GEAR
LIGHTING SPECIAL
LIGHT-BULB MOMENT
When watching a beautifully lit drama on Netflix or big-money feature film, you often encounter realistic-looking room sets where all the practical lights are perfect in terms of brightness and colour. You may wonder why that doesn’t happen in real life, since it always seems room lights are too bright, not bright enough, or the wrong colour temperature. That’s because the bulbs on many sets aren’t just everyday fixtures, but fully adjustable and tunable, non-flickering LEDs made for filmmaking. They might screw into a household lamp, and can be powered that way, but have internal power of their own, and can illuminate without mains AC on-set. A typical bulb of this kind is the £76/$70 Aputure B7c. A full-spectrum RGBWW LED that screws right into a simple E26/27 household fitting. So you can put this 7W bulb in your bedside lamp or Anglepoise office light, like we did. If it has mains power, run it from that – and it will charge up its internal lithium battery. Or hold in your hand and it will turn on anyway, like some filmmaker’s magic trick! To replicate white light, set it to a colour temperature range of 2000-10,000K. Change settings with the small buttons on the body of the bulb itself. However, for more creative application, go to the free Sidus Link app and select any colour you like. This has the ability to set colour matches with your phone camera, where it can match existing light
sources. Or tweak it to whatever you desire, using RGB settings with hue, saturation and intensity controls. This will remain accurate, as the bulb has a CRI/TLCI rating of 95/96. Without charge, it will last for around 70 minutes on full intensity. But turn the power down and the battery life extends. At full power, it’s roughly equivalent to a 50W household bulb, so plenty bright. As with so many RGBWW LEDs, there are special effects like police car, paparazzi, fireworks, faulty bulb, lightning, TV, party, pulsing and fire. Although you’d probably want to hide these around the set, as a police car bedside light is a bit “At full power, the Aputure is roughly equivalent to a 50W household bulb, so plenty bright”
unusual to say the least. But hiding them on-set is a great idea, as they’re small and easy to conceal. Put them behind furniture or TV sets and create small washes of colour, for example. Just because it looks like a bulb, doesn’t mean it has to be used like one. Think of them as small LEDs that spread light around. Wireless Bluetooth control works up to around 50m/164ft, and lots of the units can be grouped together in the Sidus Link app, to make them all do the same thing at the same time. Alternatively, control each one separately. It’s a flexible, easy way of working that means you don’t have to climb ladders and access fittings to change settings. To charge, you need a standard screw-in light socket. It would have been nice to include some sort of USB-C charging, but I digress. Perhaps the only other niggle is that the light is on the heavy side, weighing in at 240g/0.5lb. In most lamps this is not an issue, but in our Anglepoise it was too cumbersome compared to a standard bulb. We had to tighten the lamp’s adjusters. Of course, for rooms with more than one light fitting, you’d need multiple Aputure B7c LEDs. Buy a set of eight in a custom hard case that acts as a charging unit – for just £717/$799 – and you’ll always be ready to go. aputure.com
HUES OF THE WORLD Blue, orange or any colour you like – the B7c can be set by app. Basic changes are made via buttons on the lamp body
A KIND OF MAGIC Having bulbs that illuminate when not plugged into the mains is always a cool trick
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