Lume Cube Smartphone Video Kit

Shed some extra light on your iPhone photos and videos

$109 Manufacturer Lume Cube, lumecube.com Features 150 lux at 3m, Bluetooth connectivity, app control, smartphone mount

The Lume Cube is a rugged external light to help when taking photos or video, which can be controlled from an accompanying iPhone app. It’s waterproof, so can be used in poor outdoor conditions without any worries. You can buy the Lume Cube on its own, or in a set with the Smartphone Kit, which includes a hand-held mount. The mount can hold your iPhone in its clip as well as the Lume Cube (or just one of the two can be attached if you want an off-light effect), and the setup is impressively flexible thanks to multiple thread points on the clip and an included ball-joint attachment.

The Lume Cube’s light has multiple levels of brightness accessible by pressing buttons on its body (a slider can be used to control it in the iPhone app), and is really quite powerful for its size, with a wide, long-reaching throw at higher levels. It’s quite a hard light (there’s not much diffusion), so can seem fairly harsh, with sharp shadows. It also appears cooler than expected, so if you’re using it in an area with warmer lights around, the results can be odd. For closer objects, we got better results with the iPhone’s TrueTone flash. We wish the Lume Cube came with an easy way to attach filters to diffuse or change the light’s color (a diffusion kit is coming soon, but in a pretty expensive attachment).

The battery life is decent – a couple of hours at mid-level strengths. You can trigger it to flash only when you start shooting in the app, saving power, but we got better results forcing it on, controlling the light level with its app, and using a superior camera app.

the bottom line. A strong, convenient portable photo and video light kit, but we’d like more control over its effect. Matt Bolton