $180
to the cost of the 120D, bringing you to a total of $925.
Suddenly, the cost of the Practilite
isn't sounding so crazy, is it?
There's a lot more that goes into a light
than just the accessories available for it though.
One of the most important things you need to consider
is the light quality.
The 120D and Practlite 602 both claim
to have a CRI in the high 90s and I have zero complaints
about the quality of skin tones and colors
I'm getting from either of these lights.
They're both beautiful in my opinion.
Unlike cheaper LED lights that I've used in the past,
I've not needed to color correct out
weird green or magenta shifts
in my skin tones with these lights.
Light quality is where I will say
that the Practilite wins for me,
from a color temperature standpoint though.
Having a variable color temperature
on a wedding day where I can dial in my light
to match the color temperature of a room
is so helpful and I do not want to discount that fact.
That said though, having a high quality daylight balance
light like the 120D is not the end of the world
if you're filming a wedding.
You could add some color gels if you needed to
and I shot weddings for many years using an Arri 150 light
that didn't have a variable color temperature
and it still worked great.
The 120D's color may not be 100% ideal for a wedding
but if you find yourself filming a lot more
than weddings, such as commercial shoots,
interviews, talking heads, anything like that
where you have more control over the lighting
than a wedding, I think the 120D,
with its greater versatility of accessories
and far greater brightness will serve you better.
Let's talk about that brightness,
which is one of the areas where the 120D
is far away my favorite over the Practilite.
From a sheer raw power standpoint,
the 120D is significantly brighter than the Practilite
and most other LED lights that I've used for that matter.
If you were planning on using the 120D
to light a wedding reception dance floor,
you only need one and I highly doubt
that you are ever going to need
to turn it up to max brightness.
To measure this brightness, let's do something
more real world than pulling out a light meter.
I put the Fresnel attachment and barn doors
on the 120D and put both lights
approximately 14 feet away from a wall.
With both lights dialed into approximately
the same beam angle of 40 degrees,
both set to the same 5500 Kelvin white balance,
not like the 120D has a choice.
I even turned the Practilite 602
to its maximum, 100% brightness.
I filmed the wall the Practilite was lighting
with my A7S2 and I was able to achieve
a proper exposure of 0.0 on the camera's metering
by setting the lens to a 5.6 at ISO 250.
I then turned off the Practilite and turned on the 120D.
And with those same settings of F5.6 and ISO 250,
I was able to hit the same 0.0 level of exposure meting
with the 120D only set to 55% brightness.
What does this tell us? The 120D can hit
almost double the level of brightness of the Practilite.
From a light that is still this comparably small,
that is very impressive.
Now I do want you to be aware that the Practilite
has a boost mode that boosts brightness by 140%
but that is at 4500 Kelvin and this is only available
when the light is plugged in to AC power.
Because I prefer to avoid using cords that people
could trip on, I love battery power
so I couldn't use boost mode anyways.
When I was doing my brightness testing,
I noticed that the Practilite was able
to focus its beam noticeably wider than the 120D.
According to its specs, the Practilite
has a 15 to 80 degree beam angle,
versus the 120D's 12 to 40 degree beam angle.
The Practilite's beam can go twice as wide,
so if you need to put your Practilite
up against the edge of a dance floor
because the room is so small, you are still
gonna be able to light the entire dance floor.
Matt, does this mean that the 120D sucks
for lighting a reception dance floor?
Not at all but this does mean
that you may need to set up further away
from the dance floor to get the beam wide enough
to light the whole floor.
Thankfully, because the 120D can get so bright,
it makes more sense for me to recommend
you put it further away for the dance floor anyways
and just turn it up a bit brighter to compensate.
I said I loved using batteries earlier,
whenever I use my lights at a wedding reception,
so let's talk about battery life.
I use V Mount batteries for both these lights.
Usually this beefy 150 watt hour battery from Juicebox.
With the 120D set to 100% brightness,
you can expect to get 45 to 50 minutes of battery life.
Considering the brightness of this light,
I'm very impressed that a battery of this size
is even able to power it for that long.
Keep in mind also that I highly doubt
that you're going to need to be powering this light
at 100% brightness at a wedding.
I also tested the battery life with the brightness
set to 55%, aka the max brightness of the Practilite.
The 120D lasted for over five hours,
significantly longer than the 50 minutes at max power.
So depending on the length of your reception
and how bright your light is running,
you should be able to make it through reception
with one battery but I would probably get two
just to be safe.
In comparison, with the Practilite
set to maximum brightness, I was able to get
over five hours of battery life.
This is easily enough to get through
a full wedding reception and because I usually run
my Practilite at 50 to 60% brightness,
I usually end the night with over
75% of battery life remaining.
The last thing that we need to talk about
is of course, wireless control of the 120D.
In the very nice case your light comes with,
you're gonna notice this little guy.
It looks like a baby television remote from the 1990s.
This remote lets you turn on and off the 120D,
as well as adjust its brightness level.
It uses the 2.4ghz wireless spectrum,
so it has quite good range and it should let you
control your light, even if you
are all the way across a reception hall.
On the other hand, you have the Practilite,
which has an iPhone app that will let you
adjust your light's brightness
and white balance over Bluetooth.
I know some of you are skeptical about using an app,
I was too but having used it for years,
it is quite reliable and quite useful.
If I had to choose between using a smartphone app
and a remote, I would probably go
with the smartphone app actually
because I'm guaranteed to always have it with me,
I don't have to remember to carry around this remote.
You should also know that Aputure is working
on a wireless dongle that is going to let you
control your 120D using the sidus link smartphone app.
That is not available yet at the time
of making this video though.
So for wireless control, both the 120D
and the Practilite give you a good way
to wirelessly control your app.
I'm gonna say that they tie in this category.
Let's wrap this thing up.
As I said at the start of this video,
if you primarily shoot weddings
and you want a compact light,
the Practilite 602 is still my favorite choice.
With its compact size, variable color temperature,
focusable beam and wireless control,
I think it is the best spotlight you can purchase
for a wedding reception.
But because the Practilite is such a good spotlight,
it doesn't feel as versatile to me in other areas.
It does support attaching Profoto light modifiers
but even with a soft box attached,
its limited brightness makes it feel a bit less versatile.
So if you film weddings as well as other things,
commercials, advertisements, talking head
interviews, YouTube videos, anything else like that,
I would wholeheartedly recommend the Aputure 120D mark II
as the light that you should buy.
It is significantly brighter than the Practilite.
Aputure makes amazing lighting modifiers
that are easy to use.
The Bowens mount makes even more
lighting modifiers available to you
and I'm kinda in love with the soft light
I can get from their light dome soft box.
Overall, I think you will get more use
out of the Aputure 120D than the Practilite 602,
if you film more than just weddings.
For me, I'm still gonna be using
the Practilite at weddings
but for YouTube videos like this, oo
that 120D with the soft box, that is calling my name.
Speaking of calling my name, I need some music
for the outro of this video.
If you make YouTube videos as well as wedding films
like I do, then you're gonna be highly interested
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The weather's been getting colder now,
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With that, thank you so much for watching.
I hope this video was helpful to you
and gave you some great insight
into which one of these lights
that you should purchase for wedding
filmmaking or anything else.
It is also a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video
and subscribing if you wanna see
more videos like this in the future.
Do you want to see more lighting videos,
possibly cheaper lights than this in the future?
Please leave me a comment down below and let me know.
Thanks so much for watching and have a good day.
(upbeat dance music)