SmallRig RC 60B LED review - Little but capable

Amateur Photographer verdict

Small and light LED light with a decent battery, it delivers power consistently throughout the colour temperature range and it won’t set you back a fortune.

Pros

Small, well made body
Good output
Low cost
Consistent colour and power

Cons

Proprietary accessory mount
No app for remote control

SmallRig’s RC 60B is a powerful but miniature bi-colour LED video and photography light that has its own battery built into the body, and which presents pretty amazing value for money. It’s really not that long ago that LED lights were big, very expensive and not very powerful, but all that has changed dramatically in the last few years. Finding one that didn’t need mains power or a massive battery would have also added to the cost of buying it and inconvenience of using it.

SmallRig RC 60B LED – At a glance

$199 / £191
Small bodied LED light
Powerful 60W output (11200 lux)
Warm, white and cool temperatures
Built-in battery delivers 45min of full power
Mount for range of accessories
Easy to control
Weight: 680g
smallrig.com

Smallrig RC60B LED lights with reflector. Image: Damien Demolder

Things have clearly moved on at pace, and while we’ve seen pricing coming down, units getting smaller, lights getting more powerful and units that can run on a battery, this little cube of a light seems to have combined all of those advances into one. The SmallRig RC60B is only just bigger than a mini V-Lock battery, and will fit into the slot of your camera bag where you’d keep a camera or a fast standard zoom. It should provide enough light to illuminate a portrait or a still life indoors, and to fill some shadows outside on a sunny day. Plus it has enough juice in its built-in battery to last us 45 minutes on full power. To me, that all sounds enticing.

SmallRig RC 60B LED – Features

The SmallRig RC 60B is the smaller of the SmallRig RC series of COB (Chip On Board) lights that are designed for stills photographers and videographers. Previously it took a larger body to house a 60W light, but this one comes in a body that measures 100x110x85mm, and which weighs 680g. Technically the maximum power of the light is 63W which should, according the SmallRig’s figures, give us 11200 lux at 1 metre, with the supplied reflector fitted and the colour temperature set to 5600K.

We have a decent set of colour temperatures to choose from, running from a very warm 2700K to a cool 6500K, which nicely takes in the typical tungsten setting of 3200K and daylight at 5200K. The colour of the light is straight warm, neutral or cool – there is none of the green/magenta adjustment we might get on more expensive lights for fine tuning. SmallRig claims this head has a CRI of 97+ and a TLCI of 98+, so we should expect the colours in our subjects to be rendered very accurately to the eye and on the camera’s sensor.

Power can come from a range of sources, not least of which is the on-board 3400mAh battery. For context, that’s about the same power you’d expect from one and a half mirrorless camera batteries, or two thirds of a Sony NP-F750 block-type battery. When the light is on full power, SmallRig says we should expect 45 minutes of life, while in Eco Mode we’ll get 75 minutes. Eco mode runs the light at 60% full power and on a lower fan setting.

If the internal battery doesn’t offer enough run time, we have other options via the unit’s USB-C port. This can be connected to any power supply delivering between 43W and 100W to power the light, and this range and below to charge its battery – it takes 63W to run the light at full power. The most convenient methods of powering the light once the internal battery is dead will be mains power via the USB-C port, or a mini V-lock battery if you are on location.

A small reflector dish comes with the light, but other accessories and modifiers can be fitted via the bayonet mount around the LED. The mount is non-standard so only compatible with accessories specifically designed for this light – a mini parabolic softbox and a mini square softbox.

The SmallRig RC 60B comes in a neat zip-up case along with long and short USB-C cables, a screw-in handle, an angled mount to fit the light on a regular lighting stand, and a clamp to attach a power bank or v-lock battery to the back of the light’s body.

