We want to buy a light for our XL2. We need it for night shoots and indoor/outdoor interviews with different people where we have a low light cenerio. We have a low budget. currently we use a 3.0 W light which slides into the shoe on our XL2. This option is now unexceptible because its not a lot of light, and at the same time it drains out XL2'S battereries.

If any one of you experts can let me know of any cheap but effective lights out in the market which we can buy. That we can slide in the shoe of our XL2 and has its own external battery pack. What Watts? if lights intensity will be suffucient for our purpose. And what brand. Please get back to us ASAP.

Thanks.

Regards
Wajahat

For tungsten, 35 watts is really about as high as you can go. Any more and you seriously blind people. We use Frezzi, but that's not cheap. There seem to be a lot of LED on-camera lights coming on to the market. I'd look into those.

What about Canon's own VLi-10? It puts out 10Watts and is pretty bright and great for interviews. I actaully have to wrap a cellophane around it to diffuse the light. It uses Canon's batteries such as the ones for your XL2 (actaully the whole XL and GL family)

The only hitch is the cost of the replacement bulb which is close to the cost of a new unit!!!

There are also some new LED lights out there that will also use the Canon batteries.

If cheap and effective are the operative things, take a look at the thread in the Photon Management section about the Sima SL20 led light....internal rechargable battery, good for about 45 mins, fairly bright (but not a real wide coverage) and I have bought them for as little as $29.95 on sale...we issue them with hv20 kits for people who do field interviews, also bought some for the Canon S5is cameras the still photographers carry for the occasional video grab....the price is right, and the result is surprisingly good. You can even hook several together and make bigger lights.....can find at videoguys.com or amazon.com...
For considerably more $$, think about the Micro Lightpanel ($300 or so street price).

//Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team