Recently, I've been working on
a new multi-purpose light setup that I can use
for providing a soft, wrapping light
for my product photography,
provide some fill light when needed,
or even offer a fun mood or accent lighting
for video ambience or even for when I'm just working
around the studio and I wanted to accomplish
all of this within a reasonable budget.
Well, I think I finally got a setup I'm happy with
and it even does RGB.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and this intro will self-destruct in five seconds.
False alarm? Thanks for nothing, Michael Clifford.
Alright, so regarding the light, let me show you
what I came up with.
[Batman transition sound]
So, it's basically three products.
We've got the new Aputure Lantern,
we've got the GVM 150S, which is a RGB Fresnel light
and then we've got this C-stand which is from Neewer
that I got on Amazon. It was the cheapest C-stand
that I could find that I thought would do the job.
So, I'll give you some mini reviews of each component
and then I'll show you what they can do as a combo.
So, let's start with the C-stand.
So, pretty uninteresting, this is a C-stand.
This is the one that has the arm,
with the extendable arm and we're actually able
to extend this all the way out and we can lift
the C-stand up past the ceiling.
I think it goes 10 feet in the air,
so we can have it as a complete L situation
where the C-stand will go up and L out
and make this light completely upside down
and it'd work pretty well. You might want to throw
a sandbag on it just to stop it from tipping over,
but I found that as long as I put it under the leg
that it does reasonably well, but I do think a sandbag
would make it a little bit more secure.
In terms of C-stand quality, in case you guys are
looking at the Neewer ones on Amazon,
this one was $150. US dollars.
And it's okay. It's pretty good quality.
There are a couple minor imperfections,
but at a $150, I think it's a pretty good value
and I would recommend this product
and I'll show you a little bit more of what it can do
as we talk about the other products.
So, moving on then, let's talk about the light first
because that's the main thing about what's going on here.
So, this is the GVM RGB-150S, which is very similar
to the other GVM light that I covered before
that also does RGB. Now, again, it's got a couple things
that I don't love, but overall,
I think it's a pretty good value light.
So, first of all, couple things that I don't really like.
I think that the yoke system on this isn't the greatest.
If I swing it around like this, you can see
that there's actually two handles, there's two knobs
to adjust the yoke and you have to use them both
in sync and they're both actually a little bit weak.
So, for instance, if I loosen this one on the left,
see how it's already starting to dip down
and you have to like, kind of lift it up
and you can hear that weird clanking sound
and even when you tighten it down,
there's quite a bit of droop.
So, I don't love the yoke system. It works
and if you tighten it down a lot, you can get it to work,
but it's not fantastic. The second thing
is that this comes with a Fresnel,
sort of a semi-Fresnel, you can go from
60° to 120°,
which there's a knob on this side, which I'll show you.
So, you can adjust this knob here to extend the light,
which will give you a more narrow beam angle,
or pull it back in to have a wider beam angle,
but the problem that I find with this light
is that it tends to droop when you use it
in this overhead position, which is what I'm using it for.
So, you can see it doesn't take a lot of force
for it to kind of slowly come out,
so I found that it does slowly sink over time.
So, I wish that was a bit tighter,
maybe had some kind of lock to it.
And speaking of locks, this thing has a Bowens mount,
which is great because then we can attach
Aputure modifiers like the Lantern or the Light Dome,
but the Bowens mount implementation
could be a little better. The way that you actually secure
your light modifiers to the light is by this wingnut
up here, which I'm not sure if you could see it,
but not only is it too wide to fit correctly
in with the body of the light, it actually rubs against it
when you try to get the last few tightens it,
so it's really annoying, but it takes forever
to unscrew it. You probably have to do,
I would have to say, 20-30 rotations in order
to get the light out, so I would say it probably takes
like 45 seconds of unscrewing a wingnut
where the Aputure lights obviously just have a release
where you pull back the lever and so,
the Bowens mount works, but it definitely
could be implemented a little better.
Those are the main flaws that I have.
The only other one that I have has to do
with colour temperature, which if you've watched
my other videos, like on this GVM light over here,
which I love if you've seen my review of this panel light,
I highly recommend this panel by the way,
and if you haven't seen my video on this light,
I recommend you go and watch it because
it's going to be a more thorough review
of what you could basically apply to the COB version.
