I just returned from photographing along Route 66, first some assignments and then followed by a fantastic Route 66 workshop. As you might expect, there are a lot of old cars along Route 66. We often photographed during twilight and used speed lights and larger Elinchrom ELB 500 strobes to illuminate the scene. But a few times we needed just a little illumination in the scene, and that is where Lume Cubes are handy.
Lume Cubes are the GoPro of lighting. They are very small, waterproof to depths most of us will never go, and almost indestructible. And unlike speed lights, they are continuous lights. If you want to illuminate a shallow pool, just drop a Lume Cube into the water. If you want to illuminate a car interior, place one on the seat. The only catch is this…they work great at night and in low light ambient conditions, but they don’t put out a lot of light. Which is fine, because you are not using these lights to overpower the midday sun. But being a continuous light, you don’t need a transmitter to trigger the light, you just have to calculate exposure like a normal photograph using available light. I don’t fly drones, but it seems the Lume Cubes are very popular to attach to your drone for creative lighting options.
For $195 I bought the Portable Lighting Kit Plus+. As the photo at top shows, the kit comes with two lights, gels, snoots, barn doors and diffusion domes. Since the cubes are so small, you can easily drop one into your pack. The next time you need to fill in shadows on a wildflower image, try using the Lume Cube for the job.