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Best gear under 100$? 5 Uses Cases // Sandmarc Prolight Mini RGB & Bi-Color Review (vs Aputure MC)
This is a real-world review of the @Sandmarc Prolight Mini RGB & Bi-Color video lights, must have accessories for cinematic video and photos! This is not your typical review: I start it off with a cinematic short film and then explain 5 uses cases where this light is useful!
🔗 BUY THE MINI BI-COLOR https://geni.us/sandmarc-mini-bicolor
🔗 BUY THE MINI RGB https://geni.us/sandmarc-mini-rgb
(Note: I did get the lights for free but Sandmarc had no input on the video and I was not paid to make it)
#cinematicshort #bestvideogear #videolights
✨ WATCH NEXT ✨
- Sandmarc VN Filters for phone https://youtu.be/JZJUabiHz50
- DJI Pocket 2 Review https://youtu.be/j35Xy3ibRxc
- Capturing the stars with the DJI Pocket 2 https://youtu.be/cKYHj26coE8
✋ COME SAY HI!! ✋
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford (http://bit.ly/lba_instagram)
- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@loic.bellemare.alford
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/loic294
- Facebook: https://fb.com/lbaphotographie
📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Cinematic Short Film
01:36 - Introduction
02:50 - Prolight Mini Bi-Color Specs & Walkthrough
05:02 - Prolight Mini RGB Specs & Walkthrough
06:37 - Use Case #1: Cinematic Videos
07:43 - Use Case #2: Studio Look
10:30 - Use Case #3: Zoom Calls
12:17 - Use Case #4: Night video & photos
14:39 - Other Use Cases
15:09 - Sandmarc Mini Prolights vs Aputure MC
16:07 - Conclusion
🖼 SHOP FOR PRINTS 🖼
- My online store: https://store.lbaphotographie.ca
🎶 MY MUSIC 🎶
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/iu5gau/
📸 GEAR I USE ON YOUTUBE 📸
https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo https://geni.us/dji-pocket-2-combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card https://geni.us/sandisk-extreme-128gb
- Canon 6D Mk https://geni.us/canon-6d-mkii
- Google Pixel 4a https://geni.us/google-pixel-4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM https://geni.us/canon-lens-24-105
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD https://geni.us/vanguard-veo-265cb
- DJI MAVIC AIR https://geni.us/lba-dji-mavic-air
🌍 MY PERSONAL WEBSITE 🌍
- 0:00 Cinematic Short Film
- 1:36 Introduction
- 2:50 Prolight Mini Bi-Color Specs & Walkthrough
- 5:02 Prolight Mini RGB Specs & Walkthrough
- 6:37 Use Case #1: Cinematic Videos
- 7:43 Use Case #2: Studio Look
- 10:30 Use Case #3: Zoom Calls
- 12:17 Use Case #4: Night video & photos
- 14:39 Other Use Cases
- 15:09 Sandmarc Mini Prolights vs Aputure MC
- 16:07 Conclusion
so [Music] entry delay started [Music] wait what that's the right code [Music] really don't worry it's just a video light good evening everyone tonight we're talking about lights and more specifically about these two lights from sun mark that i use to film the intro so i have the pro light mini rgb light and the pro light mini bi color light right here if you're like me when i started out you might think that these lights are not very useful and that you shouldn't really listen to this video but you're gonna see it's probably a lot more useful than you're maybe thinking right now so i'm gonna talk about how you can use them for studio setup like i have right now how you can use them to get better zoom video calls how you can use them in a more cinematic setting how you can use them to get better pictures and also videos at night and also how you can use them in settings like when you're doing a trip or things like that so overall they can be very useful in so many different settings i'm also going to end with a little comparison with the aperture mc which are the most similar lights to these ones and the more popular ones so stay till the end for that comparison but now now let's get started right away with the intro foreign filmmaker on a journey to compete at this site so let's talk about the specs of these little lights right away to get away with it right at the beginning of this video so if you look at this slide right here so i have the bicolor light and by color simply means you're going to be able to adjust the color temperature of the light if you don't know what is color temperature it basically means it can be either more on the blue side or on the yellow side so if you're taking the light outside during the day it's usually more blue but once you're inside at night it's usually a little bit more yellow so you can adjust this with this little light which is pretty neat to match the lighting that you have around so right now i have it at 5 600 kelvins and that's basically the color of outside during the day that's also what i have for my other video lights around here so that's why i'm leaving it at this setting right now now if you look at the light here we have a few ports and different things around so first of all we have a quarter inch screw at the bottom here and actually comes with this nice little thing you can screw on to be able to put it on your camera in the hot shoe of your camera then there's a usbc port right here there's the button on the side and there's this little thing on the top that you can remove or add to get more diffusion from the lights it's nice that you have this little thing to be able to get more diffusion directly from the light if i have one complaint about this slide is that the usbc port is located at the bottom of the light right here and this is a problem because once you put it on a tripod or something like that a lot of time you cannot access it it makes it hard to be able to power the light when there's no more battery or recharge it without having to remove it from