In case you guys were worried that this set
wasn't purple enough already, I found an affordable option
to make it even more purple.
Or whatever colour you want, for that matter.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and today we're looking at an RGB light
from Great Video Maker,
the GVM-50RS RGB LED light panel.
Now, I have mostly good things to say about it, but there
are a few notable cons that we'll need to cover as well.
So, let's start off with one of the things that I really liked,
which is the overall package and included accessories.
So, you've got the light panel itself,
which is well constructed and made of aluminum,
and I personally think it looks great, and it's mounted
on this quality yoke system that allows you to mount
the light both vertically and horizontally.
Which allows you more clearance
for the barn doors when you're tilting.
Because that's an awesome included accessory
that you get-- barn doors-- but we'll talk more
about those in a second.
You also get two diffusion panels:
the primary one, which doubles as a protective
layer for the diodes, and then a second larger one
that is set off a few inches from the panel
that you mount with these included brackets
if you want a bit of a softer look.
Personally, while I like that it was included,
I can't really see myself using that second diffusion panel
too much, because it doesn't really provide
that much of a softer look, and it can't be used at the same
time as the barn doors-- they're not really
compatible together-- and I think that the barn doors
are probably a bit more useful in the long run
than that second diffusion panel will be.
But on the topic of diffusion, while I do think that this yoke
is great and allows you to mount it in different positions,
I should mention that there's no umbrella holder
so any kind of extra diffusion options
that you will want to use outside of that second panel
are going to have to be some kind of DIY job,
because there's no conventional mounts for it.
Although there are quite a few threaded holes
along the sides, top and bottom of the panel, so it might
be a little bit easier to make some kind of DIY diffusion
for this light, if you so choose to.
Now, I did have a couple issues with the barn doors.
First, getting them on was a bit of a painful hassle.
So, they're mounted using these four hangers like the one
you can see here, and when you start, they're really stiff.
But you have to line them up with these holes, and they don't
really wanna move, and then when they finally do get moving,
your hand slips, and you end up punching
this relatively sharp metal over here.
So, I definitely recommend working them in a few times
before trying to slide them into position.
And then once you do have them in position it's kind of finicky
because they're attached using these thumb screws.
It's not a big deal, and once they're on
I do feel like it's relatively secure,
but I do think that that's an area that probably
could have used a bit more refinement.
Now, the barn doors themselves are quite satisfactory,
and they do add a nice value boost to the overall package.
But there is a noticeable amount of light bleed that comes
through the seams here, and because the doors themselves
aren't felted, they do reflect a little bit of light,
which tends to undermine their intention a little.
Now, lastly, because this is a wide-beam angle panel
and not a spotty COB or Fresnel, the barn doors aren't going
to let you create any funky shapes of light
or, you know, lines of light to get that Morticia Addams look.
It'll always be sort of a glowy orb of light regardless
of the position of the barn doors, so, for this panel,
they're really just for controlling spill.
The panel supports two Sony NP-F batteries,
which are not included, but it does come with
a DC power supply, which is in two segments.
Now, I have two complaints about the power supply.
The first is: I wish that the panel segment was longer.
I think that all these lights should have
this segment be at least as long as the panel
when it's fully extended on a light stand.
The brick should be able to rest comfortably on the floor.
But this one's only about just under four feet,
so even at this height with it this low when I'm sitting,
it still barely touches the ground and it's just kind of
dangling there, and this can't be great for the connector.
But, to give credit, I will say that this connector
is quite robust, and they thought ahead
to put it on a right angle, so that helps
with the whole it dangling down thing.
But I do think that this should be better, and I do wish
that it was longer. And the second complaint
that I have is that the second segment,
the one that plugs into the wall, was wound up,
and then folded in half, and then jammed into the box.
And this created a really kinked cable that makes it so you can't
really use it at its full length, 'cause it's too kinky.
And it also put really strong bends at the joints,
and even bent one of the plugs in a little bit,
so I had to use a pair of pliers
to straighten it out just to plug it into the wall.
I believe the purpose of this was to create a pleasing
symmetrical package that's nicely laid out,
and I think they succeeded in this wonderfully.
In fact, this was probably one of the coolest
looking light packages that I've ever opened.
But I don't really like the sacrifices
put on the power cord in order to achieve that look.
I also have one irrelevant but comical point
about the packaging: I've never opened so many boxes
in my life before in order to set up a light panel--
or any other product, for that matter.