But, basically, the problem with this
is that the RGB is great, but when you use it
on bi-colour mode and you go from 5600K
to anything slightly warmer, like 5550 or 5500K,
there's a significant jump in colour temperature
and I measured it and it's about 400-500K
going just 100K on the light,
and another thing that might be a little bit of a con
for some people is the noise.
It is a little bit more noisy than some of the other COBs
that we've tested. So, the fans are located right here
and there are no fans in the power box,
and it's not really a control box either.
It's really just literally a power adapter.
All the controls are up here, so all the noise
comes from here and there's no way to control
the fan curve or when it comes on or off
or turn it off. It's just always on and it's always
at its regular noise. So, I have a lav mic on here
and I have a pencil hypercardioid mic up there
and they're both kind of pointed at it,
so I'll just give you a couple seconds of silence
so you could see if we can pick it up at this level.
[faint humming]
But, I don't think it's gonna be that big of a problem.
I'm pretty close to it now, so this would probably be
an extreme version of how loud it will be.
Now, moving on, I was talking about the power box.
One of the issues that I do have,
this is a mains power only light, by the way,
there's no battery power. But one of the issues I have
is with the cable length. So, I'm gonna undo this here
because I came up with a bit of a solution for it.
So, this cable, which is the one that runs from the light
to the power adapter is only about just over a meter,
about three and a half feet long,
which is definitely not long enough
for letting this go to the ground
and if you were to let it go, it's obviously going to dangle
and put a little bit of force here.
It's nice that it has a bit of right angle connector,
but I don't like having power bricks dangling.
This one is lighter and smaller
than some of the others, but still, it's not very smart.
But, to combat this and inspired by
the Aputure 300d II, which I most recently reviewed,
which I highly recommend you go check out
that video, I love that light.
Basically, I made a little super clamp adapter.
So, I wrapped some metal strapping
around the power adapter,
on top of tape so it doesn't scratch it up,
and then I just attached a small rig,
super clamped to the side using a 3/8 to 1/4-20 adapter
and I put a little bit of shoelace around it
so it wouldn't sink or slide around.
And now, we can just use that super clamp
and attach it to the C-stand here
and that will hold it in place pretty well,
so it solves that one problem.
But then, from the floor, the cord isn't very long either,
so the higher we put this adapter,
the shorter that floor cord is even gonna get.
And, this is basically the entire length of it.
It's right around, I wanna say 10 feet
or just around three meters, I think,
and you're definitely gonna want an extension cord
if you're using this light because combined,
these two short cord lengths is not going to be enough
to get the job done. But, it sounds like I'm ripping
all over this light and I'm not trying to.
Those are just sort of the issues that will come
when working with it, but there are so many great things
about this light that I do like. Basically, its RGB modes
and the cost effectiveness of its output.
So, this light is $470, which is actually...
it's a great price for all that it does.
It's a little bit more than some of the discount COB-only lights,
but those lights don't have RGB
and the RGB implementation is fantastic.
It's a single press of a button, just like with the panel.
That switches it over into RGB mode,
but it's using an HSI rather than RGB,
so you're not dialing in individual colours.
You're just changing the hue
and you can basically just spin the knob.
So, you press the knob and then turn it
and it cycles through all the colours super easy.
You've got the 360° control there.
You choose a hue that you want,
and if you do press it again, you can control the saturation,
which obviously the lower the saturation,
the more the white it's gonna get,
so you can adjust the intensity that way.
And then, your brightness knob
now still basically operates as a dimmer,
but that's gonna give you the third of your HSI controls.
So, super fast to get the colour you want, really easy
and the colours are really vibrant and I love them.
I've been using that panel in the background
of my videos for a really long time, putting that blue cast.
It's fantastic. Now, before I move on to the Lantern,
I know that I didn't really cover this light thoroughly,
but that's because I wanted to refer you guys
to LunaScope Film School, who made a video
on this light back in March and I was actually watching it
when I was first looking into this project
and I really like this video.
I like the personality of the host. I think he did a great job
and had some great tests. So, rather than just make
my video completely redundant of that one,
I'm going to throw a link to that in the description.
