While looking up information about how Panasonic’s HVX-200 performs in Low Light, I came across a tip from HVX-200 guru Barry Green suggesting use of a “MicLight”.

The MicLight is a round disc with 48 LED lights. It’s designed to fit around a camera’s mounted shotgun microphone, making it easy to get higher quality lighting in bad situations (particularly at night). The MicLight site advertises “Pro Quality 5600K LEDs” and says it is “equivalent to 50w camera light”. Powered by three AAA batteries, it’s also fairly long lasting. I’ve read some accounts suggesting it can run consistently over multiple days.

There’s one catch though – it costs a paltry $149. Yeah, $149. For a bunch of LED lights arranged in a circle.

Luckily for us though, Barry made another suggestion: “just search for 48 LED camping light.” Armed with that information I was able to find that, sure enough, the “MicLight” is nothing more than a rebranded camping light that’s usually stuck on umbrellas and that sort of thing. Clever, MicLight. Someone give these people an award for creative use of capitalism.

The unbranded MicLight is being sold for as little as $5 on eBay, but you can find a pretty stable supply online for about $10 a piece. This seems like a really good deal for what could be a really effective way to resolve some low light problems.