And I'm not just talking about the six
individual component boxes within the case.
The case, by the way, is really great.
It's a nicely textured, soft briefcase-style carrier
with sturdy reinforcement panels.
Everything fits beautifully inside and it's very intuitive.
Highly approve of this case.
But the case makes for a seventh box to open,
and before I even got to that case,
I had to open the Amazon box that it was shipped in,
which contained a smaller cardboard box with GVM branding
on it inside of it, which then contained
an even smaller GVM box inside of that one.
I honestly thought I was getting pranked
when I was unboxing this.
It's like those Russian nesting dolls.
So, collectively, I had to open ten boxes
to assemble this light panel. A new record for the channel.
Anyway, so let's rewind a little bit
and get back to the power options.
So, on battery power it will last about four to six hours
on two of the biggest Sony batteries, the 970s.
Your battery life will depend on
the brightness and colour temperature.
It's bi-colour from 2000K to 5600,
and it's brightest around 4400K,
and that's where you'll get that four-hour limit,
but it will get longer from there.
The power systems are independent,
and they're selected with this power switch,
which means that you're not able to charge
batteries over the DC power. They're separate.
The aluminum chassis allows for effective passive cooling,
so it never really gets too hot and it's always silent.
It's well built and rugged and features a quality LCD display.
There's a wireless mode for master and slave
and then you can also set it to neither
if you're just running a solo light.
Now, on master mode you can only mirror the settings,
you can't, like, independently tweak multiple lights.
So, if you wanna have different lights with different settings,
you're gonna have to go set them individually on each panel.
But if you're okay with having all the lights
do the same thing, then you can use the back
of one panel, just make them all do what this panel is doing.
Now, there's two knobs. One of them is for brightness,
and it's smooth and tactile and responsive,
but it doesn't actually coincide with the guide that's on it.
There's a min-max guide but the knob itself
spins forever. It doesn't stop at max.
But you're probably gonna wanna use the LCD display anyway,
and it does show you the brightness that you're set to.
Just thought it was kind of a weird quirk that there's
an arrow and a min-max, but it doesn't actually mean anything.
But a bigger issue that I had with the brightness knob
is that the brightness only moves in 5% increments,
and the jump from 0-5% is pretty extreme.
So, I wish that it had 1% increments
from zero all the way to a hundred.
Now, the other knob controls three different attributes.
You've got your colour temperature,
which goes from 2000 to 5600 like I was saying.
And then if you press it in, it switches over to hue,
which allows you to choose the colour for RGB,
and then if you press it again it's a saturation,
which is the intensity of that hue that you just chose.
Then if you press it again it switches back to bi-colour
and ignores your settings for the RGB, which I like.
I like that the modes are independent.
That way I don't have to worry about what my RGB setting was
when I switch back to bi-colour,
and have it affect my colour accuracy,
because the colour accuracy is very different
between the bi-colour mode and the RGB mode.
But one issue that I do have with this light about
the two modes being separate is that when you switch
it off and back on it always goes back to the bi-colour mode.
So, for instance, let's say that you were on an RGB mode
like this, and we'll set it.
And then say that you turn the light off and back on,
it doesn't go back to the RGB mode,
it switches back to the bi-colour.
Now, it remembers whatever setting you were on
for bi-colour and it switches back to that,
and then if you press the button in and you switch back to
RGB, it also remembers your RGB setting, so it's not that big of
a deal, it's just a single push, but I do wish that it remembered
whether you were on RGB or bi-colour when you turned
it off and went back to that when you turned it back on.
Now, back to what I was saying about colour accuracy.
The light claims to have a CRI and TLCI of 97+.
But by my measurements
this only seems to be true when at 5600K.
And it uses a different white light when in bi-colour
versus when in RGB mode, so there's serious colour shift
when you switch modes, even if the saturation is set all
the way down to zero and you're only using the white light.
You're going to notice a big difference between
5600K and the white of RGB.
Now, when you're on 5600K the light performs quite well.
I do find it to be a little bit warmer
than it says, I think it's more around 5300,
but it's not too bad and I would definitely use this setting.
However, and this a big however, as soon as you adjust
it down to the next notch, which is 5500K,
there's a huge shift and I would say it jumps
by about 500 kelvin or so down to around 4800 or 4900.
And it's nowhere near 5500K, and is a noticeable jump
and it's not a smooth transition at all.
Now, my guess as to why this happens is the same thing
I was saying about the power from 0-5%.