I highly recommend that you go check it out
because I'd rather support other creators
and promote other channels than just make redundant videos.
But overall, my sort of final conclusion on this light
is that I think that it's a great value for what you get
and that I'm okay with getting past
some of the build quality weaknesses.
It's definitely not built as well as an Aputure light
if that's what you're used to,
but I'm willing to ignore those flaws
for how awesome the RGB implementation is
and the versatility that you get out of this light,
as long as you don't need battery powered portability.
Now, let's move on to the Aputure Lantern,
which is a new modifier from Aputure
that costs around $90, which I think is a great price.
You're getting great value here. It's very versatile,
very soft and really, really fun to use.
So, let's switch this back over to the bi-colour mode.
So, what I like about it is how soft and enveloping
this light is. And obviously,
you could think of lots of purposes for this.
Like I said, we could jack it up and tilt it over
so you can get an overhead light that you could use
for podcasts or interviews, but what I like about it too
is that I can use it for a work light.
If I switch it over here, you can see
that we're gonna get this really nice, soft light
on the bench here and that's gonna be great
for the product photography that I do.
But, what else I like about it when it comes
to working in this environment is that it's really hard
to block the light or occlude it with shadow.
Usually, when I'm working like this,
I will find that if I put my hand over something,
there's a big shadow and I can't see what I'm doing,
but because this light is just throwing it everywhere,
I find that it's actually really hard to obstruct my view
and I'm loving it as a work light.
A little bit large. It might be a little bit impractical
as a work light, but again, if you have
a bulky enough C-stand, you can get it up and out.
Now, putting it in a narrow shot
might not be the greatest option.
I just saw at the beginning of this video
that it did occupy a lot of the frame,
but if you have high enough ceilings,
you could get it up and out. But for me,
I'm gonna use it just out of frame usually
or when I'm working, just have it slightly out of the shot
where I don't care about it,
but when I do product photography, I like having it
really, really close like this because it makes
such a nice, soft light. I don't know if you could see it
on my hand right now. But, you could also control
that light, even if you didn't want it to be
so wide and enveloping.
You can-- let me lock this down. There's these flaps
that come with the light
and they're just Velcro and I have them rolled up here,
but you can just-- I don't know if you'll be able to hear me
over top of this Velcro. But, you can unroll them
and they're reflective on the inside
and they go down pretty far. Let's get one all the way down.
And there's four of them in total going all the way
around the lights. So, they're actually kind of,
I think I rolled up them up a little bit too tight here.
I might suggest doing more of just a fold
because this is kind of tedious,
but I thought it looked good when I had them
all rolled up. So, they're actually quite long
and when you have them hanging down like that--
here, I'll turn this up.
And then, if we pivot the light over this way...
You can see
that you're gonna be able to get quite a bit of control now
where obviously this whole area on my table now
is now completely darkened. So, you still have control
that way and if you didn't want the light to shoot
a certain way, or if you only wanna go to the sides
or split the beam that way, so that's fantastic.
Overall, I just really like this modifier.
I think it's very fun to use and it's very easy to set up.
You basically just push down on the centre beam
and it just spreads out and you lock it in place.
And, like I said, you can get rid of these things
a lot easier if you want to by rolling them up.
You basically just fold them.
If the neatness wasn't that important
and I just think for $90, it's a fantastic modifier
at that price and definitely a recommended buy.
So, overall, right around $700
for the stand, the light and the Lantern,
which I think is actually a pretty great price.
It might seem expensive, but as soon as you add RGB
into the mix, usually the price gets inflated quite a bit.
So, the fact that we can get all this with RGB
is actually pretty decent at $700.
The only thing I would do now is probably add
casters to the bottom of this so I can wheel it around
like Caleb Pike because it is a little bit heavy
and awkward to be moving this thing by lifting.
So, I think that's everything I wanted to talk about.
Overall, I'm really happy with this configuration,
but let me know in the comments
if you could put something like this to good use
and what you would use it for
because I'd love to know your setup ideas.
But, that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining,
but if you did, make sure to leave it the old thumbs up
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feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright...I'm done.