I seem to have been inundated by lights and gimbals of late – not the least being from Zhiyun which is releasing new products at a great rate of knots. And very good they are too.
The latest to cross my desk is another light called the Cinepeer CF100. This is a portable “light stick” with a 100W LED vertical panel configuration.
I reviewed the original FiveRay light stick some time back and discussed the shortcomings at that time of that unit, and the CF 100 goes a long way to addressing those issues.
Overview
As mentioned, the CF100 is a “light stick” configuration with a tripod thread on the base allowing the unit to be mounted vertically. I’d like to see a horizontal mounting point too.
You do get some built-in barn door reflectors however.
A USB-C socket on the left side is for charging purposes, and the main control panel is on the rear of the unit, with all functions available from a single rotary wheel with a centrally located button. This doubles as an on/off switch and a mode selector with different button press combinations.
Once the CF100 is turned on, by pressing the rotary at the 3 o’clock, 6 o’ clock, 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock positions, you cycle through FX, HSI, FX and CS Full power modes. Once in a mode, the rotary then lets you finetune brightness, colour, saturation, colour temperature (2700k to 6200k) and individual effects and so on depending on which mode you are in.
The original FiveRay only allowed one colour at a time from the LED panel; with the CF100 a multi colour display is possible and is totally customisable, letting you vary between such things say, as a light sabre display through to flowing colour changes.
And the bane of all lights, heat, is kept at bay using a built-in inverter multi fan / heat sink system – and I am damned if I could hear it!
On a full charge, you’ll get between 5 hours to 30 mins operational time depending on the mode and light intensity. The unit will still charge when in use, by the way.
Conclusion
The flexibility of CF100 makes it suitable for a large variety of purposes. Product lighting, portraiture photography, as a special effects generator for films immediately spring to mind, but there are a zillion other uses obviously. And I can see that a bank of CF100s could be a very useful outdoor lighting system in a variety of scenarios, and at the price (USD$179 through Amazon at the moment), a bargain.
The only shortcoming I can see on my use of the CF100 so far is the same as a saw in the original FiveRay light, and that is there is no app available to control it. That would make a world of difference, especially if, as you can with the Aputure Travel Kit I reviewed recently, you could create a group of lights and control them simultaneously.
Zhiyun products are available in Australia through Melbourne based OzEmu, and they tell me that if Creative Content is mentioned, they’ll give a discount off the RRP.