So, who makes the best video light?
What's going on everybody?
Potato Jet here.
Sorry, the lightening here looks a little bit like crap.
We kind of put all our best lights up here.
Shopping for lights is pretty tough because
it's really, really easy to spend a boat load of cash
on a crappy light.
I know from experience, unfortunately , as you can see.
Now, I'm going to be talking about the color of light a lot,
so, to get everyone on the same page, mini lesson on color.
Being familiar with this color wheel is useful.
Especially to know what colors cancel each other out.
The most important being this orange and blue.
This is super important because natural light
vary between these two depending on the time of day.
This is also known as the Kelvin scale
or color temperature, and when you adjust the
white balance in your camera,
you're adjusting this color temperature.
Within color temperature, the most important numbers
to know is 3200 degrees for tungsten,
and 5600 degrees for daylight.
As you become a little bit more comfortable with this,
you can predetermine if you want your footage to
look cool or warm and set your white balance accordingly
to give you that look straight out of camera.
And stylizing in cool or warm is common,
because it still looks natural.
Obviously, because our sun does the same.
Now, here's the big problem with
artificial lights like LEDs.
They start to shift in the magenta or green spectrum.
That's not a natural shift in color.
So it immediately makes the set start to look
digital and artificial.
We'll talk a little bit more about the shift in a bit,
but enough talking about theory.
Let's dive in to some tests.
Here's seven different lights that I've owned
and used over the years.
Why don't you pick out your favorite?
And here, you're just looking at color.
You're not looking at sharpness or how soft the light is.
Only color for now.
See which one looks the most natural
and which ones look like trash.
In my personal opinion, my favorites are D and F.
They look the most natural and clean to me.
I also think A and C both look very nice as well.
E has has a big shift towards the green.
B and G have a huge magenta tint.
But I didn't want this to be a super biased video,
so I asked you guys on Instagram which one you liked most.
Here were the results.
D was the clear winner, which is what I was expecting.
But what was surprising was E came right in second place.
To me, it looks way too green.
But, hey, you guys voted this light to be second place.
And what's really interesting is it's the cheapest one.
This is your budget option.
This is like one of those generic brand ones that
you can find off Amazon.
It uses compact florescent lights.
Which are like light bulbs with those twirly tubes.
The advantage of these are that they're so inexpensive.
You can get a whole set of these for under $100.
I can't recommend these but there has been a point
in my life where these were literally all I could afford.
So, if that's your position, I'd say get it
and practice with it.
An advantage though is that they do come
with a soft box already.
So, they're relatively soft right off the bat.
For most of you, you're going to want a soft light to start
off, but here's why I don't recommend these lights.
They do not last long.
I've had the mounts break.
I've had the joints break.
I've had the sockets break.
I've had the soft boxes rip.
It's not built for professional use.
So if you're going to be constantly setting them up
and breaking them down and going from location to location,
they're not going to last very long.
Over the course of like two years,
I was using them as my primary lights.
I went through so many sets of these
because they kept needing to be replaced.
To set them up and break them down, they're kind of a pain.
There's these bulbs that are fragile
and transporting them is kind of difficult.
And it's also not too versatile.
Which is fine because most of you, again, want a soft light
which the soft box provides, but, again,
you can't really modify that too much.
You get what you get with this light.
There's just not too much output.
There's also a warm up time for these bulbs.
And finally, what's the problem with having
a green tint in the light?
Actually, a lot of skin tones have a lot of red in it
because, you know, flesh is red
and if you were to cut me open,
I would be just this red, gushy thing.
This is inappropriate.
Looking back at the color wheel, red is the complete
opposite color of green.
So, a green light kind of cancels that red out a little bit.
And it kind of absorbs the red out of the skin tones.
And actually the reason why we use green screens
to keep people out and separate people from backgrounds,
is because green is the only color that isn't
in natural skin tones or hair.
So, when you put a person in front of a green screen,
it's easy for the computer to separate the green
from the people.
Grass is actually looking pretty nice
because it's all this green tinted light hitting green.
So, that's great but once you start looking at this wall
or once you start looking at the skin tones,
it just suck the light right out
of Steve's already lifeless soul.
Finally, for this test, we were only using one light.
