Vlogging Camera Light Comparison
I’ve been really trying hard to up my photography and video game here on the blog. Lighting of course is one aspect of that journey. I have recently purchased a couple different brands of Vlogging Camera Lights, and I’ll shake them down here.
The fun part about this is that I spent my own money so I can call it like I see it. It’s not that I don’t do that already, but when someone sends me an item to review I try hard to WORK WITH THEM. If I find something wrong I contact them and most places are happy to hear the feedback and WORK WITH ME. But when I spend my own cash there isn’t any pre-established back and forth.
And I review so much gear provided by others I seldom get to write about the things that I spend my own money on.
So, I’ll use these lights and then I’ll tell you what I think about them. Let’s get started.
Backstory
A lot of my pics are taken against a backdrop with me holding a flashlight to mitigate shadows. It’s painful sometimes. And if you look at some of my product photos they aren’t too bad but they do typically have shadows. Sometimes that works, and sometimes that doesn’t. During the recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday events I have been perusing through the deals and found a Vlogging Camera Light for not much money. So I bought it. Then I saw another one and I bought 3 of those. I’ll explain why as we go along.
My Needs
I simply need a bi-color light to defeat shadows and provide some fill light. There is seemingly no end to manufacturers or rebranded lights with many of them being RGB lights. At this time I am not interested in anything but white light with temperature adjustments.
The light needs to fit on a hot shoe, or small tripod. Having a magnetic mount is nice however not something that makes or breaks my purchase. So, I am keeping it simple here.
At this time I don’t want a big ring light, or proper studio lights. Think Vlogging or Blogging and portability.
The Vlogging Camera Lights I Chose For Comparison
1. K&F CONCEPT Bi-Color LED Video Light
The K&F Concept Bi-Color Vlogging Camera Light was the first one that I purchased. It hit all the wickets after I saw a couple of YouTube reviews on it.
It lacked one trick though that my comparison light does have so I bought it as well.
One thing I like about these lights is that there is no app, and not another smart IoT device that doesn’t need to be an IoT device.
Construction feels solid and it has a cool range of features. The features are pretty intuitive as well. Push the button or spin the dial once and you immediately know what it is for. While it has a magnetic base which is cool, the power of the magnets is not very strong which is not very cool. I generally watched the light slide down whatever magnetic surface I placed it against.
An example of this:
Believe it or not this doesn’t bother me a bit. I plan to mount these on small tripods or just use one on the cold shoe mount on the camera.
Settings
There are 4 settings for the K&F Concept light (Bottom Dial)
- CCT – Stands for Correlated Color Temperature. That means you can adjust the light temp from 2500 K – 9900 K. And in this mode you can adjust the brightness.
- EFF- Effects, I think. It is just flashing. I don’t really see a need for this in my tiny studio, however I bet you could mist an item with water droplets, hit the effects, and dub in some thunderstorm effects.
- 5600 K – Sunlight (most of the time) is 5600 K
- OFF
The top dial controls temp range and percentage of brightness while in the CCT mode.
Other Details & A Video Review
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that you can buy the same light with RGB LED’s. I don’t currently have a need for this.
2. SmallRig P96 LED Video Light
As you can see in my photo the SmallRig P96 has one pretty cool trick. You can daisy chain a few of them together for some serious shadow destruction.
When I saw a similar photo on Amazon my first thought was, “I have to have this”.
It does mount together but there are two things I want to point out here. The outer lights sit a little higher than the middle light and that drives my OCD crazy. The second thing I want to mention is that when you are fitting them together it sounds like something is going to break at any second. If you buy three lights like I did to configure like this, BE GENTLE, and only do it once. Or once a year 😀
Listen to this:
Pass on this one compared to the K & F Concept Light. It also has a more limited range of temperature (2700 -6500K). The K & F light goes from 2500 – 9900K.
My Conclusions
Hands down, if you are a blogger or vlogger and want to up your lighting game a bit you should get the K & F Concept Light. It has more features for the same price and is not constructed in a flimsy manner as is the SmallRig P96.