Key features

Power options: Built-in 3400mAh battery as well as USB-C PD for mains, power bank or V-Lock battery
Eco Mode: runs light at 60% brightness for longer battery life and almost silent fan
Display Panel: Nice clear screen for monitoring settings, power remaining, and power coming in

SmallRig RC 60B LED – In use

The light is very easy to use, as it features only two knobs and three buttons. While few control points can sometimes make life hard, in this case they are just enough – and actually there isn’t too much to control. One knob controls intensity and the other the colour temperature. Both are large enough to find, and are simple to operate. A slow turn gets you small incremental adjustments while a spin lets us jump more quickly, and a press takes us directly to a number of pre-determined oft-used settings.

As well as the continuous lighting mode, we have a collection of FX effects – flashes, fireworks, broken TV, fire, etc. Again, these are easy to access, and simple to customise to the frequency of flashes/modulations and the colour we want to use.

All these modes and adjustments can be monitored on the little screen mounted on the side of the body. The text and icons shown here are clear and pretty straightforward, the screen responds quickly when we make changes, and it displays all the things we’d need to know – including how much longer we can expect from our battery at the current level of output. It is small and simple, but it’s actually pretty good.

The base of the body has a regular 1/4in 20 thread for the sort of tripod screw you’d use with your camera, and it has a couple of smaller holes either side to allow anti-rotation pins to be accommodated when required. The angled adapter that comes in the kit screws into this so we can use the RC 60B with regular light stands, and so we can fit a brolly.

I didn’t notice at first, but there are also little indents top and bottom of the rear of the light that fit the battery clamp that comes with the kit. This clamps on over the back panel – still giving access to the buttons –allowing us to attach a mini V-lock battery or a power bank. I’m not sure I’d want to hand-hold the light with a V-lock hanging off the back of it as it doesn’t feel entirely secure, but it’s certainly good enough for when the light is stationary on a stand.

A fan helps to keep the light cool while in operation, but it isn’t especially noisy. You can certainly hear it when the light is at full power, but in Eco mode it’s very quiet indeed.

Unlike so many other LED lights on the market at the moment, the SmallRig RC 60B doesn’t have Wi-Fi and it doesn’t connect to an app for remote operation. That’s a bit of a shame, as these little lights are ideal for hiding somewhere that we don’t want to have to keep going back to. But if you are just going to stick it on a stand at head height the lack of app probably won’t bother you.

SmallRig RC 60B LED – Performance

A 60W light is primarily aimed at those shooting indoors or those needing a fill light outside on a bright day. It won’t be overpowering the sun, even in the UK. Indoors though we can get some decent enough readings, and this light performed as I’d expect. Whatever the lux figures SmallRig quotes, the reality is that when you’ve set ISO 400 on your camera and you have a shutter speed of 1/60sec, you can expect a subject at 2m to need between f/5.6 and f/8.

The light is reasonably consistent across the colour temperature range, which is nice, dropping only just over ½ stop from one extreme to the other. At 6500K I got a reading of f/5.6 7/10, at 5200K f/5.6 8/10, at 3200K f/5.6 5/10 and at 2700K f/5.6 2/10, so we lose a bit of power as the colour temperature gets warmer – but not a whole lot.

Colour temperature is also really quite consistent as we alter the power, with the brightest settings being a tiny bit red and the lower power settings being a tiny bit blue. The internal battery lasts pretty much as long as advertised and it charges nice and quickly too.

Verdict

SmallRig RC 60B lights — The Smallrig RC 60B is primarily aimed at those shooting indoors or those needing a fill light outside on a bright day. Image: Damien Demolder

Almost every time I review a new LED light, I’m delighted with the advances made since the one I tested last week, and this SmallRig RC 60B is one of those that has made me very pleased. I like that it’s small and light, that it has a decent internal battery that means you don’t always need to carry more power, and that it’s easy to use. What makes me more delighted is that it offers the power it says it does and that the colour it produces is mostly neutral – certainly neutral enough.

The kit it comes with is also well thought out, and we are immediately well equipped for using it straight away. So, in all, it’s a very nice little light that can be had for very little money. An app would be nice for remote control, but perhaps we’ll see that next time.