Customer Reviews

Sima SL-20LX Ultra Bright Video Light (Black)

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I paid about $30 for this light. It charges fast, works way longer than other lights in this price range, IT DOES COME with the bracket to mount it on your tripod threads. A little cheap, but made of metal and quite useful. My camcorder has a widescreen display and you can angle the bracket forward so the light will not hit the screen. I got this so I could record in fairly low-light conditions, the kids, etc. Does what I need for cheap. **To the people who say it has a green tint to it. #1 its $30 - go see what a professional color correct light costs, then complain. #2 Most cameras and camcorders have what is called a "WHITE BALANCE" setting. Auto usually does ok, but if you are getting funky colors, manually set it by holding a piece of WHITE paper in the light you are using, fill the frame and hit 'set' however your camera does it. And presto! The colors should be much more accurate than before. Learn how to use your equipment!

I just got mine a few minutes ago and pulled it out of the packaging. Boy is it light and seems bright to me. I haven't done much testing with it. I have it on the charger now and will give it a workout after I get a full charge on it.

As far as the color it seems warmer than most LED lights. I have a few LED lights (round tent camp light and some flashlights) and it is much warmer than them.

It feels cheap and plasticy which it is but it has a clever design. It comes with a mount for a hot shoe and the shoe is all plastic which I like because you don't have to worry about it shorting out anything on your camera. The bottom of the shoe has a 1/4-20 thread mount too. Granted it is only plastic but the whole thing is so light I don't see this being a problem. The other three sides on the light have a hot shoe slot (well a non hot shoe, just a shoe). This means that you could hook another light to the Sima or several to create a multi-light setup. The lights would work separately so you could switch one light on, both or either one.

The diffuser seems to work quite well.

I could see having a bunch of these to bring with for tricky lighting setups in small areas. Trying to light inside a car this thing would be perfect. Tape on a gell if you need it and use a small suction cup with mini ball head on it or even just stick it on the dash.

Pros:
- dead simple to use
- amazing bang for the buck
- great light weight and decent run time
- clever design with hot shoes built in and included little flash bracket thing for camera's without a hot shoe that do have a tripod mount

Cons:
- no dimmer
- non-replaceable battery pack
- no standard battery option (like AA option)

One could pick apart the Sima SL-20LX over a number of what I consider small points. The battery can't be replaced by the user. The unit will not function as a light while being charged. The light pattern is definitely hot at about five feet or so and will overexpose your subject if you don't compensate. They should provide a clip-on diffuser: the light is very bright and will bother people looking straight at the camera.

All those "negatives" and I stil give it 5 stars.

Why?

Because this much light in such a small package at such a low price is on the order of a miracle, that's why.

Even though the close-in light pattern is hot, once you move six or more feet away from your subject, you have a nice blanket of cool white light that renders color well. It is good out to almost 20 feet.

A 2.5 to 3 hour charge gets you about 1 hour of light. It would nice if you could adjust the output power with a switch, but you can't.

At the price, you can afford to carry a couple or more of the units with you if you need mroe than an hour of light. A unique and welcome feature incorporates hot shoe mounts on three sides of the unit so you can build your own light arrays by connecting one unit with another. Very clever idea.

Sima includes a bracket with a tripod screw and a hot shoe adapter. One of the units I tried the SL-20LX wqith is a digital camera with video capability. The video, within the limitations described above, was gorgeous.

So even though some people might find shortcoming in this unit, I see it as a wonder of the age: a small, powerful, highly portable light source at an affordable price. That truly merits 5 stars in my opinion.

Jerry

I bought this light and used it 2 days later on a wedding with our b-roll camera, a Canon HV-20.

Plus - Lots of light in a small package. The color is cool but acceptable.
Minus - The internal non-removable battery doesn't last long enough. Barely an hour and it's out.

The small size of the light also makes it useful as a key light in odd places. Most oddly was its use in our Pumpkin on Halloween.

I only have one at the moment, but I plan to buy more. They can be snapped together to make a larger light, but mostly, I just need the backup.

Lagniappe: the included aluminum attachment bar is quite useful. It has an adjustable 1/4" mounting screw on one end and a cold shoe on the other.

I bought two of these lights for shooting indoors at area skating rinks. The lights we're reasonalby priced at MCM electronics for about $42 per light. Video recording in a skating rink without a video light produces eye aching video clips. I bought these two lights in hopes that I could light subjects from about 15 feet away. Two lights do a lot better than no lights but I was maybe hoping for a miracle, so I can't hold it against Sima for this product, I need a little more light for the situations I'm shooting under. I like the product; the lights are light weight, last about an hour on a full charge and work with any standard size accessory shoe whether hot or cold. The lights are individually turned on/off by a switch on the back. The diffuser works quite well and the light seems pretty even when lighting a subject. Using two versus one light does make a difference in the quality of video clips, so I suggest you order two if not more.