a tripod so this is definitely one of the disadvantages it would be better it was on the sides or things like that so talking of the buttons here it's actually really simple to use so we also have a little screen at the back here so first of all we have a button right here to be able to turn it on and off so simply press it a few seconds to be able to turn it on and off then we're gonna have right at the top here the first button here is actually allowing us to twist between the two modes of color temperature and also brightness and at the bottom here it's simply plus and minus so you can make it brighter by pressing pressing plus or you can make it darker by pressing uh minus so that's how easy it is to use this is really great because it's super simple to use you don't have to think too much about how to navigate the menu to get where you want this is also only 69 and it might seem a lot but video lights are usually very expensive so 69 is actually a pretty good value for this small little light especially it becomes really really bright and i'm going to show it a little bit later how bright this little light can become the second light drive right here is the pro light rgb and if you don't know what rgb stands for it's for red green and blue and this basically means that you're going to be able to get whatever color you want by using this slide i'm going to put the details on the screen but again the form factor is exactly the same as the other one very small very portable and i forgot to say but they're both have really good build quality so that's a good thing because you don't want them to break when you bring them around in your backpack or something like that if you look at the menu it's again very similar four buttons on the side but now if we look at the back screen here we have an option to change the hue and the hue is basically which color you're going to be choosing then you can change and select with the saturation and this is how intense the color is going to be so it can be more intense or less intense and finally we have an option to select the brightness of the light so again super easy to use but what makes this one really special is actually if you go back on the power button right here and you click on it once it's gonna go in the effects mode so right now i have it on lightning so there's a first mode here with lightning so now there's a second lightning mode right here then we have cop cars we have other security lights right here two different types we have some lights a little bit more like a party where they just continue to change lighting there's another mode like this then finally there's fireworks which can be pretty cool if you want to simulate having a firework outside and finally you have a sos mode so you have eight pretty useful different modes especially if you're doing a short film or something like that this slide is a little bit more expensive costing around 99 so it's definitely a bit more than this spin but if you're doing something like a short film it can be very useful as a light this brings me to my first use case which is for creating some short films and more sonic videos like music videos or things like that actually all the intro was filmed using only these two lights media shy pocket 2 which isn't a very good camera in low light so it's pretty impressive the results we got by using these little lights i think an error that most beginners do that i definitely done in the past was thinking that lighting wasn't very important and investing more money on things like the camera and not investing enough and good lights using a little video especially the rgb light like this with the effects that are built in can get much more creative results and just much better looking videos in the end and more creative videos which is very important when you're creating a short film music video or something like that so i definitely think buying this little light can be a really good investment if you're creating some short films or music videos or anything else that won't be a little bit more cinematic i usually don't interrupt the video to tell this but i would really appreciate if you could leave a like down below and also share this video because it's not one that i think youtube is going to be recommending too much but i think it can be very useful for multiple friends family members and people like that that are interested in getting started in video and also photography okay so it's time to type out the second use case and this is creating a studio look which is very useful if you create like me youtube videos or if you want to make some interviews product shots or all kinds of things like that so i have a little bit more expensive setups i have two aperture mc in the background here i have an i'm around 200d that i bought today that i'm really excited about i'm going to make another video on that one another amaran light over there i don't remember the model but these are all lights from aperture the whole setup is actually quite expensive so i want to show how you can replace all of it and using only these two lights and get something that's going to look pretty similar in the end but it costs a lot less money by using only these two small lights okay so the first thing we're going to do is close the background lights we have right here so i'm just gonna come here and close the first one right here i have a second one right here so i'm just gonna close this one so now we have no more light in the background right here and i'm simply gonna come here and i'm gonna open this one right here i think it's on pink right now which is fine for the background and i'm going to show you the saturation and that the brightness