Today we're gonna be talking about these,
the Aputure B7c multicolour smart bulb.
Let's get undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What’s happening, everybody? I’m Gerald Undone
and it's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.
So, today's video is unscripted. Normally, I have
a very thorough script to go over,
but I thought today, just to mix it up,
it'd be fun if we didn't script it
and I haven't even done all the tests yet.
I'm gonna do some of them right here during this video.
I've got my notes and some specs in front of me here.
There is an inordinate amount of noise
coming from outside, so I apologize for that.
We're just gonna motor right on through it.
And, there is one pesky fly that keeps flying around
in the studio that's driving me crazy as well.
Anyway, so, today we're talking about the B7c from Aputure.
Now, I first saw this thing at NAB,
and I was really excited about it.
I think the design has changed a little bit since then.
Right now, I've got it on purple.
Um, but what comes in the box, we'll start with that
and then we'll talk about some construction,
I'll give you some of the specs and then we'll do some tests.
So, in the box you only get two things.
You get the light itself, the bulb, not this base plate.
This is just a cheap, uh--
little base plate thing that I got from Home Depot,
which, I think, was like $2.
You can use one of these if you want to,
that's a really annoying sound, eh?
[metal scraping]
You can use one of these if you want to have, like,
a little tripod for your light bulb if you want,
but, obviously, it works better in fixtures.
Anyway, all you get in the box is the light,
and then you get this little felt bag
that you can keep it in. Right now, I've got a little
Philips LED bulb in that we're gonna compare it to
to see if the colour quality is that different
versus just some cheap LED.
But yeah, you get this bag and you get the box.
In terms of the basic specs, there's three buttons on it,
one for increasing and decreasing the brightness,
two different buttons for that and then a power button
to turn it off and on. And, then, there's a whole bunch
of combination buttons that you can press
for, you know, activating the Bluetooth mode
so you can control it with the app,
for resetting things, for changing it
between AC and DC mode, note about that, by the way.
So, there's two different power modes for this,
AC, which, obviously, is gonna work
if you plug it into, you know, your regular outlet
and using it in where you typically use a light bulb.
But, if you want to use it on battery power,
or something that requires DC, you have to switch it over.
So, make sure you have that set up correctly.
I think by default it's set to AC
and that's how it works from there.
And, then it charges using the same, like,
lamp socket that you would plug it into which is great.
There is an internal battery.
I think it's, like, 1300mA, and it'll run you
for just over an hour on full power.
And they say 20+ hours on minimum brightness.
I didn't let it run down for 20+ hours,
but the just over an hour thing
seems pretty fair at full brightness.
You can even use the lamp controls, so if you have, like,
a switch on your lamp, you can use it to turn the light on.
Right now, the light's turned on by the bulb,
so if I turn the bulb off using the power button,
now if I flick the switch on the lamp,
it turns the light on there. I just don't think
that you can turn it off with the switch
if it's turned on.
It just switches over to battery power which
might actually be a great thing
if you're worried about, you know,
power getting cut.
At least, your, your practical lights
will still work. But, if you wanna charge it,
then you're gonna have to have the switch on, obviously.
OK, as far as the rest of the specs go,
the colour accuracy is rated quite good.
It's, like, right up there again with the Aputure MC.
You get, like, 95-96 on the CRI, TLCI and the SSI for tungsten,
I believe, is 85 and it's 74 for daylight.
And, it also uses that same Bluetooth mesh thing
that the other Aputure products do as far as
the Sidus Link in terms of expanding their range.
And, it's passively cooled in case you're wondering
there's no fan noise or anything like that coming out of it.
And, I don't hear any kind of whine or anything either.
It's essentially silent.
While we have it running here, let's do a quick, sort of,
RGB test and check and see with a low intensity
'cause you can set it between 0, 100% and 1% increments.
Let's see if we get any kind of flickering on it.
I presume that we won't because
we seldom do with any Aputure stuff.
