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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a review of some of the lights that I use on a regular basis like I am right now to light my set, my house really, but to provide lighting for the various not only videos that I use, but a lot of times I use fixed lights even when doing actual photography, portrait sessions
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and the versatility of lights these days is really, really incredible. Now, I've brought you reviews of some really high-end lights that I'm very, very fond of
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But today I want to present to you the lights that I think, if you're working on a tighter budget
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should be at the top of your list of lights to consider, particularly if you need more than just one light
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you need to have multiple lights as a part of your solution. I'm here today to talk to you about the Generee Crux
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and these are 10-inch, bi-color, LED lights. And so in just a moment, I'll take you on a closer examination of these lights and
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show you just what I'm talking about. But to give you some of a basic idea of what we've got
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we have got, as I noted, bicolor lights, which you can step anywhere between 3,000 and 5600 Kelvin
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So 3,000 is fairly warm. Light source. And then, of course, 5600 Kelvin is right up into
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daylight, a cooler light, and thus you have a lot of options in between. Just to let you know at the
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moment. I've got a couple of these that are lighting me and I have them running at 5,000 Kelvin
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which is the most common choice that I personally make for lighting what I do. These are made up
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these panels are made up of 120 LEDs, although you can't see the individual LEDs because they are
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behind a built-in diffuser panel. And just to give you an idea of how much light that's putting out
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They put out 2,460 Lux at a fairly close distance of under 2 feet, 1.6 feet
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But there's also a high degree of accuracy, a CRI of 95
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And of course, what makes these really useful for video work in particular is the fact that they are completely flicker-free
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In fact, flicker-free even if you are in the process of dimming them
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And so they have a really consistent light output that actually works really well for filming for that
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that reason. They are 28 watt lights and so that puts out the equivalent of around 250 watts of equivalent tungsten lighting
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And so as a result of that they are they put out a great quantity of light but also they put out a great quality of light You have this big round panel that is not too directed too harsh but the spread pattern is nice for what I do
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They run very cool. They generate very, very little heat, and you have a couple of different options for powering them
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You can either run them off AC power, which adapter is included for that
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But then you can also run them off of, you know, very common Sony battery types, and that's what we're
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but I typically do, and that of course makes them useful even for shooting outdoors. What I like above all else is the fact that they are, they're really compact
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When I first started out doing things like this, I had big lights and big soft boxes
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because that's the way that you got the light. This is before even, it was popular even to have, you know, the massive spiral CFL bulbs
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that would later come you put in these. Some of these initially were just, you know, big halogen lights that were in soft boxes
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for continuous light sources. And then, of course, we begin to move to maybe multiple LEDs
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in terms of traditional bulbs. But now these panels are really compact
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You don't need a big diffuser on them because they have a built-in diffuser panel
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Anyway, let's jump in and let's take a closer look before I wrap things up. Okay, so as you can see, we've got a nice clean construction
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an aluminum frame around here. This shows you the kind of the built-in diffuser panel
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which you can see from the side. There's nothing that sticks out here, so it's nice and flush, just to give you a quick look at light coming off that when it's turned on
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I won't blind you anymore. But what I do like about this, I've used larger panels than this
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which of course can be useful if you want a higher volume of light. The downside sometimes is the fact that because there's more weight associated with it
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it means that you need multiple tensions to angle the light. And in this case, the one-handed operation, I find to be just easier to use
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a little bit more user friendly. What it comes with is the yoke, I believe this is a 3-8 inch
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and so you can mount it on the top of any traditional light stand. You do need to provide a light
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stand, however, it is not included, and then you can tighten it down, and thus it's pretty easy
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to position the light wherever you want. Flipping around to the back, let me give you a look from the
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side, actually, from the side, you can see this is a really slim unit, and in fact when the battery
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is out, it takes up very, very little room at all. So it's part of what I really like about it
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Looking at from the back, you have a choice to come in with a DC. And so you can switch the power
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over here if you powering from DC And then of course you can run that for an unlimited period On the other side you can switch into the battery mode of power So what you got in terms of you have a readout here which is touch sensitive and so what you can do is you can
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use this to go up and down in terms of changing color a temperature of the light anywhere between as noted 3,000 to 5600 Kelvin and then you've got up and down for the amount of light that you're outputting and so and if you have it in you know in this case what I'll do is I'll just
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just I'll turn off the wireless for a moment. So I'm controlling this independently because I'm currently lighting it with another one of these
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And so you can step it all the way up anywhere between 100% and then in terms of the light output
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as little as down to, I mean, here we're at, you know, 10%
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And as you can see, if I step it back up, you can ramp it all the way back up to 100%
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And so, and you can see that we're doing that without flicker along the way
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Same applies to temperature. Then, of course, there is a wireless component that is built into this
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And so if you happen to be on the same channel as another light, you can see my light just went down
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because that's on the same channel as the light I was using currently
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And so I'm now controlling my light that I'm using to light this video with another way
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You can, of course, choose to go to different channels. You can set them up in groups or you can turn that off altogether
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you do have a battery read out there as well. Finally, I take a look at the actual battery. It comes with the adapter plate, and it does come with one NPF750F. This is a 4600 MAH battery pack, and so it's enough battery to go for roughly about an hour and a half to two hours before it runs dead. And so one of those is included in the kit. So you get basically everything you need outside of the light stand that is including
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included with the kit. Everything goes inside of this nice nylon carry case
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As you can see, the overall dimensions are fairly compact from this
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It gives you some nice tough protection value. Inside, there is room to lay your light in
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And then underneath here, there is custom molded areas. You've got space for a battery charger, place for you to put your battery
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This is the actual power cable for the battery. And then there's also options here for the AC if you want to run that from inside of there
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All in all it fits down into this very compactly And so it gives you an easy way to carry this And of course because it lightweight and it compact it wouldn be difficult to even carry multiple of these if you so desired
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But I think the bottom line when it comes down to it is the price itself of these units
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Obviously, you're getting the light unit itself. You're getting battery. You're getting a storage case for it
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You know, you're getting the ability to AC power it so you can run them indefinitely
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And there's no real need, as I noted, because, of the way the diffuser panel is designed, there's no real need for any kind of additional
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accessories to go with it. And so right now you can get this light for around $200 at BNH photo
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And so that means that if you're wanting to do a multi-light array, you know, you could buy two
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you know, three lights and you know and end up still having a relatively low cost
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And I think the other advantage here for those of you that say are, you know, maybe wanting to
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run a YouTube channel or, you know, do something to where, you know, you're not having a permanent
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studio space that's set up, but you're just wanting to store. I mean, the fact that this has such
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a small footprint, I think is also a really, really, you know, important aspect of the overall
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design. And so at the end of the day, I think that the versatility adds a whole lot to them. I mean
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I think that if you, you know, invested in a number of them, if you're doing, for example
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filmmaking. I mean, they're easy to position in different places and, you know, they're relatively
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light, so you might be able to even position them out on booms or something. And, you know
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so at the end of the day, you could be running quite a number of these in lighting a small set
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and, you know, have some, you know, ability to control your color temperature. And, you know
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what they don't have that some of my higher end lights have is they don't have things like
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you know, effects on them. They don't have, you know, the ability to run them off of an app or, you know
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some of those other connected type things. But if your purpose is just getting good light
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in a versatile package, I think that these Genere Crux are certainly a very tempting option
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If you look in the description down below, I do have linkage to where you can go
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and you can purchase them for yourself. And there's also my typical link
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It's there to follow me on social media, including now on Instagram. You can become a patron and get sneak previews
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you know, advanced screening of upcoming content. And then, of course, If you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube
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Thanks for watching. Have a great day
