I bet you've heard of aputure lights or maybe even used this one but there are so many companies
putting out similar pocket led lights and the question is does this mc still light up the
competition today we're going to be comparing the brand new falcon eyes pockelite f7 mark ii
rgbw led light that's a mouthful against the super popular aputure mc rgb light
i'm going to go over all the good things and the unmet potential let's dive in
now off the top i bet you're asking why am i comparing these two specific lights
one's a 12 watt light with over 1200 lux and the other one's a 5 watt light with about 400
lux at the same distance a half a meter and what about the Falconeyes f7 mini isn't that
supposed to be the competitor to this aputure mc well to be transparent falconeyes provided me
with the f7 mark ii this one right here free of charge to test out and i've heard great
things about falcon eyes lights so let's figure out together if it's worth adding to your kit
and also so you know neither falcon eyes or aputure is paying me anything to make
this video so my thoughts and opinions are strictly my own and there's time stamps in
the description so you can jump to just the section that you're curious about
first and foremost the falcon eyes f7 mark ii smoked the aputure mc in my test for battery
runtime the f72 is giving me just over three and a half hours of full power at 5600 kelvin
whereas the aputure mc pretty much cuts off consistently right around the two hour mark
also running full power at the same color temperature this f7 runtime is actually an
hour longer than they post in their specs list so i thought it was worth noting
nice job Falcon Eyes the pockelite f7 2 is also obviously it's a larger light it has a 3
000 milliamp hour battery compared to the 2600 milliamp hour battery that's in the mc
which clearly helps it last longer when it's running off its built-in battery
they both use a usb-c type cable to charge and you can actually use that cable to keep
the charge and the power going during a shoot that lasts longer than a couple hours which is pretty
nice the main difference here is that the falcon eyes uses quick charge technology and the mc uses
power delivery they're both great um and they can help you charge up quickly so it's nice to know
that neither company slacked there the other big difference is that with charging the aputure mc
lets you wirelessly charge so if you have any uh wireless qi charger that you maybe already
have for your phone you can use that and that also comes in really big and handy when you have a case
of them they have a case that you can purchase as well if you get like four of them together and you
don't want to deal with all the cables and you're lighting up several accents across a whole set
the falconeyes f7 mark ii does not support wireless charging and you probably already realize
this now but both of these compact portable uh lights they're fully rgb so one thing you can do
is create color contrast easily in the hsi mode of each light by setting the hue to opposite ends of
the color wheel what you do it's really simple you just picked one color that you like on one of them
and then you subtract 180 180 degrees you turn that dial you set that in on the other light
and you're set with a perfect complementary color combo that should help make your scene pop this is
where you see so many movies with teal and orange you know there's orange from like the actor's face
and it just pops away from you know the the complimentary teal color that's in the background
and the rest of the scene this can be done with warm and cool gels and and color grading uh but
now you can actually use the hsi modes that are in these to mimic the look of hollywood or maybe even
better it the output power coming out of these lights is another big difference on paper although
maybe it's not such a big deal in real life when it's used like as an accent or a background light
the falcon eyes f7 mark ii uh it measures 1200 to 1600 lux at half a meter and the aputure mc
uh it's 400 for the same distance so one third to one quarter the amount of light
what's interesting though is that unless you're really wanting to use this
as a key light i don't think there's a huge difference and it's a huge deal the mc can
light up a background corner in most situations just fine even though it's smaller with less power
speaking of how small the mc is i find that to be one of its biggest strengths
the aputure mc is about the size of a nolan ryan baseball card check that out and it only weighs
130 grams it's super light versus the falcon eyes f7 2 which you can see here is about two nolan
ryan baseball cards um and but the bigger thing here is that the weight of the falconeyes f72 is
298 grams it's it's not exactly lightweight in fact it compared to this mc it's practically heavy
it's it's like a full fat full calorie model um and but that makes sense because we know that
it has a bigger battery and more led diodes i just don't know why they call it pocket light
the build quality of both lights is really really great and i'm a stickler to avoiding
crappy feeling film equipment they're both super duper solid um the falcon eyes light is all metal
which is maybe why it's a bit heavier also and the aputure mc has some high quality plastics mixed in
with some metal where it's important like the the quarter 20 that's down there the mounting spigot
both lights have a single quarter 20 at the bottom to rig it up and they also have magnets so if you
have any bright ideas you can rig this up to any sort of flat metal that you have laying around
like if you have like a an a clamp from home depot these can always come in handy stick it on like
that and then clamp this to whatever you want um although i don't always see a need for having the
magnets it's nice to know that they're there if you want to compare which light winds here it's
definitely the aputure mc because the mc uh is so lightweight that it doesn't need much strength to
hold it but it and then also has magnets on both sides both left and right have magnets
whereas the falcon eyes f7 mark ii it only has magnetic magnets how do you say magnet
five times fast on this one side so it's i maybe wouldn't trust this in quite as many situations
and locations another thing both lights share in common is a screen to make almost any change
you need to right there on the device itself the aperture mc has an oled screen versus the older
style led screen that's on the f7 mark ii but both serve the function they're designed to do
just as well the falcon eyes uses a dial a squishy button and a a power selector that changes the
modes whereas the mc just has one dial and a power switch so a few less parts there on the aputure mc
now the on-screen controls are a little confusing and maybe you want to adjust the light from behind
the camera monitor which is actually a great way to do it that way you can see the amount or the
effect that that light's having on your scene each company has actually made their own bluetooth app