Like I said I'll do some of these tests on camera here
and we'll do some different frame rates
and some shutter speed options. So, we'll do, like,
really low shutter speeds, really high shutter speeds,
low and high frame rates.
I'm not seeing any issues at all there, so that's great.
Let's actually test and see if the spec
on the lux at one meter
is accurate and see what result that we get with that.
So, I've set it to 5600K
and we'll jack the intensity
all the way up to 100% brightness and...
if you want to measure something one meter away
and you have an inches tape measure,
that is 39 and 1/3rd inches.
So, I'm gonna set the light here.
The beam angle on this is 160°,
which is another thing, obviously, to factor
based on the power of a light,
would be the beam angle, so maybe I'll...
I'll try it both from the side and then also from...
from straight on, although,
generally, you wouldn't use a light bulb in that fashion, but
we'll do it just for fun.
At full power, 5600K,
and we're getting 64 lux.
And now I'll point it at the light meter and see what we get.
So, now we get 117
and on their spec sheet they say that you can expect
a 110 at 5500K, so I'd say that's pretty close.
If you want maximum output, it seems like 6500K
will get you a bit more lux than 5500,
but the colour temperature range, capable range
is from 2000K to 10,000K
so you should get your peak output in and around 6000K,
so daylight should be a good result here.
So, we're seeing pretty accurate, just depends,
obviously on the angle at which you approach the bulb,
which is natural for light bulbs.
Now, while we have this set up, let's go ahead and check
the colour temperatures of those different--
actually, I don't need to be that far away,
but let's check the colour temperatures
of those different presets. So, in the manual it says that
there's six different presets, but I've only been seeing five.
It says that they range from 2000, 2700, 3200,
4300, 5500 and 6500.
So, let's just double tap the power button
until we can find the warmest one.
OK, so that one.
Let's get a reading on that from, like, right here.
So, the warmest one I'm measuring
at 1800K, now, let's...
press it. We'll get a different one here,
and now I'm getting 2600K.
This one, it definitely got brighter.
3500K.
6000K.
8400K.
And then back to the red one. So, I'll put those
on the screen, but yeah, I only measured
five different steps and they don't exactly seem to be
matching what they say in the, in the manual.
But, instead, let's see if we actually dial it in
to exactly what we want, how we do there.
Let's set it to 5500 even,
using the app and see what we read for that.
5700, so that's not too bad.
So, if you set it with the app, you can be precise.
I just don't know that the presets are gonna give you
exactly what you want. Normally, I don't really like apps,
but the Aputure app is really good.
It's smooth. I'm using it on Android too, by the way,
so it's not just the, an Apple is the only one
that works kind of thing. The performance is great.
I've really been enjoying it lately.
They've definitely converted me into liking apps
when it comes to the light stuff.
I want to compare it to the Aputure MC to see
which one comes out brighter.
I'm gonna do this exactly three feet away.
So, 360 lux at 3 ft.
Apologies to my metric community.
And we'll do the same thing with this one
with the light bulb pointed at it three feet away.
340 lux.
So, I would say, based on the variance
that could be created here, we are within a similar realm.
Let's get these lights on in here, actually.
We were within a similar realm to the Aputure MC in terms of
output as well as in terms of customization with the
colours, app usage, everything, it's very, very similar.
The only difference, I guess, would be is that
you can control the Aputure MC from the device
where the bulbs you can stick into a socket
and they obviously fit better in terms of,
you know, practical fixtures and that kind of thing.
It's heavier than you'd think, uh, in the hand.
The buttons are good, they're, I mean, they're like,
I don't know, they're reasonable.
They're, like, little plastic, flicky kind of things
but they, they don't take up much space.
The rest of design, I think, is nice. And--
It feels, it feels solid and well made.
And I like this diffuser on the top as well.
It's not, uh, it's not brutal.
As you can see, I'm pointing it at myself right now.
It actually does a decent job of making, kind of, a--
a glowy light for what would really be
just a source, like, directly on your face.
Eh, I think it looks pretty good without any modification but
let's go ahead and modify them up with some different
light setups and see how it looks in practical use.
