Lighting is important. This is something I've been personally learning the hard way over the past seven years of desperately trying to make my product images look better for reviews. I believe I finally cracked the basics (I'm still learning) once I realised I needed proper lights—at least two of them—and some sort of diffusion.
The good news is, I've spotted a really excellent deal on a pair of key lights I almost bought a few months back. They're these: Neewer's 13-inch Video Light Panel 2-Pack (NL-192AI), which are currently down to the lowest price I have them on record at $91.
That's for the set of two lights, power plugs, stands, and carry case. Essentially everything you need to light up a stream or video shoot properly.
One light can act as your main light. That's the brightest, most central panel beaming onto whatever it is you're shooting. Then you use the second panel to cut out some of those shadows and give whatever it is a more even glow.
You might want to consider adding a diffuser for product photography, but I'll get to all that shortly.
Anyways, I know what you're thinking. Almost buying something isn't the highest commendation in the land. Though I ended up borrowing a pair of Elgato key lights that my partner had been using for streaming and ultimately saved spending any money at all on new lights, which I think is fair enough.
The exact model I use, Elgato's Key Light Air, is on sale at $91, though that's not much lower than its usual price. The larger Key Light is available for $130 in a supposed Black Friday deal, but that's also not much cheaper than usual. And our pick for the best key light right now, the Elgato Key Light Neo, is still full price at $90.
The Key Light Air is the best pick of those three Elgato units, but when you can get two key lights for less than the price of Elgato's one key light, the Neewer is a smart pick. That's especially true if you just need a straightforward, simple lighting solution with lots of flexibility, which most people do, and which Neewer offers here.
Onto the Neewer lamps. They can be tuned between 3200 and 5600K temperature, which means they're mostly on the warmer side. That means more yellowish tones. However, 5600K is what I use across most of my lights pretty much every time I use them. So while the brighter white and blue tones are missing, for product photography and streaming, they're alright.
Above: here are my latest results using two key lights and a diffuser set-up. Getting there, I think.
They're plenty bright enough at 2,400 Lux, which is a measure of one lumen per square meter. To be honest, I'm not sure how accurate that rating is, but they should be plenty bright enough either way. The many, many customer reviews all suggest they're plenty bright enough.
One of the features I actually wish I had access to with my pair of Key Light Air is the battery pack included on both Neewer panels here. That's apparently good for around 1.5 hours of runtime, presumably based on the brightness setting you've chosen. There are power plugs included if you need to go for longer, anyways.
Throw in the storage bag, and this is a pretty nifty set of key lights.
I mentioned earlier that I'd also recommend some sort of diffusion solution for this set-up. That's mostly because I've found I get the best results for product photography when I slightly block out the direct light from the key lights. Key lights are slightly more diffused than your standard direct light source, though not enough to cut out all glare.
Diffusion solution makes it sound like more of an investment than it is, however. I mean a cheap stand, a couple of clips, and a fabric, pop-up diffuser, like this one for $31.
Though I bought mine on Aliexpress for the equivalent of around $15, so you could definitely get the same thing but cheaper elsewhere.
If you want something different, then I've collated all of our fantastic lighting reviews into the best desk lighting guide. It covers key lights, but also RGB lightstrips and wall lights for a little more variation. All of which we've tested right here.
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