Aputure STORM XT52– 5200W fixture with BLAIR light engine

Aputure has unveiled its new 5200-watt STORM XT52 today. Aputure claims that the STORM XT52 is the brightest COB light in the industry, with output rivaling some 9000w HMIs.

The STORM XT52 inherits Aputure’s new BLAIR light engine, offering a tunable white light color spectrum with a CCT range of 2500-10,000K, +/- Green adjustability, and x,y coordinate tunable colors.

The STORM XT52 joins the existing Electro Storm XT26 which features a 2,600W tunable white high intensity point source lamp, but that fixture doesn’t use the BLAIR light engine.

The STORM XT52 looks to be direct competition to the recently announced Nanlux Evoke 5000B.

“We gave ourselves an immense challenge to produce the brightest LED light in the industry with the best spectrum and tunability while making it small and lightweight enough for single-person set up and operation on a crank stand. Last year we launched the STORM lights with the amazing BLAIR light engine. Customers around the world asked us to bring our BLAIR light engine to higher wattage fixtures. So we did. Our engineers knocked it out of the park, putting that technology into such a powerful fixture and designing new cooling and control systems to keep the size and weight manageable.

Ted Sim, President and Co-Founder of Aputure

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 have been able to come up with something that is quite unique. Aputure claims that the new light engine is capable of producing the highest quality white light, an ultra-wide CCT range, full +/- Green control, and extreme color-accurate dimming.

Aputure could have taken the easy path and just used the RGBACL light engine from Prolycht, but they decided to go in a slightly different direction.

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.

Aputure states that the BLAR light engine produces 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.

The light is claimed to have the following photometric scores:

• CRI≥95
• TLCI≥95
• CQS [CIE D5600]≥96
• SSI [P3200]: 87
• SSI [CIE D5600] 87
• TM-30 Rf (average) 95
• TM-30 Rg (average) 100

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.

There is a lot of debate and argument over what is better. Certain companies will tell you that RGBACL is better, while others will tell you that RGBWW is better.

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

Those will be specifically designed for creating high-quality tunable color as opposed to just tunable white. The STORM C series will be capable of providing a vast range of colors with full saturation.

Output

The Aputure STORM XT52 has a claimed output of 48,000 Lux when used with its 35° reflector @5m, and 29,000 Lux when used with its 50° reflector.

As. a comparison, the Nanlux Evoke 5000B has a claimed output of 22,210 lux @5M when used at 5600K, with its 45° reflector.

Size & Weight

Aputure claims that the XT52 lamp head can be lifted by one person and operated on a standard crank stand.

The portable XT52 control box is the size of a briefcase.

• XT52 Lamp Head: 29kg / 64lb, 550 x 353 x 362mm / 21.7 x 13.9 x 14.3″
• XT52 Control Box: 13kg / 28lb, 411 x 159.5 x 388mm (16.2 x 6.3 x 15.2″

As a comparison, the Nanlux Evoke 5000B weighs weighs 46kg / 101lb (with yoke).

Aputure is previewing the STORM XT52 at the BSC Expo in London today and tomorrow, at stand 209. The STORM XT52’s full announcement will take place at the Aputure Experience at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 6-9. 

There is no current indication of pricing or availability.