Oh, one more thing I should mention while I'm at it
regarding temperature of the unit.
I find that, I had these running for quite a while
and they do get warm to the touch.
I would say uncomfortable to hold if you have them
running for, I don't know, 20-30 minutes.
Not to where they're gonna burn you. It's not like when
you take a light bulb out and you, like, burn your hands
if you touch it if it was running. You can still
handle these and if you needed to unscrew one quickly
and put it in another socket or change it out,
you'd be able to do that without trouble,
but they do feel like they get up into that, like,
40-50°C level where, if you held it for a while,
you might get, like, a low temperature burn,
but it doesn't burn you to just hold it,
but it's definitely a little bit uncomfortable. But,
like I said, it's enough that you can move the light
or change it around without burning yourself,
so, I think that's-- that's fine.
All right, so here's one pretty simple setup.
I've got both bulbs working.
I've got one here just, just on the edge of the frame
so you can see it, and another one here in the lamp.
And both of them are set to 100% power
and both of them are set to 2700K so,
very warm light.
The white balance on the camera hasn't changed.
So, it's set for more of a daylight setting
so these are gonna come out very warm.
If I turn them both off, you can see that it's pretty much
pitch black in here without them, and we'll turn them
back on. So, I don't know, this could be something
where you're, like, oh, you're writing in your diary
kind of scene or whatever. The idea is just to see
that it looks like the lamp is doing all the work
and you could, sort of, motivate it with a practical.
Now, obviously, this would work a lot easier if you had
a full tungsten source
and then the lamp was just there,
just, kind of, doing a little bit,
which we could see if I turn off just one. Like this.
That would be just what the lamp's doing
and then you'd actually control your light
with the tungsten source but I wanted to show you what
it looks like if that light's a bit of a key light too.
And then, I'll pull the colour chart in here
so we can see how their,
their colour quality is in this--
aah, I'm getting a call from FedEx.
[Operator] Is this a new camera coming into Canada
-for the first time? -OK, thank you.
Or, you know, maybe it's a "getting a call from FedEx"
scene because they won't release your cameras!
I still don't have the a7S III, guys,
it's, like, stuck in customs somewhere.
Anyway, what were we talking about?
ColorChecker.
This has been a heck of a video.
Aputure, I love you guys,
I'm sorry that my Aputure video is such a, such a disaster.
I'm having fun here.
Hopefully, the viewers are having fun,
uh, it's just, it's been, it's been quite the day.
I think we can all relate to that.
Anyway, now I'm holding the ColorChecker,
so, we can kind of get a sense--
what am I doing here? What is this proving?
Anyway, the moral of the story is
I think that this looks nice. Obviously,
I wish that that was more powerful, but again,
use a proper key light, in this case,
I don't think the bulb is gonna count as a key light
but I really like what's going on with this lamp over here.
I think that looks quite nice. OK, let's do something
a little bit more reasonable. So, there's these light heads
that you can get like this one here
that has tilt control, an umbrella holder
and it has a light socket and a switch on it.
So, it's kind of perfect if you want to adapt,
you know, regular bulbs into some kind of,
like, lighting setup. So, I'm gonna stick one of these in here
and it'll give us both bulbs
and then I'm gonna put them behind an umbrella.
I have just, like, a
30-inch, I think it is, basic white umbrella.
I'm gonna shoot through that
and see what it looks like as a key light.
OK, quick little disclaimer during this setup.
While this does work,
flick the switch and both lights come on.
I've been getting some, kind of, quirky results
like it's switching between AC power and non-AC power.
I'm not able to do a charging indicator test, so,
I dunno if it's just that I'm using a cheap, little splitter,
but this may not be an advised configuration.
But, it's still going to be useful for this test to see
if we can double these up as a key light.
But I'm not officially endorsing this configuration
at the moment. Anyway, let's give it a test
and actually stick it behind the umbrella.
OK, so they're both set to 5600K and they're both
at a 100% intensity and...
I do not think that this is sufficient as a key light.
