Emma Attempts to Review the iFootage 200BNA LED Light... | Curtis Judd

we're g to try something different this week because your usual host is out of town I am going to try and do a review for those of you that don't know me I'm am I I'm usually behind the camera or editing in the editing Suite I make a lot of this stuff on this channel happen I don't often actually Give opinions on the products we cover here we're going to try it this video is covering the ey footage anglerfish sl100 BNA and that's a very long name it's this light right here okay first question are you using a rim light or a hairl light or anything we have it set up as our key light in this episode it is set at 16.8% on the dimmer very very bright as you can see we're at f4 on the camera it can get a lot brighter the glasses um okay all right yeah Fair uh 5600 Kelvin so it's meant to mimic daylight that is one of the purposes that I footage uh specifies in their description for this light so what is it it's a 200 W bolor LED video light and because we have another 200 watt video light that we really like that's the amaran 200 XS that will be our comparison point for this video so details on this light on the anglerfish it's a great name for a light by the way all right about the eye footage uh you have a tunable color range on this light from 2700 to 6,500 Kelvin and like I said it's designed to mimic daylight so that gives you a nice big range within which you can color match to anything that's coming in Windows we're not doing that right now I have all the windows blocked off so we can see just this light on its own uh I footage claims an SSI of 91 uh what is SSI it is spectral similarity index it is a way to measure how close a particular lighting instrument like the angler fish compares to a known reference lighting source so for example in this case I was going to talk about 5600 Kelvin daylight 3200 Kelvin tungsten so there those are very predictable lighting sources and the SSI score tells you how close they are that is achieved generally by eliminating the big blue Spike of light that occurs around 440 uh nanom when you look at the Spectrum graphs uh of a light's output they also use a quote Innovative honey honeycomb chip array which is supposed to distribute light more evenly than traditional LED grids and here's a comparison between the grid the honeycomb grid on the1 versus on the amaran and you can see that the amaran has the vertical stripes versus this one and here's a closeup which has the honeycomb pattern now that honeycomb pattern where that could be useful in Practical terms terms is if you put a set of barn doors on the front of the light and cut the light do you get it kind of a weird fringing pattern or do you get a nice clean cut so other noteworthy features on this light it is compatible with all standard Bowes Mount accessories so right now in this key light setup I've got it on a stand on a c stand with the avature light Dome 3 on the front that's our usual key light modifier so you can compare it to other key light setups that we've done see how it looks versus those I would not go any bigger than that it's a smaller light than most of the aperture lights that we use as key lights you don't want to tip it over uh so anything as big as the light Dome 3 or smaller lanterns are great barn doors uh appropriately sized Fel lenses all safe bet it also has an umbrella holder if you are one to use umbrellas for diffusion umbrellas umbrellas are amazing if you want a huge wash of light but the thing is that the W the light goes everywhere so if you're trying to do a very specific lighting design not necessarily as useful but they can you know it has quote fully adjustable angles meaning it moves well it has one point of adjustment forward to back up and down standard on most lights others might have a Yol where you can do that this one's just integrated I think what you're calling a yolk is it has a yolk you tighten it down loosen it you can tilt it that's that's a yoke uh it also of course has a little screw at the base that you use to take it on and off of baby pins and you can tighten it on swing it around when it's loose tighten it back up there are four different dimming curves available you've got linear exponential logarithmic and S curve so if you're into that you can change it super easy you can do it in the app you can do it on the light works great dimming curves nice nice to have that feature um I prefer linear generally um but if one of the others work better for you it's nice to have the option you've got 10 built-in effects paparazzi fireworks lightning strobe welding faulty bulb TV CCT cycling explosion and pulse that's your standard setup you only have by color though this is not full spectrum LED so if you're used to doing those in color you can't do that in color on this light but you can use anywhere again from 2700 to 6,500 Kelvin you do have the intelligent cooling system which includes Auto overheat protection and high temperature alert so again if you get a little too hot for what you're trying to do here the light will beep at you you can turn it off wait a minute come back to it it also Auto adjusts the fan speed to match the light temperature if you're in automatic mode you also make want to make sure not to block the heat sink on top of the light that's this ridged part right here don't be putting stuff over that that's an important part of making sure that the entire overheat system works the lower fan speed modes which you can also set the light to manually if you want it to stay really quiet or you need it to stay really quiet don't seem to limit the light output or otherwise affect your use of the light I will say the automatic fan setting can be annoying if you've already set up a very close lighting design when the fan was off and you were counting on it staying off and then it comes on and you're picking that up in your audio that's the only time it could possibly be problematic just be careful about which mode you're in if that's important to your setup so what does it do in the low like if I crank the light to 100% And I turn it into quiet or ultra quiet mode what does it do does it shut off at some point all right some of the more detailed tests we've