Because this-- 5500 is when the orange diodes first turn on.
So, I don't think it has an ability to kind of, like,
add just a little bit of orange. It goes from 0-5%,
and the orange is pretty significant when it kicks in.
So again, if we had, you know, smaller increments,
we'd probably be able to get smoother from here,
but instead we go from daylight to pretty significant
shifting just by moving 100K on the notch.
Now, after that, it's not too bad.
All the way down the rest of the temperatures,
it moves pretty smoothly until you get down to the bottom,
and when you're at 2100 and then you switch to 2000,
again it's a big jump to the serious orange,
because that's when the white diodes turn off.
So again, you're going to see that big jump because that
5% to 0% is a pretty significant switch.
The other issue I have is there's a considerable
amount of magenta in the warmer temperatures.
It definitely doesn't match any kind of tungsten equivalent
that you might be used to. It's a lot more rosy.
So, for me I would probably only use this light
at the 5600K if I was going for accuracy,
and completely ignore the rest of the bi-colour range.
Both because of the jumping colours,
and also because of that extra magenta that I don't really
think mixes well with other lights that you might have.
Now that sounds like a huge con, but several of the other lights
that I use currently are only 5600K daylight,
and I have to use CTOs if I wanna warm them up
right now, so it's not that big of deal for me.
But I would have definitely respected this panel's
performance more if it didn't have those issues.
In fact, interestingly, the light that I'm using right now
to shine on me while I shoot this video is the Aputure 672,
which actually costs more than this panel.
The Aputure goes for around $280 US or $390 CAD,
and this panel is $240 US or $320 CAD.
Now, the Aputure does have some perks-- it can be diffused
easier because it has an umbrella holder,
and it has a great little remote-control system,
and it doesn't have any of the power cable issues
that I was talking about that the GVM has.
Its cord is plenty long to reach the ground
and doesn't dangle weirdly. But then after that, that's it.
It's just a daylight panel. And the GVM is actually
a little bit brighter, which is plenty bright
for a strong key light in a small space like this
and is ample for a fill light in a larger shooting scenario.
We haven't really talked about the RGB that much,
and that's really the whole point of this light.
I think that this light is a pretty strong value
just as a daylight panel. Now sure, there are some
improvements that could be made as we mentioned earlier,
but I think even if that's all it did, I would still recommend
it just because of how great the overall package is.
But when we add RGB into the mix it becomes the best value
RGB light out there currently.
A lot of the other models that I've played with
in a similar spec range start around $900 US
and quickly move into the $1,200 and $1,300 territory.
So, at $240 for RGB, that's a pretty incredible price.
Because if you didn't want RGB,
this probably wouldn't be the panel to buy anyway,
because there's much better value options out there.
For instance, GVM themselves sell a three-panel kit
with stands and everything for a light
similar to this but without RGB for the same price
as one RGB panel, which is a crazy good value
in its own right, but that's a different topic.
Basically, my point is, you can get non-RGB panels
all over the internet for great prices.
But I've never seen a price like this for RGB before.
So how is the RGB? Well, it's great.
Very vibrant and even.
The hue selector uses a 360-degree mode, so it cycles
from red through all the colours and then back to red again.
Similar to what you'd find in Photoshop.
But it's not the type where you set the potency
of the red, the green, and the blue channels independently
like you would find with computer lighting.
Then you mix that hue selection in
with the saturation and the brightness
in order to create the tone that you're going for.
The colour given off is very rich, stronger than what you can
typically create by gelling, and obviously much easier,
and although the barn doors aren't really that great
at shaping the light because of the panel design,
and the diffusion options are rather limited,
those don't really hinder the RGB component of the light.
I find the way it casts the colour to be quite nice.
Especially if you're using it as an accent
or to light the background. But it also has enough intensity
to be quite useful for artistic effects.
And that's really where this panel shines.
So, if you're looking for a light to give you some
adaptable colour options on a larger scale
for creative purposes, as it stands right now,
I don't think there's a better value option available.
But it also has enough intensititdy--
intensinidity--
Could you kick up the, uh, 4d3d3d3--
I find the way it casts the colour
to be quite nice, especially-- eshspecially--
Now that whole sentence is falling apart.
But it also has enough intensitydy-- intensinidity--
I did it again. Damn it. [laughs]
But you're probably gonna wanna use
the LCDD's dis-- [party horn blowing] me.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining,
and if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright. I'm done.