I even have it a little bit closer
than I have my regular key light over here
and, uh, it's just not cutting it.
So, there's our answer to that.
I suppose the only thing left to check would be is
how the colour quality impacts
against using just, like, a regular LED
to see, you know, what, what kind of advantages
you might see if you actually did light yourself with it,
uh, straight on. So, let's go ahead
and ditch this whole umbrella operation because
you can't use this as a key light.
OK, so for our last comparison, I have the bulb
right here at a 100% power, 5600K again
and I'm gonna compare it against this Philips--
actually, we'll set it to 5000 to keep things even, so...
it's 5000K, 100% power and the draw on these,
apparently, is 7 watts, according to the box.
But, it also says in the spec that it can go up
to 12 watts, I guess, under certain loads,
which should make it comparable to this LED bulb
from Philips that I have which is 8 watts for 5000K.
So, we're gonna see how that looks.
I'll just do a quick colour chart check here.
So we got some colour in the frame
and a little bit of skin tone.
I know that it's dark and then I'm gonna switch out
the bulb for this Philips bulb so we can see,
I guess, some benefits that come from using
a $70 light bulb versus a,
I don't know, I think these are, like, $9 or something like that.
Uh, because yeah, that's the price, $70 US
or $99 Canadian, but obviously, colour quality is important
when it comes to video, so,
let's go ahead and switch these out.
OK, so now we have that Philips bulb there which,
right away, I can see is not the same colour
on my skin at all, so, you know, whether or not
it's incorrect in its colour temperature or not, or just the,
just the rendering that's coming out of it. I've always found
these bulbs to kind of give a bit more like a green-y,
kind of yellow vibe, but we'll see how it looks. I'll put them
up side by side on the screen so you can compare them.
Let me check on the shot, get the shadows out of the shot.
OK, look at that white, the white chip.
It's definitely a little bit off, so.
Also, as I briefly touched on, they have the same effects
that the Aputure MC and other recent Aputure products have,
so, you could also, maybe stick them in like, a fireplace
and turn them in the fire mode if you want to do that.
They've got other things like cop car,
and this is the party mode where it cycles through the RGB,
faulty bulb, lightning, all the ones that we're seen
over and over again recently, still there,
if that works better for your creative purposes.
But, I would say the ideal usage for these
is probably to use them as colour accurate practicals
in your in-scene fixtures.
So, just sort of a better option
if you're gonna put a bulb in the shot,
might as well be colour accurate while you're at it.
I also think that you can use it as a viable option
for smaller studio houselights,
converting them over to colour accurate,
if that's something that's important to you.
I know that often houselights are, kind of, like strip lights,
LED, you know, strip bulbs and that kind of thing,
that's probably more economical for a lot of output,
but if you run a smaller studio and you have positions
for little bulbs elsewhere, this could be convenient
if you want to maintain your colour accuracy,
not just when you're under your key light,
but all the time, when you're doing other things,
or even for just, maybe, some BTS for social.
I could see it being useful for that
as well as still having the option to set it
to some kind of mood,
you know, ambience kind of light.
If you want to work and you want them all to be purple,
well, now it's doubling down for that purpose.
Overall they appear to do a good job, they're easy to use,
well made and I love that you can just stick them
in a light socket and charge them that way.
I can't really speak to the longevity aspect of them
because I just got them, so, I can't tell you how many hours
of life you're going to get out of them,
but I can say that my track record with Aputure
has been stellar where I don't think I've had a single light
from them fail or have, really, any issues with at all.
So, they have my confidence just because they're Aputure products
even though I haven't tested them long-term yet.
I guess nobody really has.
The only tip I have for you when you get yours
is to make sure that you set the hue to 285.
Multicolour sma-- smart bulb.
This is a multicolour smart bub-- smart bulb.
But, I would say, outside of that,
-I mean, they, they're... -[fumbling]
[chuckling]
But in some, this lamp, it's wobbly.
I, I have a strong feeling this video is gonna get thrown out.
But that’s gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
helpful or at least entertaining. And if you did,
make sure to leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.