A month ago we wrote about how the LS 600x Pro copes with direct sun. Today it is the opposite job: four walls, one window, two table lamps switched on and an interview to wrap in half a day. This is where the “x” in the name earns its rental, and in our experience it is where the bi-colour head beats the daylight one almost every time.

Mixed light is the rule, not the exception

In a house or an office in Abruzzo during the day you have a window at around 5,600K and the room’s lamps somewhere between 2,700 and 3,000K. With a daylight-only head you have to gel, and every sheet of CTO eats light. The 600x Pro runs from 2,700 to 6,500K from the menu or from your phone, so you decide who wins: the window, the practicals, or a middle ground that keeps everything believable on camera. Colour holds up: CRI 96, TLCI 98 and tungsten SSI 85 are Aputure’s official figures, and you see it on skin in close-ups.

How much light actually lands in a room

The manufacturer’s numbers: 1,880 lux at 3 metres with the bare COB, 5,610 lux with the Hyper Reflector (it is in the case), 63,900 lux at 1 metre with the same reflector. Sounds like plenty, but a Light Dome 150 or a 4×4 of diffusion swallows most of it. That 600W headroom is there for exactly this: put the Dome two metres from the face and stop down instead of pushing ISO. With the Lantern 90 you light a whole room’s ambience without seeing the stand’s shadow; with the Spotlight Mount you draw a fake window on the wall behind the interviewee. All three are Bowens mount and we have them in stock.

Power, weight and the fan

The head draws at most 720W on 100-240V mains: at 230 V that is roughly 3 amps, so three heads on a 16 A domestic circuit are fine, as long as the kitchen oven is not on the same line. If there is no socket, two V-mount batteries in series (22-33.6 V) give full output; a single battery at 12.5-16.8 V runs it at half. The head with yoke weighs 5.16 kg, the control box 4.89 kg: a C-stand with a sandbag is fine, a photo tripod is not. Cooling is active: in a quiet room you hear the fan, so keep the head off the microphone’s axis and use the watts to make up the distance.

Control without leaving your chair

Sidus Link mesh from the app, 2.4 GHz remote, CRMX, DMX512 on 5-pin XLR and Art-Net/sACN over etherCON. In practice: during the interview you change colour temperature and intensity from your phone without walking to the control box. The nine built-in effects (TV, Fire, Lightning, Faulty Bulb, Paparazzi, Fireworks, Pulsing, Strobe, Explosion) solve the TV left on in the living room or the fireplace in a narrative interior without carrying a second fixture.

Three things we learned on set

  • Pick the camera’s white balance first, then dial the 600x to that value. Doing it the other way round, balancing the camera on the lamp, leaves the window blue and the practicals orange.
  • Lock the tilt with the Dome mounted: 150 cm of softbox on the Bowens mount is a lever, and a head that slowly droops by midday is a classic.
  • Keep the control box away from feet: in narrow corridors the crew trips over it, and the head-to-box cable is the one you never want to yank.

Buy it or rent it

On Aputure’s site the 600x Pro lists at 1,990 dollars, without Fresnel, Dome, Lantern or batteries: with the right modifiers you go well beyond that. From us it goes out at 65 euros a day, 160 for three days, 235 for a week (plus VAT), with reflector, control box and cables, and delivery to set included across the region. For a two-day commercial, a short or a run of corporate interviews the maths is quick. Buying only makes sense if you light interiors every week and already have a van to keep 19 kg of case in.

What we send it out with

On interviews we almost always pair it with an LS 300x as backlight or second key, same bi-colour range and same app. On the camera side, a Sony FX6 or a Canon C70 completes a two-person setup that fits in one car. The rest of the lighting inventory is on our equipment page.

Full specifications on the official Aputure page; for an independent opinion, see Newsshooter’s review with the Light Dome 150.