The “Stick” Light

May 24, 2017 | Field Reports

I recently received the Genaray SP-C Kit, something I’ve long wanted to experiment with. What I call personally a “stick” light, the SP-C kit contains the LED “stick” light and Ringlight. The HUGE benefit to these stick lights is their extreme lightweight, portability and ease of use. To be honest with you, I had NO CLUE if such a tool would be a viable tool for my shooting. The only way to find out is to take a stick light out into the field and shoot with it. As you can see, I shot with a stick light and here are my first thoughts. First and foremost, just like with any light, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. They do throw out the light, that is for sure but without any kind of light modifier like barndoors or silk, it’s just a bright light. That means you gotta use distance to mellow it and that means throwing light everywhere. There can lie a challenge.

I shot with my favorite people rig, the D5 & 105f1.4 AFS. That permitted me to limit just how much of the extra light was captured in the frame. While the stick light works pretty darn well, it takes more time to perfect than you might think at first. The SP-C is a 5600k light with a 3200k built in filter, that’s pretty cool. It works off a rechargeable handle which is very cool which will power the stick light or the included ringlight (which I’ve not tested yet). The handle battery can even charge your iPhone if needed. The power switch is a dimming switch which works better than I imagined. While it doesn’t come with an attach ring for the 24-70VR or 105f1.4, my primary people lens, the ringlight will attach to smaller filter rings with the included adapter rings. The best thing is the really small price for this entire package, less than $200! I have a lot more testing to do especially with video but would highly recommend this to you if you think this light source is right for your photography!