Which isn't the perfect test, because most of the time
you're mixing that light with either other lights
or natural light.
So even if this frame looked good with a green tint on it,
it may not match natural daylight.
So, we all know which one the cheapest one is.
How about the most expensive one?
Is it D the crowd favorite?
No, actually it's F.
Alright, so now, this is the Mole Richardson baby LED.
It's 150 watt version, daylight colored.
This is the light that we've used the most often
over the last couple years.
The color out of it is so clean,
but what's interesting is that out of all the lights
we tested, this one has the lowest CRI, technically.
In case you're not familiar with CRI,
it's supposedly the way to measure how accurate
a color of a light is.
It measures eight or nine different color spectrums
and uses that data to give you a number from zero to 100.
Closer to 100, technically, it's supposed to be cleaner.
Doesn't really matter.
Trust me, I've bought a lot of lights
based off the CRI number.
It does not mean (beep).
I remember Mole Richardson mentioning that they don't care
about CRI because it's not a great way to measure
how accurate a light is for video.
They came out with TLCI which is kind of an upgraded
version of it.
I think it measures 24 colors of lights and uses that.
Which is going to give you a bit more
of an accurate reading.
I definitely recommend looking at that number over CRI
because it's specifically designed for video
and cameras and sensors.
But not that many lighting companies
post their TLCI ratings, yet.
But, again, it's not perfect.
There's only so much information you can
put on a spec sheet.
The best way is to just turn it on
and look at it through a camera
and see which one you like the best.
So, bottom line, everyone will tell you, look at the CRI.
I'm here to say, don't look at that number.
You could waste a lot of money that way.
I've done it.
In a lot of cases, you get what you paid for.
This Mole Richardson, I do think, was worth it's price tag.
We use the hell out of it.
And it's been a great light to us.
When it comes to the professional film industry,
there's three guys that have dominated the lighting
market throughout the years.
It's Kino Flo, Arri, and Mole Richardson.
You can't go to a movie set and not see those three lights.
I mean, they're the OG's.
More expensive doesn't mean better.
An example are these Kino Flos.
They're fantastic florescent lights and they
released some LED lights recently.
When they announced that I was like, oh it's Kino Flo.
They're going to make a legit light.
They're Kino Flo.
We rented a couple for a shoot, and I turned it on,
and it was so magenta.
We were shooting on C200's and I was thinking,
this can't be right.
So, we tried out the other two units, all cast magenta.
So, there you go.
Expensive does not mean better.
Kino Flo's I love their florescent light fixtures.
They're amazing.
I use them all the time.
But their LED's ugh.
Doing a little bit of research and realized that Kino
no longer makes that Celeb 200, which I hated.
New ones, you can dial the green and magenta shift.
So, it might be something that I might want to test one day.
When I have an extra five grand laying around.
By the way, this entire video has been shot on either
the Canon 80D or the Canon M50 on standard color profile.
Just because that's what most of you guys have at home.
And, also, the standard color profile is already
very saturated and contrasty.
So, it becomes a little bit easier to spot shifts in color.
It's probably something I should have mentioned at
the beginning of the video.
I am so unorganized.
Now, if you've been looking around for different lights,
I'm sure you guys have seen a bunch of these LED
panels where, you know, you just have a bunch of LEDs
on a board like this.
Now, the two lights that scored the lowest,
were the two lights with a magenta shift.
So, some of us may disagree on how bad green looks.
Some of us may like it.
Some of us may hate it.
But we can all agree to hate magenta lights.
G was the only one that didn't get a single vote
and that is this LED panel.
This one is make by a company called Dracast
and god, I hate this thing.
Before you boycott Dracast, keep in mind,
that this light is two and a half years old.
They have newer models out.
I have no idea if they're any better.
But this one, ugh.
I paid about $600 for this about two and a half years ago.
They're much cheaper now.
Now, there's a ton of different brands that put out LED
panels like this.
I'm sure there are some out there that have better
color output than this one.
They definitely have their advantages.
For example, it's very convenient.
It's very easy, quick set up.
It's portable.
It's battery powered.
Sometimes you can dial the color temperature.
But I find the source awkward.
It's not a harsh light and it's not a soft light.
It's kind of right there in the awkward middle.
