PR

The Amaran F7 is the long-awaited upgrade to one of our oldest products—the Amaran 198.

Some quick history, but the Amaran 198 is the first product that put Aputure on the map. Prior to being Aputure, we used to OEM for others—and while we can’t say names, there reached a point that we were making the on-camera lights for many of the biggest camera manufacturers. It was at this point that we decided to come out as our own brand. And it was at this point that we released the Amaran, the first Aputure light.

Part of what’s so fun about having OEM’ed for so many brands is that we’ve already seen and made our Amaran lights for filmmakers all over the world. And in the case of on-camera lights, we’re absolute experts. The beginning of our origin story if you will. And with the Amaran F7, we’re using that expertise to build upon an already famous design to make it even better. We’ve never shown the F7 to the public or even hinted at it. So if you have one right now, it is without a doubt a prototype. And only one of an extremely small limited number that exist.

The Amaran F7 does everything that the Amaran 198 does, but better. With 256 LEDs packed into a slightly longer, but almost identical surface area, the F7 is 3x brighter than the Amaran 198c at 5500k. That said, even though it is significantly brighter, the build of the F7 has been carefully designed and compacted to be only half the size of the 198 in depth. The result is an impossibly thin on-camera LED with more output than ever. But in addition to improving upon the key features of the 198, the F7 is also capable of several features that other fixtures in that the entire Amaran series has only dreamed of:

100% Output AND BiColor. One of the most common dilemmas that filmmakers have have when buying LED is whether they want the bicolor lights or daylight so they can maximize the output of their fixtures. Bi-Color lights generally only have 50% of the output of a similar daylight panel because they alternate every other LED between 3200k and 5600k, but the ability to change color temperature on the fly has proven to be essential for many filmmakers that are used to working in fast-paced environments. The Amaran F7 solves this problem by adjusting the color range of the LEDs from 3200k to a whopping 9500k. This places the middle color temperature at a perfect 5600k, meaning that for the first time ever, filmmakers have a bi-color light that still has a 100% brightness daylight output for when they need that extra kick.

Dim to Zero Percent. LED has opened an entire world of dimmable lighting. In prior days to dim a tungsten light, it required using an external dimmer that literally squeezed the amount of electricity that powered a fixture. While this was effective at lowering the intensity, it also often made the light a nasty red hue because of the way the lighting filament reacted to less power. Fortunately, LEDs have solved that problem by now. But for years, have still been facing an entirely different issue—how do you make a light that can dim to zero without any impact on the color fidelity? Well it’s taken us years, but with the Amaran F7, we’re proud to say that we’ve done it. Now if 10% is too bright, which it often is in low-light shooting scenarios, shooters using the F7 now have the ability to dim anywhere from 0-9% as well.

Aputure Designed Ball - Head Mount. Back in our OEM days, we heard literally every complaint about poor quality stands, mounting brackets or magic arms that were often included with gear purchases. To solve this, it took a significant amount of work, but designed our own ball-head mount. It’s made with an extremely industrial and durable design with a clear goal of making a mounting accessory that we could proudly put our name on.

D-Tap. While both the Amaran F7 and MX can be used as on-camera lights, the F7 is designed specifically to be the ULTIMATE on-camera light in both form factor and function. We spent a ton of time talking to ENG shooters asking them what their needs were for a light. And in addition to the key functions listed above, the biggest request that we got was to add D-Tap as a powering solution. This is due to the nature of ENG shooting where shoulder camera operators almost always have either a V-Mount or Gold-Mount battery powering their camera system. The D-Tap input on the F7 means that this light can be powered from the very same source, simultaneously.

And then there’s everything that we’re fortunate enough to say people already expect from us:

Color Fidelity – The F7 is just like the rest of the Aputure line-up in terms of color quality and a TLCI and CRI of 95+.

Casing Included – Included with the F7 is a tripod style case designed to house the F7 in as small, but safe as a package as possible. We spoke to many ENG shooters who told us that they expected to pack the case of their on-camera LEDs inside of a larger camera backpack so the goal here was to make the case as small as possible for this purpose.

Battery Powerable – Like many of the other Amaran lights, we chose to power the F7 off of Sony NP-F batteries—the most common and standard lightweight battery used in the film industry.

Aputure Support & Customer Service – The Aputure Support Page and User Group are basically where we live these days. In addition to gathering feedback and talking with the Aputure family, we take care of our customers here too. Obviously gear should never fail, but if and when it does, we want to make it clear that everyone can know where to find us.

The Amaran F7 is available March 30th. Pricing is set to $98.

Amaran F7 (Daylight setting), Measurement using CV600, Russian Lab processing

We cover spectrum, color temperature, and all modern color quality standards, including latest 2016 and 2017 years ones.

Never select light based on just CRI number.

Focus on TM30 and CIE 224 and look for color distortion and Rf values.

Amaran F7 is good light with light quality suitable for videos.

Color temperature

Notice how spot on black body curve it is.

CRI color quality

CQS color quality

TLCI 2012

TM30 color quality

TM30 details

All TM30 color samples Rf values

CIE 224 2017

Our interview at NAB 2018