I’ve never been much of a "sungun guy." Most halogen camera-mount lights are blunt instruments at best- the equivalent of shining headlights into the eyes of a deer at night, and hard on batteries to boot. And mounting a light directly on the center axis of the camera can create a boring, flat look. So while sunguns can certainly be useful, I’d never called them "indispensable."

A little company called Litepanels changed all that a few years back. They may not have been the absolute first to use light-emitting diodes in a camera-mount fixture, but they sure went a long way toward making them into a useful tool. Their original 25-watt on-camera kits included a long-life, rechargeable lithium battery and a shoe-mount multi-jointed arm that could finally get the light off the center axis of the lens, and maybe allow some shadow and modeling instead of the unflattering flat light that is the signature of the sungun. Of course, they also came with a financially stunning, $1,000-plus price tag.

No matter how cool the light is, a thousand bucks for one is still a stretch for many of us. Litepanels heard the call, and came out with the Micro, which sells on the street for about $300. The Micro is a much smaller and lighter package, with 48 dimmable daylight-balanced LEDs laid out in an 8 x6 array. This is a much more 4:3 aspect ratio than the aggressively widescreen format its big brothers feature. Replacing the lithium battery are four AA batteries, a welcome move away from proprietary battery packs (how refreshing to be able to run into just about any store to recharge in a pinch.)

On the other hand, a lot of what I like in the original Litepanels rig is absent here, I assume due to the much lower price. First of all, the multi-joint arm is gone, replaced with a plastic shoe-mount that allows the Micro to tilt fore and aft, but nowhere else. Once again, the sungun is stuck back in the middle of the camera axis, and the light is back to being flat. Also, the case, mount and almost everything else is made of a fairly flimsy grade of plastic, which I can easily imagine snapping off when the Micro takes some of the bumps that road work requires- and worse, it doesn’t seem that any damage would be repairable. Even flimsier than the shoe-mount is a gel frame that flips up from the front of the light. If being incredibly fragile wasn’t trouble enough, the tabs that are supposed to hold diffusion and color-correction filters in place are tiny, and can hardly keep the diffusion in place. (Of course, this is what gaffers tape was invented for, right?) You’ll be glad that frame is there, though (as long as it lasts) because the unfiltered LEDs glare horribly, and would be sure to torture anyone subjected to them for longer than absolutely necessary. Three gels are included, one diffusion frost and a two different densities of Sun-80, to color-correct to tungsten. Be nice to your subjects- keep the frost on at all times!

My tests with fresh Duracells at full brightness gave me about a 2-hour useful run. Using a Sekonic light meter set five feet from the Micro, I initially measured 12 footcandles without the diffusion and 6.5 footcandles with it. The batteries held up pretty well for the first 60 minutes, and faded quickly in the second hour. Of course, if landfilling AA batteries willy-nilly makes your ecological conscience cringe, you could easily use rechargeable nickel-metal hydride AAs in the Micro. Finally, during my tests the Micro emitted a low but audible buzzing that would drive my audio operators up the wall, something I hope isn’t common in the product.

I’m surprising myself here, because despite its considerable issues, I still regard the Micro as a worthy piece of production gear- as long as you don’t mount it on top of a camera. With the addition of a few strips of self-stick Velcro on the back, this would be an outstanding choice for a small, inconspicuous stick-up light. However, unless you are in a position to baby the Micro, the potential for damage is just too high for me to recommend it wholeheartedly for its designed use.