I’m a huge fan of my Aputure Aamran AL-H198 LED lights and they’ve been performing great for me (I liked my first one so much I bought a second within a week). They’re so awesome, especially when you consider their low price, I wrote up a full review about them here on my blog.
Because I had such a positive experience with the little 198 LED lights, when it was time to add to my light kit I decided to try out a larger version of their awesome LED lights. My plan was to keep my AL H198 lights and use them for highlights, kick lights or background lights and get a bigger light to use as my main or “key” light. There were plenty of choices but I settled on the Aputure Amaran AL 528S because of it’s price (all of their 528 LED lights can be found for under $170.00 US) and massive amount of light output (the spot version I chose has a specification of 12,700 LUX at .5M).
The bigger front surface area of the 528 LED light should translate into a much softer output than the smaller 198 LED lights and that meant, with the addition of a little diffusion, it could be a perfect main light in my small office/studio. Once again the team at Aputure hit a home run and, now that I’ve had mine for a while, I’m sharing my official full-length review.