Mini lesson on harsh and soft lighting.
All the light is coming from this little section here.
The light source is only like four or five inches wide,
so that's a pretty small light source.
Which is why if I stand right in front of it,
all the shadows on my face is so sharp.
And, sometimes you want that look, sometimes you don't.
But you can take a harsh light and make it soft with
something like that.
So, now it's like a huge source of light.
It's like four to five feet wide.
So, even all the way from back here, it's somewhat soft,
and as I move in closer,
the source becomes bigger and bigger.
There's a bunch of bugs on this silk now, ew.
99% of the time when I'm lighting something,
I want something focused and harsh like this
or something soft and gentle like what's hitting me
in the front right here.
In my opinion, this just fits so awkwardly in the middle.
It's not really a soft light.
Like for a soft light, I need a light to be at least like
two or three times this size.
It's not a harsh focused light.
It's just a general blah throw light out there
type of device.
See, like here, I'm being lit by a soft light.
If I were to use this light, it would be like this.
It's still a harsh light.
It's not big enough to be a soft source.
And focused lights are very controllable.
You can use barn doors to cut exactly where your light is.
But for LED panels, the source is just too big
for it to be cut with simple barn doors.
So, it's not really controllable.
It's not really soft.
It's just awkwardly in the middle.
At this point you guys are probably just like,
hurry up and get to D.
Like you want to know what the crowd favorite.
So, I'm just going to drill through everything real quick
'cause I know you guys want the D.
Wait, no, uh.
A is an Arri 650 Tungsten light.
Great light, but it's tungsten,
so it doesn't have all the benefits of LED.
It uses a ton of electricity.
It produces a ton of heat.
Not a ton of output relative to these LEDs.
If you plug a couple of these into one circuit,
you could blow the fuse in your house.
Lots of disadvantages to tungsten lights,
which is why we are moving over to LED technology.
Even though tungsten looks so clean.
B is an off brand HMI.
HMIs are popular in the film industry
but they're definitely not as convenient as LEDs.
I often rent these HMIs called Arri M18s.
They're very popular.
They throw out a ton of light.
We often use them to simulate the sun.
But they're huge.
They're expensive.
So I try to go cheap, and get like an off brand,
cheaper version of an HMI.
No, looks terrible.
C is a Westcott Flex light,
which is one of the better options.
It's actually what I'm using here to film myself.
This one's not a bad light.
It kicks out a ton of light,
but, again, it sits in that kind of awkward size
of being small and large.
This is a 2x1' and when I bought it,
I thought it was going to be big enough
and soft enough to where I could just aim it straight
at myself, like this.
When I saw how harsh it was, I was like,
I gotta make the source bigger.
So, I bounce it off this bounce card which is on the wall.
This light hits the bounce card, making the source this big.
And the bounce card, basically, shines it back at me.
And that's how I get this, sort of soft light.
So again, it's in that awkward spot where I can't just
use this light and aim it straight at a subject,
because it's not soft enough.
I have to still bounce it off a bounce card or
pass it through a diffusion to make it as soft as I want it.
It's pretty interesting.
It's literally a mat and it folds,
and it's supposed to be really durable.
It's kind of crazy.
It's nice because you can literally throw this
into a suitcase and travel with it.
It doesn't take up much space or weight.
And in terms of color, I've been pretty happy with it.
It's one of the better ones out of the LEDs.
But I have seen a magenta tint come out of these
once in a while.
Especially, if I'm not at 100% power.
Also, they're quite pricey.
This is the 2x1'.
The 1x1' can be battery powered,
but the 2x1' can't.
Finally, we get to what you've all been waiting for.
What is the crowd favorite?
It is the Aputure 120D which is
quickly become my favorite light.
Just to be clear this is not a sponsored video.
I'm not being paid by anybody to say any of this stuff.
But I do know some of the guys over at Aputure.
They're cool dudes.
Shoutout to Nerris, what up bro?
But, yeah, me, personally, I have nothing to gain
by saying good things about Aputure.
Except for if you use my Amazon affiliate link down below.
So, please be sure to click that and then buy it,
and then make sure I get.
First and foremost, what I consider the most
important thing out of any light, is the light quality.
And we've already established that
this one had the cleanest.
