This $22 Sima SL-10HD LED light shines nicely.

I ordered the Sima SL-10HD because it touts “widescreen” LED lighting for HD cameras. I’ve one of the many people who have taken to using the digital still camera as my ONLY camera when travelling, or even around the house. This means I need tit to shoot both stills and video- and without a video light, or a lot of daylight, the video is very dark.

Well, it does the job pretty well, though I’ll probably end up adding a bit of diffusion inside to help spread the beam out a little flatter.

The light is nice, with a low and high setting on a small rear switch. It takes two AA batteries. The low setting is nice for a little bit of fill, even for stills, or for a twinkle in the eye. Plus it’s higher than the built-in flash. It is nice and white. The High setting throws a pretty good amount of light and I could easily shoot 20+ feet and get an acceptable image with my SX-20.

The Sima LED light atop my "do everything" camera.

Best of all, it’s a compact little package and it comes with a little arm to use it with digital still cameras that lack a  hot or cold shoe to mount the light directly. For $22 I can’t imagine trying to piece together an alternative that’s as workably simple as this. There’s a $30 alternative that has more power. Either can be made more “widescreen” with additional filtering gel in front, or inside the unit.