The Aputure MC is a compact RGB light that is USB-C and QI rechargeable. it comes with a silicon diffusion screen, can be attached via a standard tripod thread or with magnets. This portable light packs a punch. In this video, I share my review of the Aputure MC light as well as the Sidus Link app which can be used to adjust the light output.
Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar
This is the Aputure MC, this is the back of the light and you can see two magnets and that the only part of what makes this little light so special.
Hey, this is Scott Wyden. Kivowitz a storyteller with a camera talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about. And in this video, we’re talking about the Aputure MC that is currently blinded me with purple light orange light, yellow, green, blue backed purple. This is the Aputure MC it is a compact, very compact light. That is battery powered. You actually charge it with USB-C. I believe it is water resistant. It’s not waterproof, but I believe it’s water resistant up to a certain point. And it has these two magnets on the back that you can magnet it to certain things which I’ll demonstrate in a second. What’s really nice about this is that because it’s compact, you can really use it anywhere. You can add lights to practically any scene that you have, and this light is bright. I’ll tell you it is bright.
Now this light is special for multiple reasons. One is the magnet back, of course, which I’ve already mentioned now, I think twice, there’s also a, you know, normal thread on here. So you can attach it to a tripod or any type of small thread like that. There’s also a little screen on here where you can actually do the adjustments with the buttons and dials on the side, but you can change the color and the color temperature. So basically you got a light that doesn’t need any gels, and it comes with a nice diffusion silicone thing that just sorta wraps around this compact light. And there you go. Now, the big thing about this light that I haven’t mentioned yet is that it can actually connect to your smartphone through an app. Now, the app it uses is called Situs link or see this link. I don’t know how it’s actually pronounced.
It’s kind of a silly name. And the app is actually kind of clunky. I don’t like the app at all. However, using an app is going to be easier than using the little button and dial on the side and a tiny screen. So to each his own, you got to do what you gotta do. A hopefully Aputure works with whoever developed the app for them to make it more user friendly, because it is super complicated. All they had to do is take a page out of Phillips hues book and make the app super easy to use, or even home kit and make the app super easy to use. But no, they went with their own thing that has a don’t UI and it’s super confusing. This is the only Aputure light that I own. So it’s probably worth noting that this app also works with all of the Aputure lights, not just the MC, but again, they could have made it easier to use even for all of their lights. Now, as I’m trying to demonstrate this for you, the app is actually failing to di to connect to the Bluetooth, even though I’ve been restarting the Bluetooth over and over again. So I can’t demonstrate right now how clunky the app is because, well, it’s not connecting to the light, so I’ll just move on until I can get that to work. This light also has FX modes. So this is the paparazzi mode, fireworks mode fault bulb mode. So this would be good for a horror movie, lightning party mode, pulsing mode, cop car mode,
Fire mode. Here’s what I’m talking about with the magnet. There’s these two magnets in the back, and I can just simply magic trick. The light is now over my head, which means I can in theory, use this as a hair light, an accent light or something like that on a drop ceiling or any metal surface that a magnet can magnetize to. For example, here is a normal alligator clamp that I typically use for backgrounds and the light is literally magnetized to that. Now it’s right now, it’s only connected by the one magnet because these are kind of small, but if you had it connected to two magnets, it would be much stronger and it would hold better. But this is just a to demonstrate that it’ll stay on something like this, which is kind of cool because it means I can actually clamp something to something and then put the light on it.
All right, who called the police? The light also came with this handy dandy little case that fits the light in perfectly here. You can fit in the diffuser in here, it’s got the charging cable and it came with some double sided Velcro. If you’re going to be putting it on something, you know, on and off more regularly, you’ve got a Velcro strip that it came with that you can do. So really nice bag, super nice for transporting this. Even the bag feels well built. I mean, the light feels well built. The only thing I’m not happy with is the app. I just tried to reconnect again after restarting the light and restarting the phone and still is having connection failures the next day. Okay. So I had to completely remove the light from the app. And then REIA the light to the app. This is things that happen sometimes with certain smart products and sadly, the Aputure light is falling into it.
Now this doesn’t bother me for one light, but if I was running my entire studio off of Aputure lights and I to do this all the time for Aputure lights, it would drive me insane. Now I’m assuming that this is just a weird glitch. That is not something that happens all the time to all the Aputure users, because the be a lot, there’d be a lot of people complaining. I mean, a lot of YouTubers using Aputure products, a lot of videographers in general using Aputure products. So there’s that now here I am in the app and you can see I’m in the white mode and I can quickly just bring down the intensity down to 32% and that, by the way, if you pay attention to the light, all right there, that’s where the light is literally magnetized to a C stand. And you’ll see that it’s going up and down.
I can change to a source type to a source match. I literally match the color to, uh, a color on screen. Right? It’s pretty cool. I can also go to CTOs so I can add a CTO gels so I can actually modify the output, the color output using CTO gels. I can switch to daylight or I can go back to tungsten. I can go back and forth. Uh, I can go ahead and just quickly shift the colors around. So now I’m running red and then I’m running pink and then I’m running blue and I’m running some Aqua and some green, and you could do a lot of cool things like that. And again, you can adjust the intensity and fine tune the colors there. There’s also the picker again, and it’s kind of just rotating through everything. Uh, and then there’s system colors. And then of course you can go to the effects and this is where you can do things like, again, control fireworks.
So I can start firework show faulty bulb. So these are all the effects that you saw that I can do right in the product. But the beautiful thing is with the app, you can just write from here, just go ahead and choose what you want to do right now. Of course, I’ve got all these other lights going on, so you’re not going to see that as powerful as you would, if these background lights were off. So let’s it turn off these background lights so you can actually see what is going on behind me even better. So right now I am illuminated by my key light. And the background is completely this Aputure MC if I go back to them, see, you can see, I can shift the colors. And this is how responsive it is. It is super, super responsive, which is a really nice thing.
I can just quickly go ahead and yeah, change the colors. It’s as responsive as the Phillips hue lights, except I have this super portable magnetized water resistant product that I can use anywhere. It is super, super powerful. I wanted to show you how powerful it is. I am going to turn off the key light now and only use the app for MC I got to make sure I set it to 5,500 Kelvin. So my white balance is still good. So before I turn it off, the key light I was using a large led light. That’s actually through a soft box and now I’m using the arbitrary MC. Now the soft box is off to the side up angle down at me. The operator MC is straight on. You’re probably seeing reflections in, in my glasses and stuff, and that’s okay. Now I want to turn the background.
Now, this is how it would be if I was not using, I was doing the same set I normally do, but not using the key light. If I was only using the Aputure EMTs, that you can see how bright this thing is, it is super powerful. This is at a hundred percent intensity. I can bring it down. And now I’m at 62% intensity and still well illuminated. So that’s the Aputure MC yeah, the whole, the whole glitchy app thing and the, just the user interface of the app. Isn’t that great, but this is one heck of a powerful light. The only thing holding it back in my opinion is the app. I feel like if the app user interface was cleaned up, made easier to, easier to use,
This would, this would be even better. I mean, you saw how powerful, distinct could be, how flexible this thing is. I love that it comes with this little, you know, diffusion as well, and it’s silicone. So it’s very durable. I love the slate. I can’t wait to use this even more.
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