When an episode of Midsomer Murders has as a central part of the plot a ring light exploding in a vlogger’s face, with the expected MM consequences, you know that something has become mainstream.
As Winters tries to explain to Barnaby what a ringlight is, he is told in no uncertain terms that, well, he knows. And he knows, as he has a 14 year old daughter who is constantly being told she “is too young for social media”.
Which leads me nicely into the latest offering from amaran, a sister company to Aputure and similarly, manufactures vlogging lighting systems among other things, and sold in Australia by Sydney based Kayell.
Amaran Verge
This offering is the amaran Verge which is a studio quality LED light that by its clever design, lends itself to a number of roles.
For example, It can act quite happily as a standalone light, with brightness and colour temperature controls on the front bezel making it easy to tune output to the best combination for the current environment. In this role, it will cheerfully cast a soft, even glow to flatter your face and bring out true-to-life skin tones without harsh shadows.
Or with over 3000 lumens available, crank the brightness right up to fill a small room with ease.
Expanding Options
However, pair the Verge and the amaran desktop or Sidus Link app, and you unlock a few secrets that broadens the appeal of this roughly A4 landscape panel.
Unlike many LEDs, the amaran verge doesn’t have multi-colour capability beyond the orange hued colour temperature, so in the amaran app, the HIS and RGB controls have no effect, but you can tweak what they call the “Colours” control to simulate analogue lighting types such as Tungsten, Xenon, HMI60 and so, as you can see from the screen shot.
Additionally, there are some rudimentary effects built in like Fireworks, Faulty Bulb, Explosion, Strobe and Lightning.
However, mate the brand spanking new amaran 4K webcam with the Verge light, and another avenue opens entirely, especially for the vlogger / podcaster who doesn’t want to have to manually muck around with lighting settings.
When the “auto lighting” option in the app is activated, the smarts of both kick in with the camera telling the Verge light what specific settings to use for the best result in the current environment.
Clever stuff indeed.
But you can crank this usability up even further as amaran has an app for the Elgato Stream Deck thus letting you build a suite of profiles and presets across the amaran (and Aputure) ecosystems and semi automating even the humblest of vlogging / podcasting / video studio setups.
Other
To mount to Verge, you can either use the standard ¼” mounting point on the base or by removing a protective cover on the rear, marry it to a bracket using the amaran Verge Lock Mount system.
There is no battery in the Verge; power is supplied by an included 240v adaptor and USB-C cable. The built-in fan is to all intents and purposes, noiseless, so there is no annoying hum to interfere with the audio on a recording.
Communication to the amaran app on a PC / Mac is via Bluetooth which is on by default and detected by the app, not the OS itself.
Conclusion
The base Verge is AUD$145 and available in white or charcoal. For more power, the base Verge as tested has a pair of siblings – Verge Max and Verge Pano. You can compare the specs of all three here but note the prices on this website are USD$ based.
I spent quite some time playing around with the amaran Verge and I have to say, for the price it is impressive. At a pinch, a desktop vlogger / podcaster could get away with a single unit acting as a pseudo ringlight. A pair of them plus one smaller unit as a backlight and you have the makings of a small but serviceable video studio.
In fact this is what I might be doing using the Verge in conjunction with my Aputure MC-4 lights, which being multi-coloured gives me more scope for experimentation.
I would like to see a battery-based version of the Verge, but I can accept the need for a decent fan is probably what precludes that option.
All in all though, I have yet to see a better low-cost option and can suitably recommend the amaran Verge. They can be purchased directly from Kayell or through a retailer such as Videoguys, Rubber Monkey or Camera Warehouse.