done photometrics I footage claimed an SSI of 91 for this light that was indeed true in our tests of the SSI T scorer tungsten at 3200 Kelvin that was 91 and we also measured an SSID daylight of 83 at 5500 Kelvin the amaran 200 XS on the other hand scored an SSID of 90 so it still holds a a small Edge over this one although those are both good high quality scores this light's good in terms of color quality and they went about it a different way than aperture did aperture actually tried to add um to the left side of the the spectral graph some of that lights they use two different types of blue to fill that out what I footage did instead was to try and really really manage that typical blue Spike that you see from LED lights and there's always this trade-off with LED lights of if you LEDs by by Nature are blue but to make them fill out the other parts of the color spectrum they have to put phosphor in them which essentially lose some of the light output when you do that so you can get more accurate light but you're getting less light when you do that and so there's always this tradeoff and what I footage has done is a pretty good approach here's a clip from our flicker test we turn it down anywhere below 10% shoot at a high frame rate see what we get this is pretty flickery compared to other lights we've done I do not believe the Amarin uh 200xs looks like this at comparable levels so if you're going to be shooting in low light at a high frame rate with not a very intense light this is what it'll look like short story on the dimmer don't use it below 10% it's just not it's not usable above 10% we didn't have any problems the effects sweet are they better than apertures no I don't think so I was particularly unimpressed with Welding which was just a continual and evenly space series of flashes no matter how I adjusted the parameters do with that what you will if effects are super important to you I would not recommend this they may get better as firmware updates go on and roll out uh but as of right now I did not find them particularly convincing the build quality body of the light seems substantial it's all plastic though it's not flimsy plastic but it is plastic uh so use your own judgment and the context of what you will be doing with your lights to decide on that the Bowen Mount as far as I could tell I stuck my pinkies down in there to feel around and see what it was I am pretty sure that's all plastic down in there uh otherwise the quality is generally I would say the same as the 200 XS I prefer how they finish their plastic at aperture in amaran uh it it might be that it's slightly thicker I don't know I prefer it um the other thing I prefer about the amaran and other aperture lights is that the points of adjustment seem more sturdy the the screw pieces on this including the uh angle adjuster and the the Baton Downer the tightener on the mount uh it seemed like they would strip really easily if they were over torqued so if you're if you're like either of us Juds who have really strong torque unfortunately uh be gentle and don't go tightening them down Way Beyond what they should be other than that seems okay the build I'm actually surprised to hear that the bones Mount is plastic I didn't notice it but I wasn't specifically looking for it when I did my initial testing that's interesting um yeah I don't even think I would use a light Dome three on this I'd probably stick with the light Dome Essie or um perhaps I footage makes their own soft box it actually did ship with a lantern and the lantern was pretty small and lightweight so you got have to keep it small on the modifiers some details on how to use this light that are not super intuitive right out of the box just want to cover these if you're looking for more of a tutorial uh the CCT is adjusted with the usual dial type control so is the dimmer you can scroll it or you can quick press it to move in 20% increments of brightness that's handy uh you will want to long press the set dial to go back when navigating menus so you can't scroll from a submenu back to the master menu got a long press fine not as intuitive as the amaran to me uh but it's also no harder to do once you get a hang of it that's just an ecosystem difference I footage recommends that you set this up on their round base monopod which is not quite as immovable as a c stand in terms of stability uh it does have a wide round metal base and I would still sandbag that just to be safe and set it only on hard flat even surfaces so you don't get any chance of tipping it over it is not as good in terms of overall durability as a c stand though it's still better than budget light stand so if you're looking to upgrade that's great I would still go with C stands especially if you're going to be using bigger modifiers because then you have that time tested assurance that it will not tip over still use your sandbags though I honestly found it too easy to accidentally unlock the height adjusters when grabbing this stand by the stock and moving it around uh it's probably best than for more permanent in studio use so if you're going to set it down somewhere and you're going to keep it there uh the height adjustment that's quick unlock though is pretty handy again I would not take this on location the good thing about this sand is that it does indeed save space as the website points out uh the base is flat instead of raised so it's less of a trip Hazard and and you can walk right over it without having to skirt all these Turtle based sea stands another cool thing about this stand is that it can also be used for things other than lights up to 20 lbs so you can put cameras recorders it's got that standard size screw mount underneath the pin adapter also useful it's clearly been well thought out for thorough and diverse in studio use the stand is actually interesting to me uh yes we have SE stands in our studio and that's what we mainly use I I think where the round based stand from I footage fits in is um if you're trying to put a light or some other something like behind a desk where you don't have a lot of space C stands do not fit well there like if you've got those the three legs um it's sometimes really really hard to fit them behind a desk this could fit in those