(Rad 80's music)
- RGB tube lights can be some of the most versatile
and useful lights in your setup,
whether it's soft continuous lighting you're after,
or some kind of super crazy effect,
your creativity is really the only limit,
but with so many different options at different price points
and with different levels of quality,
it can be overwhelming to decide which ones to choose.
So today, I want to help you find out
why you might want to have-o the Pavo...the PavoTubes.
PavoTubes, they're good lights...you might want 'em .
And before we dive in and talk about these awesome lights,
just a quick disclaimer,
I have six of them and I only paid for two of them.
And it's not because I'm a criminal.
Really the whole point of this video
is for me to explain why it took me so long to decide
to just spend the money on the full size 30C PavoTubes
when I had spent a lot of time
trying to make do with other options, cheaper options,
and just lower quality options,
to be totally honest with you.
I saved up for awhile and I bought two of these
because it came in a kit of two
and that was pretty expensive for me.
And it was about like 800 bucks.
It was a lot of money,
but as soon as I bought those I was like,
why didn't I just buy these sooner?
I even did a video review on the PavoTube
6C is the little ones, and I really love these.
These are 11 inch, 12 inch tube lights.
These are wonderful.
I'm really glad that I have them
but I originally bought these thinking like,
Oh, I don't need the full size one.
I could just buy these and it'll be just as good.
And these are wonderful, but they're nowhere near as bright
or versatile as these giant ones here
and so that was $200.
I tried to deal with all these RGB floodlights
and eventually I bought my two PavoTubes
and I absolutely loved them and wish I had done it sooner.
Coincidentally, right after I did that,
Nanlite reached out to me
and I told them how much I love the PavoTubes,
and I wanted to use them in videos
and do all kinds of cool stuff with them,
and they said, "Hey, we'll send you some more."
So they sent me four more.
So now I have six altogether, which is insane
and if you check out my lighting setup tour video,
I go over exactly how I use them
and Heather even has one that she uses in her studio.
So they're really, really helpful.
Six of them would be a massive investment.
So I'm not recommending that you go out
and just drop that huge chunk of money,
but one or two of them or more,
if your budget does allow it, is great.
But I just wanted to let you know upfront
that I paid for two of these
but Nanlite sent me four other ones
that I could use in my videos
and just have fun with and stuff.
They didn't send them with any conditions,
on I don't have to make a video about them,
I don't have to say anything about them, nothing.
I just wanna make a video because I really like them
and I'm really excited about them.
And Nanlite has no input into the video at all.
So the lights themselves, again, these are the 30Cs,
they make the 6C, which is a small one,
the 30C is the big one
and there's another size
I think it's the 15C is in between these
but I really love these because the larger ones
I have found to be just incredibly versatile.
And if you're looking for quality of light
having a bigger light,
just sort of makes it helpful to disperse.
Let's see if I turn off my key light right now
and I put this up here as my key light
they do sell soft boxes
for these long rectangular soft boxes you can put on them,
which will really soften up the light
but as you can see, even without it, it's pretty decent.
Let's see shadows are pretty harsh if it's directly at me
or if it's super close or super bright,
but the quality of light is really good.
They're nice soft lights.
They can work great as backlights
and they're amazing as accent lights
obviously I've got them all over my studio here
acting as accent lights.
On the actual light tube itself, there are no controls.
Just one side is the light,
the other side has actually a bunch of info on it.
It explains how to adjust the different settings
and it actually has a whole menu tree.
So as you're going through the menus
it's sort of laid out right here for you.
And then you do have a tiny LED display right here.
And the ends of the tubes are where the other controls are.
So on one end, you have all of the control buttons.
That's where I can turn it into CCT mode,
I can turn it into HSI mode
and you can go in and dig through the menu
through these buttons, you can go into the special effects.
So they've got things like a police siren
and beyond the cop card,
there are also storm effects, candlelight effects,
and some customized ones
where you can set your own settings and set those.
A lot of the effects have flashing lights.
I am super sensitive to flashing lights.
So I'm not gonna demonstrate those
and having to edit that, it's just not fun.
It also has an RGB cycle mode and you can change the timing.
So this is very fast just going through all the colors
these doesn't hurt my eyes, or you can slow it down
to where it's basically 16 seconds to go
through everything all the way down to two seconds
to kind of flash through everything here.
This is really fun for effects
and just background stuff can be a pain to edit
if you're using jump cuts or anything like that
but it can be a lot of fun just to have these for ambience.
And then of course you have CCT mode
where you can change the color,
temperature and the brightness
to go all the way from 6,500 degrees Kelvin
to 2,700 degrees Kelvin.
