review: aputure infinibars – worth the wait?

After yeaaaars of waiting, Aputure has finally released their version of a tube, the infinibars. Coming in hot with 1’, 2’, and 4’ variants, are the Aputure PB3, PB6, and PB12 the revolution in linear LED’s that we all hoped for?

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connection system

The first thing I wanted to test when the infinibars arrived was the new connecting system that was all over their announcement video. Each unit comes with it’s own bracket that can be used to create a straight or a right angle connection between bars. It also helps distribute power between multiple bars. Building the rectangle out of four of them was easy as can be, the connections between bars were secure, and I was glad to find out that the seamless bezel selling point was an actual thing and not just a marketing gimmick. I didn’t get any of the other bracket types sent to me, but there are a plethora to choose from that enable all kinds of shapes and designs.

Because my apartment is made of all landlord special parts, I used the magnets on the back of the bars to stick them to my door and confirm that the magnets would hold the weight of them. A neat feature about the magnets on the 2′ and 4′ versions is they’re removable so you can place the bar flush on a surface. This also allows the bars to rest on top of one another for some interesting looks. You can also reposition the magnets when rigging the bars, which we’ll get into later.

mounting clamp

After testing the connecting brackets, the next thing I was eager to see was the new clamp mechanism on the back of the bar.

The machining on the clamp is flawless. I love the minimal look and I want to give a shout out to the engineer that led the design. It fits snugly into the recessed grooves on the back of the bar, tightens securely, can be re-located quickly, and it’s intuitive and easy to use. Quasar deployed something similar with their double rainbow tubes, and while I think both of these are a step above any other mounting method in terms of ease of use and quality, I definitely prefer the Aputure one. The track system is recessed, so I’m able to lay the bars flat on a surface, and it’s easier to reposition or replace bars when I don’t have to slide them along the length of the bracket.

How secure are the new clamps? I popped them on opposite sides of my infinibar rectangle and boomed it out on 2 c-stands. This setup isn’t exactly the lightest either, the 2’ bars weigh 2.5 pounds each, and the 4’ bars come in at 4.6. The clamp themselves also weigh a pound, so this whole setup is 15lbs hanging off the end of gobo arms. Don’t forget the dirt and the safety chains when doing this! By clipping a cheap window sheer from Wal-Mart across the center, I was able to achieve a large overhead source in a really tight space.

output & battery testing

Before I brought the bars on set with me the next day, I wanted to confirm the claimed output specs as well as battery life and recharge times. I tested the output of both the 2’ and 4’ bars across CCT values and hue degrees at three feet. Here’s the values I measured compared to Aputure’s claims.

I charged and burned the lights down a few times throughout the day as well to test both the battery life and re-charging times. While the battery life on all the bars I received were within spec, and is handily shown on the bars as they’re used and updates as the power draw changes, charging one of the 4’ tubes takes a significantly longer time than what’s claimed by Aputure. Maybe this was because I got an earlier production model or something though.

set #1

The first real tests for these units came over the following few days. The first day out, the DP wanted b-roll of our talent driving around in his truck, so I needed something that would both balance against direct sunlight and be mobile. Sounds like the perfect job for the new bars! I taped a two-footer to the dashboard for this shot, set it to daylight, cranked it to 100%, and it was just enough to lift the shadows even in direct sunlight.

set #2

A day later and I’m out on a different set. This time I’m helping to create training material for a dentists office. The DP asked if it was possible to rig the infinibars to play underneath the cabinets all day. The catch is that the rigging had to be minimal because the underside of the cabinets would be in frame. Normally, I’d use neodymium magnets and tape to solve this issue. But, because of the weight of the bars, I was worried that the length of tape required to get the magnets in place would also end up in frame. We ended up resolving the issue differently, but it made me curious as to how to do this for the next time.

So I threw the question to my favorite gaffing forum and tested some of the responses.

mounting options

First up, alien tape. I wish the guy who told me about this told me I didn’t need 4′ for the 4′ bar. I think I spent an hour getting the bar unstuck. Turns out, I can actually cover just the magnets of the bar with the alientape and it’ll stick perfectly flush underneath a surface. This is going straight into the kit, it’s the perfect solution.

