In photography, lighting is everything. There is no good photography without good light. And that good light could be “Lume Cube 2.0”. In this review I am going to explain to you why Lume Cube, in its improved version, is one of the best photographic lighting accessories that you can carry in your backpack.
What is Lume Cube 2.0?
Light Cube It is a markedly small LED light, it fits in the palm of your hand and is so small that it could easily be mistaken for a GoPro camera.
the suffix 2.0 As you can imagine, it indicates that it is a new generation. The first time this photographic accessory was launched on the market was a few years ago, and now Lume Cube 2.0 comes out, improving the already powerful features of its predecessor.
What is so special about Lume Cube?
Before we start, a little disclaimer.
You can skip this part because it can be a pain, but I must say: this is not a paid review. The opinions that I am going to share in this review are objective and my own.
The brand is interested in talking about its product in a specialized media the size of BdF, but they do not enter into whether we value a, boc, or if we highlight the good, or the bad. When a brand leaves me a product to try and return, I try to make it clear that my opinion has to be free and personal, that I will say the good and the bad.
This helps me preserve the trust that millions of readers have placed in BdF during these 11 years of life. If I start to falsely “flavor” a product or a brand, motivated exclusively by economic interest, that would mean the beginning of the end, because over time people would stop taking our opinion as a reference.
Size comparison, Lume Cube 2.0 with a GoPro Hero Session 5.
In Lume Cube they are delighted to appear in BdF and, if I mention any aspect to improve in their product (it has flaws, as I indicate further down in this review), they will take note to assess the suggestion and try to improve their product in future versions.
On the other hand, I must warn you that if you acquire your Lume Cube 2.0 Through the link that I include below, BdF receives a very small commission that helps us defray part of the costs of the web. Obviously you can buy it from the store you want, but if you do it through the link below you would be helping us, so thanks in advance. Even so, I do not think that Lume Cube 2.0 will be of interest to everyone, below I explain the type of users who might need this accessory.
I know that right now someone is thinking “Godssss… But how cool is the guy… Somebody take the keyboard away from him, please!”.
I had to clarify the above, but it is already said. I want to tell you about Lume Cube 2.0, so let’s get started.
What utility does Lume Cube 2.0 provide?
I am very reluctant to impulsive purchases and to hoard pots and pans that we don’t use later, so when I think about buying a photography accessory, I try to find its usefulness first, to reason about that “need”.
So the important question to ask here is, what problem does Lume Cube 2.0 solve for me? This is the filter that this, and any other accessory, must pass.
As I said at the beginning, photography is light. Having a good light in photography is almost as essential as having a camera, because otherwise we would end up with a photo that is shaken, moved, out of focus, underexposed, full of noise, among other problems. The same applies to the video, saving the differences.
Well, from here, we are presented with two options:
- Buying a professional light, with the inconvenience of the high price that it entails, the weight that we have to carry, the lack of mobility that it entails, the space that it occupies once deployed, etc. Of course, we would have perfect light performance.
- The other option would be to improvise a fix with any light source that we find: a bedroom lamp, a mobile flashlight, stand next to a lamppost if we are in the street, etc. Here we may gain in mobility since we don’t have to carry large LED light panels, tripods, cables, external batteries, or anything like that, but we lose in terms of performance because, with rare exceptions, the light we would obtain would be very poor.
Lume Cube 2.0 is a concept that merges the advantages of the two options, becoming an LED light (with all the advantages of LED lighting), which offers us lighting performance close to professional grade (I will qualify this later), in a surprisingly small body and at a markedly lower cost.
This accessory is therefore a light that you can take with you in your camera bag and even on a trip without worrying about weight or dimensions because, for that matter, it is as if you were carrying nothing.
Lume Cube 2.0 is ideal for…
In short, I think this accessory is ideal for the following groups of photographers and videographers:
- Users who use their camera outdoors (excursions, travel, etc.) and who need a degree of mobility.
- People who want to go light in weight and still enjoy good lighting.
- Photographers/videographers who need good light and who, for whatever reason, cannot deploy a large lighting team (due to lack of space for example). Lume Cube is tiny and doesn’t require a tripod taking up a huge space, no wires in between, or anything like that.
The photo on the right was taken with Lume Cube 2.0 at 30% power.