I've used the Sima LED light for a couple of days now and, for the money, it's a great little light. The color temp is 4500 kelvin which is about in the middle between daylight and tungsten. I wish it were one or the other. It tends to match up better with daylight or even cool white fluorescents than tungsten. The only "serious" downside which others have mentioned is the fact that the battery is sealed. I would rather have a light that ran on replaceable AA's or AAA batteries.

On the whole, it's a great little light for $30. It's bright, small and it's better than spending $300 - $500 for its broadcast cousins.

The Sima SL-20Lx video light is a little disappointing. I had many ok video shots with the old Sima model SL-10 and was actually expecting a better and improved upgrade model. But the only noticeable difference between the two is the price but not in brightness. In fact the SL-20Lx has shorter battery life than the SL-10, even though I paid nearly double what I paid for the SL-10.

I purchased this light to use for shooting a court-side reporter for broadcast NBA games. While the arena is well lit, at the end of the court, with the court behind the reporter, the face tended to be a bit dark. The other options for LED lighting were pretty expensive, so this seemed to be worth a try for the low price ( I found it for $35 a few weeks ago).

The color temperature of the light is about 4500K, which works well in my particular situation, since that's about the same as the arena. It would probably work well in daylight situations as well and would warm the faces up a bit. It would probably not work as well in 3200K lighting and would tend to give too much of a blueish cast to the picture and adding a gel would drop the light level.

The amount of light produced is pretty good for my particular situation. I don't think I would rely on it as the only source of light in a broadcast situation, but for a fill light it works very well. It's pretty hard to beat for the price. And since the light is set up to allow mounting of several fixtures interlocked, it would be easy enough to get it brighter for a very low cost. To quantify it a bit, in a situation where I was shooting a headshot with my Betacam at about 4 to 5 feet, without the light my f-stop was f/1.4. By adding the light I could cut it to f/4 to get the same levels, and it provided a good soft fill to the face.

The mounting is intended for a SLR-type of hot shoe, so it was a bit of a challege to mount it to a broadcast camera. It comes with a bracket intended to attach to the tripod mounting screw of a DV-type camera, but I attached 2 strips of velcro to the bracket and wrapped it to the handle of the camera and that worked just fine.

The Sima SL-20LX is a great rechargeable LED array video light that surpasses my expectations. We professionally produce instructional videos (some are available on Amazon) and have several larger lights we use in our studio, but we needed a smaller portable light for use in the "field". Here are my observations:

Pros:
+ Good Quality Construction
+ Very Compact Size
+ Very Bright
+ Long Battery Life (roughly 1 hour)
+ Includes Camera Bracket
+ Can Be Mounted on Hot Shoe

Cons:
- Can not be used while charging

Misc:
* Be sure to set your camera's "White Balance" when using

This is a great accessory for those needing an inexpensive video light!

Highly Recommended!

CFH

Update April 2010
The light has crapped out on me. I can charge it and it will appear to be fine then just die on me. Something had gone wrong with it and it is no longer usable so I no longer recommend this... I guess you get what you pay for sometimes. I actually used this light about 5 times!

Even though I read several reviews, I was still pleasantly surprised with this gem-of-a-light which beat my expectations. It arrived well packaged on time and after charging it for a few hours, I tried it out in a few different scenarios.
It seems to work best where there is some ambient light even if quite dim.

I tried shooting children in near pitch dark at a nearby park and although it lit up the kids well enough to record some decent video, light drop-off was significant beyond about 12 feet. I recommend shooting with foliage or a wall/fence/whatever at about 15 feet to catch the light and avoid having nothing but black beyond your subjects.
This light is very impressive when shooting video indoors, it really made a big difference, and the colors look much better. I did not experience any hues, blue or otherwise using this light.

The build is OK, and it is very easy to use and fits easily on the hot-shoe on my camera. The biggest downside to this light is that once the battery dies, you either need to stop filming (or stop the function you are filming) but on the plus side, I got about 1 hour and ten minutes of use out of it and it still had some battery life left. Over the approx two hours I used it, I was careful to switch off the light between filming.

It works well as additional light when using flash and can be used in place of flash but comparing photos, I found photos were better with either a flash or using the light to assist the flash( great for eliminating red-eye!)
All in all, it is a very useful light which takes up little space in your camera bag but works very well.
I deducted one star due to the none removable battery otherwise it is a super little light and I wholly recommend it.