Category: FocusPulling Original

The new Aputure MT Pro feels like the final maturity of a niche product idea that has evolved over the past few years from crude starts, to this clear finish. After a long history of inefficient and flickering fluorescent tubes, LED tubes next arrived in various sizes and capabilities, such as the Westcott Ice Light and its many cheaper knock-offs, but they have never pulled it all together into a portable, solid, reliable, high-performance and cost-effective product offering like this. As you pull the metallic body out of its included zip case, as seen in the below picture, you get the sense that it’s built to last.  As usual, I could have done without the bright red accent colors that cheapen the professionalism seen during any serious video work, but that’s nothing new in this category of foreign imports in filmmaking gear.

I like the firm click of its on/off slider switch as opposed to an electronic push/hold type. I’m relieved that the powering bus is USB-C rather than the older standard of micro-USB, and that it’s possible to directly power it during illumination from any USB power source too, whether a wall charger, or a portable battery pack: it makes the hour-or-so life from its internal battery less worrisome, when paired with external power that’s easy to set up.

I’m not quite as happy about the physical manual controls, especially the dial that is clicked and moves very, very slowly in certain categories like the default and most important “intensity” brightness setting: going from 0% to 100% will take you minutes, not seconds. And the menu system seen below is a bit clunky: you really do have to scroll all the way down to “Exit” and select it, rather than pressing the dedicated backwards button, for example. But if you have the time/need/interest to connect via Bluetooth using the free Sidius app on your smartphone or tablet, you can change all such settings rapidly with a swipe, of course. The Sidius app is the same used to control the entire Aputure ecosystem, and it’s extremely well-developed by now. You pretty much need it to fully control this MT Pro as to color picking, beat reactors, FX, etc.

I enjoy being able to hand a smartphone to talent on set, and offer them the wireless remote opportunity to pick whatever brightness and color they prefer at final position. Similarly I enjoy being able to make those decisions myself from a distance, while I’m right at the camera viewfinder. I do this with all of my Aputure products, including the new Aputure 200x bi-color key light. and the little brother to the MT Pro, the MC RGBWW LED light.

Aputure has focused marketing of its MT Pro on the pixel density of its LED array: this basically means that it’s harder to see each individual “dot of light” if staring straight into the tube, more diffusely distributed. But there is also a semi-opaque diffusion “lens” built in front of the LED array anyway, and for further customization, you can easily mount (quickly in seconds) the included lighting grid attachment seen here, for narrowing the spread of the beam and thereby reducing light spill/loss at angles beyond, say, 45 degrees. All told, the pixel density is nice to have but not critical: in fact, Aputure could not resist showing it off at startup every time with a rainbow sequence that cycles colors through those dense LEDs, and it’s nothing that I want people to see on a set.

Speaking of color, I foresee staying in CCT mode most of the time (mostly just daylight and incandescent color temperatures), rather than HSI with endless color possibilities. Adding color splash onto, for example, a whole set background surface is a bigger haul than this portable light can manage, and projecting color onto smaller subjects and surfaces is a far less likely creative decision. I like that these modes are isolated from each other, and that I can boot back into CCT every time I turn the power on, at my last setting.

Also included is a plastic miniature tripod; this is another thing I could have lived without, especially if saving room for a smaller carrying case. In this regard, it’s worth thinking how you would use this product’s size and shape: in my on-set photos below, you can see my subject’s face illuminated in an ideal use case example. I needed a soft light that would focus only on nearby talent, in a slim horizontal form factor to stay out of my multi-camera shots. In the final camera positions, the whole light is concealed by the piano’s parallel music stand. There are very few cases when you’d use the included miniature tripod with the MT Pro, though there are 1/4″-20 screw holes as mounting points (and even magnets for attaching easily to metallic surfaces), at both horizontal and vertical orientation. For the latter, you may find that it works well vertically for illuminating a nearby matching subject, such as an interviewee sitting in a chair or standing, especially when you add the included grid attachment to reduce spill. Basically, often you just don’t need a traditional round lighting zone, and a tube is the right fit. You can’t do any better in the compact product category than this Aputure MT Pro.

I became a fan of Sokani lights after their X60 line, starting with their improved X60 V2 in a single daylight color temperature, to their X60 RGB full-color-spectrum light. Now with the X100, they’ve come full-circle with a bi-color model that adds more improvements, casting even stronger lumens. I’m comparing this X100 with my Aputure 100x, another 100-watt, bi-color LED light with a Bowens mount too, costing almost $100 more. At the 5600K color temperature, from 1 meter away, the X100 outputs 3070 lux without any reflector – by comparison, the Aputure 100x outputs 3700 lux. So on that spec, it looks like a pretty close call. They have roughly the same color accuracy rating (CRI >96), too.

But the X100 has a wider color range, from 2800K to 10000K. And it adds an invaluable option: to receive power from batteries, mounted right onto the product. There are two battery slots, one on each side, for Sony NP-F such as the biggest available that you see in my pictures here (NP-F970 equivalent). To be clear, even with those maximum-sized batteries, you still won’t get much more than a few minutes at full brightness, but this is a nice feature to have for those rare occasions when you don’t have access to an AC power outlet. (In my tests, I found that unfortunately if one of the two batteries is weak but the other at full capacity, the whole light shuts off anyway.)

The good news is, Sokani provides a full 24V 5A AC adapter, packed inside a padded canvas case that holds the X100 along with a Bowens-mount reflector. You can control multiple Sokani lights with their free smartphone app called “SS LED,” including activation of various FX that I don’t anticipate ever using – but you can also control everything from rear-panel buttons on the light itself. I like the solid black design, spared of any toy-like bright red or blue colors, keeping my set looking professional.

Overall, this is a great addition to the marketplace and it is more competitive than the other options I’ve seen. As of mid-2022, there is no equivalent product on the market below $200 that combines the on-board option for battery power, with this full CCT color temperature range, and output over 3000 lux.  Since portability and low cost is what distinguishes this product, I found a match in the perfect lighting stand for it, manufactured by Impact and sold for as little as $100. Its best feature is that it combines light stand and boom, with a mounting hole at the end so you can attach a counterweight. Impact includes a saddle bag that you can throw anything into for adding weight, like other batteries you brought with you, or bottles of water that you’ll be drinking when you pack up anyway.

The stand has a big knob to tighten the angle that doesn’t slip, and its magic trick is that the boom arm telescopes down into the vertical light stand! So you can skip the boom part if you don’t need it, and the stand adapter at the end can point straight up.

It’s reasonably small at 45 inches collapsed, but it can get up to 13 feet. For packing everything up but keeping to a low budget, there’s also a great padded bag that fits the stand perfectly from Ruggard costing under $60, way below anything else I could find. It’s perfect for holding the light stand, and also the diffuser that we’re adding to this kit.

For that, a light like this almost always has a standard so-called Bowen mount, and it’s just one latch with three sort of teeth that you insert and twist in to lock. What I’ve hooked on is the Aputure Lantern; at under $90, it’s the perfect pairing with this light. Acting like a so-called “China ball” or paper lantern, it provides very soft light with wide diffusion, and it’s often used overhead which makes that combo boom stand come in handy. My favorite feature is how it instantly sets up and breaks down: you just latch one center support loop into a hook that you can see peeking down into the bottom below, and those pre-installed “ribs” on the sides just warp into position. It literally takes about 5 seconds, and when collapsed, it’s nice and small, so we can fit it into that same Impact bag, even though it comes with its own.

You can see more uses of the light in Aputure’s own advertising video below, often overhead and often using black skirts that are also included to narrow down the light radius. But you can still mount it facing forward like a typical soft box for interviews too.