I've got a Canon XHA1 and I need to go ahead and get a good on-camera light (with shoe mount) for getting good overall light in areas that are a little darker than I'd like. I do multipurpose shooting, so it needs to be able to do lots of things, but the immediate need is that I'm shooting a product placement commercial for La-Z-Boy and some of their production lines are not only too dark, but they're also not accessible enough for me to set up standard lighting kits... so I need something I can mount on camera.

What are your suggestions?

I've had a fair few lights in my time and each one has been better than the last. Thing is, this last one I bought earlier this year has been the best by far.

It's the cheepo-Chinese 160 LED lamp (ebay it). It's a neat panel light, runs off Sony, Panasonic or AA batteries, has a variable dimmer, comes with adjustable shoe mount, table-top stand (I use it for still photography too) and a selection of filters/ diffusers.

Shame it won't run off Canon camcorder batteries, but 6 rechargeable 2100mah AAs will run it for 90 mins at full brightness. It runs cool, has no filaments to break, isn't a nasty, harsh point light source. For £42 delivered, I'm impressed. No home should be without one.

tom.

Thank you for the tip Tom. Just snagged one. One can never have too many lights.

For others, if you are doing a search and want to power it off a Sony or Panasonic battery, make sure you add the appropriate video manufacturer to the eBay search -- for instance "160 LED light Sony". There are a few different kinds and you want to make sure you get the one with the battery adapter so you can operate it either off video camera batts or double A's. This particular lamp doesn't have an adapter for Canon batteries.

I have the Z96 and I agree with everything said above, down to and including the AAs.