By Stephen M. Schaub

First off let me be VERY clear…the Figital Revolution is not one of those sites where reviews are paid by advertising dollars (we have no dollars) and this site is not the place to go see and read all about the next piece of crap you don’t really need.

Having now cleared that up I had the chance this last week to look at a new item I feel may just fit some photographers’ needs, both for film and digital (imagine that!) I got this idea in my head that wouldn’t it be great to have an on-camera light (not flash) that could be dimmed, daylight balanced, light-weight and rechargable. Drumroll please…Presenting Vidled. Yes this product which is really intended for video purposes can be mounted in your hot shoe using a small ball head (very cul) and allow you to see exactly what you light is going to look like and by the use of a dimmer on the unit tweak it perfectly…and it is really a nice quality of light…for some things. My initial idea was to use this with a wee bit of a softening gel over the light for intimate portraits where flash just wasn’t right and big hot light wern’t either. Problem is that LED lights are really bright and difficult to look at even with my diffuser installed. Additionally, the light output is not huge so doing a portrait at say a distance of 7+ feet requires near full power which of course is going to blind your subject. But this brings me to the area where this handy little gadget in my opinion could be useful: MACRO and CLOSEUPS as well as still subjects that need just a little bit more light at, say, a distance not past 8 or 9 feet. You could also paint your subject with light and do some amazing long exposure stuff. The battery (depending on the version) lasts from 1.5 – 3 hours on full blast…not bad. The weight is equal to my Sunpak 383 with batteries so…reasonable. For more information on this product and to view their different configurations just visit: vidled.com