Aputure has unveiled the new NOVA II, the company’s first panel light to utilize the BLAIR-CG light engine.
After launching the STORM 80c and STORM 1000c with the BLAIR-CG light engine, users have been asking Aputure for a panel light that utilizes the same technology.
According to Aputure, the NOVA II will have the highest output of any panel light in its class.
BLAIR-CG Light Engine
The new BLAIR Light Engines are a direct result of Aputure acquiring Prolycht last year. With both Aputure and Prolycht engineers now working together for the same company, they have been able to come up with something that is quite unique. Aputure claims that the new BLAIR-CG light engine is the best tunable color light ever produced in an LED, delivering the greatest range and highest color accuracy. It can reach 90% of Rec2020 colorspace, achieving saturated colors in shades otherwise unobtainable, such as accurate yellow.
Like the BLAIR light engine found in the STORM tunable white lights, the BLAIR-CG includes a calibrated indigo emitter, which emulates the near-UV light of real daylight and tungsten. This activates the natural fluorescence of various fabrics, plant life, and other materials, thereby replicating the effect of natural light. White fabrics can appear whiter, colors more vibrant and all surfaces in general will appear the same as they do under natural light.
The BLAIR Light Engine in the STORM 1200x and 400x utilizes blue, lime, amber, indigo, and red, LED emitters. With the upcoming NOVA II, STORM 80c, and STORM 1000c, Aputure added additional cyan and green emitters. This is quite different from RGBWW or RGBACL. Lights that utilize RGBACL don’t use any white LEDs, instead, they mix all of those different color LEDs to produce white light, and that’s essentially what BLAIR is doing too.
The light engine was designed to deliver a better quality white light to fill out the color spectrum while offering greater adjustability. The calibrated Indigo is said to enhance fluorescing materials, resulting in a higher quality white light that better matches natural daylight and black body sources such as tungsten quartz.
Adding Indigo is very interesting because the light it emits is right at the edge of our visible spectrum, and that is why engineers probably haven’t thought about doing it before; that was until now. But why Indigo? Well, not all objects or surfaces reflect light; some of them absorb it. What Aputure engineers found is that by adding an Indigo emitter, certain materials and objects retained their natural brightness and color. In practice, this actually makes quite a noticeable difference. In some of the examples I have seen, you can certainly see its benefits. The benefits will be more noticeable when using the light at daylight CCT setting as opposed to tungsten.
The human eye is only really capable of detecting wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers, and most LED lights don’t contain any information below around 420 nanometers. The BLAIR light engine adds information right out to 380 nanometers.
Utilizing color control functions such as HSIC+, xy coordinates, and a gel equivalency mode, BLAIR-CG is claimed to be capable of matching gelled incandescent lights, target hues, and heavily saturated objects and dyes.
Aputure decided to call it BLAIR because they wanted to avoid the alphabet soup confusion of other RGB variants. Regardless of whether you like the name or not, it is easier to remember.
The human eye is only really capable of detecting wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers, and most LED lights don’t contain any information below around 420 nanometers. The BLAIR light engine adds information right out to 380 nanometers.
How did they arrive at BLAIR?
Instead of just making incremental improvements, Aputure got to the point where they asked themselves, What are we trying to do, and what are the problems we are trying to solve. They wanted to come up with a better mousetrap and not just build another existing one. This led them to look at different ways of coming up with an alternative solution to what was already available. Aputure received a lot of feedback from Art Directors, make-up artists, etc., that things just never seemed to look quite right when trying to replicate daylight sources.
With LED lights, replicating tungsten has always been a lot easier than replicating daylight. A lot of LED lights, when used at daylight CCT settings, never quite look right. The color of skin tones, fabrics, etc., can look slightly off. This led Aputure to re-examine the spectrum to see what was missing.
What Aputure found is that there was a discord between measuring colors with a meter and seeing what actually happened when it came to light being reflected and absorbed by colors. Certain surfaces reflect light, and others absorb it, and then there is another group that reflects back light that is different from what is hitting it. This can lead to differences in color and brightness. This discovery led to what Aputure believes was the key ingredient that was missing in the color engine, Indigo.
Probably the best way to describe it is that if you were to shine an incandescent UV light at an object, you can see how bright that reflected light is compared to the light being emitted from the source.
If an LED light doesn’t have a certain frequency that is contained in UV light, it won’t look the same. This is why so many LED lights struggle to replicate daylight sources because, up to now, those frequencies weren’t being generated by the light engine. Why engineers didn’t see this in the past is because they believed that these frequencies weren’t visible to the human eye, but what they were overlooking was that the reflected light from these frequencies was visible.
Now, some other companies have been using an extra blue emitter in their light engines to help replicate better daylight sources, and while that may sound similar to what Aputure is doing, it isn’t exactly the same. Companies like Maxima are using technology to add more information toward the edges of the spectrum, but it’s not the same as what Aputure is now doing.
The above image from Aputure compares their light to a traditional RGBW fixture.
No further information
Now, at this stage, there is further information about the NOVA II. We don’t know whether it will be available in two different sizes like its predecessor, or what the power draw is.
The original Aputure Nova P300c was announced way back in 2018 at IBC, and it didn’t actually come to market till 2020. In September 2021, they announced the larger P600c.
Aputure will show the NOVA II at BIRTV in Beijing from July 23 to 26, and more info will come at IBC in Amsterdam from September 9 to 12.