is at 100 both so i'm going to leave it right here and now we have our background light for our setup okay so i now close the two other lights that i have in front right here and we have a nice little pink light in the background right here uh but this light is actually over only at 20 right now so if i come here and i bring it up let me just check it's going up up up up up up up up up so this must be close to a hundred percent well only 82 percent still not 100 so let's bring it up up up because that's 100 it's actually really hard to look into it because it's actually really really bright you might not see it right now it's a little bit too bright for having it in your hand and just holding it close to yourself but i actually have a solution right here for this it's actually going to make it much better lighting than just having it because even i've just put it away it looks a little bit better but it's a little bit too harsh the shadows on the side and everything so i'm simply going to take here and i have a nike light right behind here so you have this little light here so i'm just going to put this inside of the ikea light right like this and now if i come back it's going to look much better so right now you might see that it's a little bit too dark so i'm going to come on my camera here and i'm going to bring up the iso to 1600 and now it's looking much better so we actually have a pretty decent lighting with the light right here so i'm actually just gonna bring it turn it around and bring it closer a little bit so now we have a pretty decent lighting and we're only using two tiny lights which is pretty impressive it definitely doesn't look as good as the whole setup with all the other lights but if you're starting out this is definitely more than enough to get some pretty good lighting actually if you only want one light i would go with the cheaper bicolor one because that's the most important to be lighting your face so definitely start out with this one okay so my next use case for using this smaller light is actually for an activity we've all been doing way too much in the last year and a half and it's for all our zoom meetings team meetings uh what's up calls facetime calls or whatever you're using to make calls with family friends and especially for work so one of the problems that with all of these calls is actually that front-facing cameras on your tablet cell phone laptops or whatever you're using are usually pretty bad and they need a lot of light to have a picture quality that actually looks kind of good so if you look at the image right now that i have it actually is very grainy and really doesn't look good and i still have a lot of light coming from the windows on the side here and also have my video light on so even with all this light which is quite a lot it looks not that good so i think this little light here uh we're actually see right away that we're gonna get much better results so if you look at my face here we're gonna see that my eyebrows and just the detail in general on my face looks a lot better there's a lot less noise and the image just looks in general much better sharper and just has a better look so a little trick here is that i don't want to be holding my light all the time with my hand here so i'm just going to take a kleenex box or something like that we all have kinds of this box and you can just put it on front here and you're going to get much better results when making video calls with people this is especially useful if you're making a call for like an interview if you're talking with somebody higher up in your company or whatever when you want to have the best image possible and look the best when using your little computer it's also really really great when you're doing calls a little bit later at night and you might not have as much lighting inside of your house because when you're putting on like your minimal lights it usually is a very yellow and not a very good color for when you're making videos calls so these little uh lights actually have become pretty useful for me for my video calls just to get some better results in general home okay so now let's talk about my next use case and for this one i'm gonna go pretty quick because it's been really hard finding a night that wasn't raining but i finally have one so the next one is using it as a video light on your camera for either taking videos like i'm doing right now so if you've seen any of my astro photography videos i've been using a little light like this one and it's actually pretty surprising because right now it's only at around ten percent uh it's really not that bright you don't need to be that bright because it can become so bright but i think one really great thing is that if i decided to bring it up so i'm gonna bring it up right now so now it should be about 100 and i can really move away and still get pretty good lighting with this so it's pretty great that this little light can be so powerful and really allow you to get some good lighting outside at night let me bring it back down so yes if you plan on doing any video at night this is definitely a light you should buy and this is actually the reason why i bought similar lights to begin with because i was making astrophotography videos and i really needed some good light to be able to show my face uh with the light if i close it i'm just going to show you we won't see anything at all so i'm just completely gone so without this light you cannot see anything at all so it's pretty incredible the difference you get when using it so now i'm going to take it off from the camera right here and i'm going to talk about the next use case and this one is using it as a little light for taking some