HANDS-ON REVIEW: Godox VL300 LED Light

This year, my company’s production work has been significantly slower than it was in 2019, mostly due to COVID-19.

However, luckily, I landed a real, crewed, multi-camera production shot on a stage for Focusrite, a UK-based audio company. The directive of the project was to produce 10 instructional videos about the company’s new Dante network-enabled products.

In analyzing the project, we were originally going to use three Aputure LS-1S Lightstorm LED panels we already own for our main workhorse lights.

I’ve found these lights have offered us a lot of value for the money and we’ve used them extensively for the past few years on all kinds of shoots.

But one area they’re not as effective in is filling up my Medium Chimera Quartz Pro softbox. It really takes two of the panels to output enough light to fill up the softbox and punch through, especially when I’m using my 40-degree egg crate to keep the light off of the background and onto the talent (aka, “mitigating spill”).

Another limitation is they don’t have a large or strong enough yolk to hold up the weight of our (36x48 inch) Chimera without sagging, especially when the egg crate is attached. Even if one of the Aputures could support the Chimera, I’d need to punch two of them through the opening in the rear of the Chimera, and using two still wouldn’t work.

To get around this