When Elgato came out with their Key Light a few years ago, I started asking them to work
on a bigger one, one that might replace my giant Aputure Light Dome setup here.
I’m told I have a new Key Light to look at today, I hope this is it- Oh, they went smaller.
Here’s 5 creative uses for the Elgato Key Light Mini!
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video site, Nebula, when you sign up for Curiosity Stream, linked below.
Obviously the first use case of the Key Light Mini is as a key light...
right? It’s in the name after all.
With little more than half the brightness of the Key Light Air and a little more
than a quarter the brightness of the full sized Key Light, this little guy
won’t get anywhere near as bright nor be as useful for bouncing off reflectors or walls,
but it still has a color temperature range of 2900K to 7000K so you can tune it just right and
it’s still perfectly diffused like Elgato’s other lights. Let’s test it on a couple cameras and see.
It CAN work and absolutely WRECKS Logitech’s Litra Glow light in terms of brightness output and size,
but in many cases a small light as a key light just looks worse
than a bigger one. That’s just physics.
As a quick demo, here’s the different Elgato lights and the effects they have on the softness
on my face. By the way, I prefer 4500K color temperature these days, as it seems to blend
most nicely with my skin. Give it a try! Just set your camera’s white balance accordingly!
The bigger the light, the softer the shadows and more pleasing the look.
Now just for kicks, here’s the same setup but with my massive
Aputure NOVA light shot through a diffuser.
Even if it isn’t a great key light, it can still be a great fill light to fill in some shadows!
When using the light at the desk, you can mount it on any mount you like with the quarter-twenty
threadded tap - though I’m pretty miffed there isn’t one on one of the sides, come on Elgato...
and then control everything through Elgato’s usual Control Center software, loop it in with
your Stream Deck, and so on! Plus you can kick it into “studio mode” which basically disconnects the
battery so you don’t wear it out while running it on continuous power through the USB C port.
Oh, you didn’t know there was a battery? Yeah this thing can go places. Like here, for example, where
I’m using it as the backdrop light for this setup! Super handy. I’m also told the battery is easy to
access and remove when you disassemble the light, so longevity and repairability should be OK here.
Or on this setup where I taped a gel on it and gave an easy colored accent.
Again, a threadded tap on the side would have been real useful for these setups.
The battery is rated to last about 4 hours when set to 50% brightness - if using the
full brightness you’re looking at around 2-ish hours? But probably a little less in my testing.
If you’re wanting to do a big multi-hour stream with the light,
you’ll want to plug it in - though even a battery bank would work fine and extend it for hours,
so portability doesn’t HAVE to be sacrificed! It’ll survive a decent video shoot, however.
(But seriously, invest in some battery banks anyway.)
You can get pretty creative mounting the light to anything between the threads and the magnets
on the back! Stick it anywhere that’s metal for convenient product lighting or spot lighting.
It’s also bright and small enough to be a real solid kicker or rim light
to create more cinematic shots, too. For this I recommend moving towards the opposite end of the
spectrum of your key light. So go blue-er if you have a warmer temperature key light, or warmer
if you have a cooler one. Here’s both looks. To do this, press the little jog wheel on the
side twice to change color temperature. Pressing it once changes brightness. This
is a decent means of interacting with the light, but it can be kinda fiddly and I’m
personally not a fan when you can just put knobs on the side like this other light here.
However, thankfully you can still connect it to wifi by holding the
jog wheel for 5 seconds and then adding it through Elgato’s Control
Center app and control it via that or the stream deck for more usable controls!
Lighting a backdrop is cool, but what about a green screen? One of
the biggest struggles with chroma keying is shadows cast from you onto the screen.
A little light like this either mounted behind you or strapped to your chair (perhaps with a
battery bank) can help blast your green screen with light to fight your shadows.
Remember to light your green screen with the opposite colored lighting from your normal
subject lighting. Doing this helps completely isolate the color from your subject. It’s a
forgotten trick in the streaming scene that’s used regularly in higher-up production.
If you are interested in product photography or videography, I have 3 or 4 awesome tricks to use
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Despite being battery powered, the light is flicker-free on both battery
and USB power. Nice. Here’s some shutter speeds to show you.
Let’s have a real talk about the price, though. We’re in pandemic, silicon shortage,
shipping delays, and everything more expensive times, and this is a brand new product which is
always going to be more expensive than one that’s been out for a while. But for $100,
while I’m initially happy with the overall quality of product you’re getting, you’re missing a lot.
The light IS very price competitive with Aputure’s smaller MC lights and that was
the context I originally looked at and was happy with. But when I started looking at the product
photography potential - hell you can get the Nanlite Pavotube 6C for 89 bucks. And that will do
full RGB, a wider color temperature range for white, some special gimmick modes, and is
rated slightly higher for CRI. It’s not a square and would be harder to
use directly as an actual key light, but playing to the things this light is best at,
the Pavotube is better in every conceivable way and cheaper.
ACTUALLY researching further as I wrote this script, for the price
difference between the Pavotube and the Key Light Mini, you can get a fabric grid
built specifically for the Pavotube II 6C that helps direct the light specifically for
use as a key light or subject light. I’m ordering a couple of these right now.
You could also get one of those Yongnuo light wands
with RGB cheaper than the Key Light Mini, but those are pretty cheap-o IMO
and I wouldn’t bother, especially with the Pavotube being basically the same price.
If you are looking for other alternatives,
check out this video on the Elgato Key Light KILLER budget option,
or this one on another similarly-sized light with a lot more features. Remember: Be kind, rewind.