mobile app that's going to control the lights and that's something brand new to the mark
ii version of the f7 here from falcon eyes both the apps work over a bluetooth connection and
allow you to control multiples of their brand of light in the single app so this is freaking cool
that way you could have multiples of the same brand in different areas and just control it
with a single press of a button and the challenge actually comes in when you start mixing the brands
up like a falcon eyes and an aputure then you have to use multiple apps the falcon eyes app
is called the DeSal Lite and it pairs very simply with each light having its own id code
and the aputure mobile app is called Sidus Link which offers a couple advantages not found on
the falcon eyes desal lite app by the way what i think it's odd they call it DeSal lite as in
like it's some sort of free or lesser sort of app it's actually their full-blown app it's just
it's a little confusing as well anyways the the big advantage with the Sidus link app
from aputure is you can see a battery percentage number it tells you how much battery is left on
your light and it also lets you mesh together multiple lights on a set that's quite large
but that first one though seeing the battery percentage when you're away from your light
it's huge it can let you know if you can get that one more take before losing power i would love to
see them add that to the desal light app although maybe since this one has a bigger longer lasting
battery it's less of a concern but i thought i'd point it out if you're interested in learning
more about how all the mobile app functions work in either app leave a comment and i might make a
video that dives deep into the iphone apps and if you're new to this channel i just want to
say welcome i'm chadwick this is creative video tips which is all about helping you create videos
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light modes the most important part of any light is the cct or correlated color temperature mode
and this is the one thing that the newer model the mark ii of the falconeyes f7 improved on
they added control for the green magenta shift this will help you match other lights and has a
very impressive kelvin range from 2500 kelvin up to 9000 degrees kelvin whereas the aputure mc over
here it only goes from 3200 kelvin to 6500 kelvin and it does not feature the green magenta shift
but in its defense it can actually you can match stuff using the Sidus link app using a mode called
source match but again you've got to use the iphone app or the mobile app the falcon eyes here
can increment the kelvin degrees in 50 degrees at a time on the device whereas the aputure mc does
100 degree increments but again if you use the iphone app or the mobile app you can fine tune
this further the rest of the modes besides cct are really all party tricks but isn't that why you're
looking at an rgb light to begin with we have hsi modes on both of these which is going to allow
you to define like a very specific hue saturation intensity there's an rgb mode which gives you like
an 8-bit 0-255 range for color both lights can pull colors from real life using a color picker
that uses your phone's camera to match this can be useful to color uh like the product you can
grab the color of a product and use that as the background light super cool kind of creative
um the falconeyes f7 mark ii has gel modes to mimic popular gels from rosco and lee which is new
to the mark ii model whereas the aputure also has gel modes they're just not branded specific like
roscoe or Lee and again they the gel modes here on the aperture have to be accessed from within the
app you can do that on the device here with the f7 both lights feature what have become kind of
standard special effects sliding tricks maybe that makes them a little bit less special like it's
like if every kid gets a trophy they're really special um the falcon eyes f7 2 has 20 of them
i'll list them out right here on the screen the this is one thing that they did improve
from the mark one model is you can control the speed and intensity of some of these
um but maybe they should consolidate i don't know i guess options are good and the aperture
mc everywhere it has nine scene effect modes uh which essentially give you similar results
so what do you get with these pocketable rgb lights pretty much all the stuff you'd expect
except for a adapter brick to charge into the wall it seems like apple has inspired other companies
to cheap out here and give you only a cable so with the f7 mark ii you will get the f7 2 light
a rubber diffuser which is super important to blend together the individual
diodes that can cause dozens of tiny shadows without it i pretty much always use this
a grid which is great to focus the light and it kind of minimizes the spill and
it gives you more direction with the light i love that
a friction arm cold shoe to quarter 20 adapter USB-C cable and canvas bag so quite a bit there
in contrast the aputure mc comes with a diffuser which again you want to use that
to minimize those diode shadows a usbc cable a little canvas bag and then some of these sticky
velcro attachments uh mounts so no grid and that's that's kind of it there with the aputure mc
which light wins they both have some great strengths and i think if i was looking for
something that could be used more as like a key light kind of like this in a pinch um or i needed
the longer battery life i'd go with the falcon eyes f7 mark ii for sure but if i only needed
accent lights or background or hair lights and edge and fill for close-ups the aputure would and
has worked great for that for me either way you probably can't go wrong but the biggest advice i
probably can give you is to go with one single brand and then go all in with them and if you
did go with falcon eyes uh they also have an f7 mini which is pretty similar to the aputure mc
but it costs less it's kind of like investing in lenses for a camera system the reason i
suggest going with one brand uh is because of the bluetooth app controls you have by controlling all
of your lights in one single app on set and then looking at the results through the camera monitor
that's freaking magic once you start needing to open one app and then close it and then open
another app that can get really frustrating really quickly and me personally i'm gonna continue using
both of these lights along with the uh my big brother right here this is actually another
brand and i'll do as i say not as i do uh this is the godox sl150 mark ii and that's just because
i'm frugal they all work and i just i personally wouldn't recommend mixing brands if you can avoid
it because of the app thing so falcon eyes thank you so much for sending this out for
us to take a look at and test out today clearly the pockelite f7 mark ii is a great option for
a portable rgb light if this video helped you out in any way please click the like button right now
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