Then, I tested 3M Velcro since it’s the quick Wal-mart / Home Depot run solution. I tested 2 pairs of large size strips on the 4′ bar since that’ll supposedly hold 8 lbs. It’s supposed to set for an hour before you put weight on it, but nobody has time for that on a film set so I didn’t bother with that part. An hour later and the bar was still in place so this will work in a pinch too. The only downside is the bottom of the bar doesn’t have a large enough surface for the velcro to attach to, so this can only be used to mount the bars facing out.

Lastly, I figured out my own trick for when nothing is available but gaffers tape. I resolved the tape showing issue by repositioning the detachable magnets on the bar. Slide them towards the center and now the tape won’t overhang the ends of the bar! If you’re on a narrow depth of field, then to a camera it just looks part of the set decoration. After a few rounds of testing, I had found that I needed at least 9” of tape per magnet for the 2’ bars and 18” of tape for each magnet on the 4’ bars.

For the curious, in this video I have magnets glued to the bottom of the shelf because I intend to use these bars quite a bit under there.

build quality

It’s hard to spend much time with these lights and not notice the phenomenal build quality. All metal construction means these can and did take a few accidental whackings during my testing. In fact, the demo units they sent me had a chunk taken out of the diffusion panel, so I KNOW they can take a beating and keep working because one of them clearly did before I even got to it.

The menu system built into the bars is intuitive and I didn’t find myself getting lost even when browsing sub-menus. One very appreciated feature is the ability to select how long I would like the tubes to last. This is great if I know I need the bars to last all day on set, or at least until I can get the next one charged. You can also do some frequency offsetting if you’re shooting at higher frame rates and need to avoid flickering. The buttons don’t interfere with the mounting clamp either, so it can be positioned directly over them if need be.

Aesthetically, the bar design fits in with the modern minimal look of most locations these days, so it looks more like a piece of set decoration and less like an obvious film light when the infinibars inevitably end up in frame.

titan tube comparison

Just like everybody else, I was curious how the infinibars compared to the standard workhorses of the film industry, the astera titan tubes. So I reached out to another owner/operator in my market, and the gaffer you’re probably already following on instagram, Tyler Kaschke aka @colorado_gaffer, to see if he’d let me borrow his for a few days.

Since he’s a great dude, I was able to spend some days comparing the two types of linear leds. The biggest noticeable difference between the two when using them was how much easier it is to rig the infinibar over the titan tube system. The titan tube system requires 8 pieces to hold a single tube, takes a while to build, and it still has the issue of coming untwisted if weighted improperly.

I also prefer the menu system of the Infinibar, I found it more intuitive to use and I didn’t get lost in the menus so much.

Light spread and output remain relatively the same regardless of which one you’re using, although Aputure is markedly brighter when entering RGB color space.

One feature I’d like to see come to the infinibars that’s already on the titan tubes and the quasar double rainbows is the ability to saturate in color from any point in the CCT range of the unit AND have green/magenta adjustment. Since we’re entering an era where color rendition matters more than pure output, and given who Aputure is competing with in this price bracket, it’s a feature I’m hoping we see in a future update. These higher-end units also already have multi-universe DMX capabilities a la art-net or sACN, whereas I’ve been told that’s coming in a future release for the infinibars, so they won’t immediately be replacing large-scale titan tube deployments.

At $200 cheaper per unit though, and an equivalently tank-like build quality, there are a lot of reasons to love the infinibars over the several year old titan tubes as a smaller market owner/operator, and enough differences that I can still see Titan tubes being used as the need arises.

sets 3 & 4

Alright, it’s a few days later and I’m helping create family montages for a company website. The bars worked wonderfully tucked under shelving for this, and I found the gaffers tape and neodymium magnets combo to be the quickest solution for consistently re-positioningthe bars quickly when they don’t end up in frame. We also re-created soft blue moonlight for a shot by taping both 4’ bars to a curtain rail and blasting a couple 600’s through the windows. NDA’s were all over this set, so you only get the dramatic re-creations from my apartment.

Rounding out the end of my on-set testing, I was finally able to get these bars on set for a short film. We rigged the two four-footers onto an electrical panel to give us a nice gross green metal hue, and I screwed the two-footers together to create a very portable key light. To help me control this key light, I was able to test the softboxes that come with the bars. The narrow beam provided by a tube has it’s benefits and drawbacks, but for this film it worked perfectly. By using the provided grid, I was able to key my subject without affecting any of the other subjects in frame. If we used a larger source for our key light, then there would have been more spill around the scene. Controlling this would have required additional flagging for every scene to get rid of, increasing our set up time for each shot and slowing down the day.

sidus link

One thing that made all my time on set with the bars so much easier was the Sidus Link app. I found it was a great companion to the capabilities that an RGBWW tube affords.