So you can get some nice warm lights or some daylight.
So the quality of light on these is excellent
and I found them all to be pretty accurate.
So if you put the same settings
between multiple versions of the Pavo tubes,
they all look the same.
It's not like 4,400 means something different on this one
than that one over there.
They seem to be very consistent.
On this end over here, you've got the power switch
and then you also have three plugs.
One of them is for charging
and then two of them are 3.5 millimeter jacks
for input and output.
I'm gonna talk about that in a second.
The lights come with these little 3.5 millimeter cables.
These do something really cool
that I don't really hear a lot of people talking about it,
but it's one of my favorite things.
Both of these have holes
on these little ears that pop up over here.
So you can actually run something through those
and hang them if you need to hang them.
And then the lights
also come with these little plastic mounts
that you can just put right on here.
And then these have quarter 20 mounts on the bottom,
so you can attach them to light stands,
tripods, anything else and then you can position the lights.
You saw that in like the intro to this video
I had these all mounted on different stands like that.
And of course they're really big.
So you can always just lean them against stuff,
like this one over here is just leaning against the wall.
This one behind me over here
is also just leaning against the wall.
And that's a cool thing too with these lights is that
they look great on camera.
So, they provide excellent lighting.
And if you need them off screen, providing light,
kind of as you would imagine, they work great,
they look great, change the colors, do all that stuff
but if you want them on camera, they can look awesome
and they can really like help with your set design,
they can help with your effects.
Peter Lindgren just did a short film
where there's kind of like an intruder alert sequence.
And in that you can see Pavo tubes mounted on the wall,
flashing red, and they look like alert lights.
They look really good.
It's like great production design
but they also work great off screen.
Down here in the corner, I've got two of them
at a 90 degree angle
and that's it's lighting up the area behind my drum set.
So you don't see those at all.
The lights also come of course with a power brick.
If you buy a single light,
it will come with a single power brick.
If you buy the two light kit,
it still comes with a single power brick
but it has a splitter that lets you attach
and charge two lights with it.
They can be operated via wall power
or with the built-in battery.
Battery life is going to depend on how bright the light is,
what effects you're using, that kind of thing.
In general, I've been getting between one and three hours,
from a full charge.
Kind of depending again on what you're doing.
Normally, if I have a light like this on
where it's about 50% brightness
and it's not doing anything crazy,
it's just one color the whole time,
it lasts about two and a half hours
without needing to recharge it.
Whichever light you get
is gonna come in some kind of carrying case.
Even the single lights come in a case
that can carry at least two lights.
And that's kind of cool.
This one here can carry four lights, which is neat
because these are nice rugged cases
where all the lights fit in there
and all the power and everything fits in there,
but you can carry just this and have a four light setup.
If you travel
with a lot of like production lighting and gear,
you probably know that it can take up a lot of space.
So fitting four super bright, super capable lights,
in a case that small and compact is really nice
if you're somebody who needs to travel
with your lights a lot,
and these are definitely lights
that can handle being moved around
and used in different locations,
they're pretty rugged and pretty durable,
they are made out of hard plastic.
I've seen some people say that they don't like the plastic.
I have found it to be super durable.
It can definitely scratch, but other than looking bad,
the scratch isn't going to hurt anything.
And I really don't know what else you would make it out of
cause these can't be made out of glass
that would be super dangerous
and it needs to be a transparent material
that's not gonna degrade the light quality.
So this seems like the best possible option.
So they're very well-built overall.
The only area where I don't like the build quality
is with these buttons here.
You can probably hear it
They're a little plasticy and clicky and they're fine.
I've literally not had a problem with it,
but it seems like if something was gonna break
and get damaged, it would probably be here
before anywhere else on the light.
And like I mentioned, just a second ago,
if you buy more than one light
they'll come with this little cable right here.
And this is something really cool
that I just haven't heard a lot of people talking about.
And I think it's super neat.
So on the end of the light is an input and an output.
I'm gonna plug the input here,
to the output of this light.
And once the lights are connected,
you can dig into the menu
and go to an option to combine controls.
And then you can decide which light is the transmitter
and which one is the receiver.
They use more antiquated terms for those roles
that I'm not going to use in this video,
but I'll set this one as the receiver
and we'll set this one here as the transmitter
and now they're synced together.
So this light here in my right hand
if I change the brightness with the light in my left hand
you see it changes the brightness
with the light in my light.
If I change the settings,
say I go into the RGB cycle over here,
now it's going into the RGB cycle over here
and they're actually synced up
doing the same colors at the same time.
