In this video, I want to share some of the ways you can use this portable Aputure MC RGB
light to improve your videos and live streams.
First of all, a quick disclaimer.
I am by no means an expert on lighting.
I am still figuring this stuff out.
So I'm always interested in learning about new techniques and new things you can use to
improve your lighting. If you do want to learn about lighting from someone who knows way
more about it than me. Go take a look at New Layer or Tommy Callaway on YouTube.
They're both very good at lighting and have very good comparisons of different lighting
setups and different gear.
What I *am* going to talk about is how I'm starting to use these lights in my own work
both for live streams and other videos.
I also want to give a shout out to DVE Store for sending these to me to review.
DVE Store has been fantastic to work with and I've been buying a lot of my gear from them
and they have these in stock right now.
I'll leave a link in the description below if you want to get one yourself.
All right. With that out of the way, let's get started.
First, a quick overview of the features of this light.
It is an RGB light with a built in battery, but it also has two white LEDs.
And that means you can get a wider range of colors and better white balance to match your
other lights. Some of the cheaper RGB lights have just red, green and blue.
And then they mix those to create various shades of white.
But that always ends up with weird color casts or funny shadows.
So having the warm and cool white LEDs is way better.
One of the other things I noticed about this light is that it can actually produce color
smoothly through the whole spectrum.
I've seen a lot of RGB lights that kind of skip from right over to yellow and then can't
get much of the orange range.
But this one can hit a lot of the colors the other lights miss.
Here is a side-by-side example of the Aputure MC and the little Godox R1.
Here they're both set to 0 hue, which is pure red.
Now if I change Aputure to hue 1, it looks almost the same.
If I change the Godox to hue 1 it skips straight into orange.
And I've seen this with other lights too, but it's nice that the Aputure can handle a
wider range of colors.
So I mentioned it's battery powered with the built in battery.
But it also has wireless charging.
Aputure sells a wireless charging case that fits four lights.
But because it uses the wireless charging standard, you can actually just drop it onto a
phone charger and it'll charge just as well as it would from the case.
And of course, it also charges over USB-C where it charges a bit faster.
The build quality on this is super solid.
It feels very sturdy.
It's got a tripod screw on the bottom so you can screw it into tripod heads,
but it also has magnets on the back, which means you can just sort of stick it to things
to quickly add it into your shot and get it in weird places.
As for how to control the light, you can either use the dial on the side to change modes
and dial in the color.
You can use the button to change between the different modes like RGB or warm and cool
white. And like most of the similar lights, it has some fun effects as well, but I don't
really use those very often.
You can also connect your phone to it over Bluetooth and control the light wirelessly
through an app. One of the nice things about this being Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi is it
means your phone can connect to it while still being on a Wi-Fi network for Internet.
Some of the other lights I've used have a Wi-Fi hotspot in the light, which means your
phone has to connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot and then you lose your Wi-Fi for Internet.
So I really like the Bluetooth feature of these lights.
Another cool thing is if you have more than one light, they can all link up and then you
can control them all from a single phone.
Now, I'm usually pretty skeptical of wireless control of lights, especially when it
requires an app, because I just feel like it's not that hard to go fiddle with lights and
change the color on the device itself.
But that said, I have been pleasantly surprised at how useful it is to be able to control
the lights from my phone.
You can even do things like save presets, which means I can save these colors in the app
and then very quickly restore them when I want to.
And then I don't have to worry about remembering to write down the numbers I used to find
the right color or have to fiddle with that.
When I'm changing between locations, I can just have a preset ready to go drop these
lights on a set, turn them on and it's ready to go without having to fiddle with each
one. It also means it's very easy to turn on and off.
So if we set everything up and then take a break for a half hour, I don't have to worry
about going around to each one and turning them off to save battery.
I just tap the off button from the app.
Another really neat feature of the app, which again, seems kind of silly at first, but
actually is surprisingly useful, is the color match feature.
You can use your phone's camera to take a picture of something and have it match the
color of that with the light.
So for quickly being able to match colors of stuff, it's actually pretty cool.
I can match the colors of my walls by using the camera to just take a picture of the
color on the wall. It's obviously not an exact science.
You'll probably want a little bit of tweaking after you do that, but it's a nice way to
sort of jump to the right general area of color that you're trying to use.
Last thing I want to mention about the app is that remember that any time you're buying a
device that uses a phone app to talk to it, you are relying on that company being around
to continue to support the app.
As new generations of phones come out, the software often needs updating and you're
relying on that company to continue to publish the app updates for the app.
So when you do buy something that requires an app, you want to make sure that you're
getting it from a company that you believe will actually stick around long enough to
support the device over the long term.
And I do think Aputure is one of those brands.
It's in a very good position to actually do that.
I wouldn't want to trust a lot of smaller companies to keep publishing updates and risk
losing access to my device.
And that said, if the app ever does stop working, you can still control the device using
the manual buttons on the device itself.
So I've been using these lights for both live streams, as well as shooting B roll.
For live streams, I'll use them to light up the background of a set to give it different
colors, depending on the theme of the show.
So, for example, in this clip, I match the lights to the colors of Lily's sweater, kind
of tying in this whole scene together.
And then this other clip was from a live stream during one of the debate weeks, so we
were going with a red, white and blue theme.
And then here's a clip from Halloween, using the lights with a fire effect to kind of give
it a spooky look. So these lights can just really be a lot of fun to throw some color on
the scene and change things up.
When I'm shooting B roll for product shots and videos, these are a great way to add a
little bit of color to make the shot more fun as well.
Like in this video of the YoloBox, I used two lights set to different colors to give the
edges of the device some color.
That way it matches my channel colors.
And in that case, the only lights in the scene where the two RGB lights.
Other times I might light the scene normally so you can see the actual colors of a device,
but then add these in the back to give the edges a nice little color tint.
So overall, I've been really happy with these lights.
They are a great piece of gear to add to my kit.
And I again want to say thanks to DVE Store for sending these my way.
If you do want to buy one, I would appreciate it if you use my affiliate link down below.
It's from DVE Store and they were super kind to send these out to me to review.
Well, that's it for this video.
I hope this gives you some ideas of how to use RGB lights in your own workflows.
Thanks so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.