hey guys my name is Francisco Hernandez and today I'm doing a review on the
Apurture Light Storm 120D before I continue I did want to state that did
get this light from aperture but the review itself is my complete and honest
opinion if you guys are not familiar with this light it's basically just a
beast of an LED light that's been getting a lot of attention lately and
for a lot of good reasons which I'll be going over in this video but before I do
that I wanted to show you guys what exactly comes with this light when you
order the kit version this light comes with a red and black soft carrying case
and on the inside it has the aperture 120 D a small reflector for the light in
case you wanted a more focused beam and has the power supply and cords the light
control unit a remote to control the light a manual and a warranty card and a
couple of different opportunities ioan stickers like I said before this light
has a lot of great features and the very first one that I wanted to talk about is
the color accuracy the aperture 1:20 has a CRI and a dlci rating of 97 and that
just basically means that it's gonna be able to reproduce close very accurately
to both the naked eye and in photo and video
typically when you use a light that doesn't have a good CRI or t LCI rating
you're gonna have some weird skin tones and experience some magenta and green
shifts and the colors and you definitely want to avoid that another great feature
of the light is the design of the light itself it's made out of aircraft-grade
aluminum which makes the light look really cool but also tough and durable
aperture design is light with a nice handle at the back which not only helps
in directing the light exactly where you need it to be but just carrying around
the light in general especially because it only weighs three and a half pounds
now that control unit being designed to be separate from the body is not only
helping reduce the weight of the light itself but it's gonna be helpful in case
you need somebody to control the light even when the light is mounted pretty
high that's gonna be very helpful and very much appreciated in case any of you
guys or myself this is the remote and speaking of the remote it's able to
control the light up to a hundred meters away or 328 feet in case you have
several aperture lights like I do you can use a remote to control up to three
channels and four groups with two of those groups being able to adjust the
color temperature I'm actually using the aperture 120 D as the key light and the
aperture HR 672 as the rim also related to the design of this light is the fan
system which is actually really really quiet producing
only eighteen decibels of noise so you never have to worry about this light
producing any unwanted noise to your videos the design of the light unit
itself is also pretty cool it has a little antenna on top to help with that
100 meter range for remotely controlling the light it has a little power button a
little brightness dial to control the brightness a channel and group button
that you can use to change the channel of the light to be either 1 2 or 3 or
the group to be a B C or D a fan button that has two modes to be either auto or
you can force it to be on and a nice little LCD to display the group the
channel the fan mode and the power level of the light which can range from either
10 all the way up to a hundred percent the control unit also comes with a strap
that you can use to attach the control unit to the light stand you're gonna be
using the back of the light continue either has a Sony V mount or an anton
bauer mount which you can use to power the light wirelessly on location for me
personally though I didn't have either of those types of batteries and they're
a little bit pricey so what I did was I used my existing vagabond mini lithium
from policy buff I tested how long this light would last at 100% 75 50 and 25%
in case you guys have the vagabond mania theme as well I must were those
measurements on the screen so you guys can see how long it'll last for you to
be honest though using the Vagabond mini of the theme wasn't ideal it was just
another cord to worry about another thing to add to the lights and so
eventually I do want to get a Sony V mount battery but until then I'll be
using the big one the very last thing that I wanted to mention about this
light is probably my favorite thing about the light and that's that it uses
the Bowen s type mount the reason why I was excited that this light uses the
Bowens mount is because Bowens mount is very Universal so there's a lot of
different options for modifiers that use the bones mount for my off-camera flash
photography I tend to use a Bowens mount strobe so I have a lot of different
Bowens type modifiers so I can use those modifiers with the aperture 120 D in
case you don't have any bones type modifiers this light also has an
umbrella mount as well so you can use any existing umbrellas that you have
with this light and speaking about bones type modifiers aperture actually offers
a couple themselves with my favorite being the light dome which is an octa
box that's around 34 to 36 inches and offers really nice soft light especially
when you make use of the inch and the external diffusion panel it's a
great modifier but the only thing I don't like is how you have to assemble
it it's one of those types where you usually want to assemble it and leave it
be because it has those rods that can be pretty difficult to assemble I usually
like the modifiers that open and close really quick but there's good news to
this story because aperture actually is coming out with a second version of this
light dome which opens in like two or three seconds and closes even faster
just gonna take a quick second to pause the video and show you guys how I set it
up if you're having difficulty setting up the light dome and what I could
advise you guys to do is to put the rugs in the the red slots these little red
circle slots on opposite ends first like this one then this one and then maybe
this one and then that one right there and then that's just gonna help make it
a lot easier and then when you're tearing it down do the same thing just
go on opposite ends and that should be easier I'll show you guys how I set it
up right now
all right so now that's done you just have to put the velcro up and then put
the diffusers on hope the help
if it feels a little loose that's completely normal it's just kind of it's
kind of designed like that well that's tip I can give you guys is
that if you're wondering where to put the outside the fusion panel where you
like where you would attach it I would say not to put it towards the outside
edge but more so towards the middle if you do that then you'll be able to
comfortably attach it throughout the very last tip I can help you guys out
with with this octa box is that if you intend to use both diffusion panels then
I would say so just leave them on when you're assembling it or disassembling it
because it's just another step that you don't have to do and it's not going to
mess up the diffusion panels at all so go ahead and just leave them up alright
so that's pretty much it for this video if you guys are interested in getting
the aperture 120 D or any of the other lights that aperture offers I'll be
leaving a link to a couple of my favorites in the description area below
to end the video I want to leave you guys with a behind-the-scenes look into
a portrait shoot that I did using the aperture 120 D and the aperture hr6 me2
which I also did a video on hope you guys enjoy the photos and this video and
if you did don't forget to give it a like alright take care guys and I'll see
you in the next one