Right now, it's sitting at around $645 ish.
Which is not super cheap, but it's not super expensive.
I mean, it's almost half the price of this thing.
Next, is it bright?
And the answer is yes.
It is bright as (beep).
But they do also have a 300D which is an even brighter
version than this one, if you need that extra output.
But this 120D's been bright enough for a majority
of what I've done so far.
The size is also awesome.
It's very light weight and easy to handle,
and it gets powered off the v-mount battery.
Which is super convenient for when you're on the field.
And out of these lights,
this is the only one that came with a case.
Which is very useful.
With all that aside, the coolest part about these
Aputure lights is how modular they are.
It uses a bowens mount which makes it very adaptable
to a lot of different accessories that
are already out there.
If you want a focused light, you can use fesnel head
like this one.
So, now you can control how focused your light is
and how far it will project,
just like an old school, traditional fresnel light.
This is the one I use the most, which is their light dome.
Now this is already a soft light, which is awesome
because usually we have to take our big lights
and pass it through stuff like this to make it soft.
But now it's like one package, soft light right out of here.
You know, how I keep saying a soft like has to be big?
Well this is how big I want my soft lights to be.
Another thing to keep in mind is that having a bowens
mount is awesome because all the accessories are
going to be a whole lot cheaper.
If you ever try to buy a soft box for a video light,
you know they're so expensive
because they're designed for tungsten light,
meaning that they have to be able to resist a ton of heat
but LEDs don't put out that much heat.
So, not only is the light cheaper, but once you start
getting accessories for it, that's going to be
cheaper as well, so.
But if you guys want to see a full, in depth review
of this Aputure light, there is a lot to talk about.
So, let me know if you guys want to see that.
I'm actually kind of digging this back light here.
I don't know.
Does that look good?
Other YouTubers have like this really nice background
that's all clean and lit,
and mine's just my crappy Echo Park apartment.
Clearly, I spend all my money on video gear
and not my rent.
Couple tips I want to leave you guys off with.
Lights, you can generally pick between daylight or tungsten.
So, blue or orange.
There are LEDs out there where you can dial the color
temperature, which sounds convenient, but I usually don't go
for those because most of them only have full power
right in the middle at like 4500 degrees.
Because they usually have blue LEDs and orange LEDs
and based on what color temperature you set it to,
a certain amount of them turn off.
So, when you have it fully at daylight,
only half of the LEDs are on.
So I always go for the daylight colored ones
because whenever I need the most output,
it's almost always during daylight
because I'm trying to fight against the sun.
Like if a ton of light was coming in through those windows,
I would need to counter that with daylight color light
and that's usually when I'm like,
I need as much light power as I can get.
So that's why I got the 120D, which stands for daylight.
Now, if I needed a light a scene in tungsten,
I would put one of these on it.
Which is a CTO, stands for color temperature orange.
So, if I put this on here, then it converts that light
into a tungsten light.
Now, every time you put a light through one of these filters
it loses a little bit of light and loses it's power.
So, I always like to have my light be native at daylight
and then only when I need to use tungsten,
I'll pass it through one of these.
But usually, when I'm filming an indoor scene
or tungsten light, I don't need that much power.
I'm not trying to battle it against the sun.
Usually I'm just trying to battle it against other
preexisting indoor lights.
Which is a lot less bright than the sun.
So, even though I can't dial the color temperature of these.
I always like to have a big set of CTOs, color
temperature orange, and CTBs, color temperature blue.
And I use that in different strengths to shift it
to exactly what white balance I want.
And if you already have a light where you're noticing
a shift in green or magenta, you can get some of these
gels to help you push it in the right direction.
This is a plus green and this is a minus green.
Keep in mind that these gels only nudge the light
in the right direction,
but the best is always to have a nice, clean,
full spectrum light as the base.
By the way, this is a color correction gel kit,
which basically comes with a set of CTBs in different
strengths, CTOs, plus greens, and minus greens,
all at different strengths.
If you have an LED, then I highly recommend
you guys get some.
This will give you an idea of what strength and what color
gels you need and then eventually you can start ordering
larger rolls at the strength you need.
I'll put a link to this in the description, as well.
And, god, I am so tired of talking.
Oh my god, I've been talking for so long, bye.