images so it's actually a little bit too strong right now so i'm just going to come here and i'm going to bring it down at only two three percent so i already talked in some other videos that i really don't like using the flash on the phone to take some pictures because i think it doesn't look really good so if i come here on my google pixel 4a and i took a portrait mode photo of me right here we're gonna see that using this light we can get some much better results from the photos i'm going to take another picture by closing this slide i'm going to put this back on here and i'm just going to close it for an instant so i can take a picture without any light and you can see we don't see anything even if i put on for illumination you can see that having the little light is really a saver when you're taking any pictures at night so for this reason i think it's also a really great option you can also use it to eliminate the whole scene if you want when taking pictures at night so it's definitely worth the investment for either photo video if you are taking pictures or videos at night i had these two lights for a little bit over a month now and they've been very useful in all kinds of situations we're never really expected to be using these little lights so for example they were very helpful when i was taking out some things from the car and a little bit of light to see what i was doing they're also really useful when you're inside of a tent and you want to have some light at night to see what you're doing they're also really great when you're walking around with your camera bags something like that and you just want to clip one on it to be able to see where you're going so just in general they've been very useful and they're very useful because they're battery powered and super small so they're super easy to put inside of your backpack before wrapping up the video let's make a quick comparison with the output chamcea so i'm gonna go get one in the background right here so we can make a comparison honestly both of these lamps are very similar on paper the aperture amc should be a bit better because it has bluetooth connectivities which allows you to use an app to control the light it also has magnets in the back and it's also ten dollars cheaper and has a longer battery life but in reality i might use a little bit more the sun marked light at least that's the one that's gonna be coming inside of my backpack because of this side so the bluetooth connection is going to be much more useful on the app hmc for studio light like right now when i have them in the background but when i'm going around i prefer having a smaller light that can easily go inside of my backpack and especially the smaller one the bicolor one that i'm gonna leave pretty much all the time inside of my backpack because whenever i need a little bit of light at night it's gonna be a savory to have this small little compact light inside of my backpack at all times i hope you enjoyed this video but remember that what i talked about inside of this video don't only apply to these lights even though i clearly recommend them also what did you think of the intro definitely let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting the like button below and also subscribe for more content on photography and filmmaking see you in the next one [Music] you
Video Links
- 🔗 BUY THE MINI BI-COLOR
- 🔗 BUY THE MINI RGB
- Sandmarc VN Filters for phone
- DJI Pocket 2 Review
- Capturing the stars with the DJI Pocket 2
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- TikTok
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
When I first started making videos, I thought lighting was a luxury—something I could worry about later. Turns out, that was wrong. These two lights from Sandmarc changed my mind about how much impact a simple portable light can have.
I've got the Prolight Mini Bi-Color ($69) and the Prolight Mini RGB ($99), and I want to show you exactly where they fit into real creative work. I'm not giving you a generic specs rundown—I filmed the entire intro using only these two lights on my DJI Pocket 2, and honestly, the results surprised me.
Here's what I cover in the video. First, cinematic work: the RGB's built-in effects (lightning, cop cars, fireworks, SOS) are genuinely useful when you're shooting short films or music videos. The RGB mode lets you get creative colors without needing a whole rig. Second, studio setups: I show how these can replace larger, pricier lights. Using one as a key light and one in an IKEA diffuser as a background light, I got professional-looking results that rival lights costing ten times more. Third, video calls. Front-facing cameras are terrible in low light. A single Prolight sitting in front of your laptop during a Zoom call, interview, or team meeting makes a huge difference—cleaner image, less grain, better color. Fourth, night video and photography. Whether you're filming yourself outside at night or taking portrait photos, this light is powerful enough to work at 10% brightness and bright enough when you crank it to 100. Fifth, there are all the other moments you don't expect: lighting inside a tent, clipping one to your bag, pulling things from your car—having a compact, battery-powered light in your backpack becomes invaluable.
One design complaint: the USB-C port on both lights is on the bottom, which makes it hard to charge when they're mounted on a tripod.
As for the Aputure MC comparison—yes, it's cheaper and has Bluetooth control via app, plus better battery life. But for travel and everyday use, I reach for the Sandmarc because of its size. If you're starting out with one light, get the Bi-Color; that's your face light and it'll cover most situations.