So it's a super easy way
if you have multiple lights in a situation
and you don't wanna have to go from light to light
and try to adjust these little dials
and get everything matching perfectly,
you can just sync them up super easily, super quickly,
and they will all match.
And the way that that works
is this light is just on by itself.
So it's doing its own thing right now.
But as soon as I turn on the transmitter light,
then it will kick in and take control over this light.
Now there are other lights
that let you do things like that via apps.
I think there's some sort of way
to attach an antenna to use an app,
but I have not used any sort of apps
with these lights at all.
I actually am not a huge fan of lighting apps.
I know the Aputure one, the Sidus Link is pretty cool.
And I use that for some of my lights back here
but when I'm using a light,
I like to be able to just use my light
without having to fiddle with anything else
and these let you do everything just right here,
instant, immediate.
I don't need to pull out my phone
or something else and go into an app.
That's personal preference, but it is something that I like.
You might even say it delights me.
Actually, I guess if I turn these off
see this is light full,
and now this is delightful, delighted.
Anyway, now, can you sync more than one?
So now I'm gonna take this light
and connect this to the output here and to the input here
and so if I turn and this one on, nothing happens,
but if I turn this one on, yes, you can.
You can sync multiple lights
so you can just chain them all together.
And obviously if you're using a longer cable
than the lights don't have to be right next to each other.
That's cool because as I mentioned,
these lights look great on screen.
You see them a lot in music, videos and stuff like that.
So there's a lot of scenarios
where you might want them to be synced up and matching.
They're also fun environmental lights.
I use them in here a lot of times when I'm not filming.
And when I was teaching all my high school classes online
and making videos and stuff,
these lights would be left on at about half brightness
five to seven hours a day, five or six days a week
and I never had any single issues.
I've had them for about four months now.
So in my experience they've been super reliable
and super durable.
Now it's not all perfect.
Let's talk about a few things that I don't like
as you might've already seen
just a couple of times in this video,
I am constantly forgetting which end of the light
has which controls.
So one end has the inputs and the power button
and the other end has the screen, the buttons and the dials.
I don't know what the solution would be,
but maybe if there was some sort of pop of color on one end
it would help me know which end is the right end.
But this end here, which is the main one, the control end,
there's a couple of things about it that are funky.
Mainly with these knobs right here, they feel really good.
Like they're nice high quality knobs,
but there's no tactile feedback,
there's no clickiness, there's no way to lock them
or anything like that.
So you get your settings dialed in
and it's very easy to accidentally bump these
or turn the wrong knob
because one of them will let you go
through the different settings
and the other will let you adjust that.
It'd be nice if there was just an easy way
maybe through like a push button or something to lock these.
And once you have them where you want them,
and it would be cool if these were tactiley like different
like one is circle and one is square or something.
So that way as you're looking at the menu,
I'm constantly doing exactly what I just did actually,
needing to look at the end and then moving the light
and hitting it on things,
trying to see which knob is which,
it'd be cool if I could do that more easily
without having to look at them.
It's not a big deal but it's one of those things
where it's like, this is a little bit of friction
every time you're trying to use it,
and the more you can eliminate that stuff the better.
The other biggest advantage to these lights
is that they are dedicated video lights.
And I've talked about this before.
If you're using a lighting setup, that's kind of makeshift
and you're not using dedicated video lights
but it's working for you, then it's great.
Like if it works, it works,
you don't need to spend money on anything else.
For me, I was trying to get by with a lot of lights
that were not made specifically for video.
And I was ending up with bad colors,
I was ending up with flickering
and I was just ending up with frustration.
So when you're dealing with dedicated video lights,
you don't have any of those problems
and RGB tube lights, as you can see,
are just incredibly versatile and I love them a lot.
There are other options
besides just the PavoTubes for RGB tube lights.
I haven't tried all of them
and if you have a less expensive option
and it's working great for you, then it's perfect.
However, what I can say is speaking from my own experience
as soon as I invested in the PavoTubes,
it was such a relief.
It was scary to spend the money
cause they're expensive lights
but once I got them, everything was just so easy,
everything looked better.
I just wish I had done it sooner
instead of like torturing myself for like a year and a half
trying to find these makeshift solutions
that just didn't really work.
So whatever you choose to light your path
if you're gonna invest money in a video light,
please make sure that it is a dedicated video light
just to save yourself the frustration
and the headaches down the line.
If these are a little too big
or a little too expensive for you,
I do have my review video all about the PavoTube 6Cs
which as you will see in that video are sick lights.
Bro, check out that video.
(chill beats to study to)