circumstances or any other sort of space constrained kind of area you're trying to go in so it's actually a pretty interesting stand yeah I would agree it sits between a c stand in terms of like durability and ruggedness between a SE and one of those very light travel stands those folding travel stands for lights um so somewhere in the middle between those two but really good at fitting in tight spaces now there is a companion app comparable to cus link which is called Lumen Plus for this ecosystem of lights and in that app you can control the brightness color temp as well as user presets you can save those as well you can do syncing to music and and multi-lamp control it connects via Bluetooth of course as usual and you do have to do a Bluetooth reset on the light before you pair it with your device for the first time easy it's in the menus you can also make further adjustments Beyond what's on the light itself to the built-in effects Suite using the app that's handy how does Lumen plus compare to cus link well you have to make an account I know some people don't like that it doesn't particularly bother me although yes you should be able to use the app without putting your information in uh it's a fine app it doesn't seem buggy clunky Etc it's easy to connect to the light and it's easy to use it's intuitive uh it's all in one place everything you need is right there it's great some apps you get and you're you think to yourself gee this looks like it's from the '90s I know there weren't apps in the '90s however some of them make you think that this one's pretty Sleek it's not like it's not exactly like cyto slink but it's not horrible either the one thing about it that was horrible is the music syncing which is a bummer cuz I was looking forward to showing you that uh but it that is just not a fully-fledged feature yet it requires microphone access on the device you're using so it's taking microphone input on your chintzy phone or iPad or tablet speakers and using that as the input data uh and it doesn't interpret any average musical elements very well at all it just ends up being a sickening Mash of frenzy flashing which also looks really weird with just CCT available to you it could it has potential for I think an RGB light it doesn't work on this one so that is not roller disco approved sorry just stay away from the music sync so if this is sounding like a good deal to you you can get it for 369 USD at the time of this review and compare that of course to the price for the 200 XS which goes right now for $349 so this and all of these features are $20 more than the amaran your choice uh you can register your light with eye footage to get three-year Hardware coverage and oneyear electronic warranty coverage if you bought it direct from their website this is an important detail if you bought it from a third party site you will only qualify for one year of coverage in each of those areas so if you want the longer coverage make sure you buy it direct from I footage all right and after all that my take well it's a fine light and it's honestly color accurate enough that it could probably be truly useful in a variety of roles including as a key light like we're doing here and you could probably color match with it if you need to do that I will say that the ey footage ecosystem seems to be optimized for creators working in studios rather than professionals toing around a lighting kit on location I'm not sure I would trust this to hold up super well in the field over a long period of time and heavy use on set on the other hand in my experience aperture and amaran fixtures are of just higher quality enough to make them able to do both and that's what gives me probably my aperture and amaran bias I don't agree I don't think well the amaran I think are also something that I wouldn't trust to take on location every day too I'm not sure how well well they'd hold up I haven't done that with them because of course we have the aperture lights which are definitely built for that kind of situation but I yeah I'm not convinced that amaran are really daily location use lights either so in the end I view this as a a competitor to the 200 XS it's $2 more if you want to spend $20 more on a comfortable light just to diversify or to meet your needs better in the details of the features of these two lights great consider it personally I would buy the amaran but hopefully this video has given you a proper overview of both of them I know I'm biased toward apature and amaran don't take my opinion as as the ideal use the information that I've presented to you to make a decision for yourself now we will hear remotely from kuu uh on his opinion after all that funny commentary throughout okay so um this light is interesting kudos to I footage 4 producing something with better color quality than 99% of the other LED lights in the same price range out there great job on that I think it is a tough sell to go up against amarran who has a pretty good ecosystem already especially a really solid app that's going to be a tough sell for a lot of people I would not consider this or the amaran line honestly the amaran CB lights like the 200 XS to be the type of thing that you would take on location day after day after day I just don't think either the eye footage or the amand would hold up well to that so I see that the same I think one advantage potentially for the eye footage is that those low like the quiet and ultra quiet modes on the fan you don't get that control on the amaran 200 Xs and if you're doing kind of sound sensitive type things with the light in quite close that could be a useful feature again assuming that it doesn't shorten the life of your LED too much or do you know wild unpredictable things with a fan like suddenly it kicks in once it hits a certain temperature it has to turn itself on or if it doesn't limit the light output in any way so those are kind of dangerous things as far as longevity is concerned when you come to those lights but overall I'd say good light I'd probably be with you Emma I'd probably choose the Aman unless I was doing something really sound sensitive where I need to have the light in really really close all the time that's where the eye footage might have an [Music] advantage