Promaster Mini LED Review Part 1

Let's look at my first try with the LED lights.  At this point I've had them for a little over 24 hours and had shot a total of 4 photos with them prior to this test.  So let's see the control photo (please note these are not my best, they normally wouldn't be shown but they do provide some idea as to how the lights preform)

This is straight off the camera.  I shoot only in RAW, so this is without any adjustment at all.  (I'll post later about RAW vs. JPG I promise.)  All photographs end up being processed in some form or fashion but that's another post all together.

Now let's look at the control with some adjustments.  

This isn't the best processing I've ever done.  I was in a hurry trying to get this post done.  It's not a bad little photo though.  If I was selling that snowman I'd probably say it was a passable product shot.  (Disclaimer: Product shots are not my thing.  Really I'm clueless about what makes a good product shot.)

Now let's look at the Mini 9 LED.

First Up Straight Off The Camera Mounted in the Hot shoe:

Awfully bright for my tastes.  The highlights are really blown out.  The shadow is kinda large too.  I didn't move though from the spot I was in the control.  The only thing that changed was the exposure to attempt to get spot on exposure.  

I do post of my processing in Lightroom and it has this great function to be able to sync your adjustments with another picture.  So I did that with the control.  Let's see how that worked.

WAY TOO COOL.  The color temp is way too cool that's why the white is blue.

Now on to the the real post process.

Slightly better but I'm not thrilled with the brightness and shadows.  There was no way to balance it well either.  Ok, not in the whole 2 minutes I spent doing this photo.  Of course the lights may not be best used up close with a metal object that can reflect the light back.  The rest of the lighting in the room is not ideal for taking photographs at night anyway.

The next thing I did was take that metal bar that you saw in the first post and attach it to the bottom of my camera and attached the light to it.  This put the light on the right side of my camera.  So let's look at the finished product.

This is much better and probably could have even been better had I given it time in Lightroom.  I used that great sync feature and processed it with the first processed photo.

Next time we'll look at the larger mini LED.