LimoStudio LMS103 Umbrella Studio Lighting Kit Review
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The LimoStudio LMS103 Umbrella Lighting Kit is an appealing budget lighting solution. You get a full set of equipment for minimal investment. But what corners did LimoStudio have to cut to get the cost down? And is this kit still worth it? I'll answer that, and give my verdict at the end.
- Price
- What's in the box
- Brightness
- Build Quality
- Convenience
Price
I bought my LimoStudio Lighting Kit for about $55 (Amazon). This is much more expensive than many of the popular high end lights like Elgato’s Ring Light (my review), that launched at $200 and some GVM lights that cost even more than that.
In the box
2 full sized light stands (up to 86 inches) 7’2”
1 small, fill light stand (28 inches) 2'4"
3 45 W 1820 lumens 6000 Kelvins bulbs
3 bulb sockets
1 photo equipment carry bag
That’s a lot of value for the price - on paper. We’ll get into performance. A note on the bulbs color temperature; It’s listed currently as 6500K on Amazon, but 6000K on LimoStudio’s site. Not a huge discrepancy, but keep that in mind for later in this review.
Brightness
These lights are NOT bright. Each bulb is listed by LimoStudio as being 1820 lumens, but that number in isolation is misleading when you factor in the method of diffusion. By the time the light passes through the umbrella, you're left with just a little more than an average lamp light brightness. The smaller light stand doesn't come with an umbrella, and it's meant as a back light to separate you from the background. This is mainly useful at night, and it’s hard to notice in the middle of the day.
With these lights, the subject will indeed have soft, even light distribution. But it's so dim that everything still looks dark unless there's another bright source of light. Elgato's Key Light Air, which has its diffusion built into the frame, is listed as only 1400 lumens but appears much brighter in practice.
In the middle of the day, the LimoStudio kit is indeed quite useful for evening out the sunlight coming in through a window. The 6000K color temperature helps with this especially, as it's made to match the light of the sun around noon. However, at dusk and night time, your shots are going to be filled with a lot of noise as your camera tries and fails to seek out more light. These are best suited as supplementary light.
The following screens are from the Logitech Brio webcam (my review) set to an exposure of -5 and gain of 0.
Daylight only, overcast evening.
2 Elgato Key Light Airs
LMS103 (all 3 lights)
Build Quality
The stands themselves are quite sturdy, but make sure to tighten everything properly and keep the base wide enough so it doesn’t tip over. This is how one of my bulbs died. The umbrellas themselves are good quality too. All that leaves is the bulbs themselves.
The LMS 103 lighting kit bulbs are very flimsy. Like I mentioned, one of them died from being tipped over. My fault, no problem. But another slowly got loose over time. The capsule isn’t fitted together very snugly, so it slowly started slipping apart unprovoked. When I saw the wire sticking out a bit, I knew it would inevitably break apart, so I tried to click it back together. That hairline crack it created led to an even quicker undoing of the bulb unfortunately.
The confirmation that the problem was more the bulbs than me was the fact that I bought a bunch of replacements, and one of those didn’t work out the box. Apparently, this is quite common based on other reviews. The replacement lights from LimoStudio are also a slightly different color temperature than the original lights. They’re a bit more red which is hard to tell especially when you have manual white balance, but it’s still an annoyance.
Same shape.
Different color temp.
Convenience
Big and bulky sets the stage here. The LimoStudio kit is not easy to move around. Be ready to have the umbrellas or stand bump into stuff as you try to reposition them around the room or take them down. Initial setup out of the box took around 15 minutes which is respectable and it gets faster each time, but the less you have to do that the better.
The wire is about 7 feet long, but it comes out of the bulb socket at the top, so if your outlet is on or near the floor, you’ll need to set the stand about 3-4 feet away at max. So, convenient? Not really. But if you can deal with the bulk, it's not much of a problem.
The height is adjustable from about 37 inches to about 86 inches, and the bulb can arced up or down by adjusting the mount on the top.
The lights turn on with a basic switch. You cannot increase or decrease the brightness. You also cannot change the color temperature, but for the price it’s hard to complain too much.
Verdict
There are two scenarios in which I suggest these lights.
1) You're filming exclusively in the daytime.
2) You're using some other light to brighten your subject, but want to light the background too. This can make your set look like it's midday even when it's pitch black out. Check out how they transform this Logitech Brio nighttime shot when paired with 2 Elgato Key Light Airs.
2 Elgato Key Light Airs at night.
2 Elgato Key Light Airs at night + LimoStudio LMS103 Umbrella Lights.
Otherwise, these lights aren’t the way to go for a primary light source. I've reviewed some of my go to Elgato Lights that I pair with these here.
LimoStudio LMS103 Umbrella Lighting Kit: https://amzn.to/2LvYWAK
Elgato Key Light Air https://amzn.to/2VW9zEX
