Aputure STORM 400x & CF7 Fresnel

Aputure has announced the new STORM 400x and CF7 Fresnel. The STORM 400x features Aputure’s BLAIR light engine, which delivers excellent tunable white light quality with a wide 2500K-10,000K CCT range, as well as a wide CCT and full ASC MITC range with +/- Green adjustment.

The STORM 400x is also capable of outputting saturated colors across more than 70% of the Rec.2020 color space, controllable in Limited HSIC+ and x,y modes. The STORM 400x is also claimed to be very bright, with output matching or exceeding many 500W and 600W-level COB lights.

The STORM 400x also shares the STORM family’s industry-leading build and functionality, including extreme low-end dimming, IP65 rating, professional connectivity, and the ProLock Locking Bowens Mount for securely attaching modifiers with perfect optical alignment.

Aputure’s STORM series started with the high power draw 1200x and then came the 1200c and the small 80c. While these are all very good fixtures, a lot of shooters have been waiting for something in the 300-600W range. I personally feel like the 400x lands right in that sweet spot for a lot of owner/operators. A lot of solo shooters and smaller-sized crews don’t require high-power draw fixtures, and you could certainly make an argument that even 600W lights are overkill. Aputure’s LS 300d, 300x, and 300d II were all very popular fixtures for this exact reason.

BLAIR Light Engine

The BLAIR Light Engine is a direct result of Aputure acquiring Prolycht last year. With both Aputure and Prolycht engineers now working together for the same company, they were able to come up with something that is quite unique. Aputure claims that the light engine is capable of producing the highest quality white light, an ultra-wide CCT range, full +/- Green control, and extreme color-accurate dimming.

The BLAIR Light Engine utilizes blue, lime, amber, indigo, and red LED 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. Instead of having a green emitter, they are utilizing indigo.

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 400x is a full-spectrum white light with excellent CRI and SSI. It is claimed 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.

Hive Lighting has been using 7 LED-chip blending. Instead of the traditional 3 colors, Hive uses red, amber, lime, cyan, green, blue, and sapphire. Companies like ARRI and Kelvin are using RGBACL, while a lot of other lighting companies are using RGBW and RGBWW.

The advantage RGBACL has over RGBWW and RGBCW is that it is capable of giving you a larger CCT range, and it can produce more saturated colors with more output. RGBWW lights tend to struggle to create saturated colors like yellow, and they don’t always have as much output when generating saturated colors. They can also have a large drop-off in output at different CCT settings.

Aputure does have another version of BLAIR called BLAIR CG, which can be found in the STORM C fixtures. Along with the blue, lime, amber, indigo, and red emitters, it also has additional cyan and green emitters.

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 becaus,e 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.

IP65 Weather Protection

The fixture features IP65 dust and weather protection, which means the STORM 400x can work in extreme environments. Seals on every connector and around components allow not only the lamp head but also the control box and cabling to be used outside in the rain.

Design

The Aputure STORM 400x consists of a light head and a separate power supply/controller. Aputure has done a good job of keeping the size of the light head to a minimum.

Having a separate light head allows you to use slightly smaller-sized light stands.

A lot of today’s modern lights are now a seamless blend of hardware and software. With software playing such a big role, lighting companies could continue to improve and update fixtures over time via firmware updates, however, you don’t actually see too many firmware updates getting released for lights. It will be interesting to see if Aputure adds features or extra functionality via firmware in the future.

COB

Quite a few LED lights on the market, including the Aputure STORM 400x, are using COB technology. COB stands for “Chip On Board”, where multiple LED chips are packaged together as one lighting module. The advantage of COB LEDs being multi-chip packaged is that the light-emitting area of a COB LED can contain many times more light sources in the same area that standard LEDs could occupy. This results in a greatly increased lumen output per square inch.

The first caveat with COB LEDs is that they produce a ton of heat, and that heat needs to be effectively dispersed. The second caveat is that you will usually need to diffuse them as they are very bright to look at and can be unsuitable for directly lighting talent. The trouble is, if you use them with diffusion, such as a softbox, you are going to lose a ton of output because that output is coming from a small-sized source. With a lot larger source, say a 2×1 panel, you don’t lose as much output.

Weight & Size

The STORM 400x light head and yoke weigh 3.95kg / 7.99lbs.

The power supply/controller weighs 3.00kg / 6.07lbs.

So, how does that weight compare to some of the competition?