Being able to group the bars and control both the two-footers and four-footers at once saved me so much on set time. The app also has some nifty features beyond just wireless control over the obvious features of the units.

Source Type is great when you know the type of light you want the bars to mimic. Source Match is great when I’m on location and I want to have my hair light and my kicker match the values of the overhead lights built into the location. I can point my phone camera, get my value, and within seconds everything looks like it fits in place.

Aputure has also programmed gels from both Rosco and Lee, so if you’re used to using a favorite gel, you should be able to find it here. X,Y mode is useful for replicating very specific colors as well as allowing you the option to choose which color space you’d like to operate in.

Picker FX is a crazy powerful tool to help the gaffer match VFX in-camera. One way that I’ve heard of this being utilized is during “All Quiet on the Western Front”. In this scene, the flare is a real in camera practical, but doesn’t have enough light to actually light the faces of the talent. So the gaffer recorded a flare being shot using an FX tool like this, and then played that back on lights rigged to a crane to match the timing of the flare so all the effects work would be realistic and happen in-camera. Super cool stuff, I’m excited to see what young and hungry filmmakers do with this.

cons

Sure seems like a lot of positives, so did I discover anything negative about the bars over my testing? Of course I did. I’m never afraid to nitpick, so let’s dive into some areas these bars could be improved.

If the bars are advertised as being able to be placed in frame, then why is there no clean side to them? I either have the charge port or the warning labels in frame. Kind of a frustrating oversight.

An IP20 rating means these bars are strictly for indoor use only.

Another niche complaint for the 1%, but when used in individual addressable pixel mode, the lights run at RGB and not RGBWW. I’m assuming this is because for 16-bit DMX control, 96 pixels would be more than a universe for tube, but it’s still a limitation nonetheless.

The lights stack seamlessly together, but I can only link 16’ together to charge off a single charge port, and with the port being on the side, that means I can only stack 4 tubes at once. It’s weird to have everything be seamless and bevelless and then have design implementations that reduce the ability to utilize that.

96 pixels begs to be used in some type of pixel mapping configuration, but the units don’t currently have sACN or ARTNET capabilities, nor a USB-C to DMX converter. One thing I’d like to see them do in future iterations to really work seamlessly in virtual production environments, is have dual Ethernet ports like the double rainbows, so the infinibars could be daisy-chained together to reduce on-set cabling.

Lastly, when I built my rectangle, I noticed the pixel effects run twice on the 2’ bars for every one time it runs on the 4’ bar. This happens because the pixel effects are dependent on the length of each tube. Hopefully, there’s a future update that enables selection between cm/s and the amount of times the effect runs across all bars per second when we group them together. Another feature I’d like is to select how long we wanted the effect to be in length across the bar. This way, I could run two rainbows on the 4′ bar for every one on the 2′ bar so rainbows are the same length.

conclusion

Let’s wrap this blog up and put a bow on it. What niche do I think these bars fill? Well, if you’re a run and gun videographer who uses tubes mainly for their utility, then you can probably make due with the less expensive amaran tubes. USB-C charging and a slightly longer battery life will make things much easier as you run around. But if you’re looking for awesome pixel effects for your next music video or narrative project, or lights that seamlessly blend into locations, then the infinibars are easily the best thing on the market currently. Thanks for coming along with me on this journey, I hope you learned something! See you next time!

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disclaimers

– Aputure provided the Infinibar PB6 & PB12’s for this review

– Some of the links in Tyler’s blog posts are affiliate links, which means that qualifying purchases will help financially support Tyler at no extra cost to you. If you wanted to purchase something else but still support Tyler, please use the following link: https://amzn.to/3WdnsdM

– This blog post contains only Tyler’s opinions about G&E, gaffing, and LED lighting, and was not reviewed or paid for by outside persons or manufacturers

– Tyler Trepod is a freelance owner/operator gaffer of a Grip & Electric truck based in Denver, Colorado and serves the Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, & Fort Collins markets