Yeah I know LED is the way to go and I do like the Light Panels Mini Plus, but it is a little out of my price range, anybody know of a cheaper on camera light that will not just be super flat on the subject?
How flat the light looks is more a matter of where you put the light, not necessarily which light you choose, as most small LED sources have similar dimensions and hence similar softness qualities.
The z96 is a popular choice in the budget segment.
Depending on how powerful a light you need... I normally use the rotolight. It's properly colour-balanced, and the gels that come with it are handy. Not to mention the fact that you can stick it over your microphone. Big downside is that it's not really dimmable (you're meant to take it apart and attach ND gels to dim it).
You can get similar $20 lights from hardware stores that aren't, to be honest, all that different. Light is harsher, colour balance is off, can't attach gels or diffusion. But, still, for $20...
Second budget choice to rotolight would be cheap Hong Kong dimmable LED for $40 or less. These are very popular in my area. Downside is that there's something off in the colour; seems so to my eye anyway. As if there's a slight greenish tint to it or something; or if there's weird spikes in the colour spectrum. Anyway, does the job most of the time...
Are all these options super flat? Probably. +1 to nothing's post. Sometimes you can get a bit of angle when mounting a light on camera (for intstance, twisting the rotolight slightly on its stand), but it's deckchairs on the Titanic...