	TOTAL WEIGHT
Aputure STORM 400x	6.95kg / 15.3 lbs (including yoke)
Aputure LS 300x	11.4kg / 25.1 lbs (including yoke)
Nanlite FS-300B	3kg / 6.6 lbs (including yoke)
Nanlite Forza 300B II	5.6kg / 12.4 lbs (including yoke)
Nanlite FC500B	5.4kg / 11.9 lbs (including yoke)
Godox Knowled M300BI	4.5kg / 9.9 lbs (including yoke)
Godox SL300IIIBI	3.59kg / 7.91 lbs (including yoke)

ProLock Bowens-S Mount

The STORM 400x features a positive locking clamp on the Bowens mount. This is a really good mount because a lot of standard Bowens mounts on competing fixtures leave a lot to be desired. The Bowens S-mount was never designed to take large and heavy Fresnels or the types of lighting modifiers that are now available.

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Again, this is a direct result of the Prolycht acquisition. The Prolycht Orion 675 FS featured a Prolock Locking Bowens Mount, and that technology has now found its way into Aputure STORM products.

Essentially, the ProLock is like a PL mount for your light. It works in exactly the same way as a PL camera mount. It is made out of metal and it is very strong. This allows you to put heavy lighting modifiers or a Fresnel on the STORM 400x without fear of anything breaking. Every time I put the F10 Fresnel on the Aputure LS 600c Pro, I worried that I was going to break the mount.

Once you lock in an accessory, it doesn’t move or wobble around like it would if you were using a standard Bowens mount. Having the ProLock also makes it far easier to attach and remove lighting modifiers.

The ProLock is a great feature, and it allows you to stick with a Bowens-S mount instead of going to a proprietary mount.

Power Draw & Output

The Aputure STORM 400x draws 500W, and the max power output is 400W. Below, you can see how that compares against some other similar power draw fixtures.

	POWER DRAW
Aputure STORM 400x	500W
Aputure LS 300x	350W
Nanlite FS-300B	350W
Nanlite Forza 300B II	350W
Nanlite FC500B	520W
Godox Knowled M300BI	330W
Godox SL300IIIBI	330W

As you can see, the Aputure STORM 400x draws around the same amount as a Nanlite FC500B.

The power supply/controller does have two V-mount (or Gold Mount) battery plates on it, so you will be able to run the light remotely, but that will require some pretty high-power draw batteries. If you are a traveling cameraman, you won’t be able to run it via flight-safe batteries.

Aputure claims that the STORM 400x has an output of 27,100 lux @1m / 3.3′ when using the included 35º reflector and set at 5600K. The max output is claimed to be 237,300 lux / 22,045 fc @1m /3.3′ when the light is set at 4300K and used with the optional CF7 Fresnel set at 15º.

As an output comparison, the old Aputure LS 300x has a listed output of 20,500 Lux at 1 m / 3.3′ when used with its reflector at 5600K. The Aputure LS 600x Pro has a listed output of 63,900 lux / 5,937 fc at 1 m / 3.3′ when used with its reflector at 5600K.

As a Fresnel comparison, if we look at the LS 600x Pro and F10 Fresnel, it outputs 135,300 lux / 12,570 fc @1m /3.3′ when the light is set at 4300K in its full spot position.

Above, you can see all of the claimed photometric output figures.

Beam Angle

The native beam angle of the STORM 400x with no lighting modifiers attached is a pretty tight 57º. With the included reflector, it is 35º.

As a comparison, the old Aputure LS 300x has a native beam angle of 105º.

F7 Fresnel & Barn Doors Kit

Optimized for the 400x, the CF7 Fresnel and Barn Doors Kit is a 7-inch Bowens Mount fresnel with included 8-leaf barn doors.

Its beam range adjusts from 15º to 40º while maintaining a compact profile. The dual-expanding focusing system with multiple lens elements drastically reduces size and weight without compromising optical performance.

Pricing & Availability

The STORM 400x is now available to order for $1,059 USD, and the CF7 Fresnel and Barn Doors Kit is $199 USD.

So, how does that price compare to some other similar lights? Below you can see.

	PRICE
Aputure STORM 400x	$1,059 USD
Aputure LS 300x	$799 USD
Nanlite FS-300B	$239 USD
Nanlite Forza 300B II	$799 USD
Nanlite FC500B	$399 USD
Godox Knowled M300BI	$989 USD
Godox SL300IIIBI	$519 USD

Thoughts

The Aputure STORM 400x looks like a really good fixture, and it arguably falls in that nice middle ground between a 300W and 600W fixture (although technically it’s closer to a 500W fixture given its power draw). The BLAIR light engine is exceptionally good, and it is also good to see Aputure making a dedicated Fresnel for the fixture that is available at launch.

It is good to see Aputure finally release a STORM fixture that is arguably going to be of a lot more interest to owner operators than some of the larger fixtures.