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Oct 26, 2024

There’s a cheap LED camera light hidden inside this fake film roll - The Verge

By Andrew Liszewski, a senior reporter who's been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2011, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid. If you buy something from a

By Andrew Liszewski, a senior reporter who's been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2011, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.

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Even if you switched to a digital camera decades ago, TTArtisan’s Mini LED Light is a fun reason to carry around a film cartridge. Instead of a roll of 35-millimeter film inside, there’s a rechargeable battery and an array of 15 LEDs. It’s not the brightest camera light you can buy, but it’s also $7.

With just 250 lumens of illumination, you’ll need to position the light within 10 feet of your subject for it to be of any real use. But by way of comparison, you can buy 18 of them for the same price as a single 400-lumen Lume Cube LED light.

The Mini LED Light’s 300mAh rechargeable battery will keep it glowing for up to 180 minutes, and TTArtisan has even included three color temperature settings: 6,000K (cool), 4,500K (neutral), and 3,000K (warm). Its color rendering index of 95-plus is surprisingly accurate for such a cheap light. An included magnetic cold shoe mount allows the light to be perched atop a camera, and it comes in a small matching cardboard box that looks like the ones 35-millimeter film used to ship in. (It also has a lanyard hole.)

TTArtisan sells the Mini LED Light through its online store, but shipping to the US costs $20, which somewhat negates its impulse purchase appeal. You can instead buy it through Amazon if you don’t mind a small price bump to $9.90.

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