Be careful, there are people for whom the Lume Cube may be unnecessary: if you take photos exclusively during the day, on the street and under a scorching sun, you don’t need it. If you have a professional studio set up where you have plenty of space and your LED lights already set up, with your main light, your fill light, etc., you may not need a Lume Cube. But if you are an amateur photographer/videographer, intermediate or advanced, even a professional, Lume Cube is an accessory that can significantly revolutionize your results, thanks to the huge amounts of light it provides, the generous functionality it offers ( more on that in a bit), and at the “invisible” size it is.
Features of Lume Cube 2.0
Below I detail some of the features of this new generation of Lume Cube:
- 750 LUX power. A lux is a unit of measurement for the intensity of light on a given surface. To give you an idea, a professional television studio with all the hardware that comes with industrial-grade light bulbs usually has about 1000 LUX. Imagine being able to shoot 750 LUX from such a small cube.
- HR 95%. CRI refers to the level of fidelity with which light “preserves” true colors. A light with a low CRI would produce images with different colors than the real ones. To situate ourselves a bit, it is not uncommon to find LED lights with only 90 or even 80% CRI. I believe that a professional light for photography and video should not go below a 95% CRI.
- Color temperature 5,600K, which offers us a very neutral white light.
- 1 hour and a half battery life if we leave the Lume Cube 2.0 on all the time at maximum power. If we put it at only 50% of its power, it will give us 2 and a half hours, according to the manufacturer’s specifications (with USB-C charging port).
- It comes standard with accessories to modify the light, such as the diffuser screen that allows a soft and uniform light to be obtained, or the warm light filter that allows the white light of the Lume Cube to be transformed into a pleasant warm tone.
- Wireless connection with the mobile, with the possibility of controlling our Lume Cube with an app (for iOS and Android devices).
- Possibility of using the light as a slave Flash. Thanks to the small optical sensor located on its top, Lume Cube 2.0 can detect the firing of the main Flash and synchronize with it, ideal for use as a fill light for example.
- Waterproof: Lume Cube 2.0 can be splashed or even deliberately submerged in water, and still illuminates without issue (up to 9 meters underwater).
- You can vary the lighting power: you have 10 lighting levels: 10%, 20%, 30%, and so on up to 100%. But also, within the 10% range you can activate a “precision” mode that allows you to raise or lower the intensity of the light in increments of 1%, for example you can adjust the intensity to 5%, 3%, or the intensity you need.
Types of use that can be given to Lume Cube 2.0
The powerful light of Light Cube and its diminutive size give it a degree of versatility that we are not used to with the typical traditional LED light. Here are some examples of situations and uses that can be given to this small “cube of light”:
- Attach it to the camera shoe and use it to illuminate photographs and video reports.
- Use it as a fill light for portraits, either in photography or video (interviews, family/friends home videos, etc.).
- Social, family and event photography with logistics/space restrictions, or where the photographer or videographer needs to go unnoticed.
- Selfies and vlogs.
- Low investment/hobbyist level product photography, with very decent results.
- Lighpainting, long exposure photography, night photography…
Points to improve?
Lume Cube 2.0 is not perfect, it has some things that could be improved in a future version perhaps, although the drawbacks that I have found are not serious:
- The way to operate through the buttons can be somewhat tedious depending on who you are. In its first version, you pressed the button and the device turned on immediately. In Lume Cube 2.0 you have to press the power button and wait with the button pressed for about 3 seconds. I have read opinions of people who have complained about this. I understand that the manufacturer has made this change and now you have to keep the button pressed for several seconds to avoid accidentally turning on the Lume Cube while carrying it in your backpack for example. For me this is not a drawback per se, but I mention it because I know that there are people who do not like this aspect (again, for me, it is an improvement).
- Lume Cube has a USB-C charging port. At first I liked this, because I use a Mac and almost all the cables I have are USB-C. However, the first time I tried to charge it I went crazy. I tried by all means and with none of my USB-C cables would charge. I got into reddit forums and there I discovered, through other users, that the charging cable for Lume Cube 2.0 is USB-C on one end (the end that connects to the Lume Cube charging port), but the other end of the charging cable , the end that goes into the charger, or the USB port on the computer or whatever, that end should be USB-A (come on, a traditional USB port, not USB-C. I mean, if you try to charge it with a USB cable -C on both ends, not rula. It has to be a USB-C cable on one end and USB-A on the other end.
This is not the end of the world, after all…