When we heard rumors about the new bicolor LED light, the Lume Cube Panel Mini, we couldn’t wait to try it out on mid-sized stages during performances and backstage in Green Rooms. The tiny-but-mighty original Lume Cube scored a permanent place in our photographers’  photo bags, and the larger Lume Cube Panel had joined our must-have lighting accessories.

Then, before the Panel Mini’s launch, we went on lockdown and live performances became history.

Now everyone—not just photographers and videographers—needs the Mini Panel. Parents, children, teachers, students, employers, employees, doctors, patients, friends and neighbors are all connecting on Zoom, Facebook, Facetime, Skype, Google—plus new apps cropping up weekly—in order to stay connected, healthy, solvent and sane, and Lume Cube Panel Mini is absolutely the best choice for lighting those online meetups.

Like the larger panel, the credit-card sized Lume Cube Panel Mini offers full-spectrum lighting, with significant color adjustability (3200 – 5600k for you techies). Those of us with less-than-perfect hair and skin benefit from a simple dial system to adjust both the brightness and color warmth, minimizing wrinkles and shelter-at-home skin; the frosted lens diffuses the light so we don’t appear to be in an interrogation room down at the stationhouse, but still keeps us clearly lit for the chat.  There’s a silicone diffuser that pops on and off  to further soften the light .

Setup takes a full ten seconds—maybe 20 seconds for little kids or Grandma. It arrives powered up, but keep it plugged in for USB charging. Two tripod mounts, one on the long side, one on the bottom, provide portrait or landscape lighting. That simple screw mount can go on a tripod or on an included suction mount that firmly attaches to the back of a laptop, monitor or Smart TV with the flick of a lever, and you’re ready to chat, teach or diagnose.

The Panel Mini  is also available with a camera shoe mount when this is all over, and you may want a second Lume Cube Panel Mini by that time, since in the New Normal you’ll be used to its convenience at the computer. Despite  the easy setup and portability, at under $70.00, a second Mini Panel that stays with the camera will ensure a photographer always has one handy for those great greenroom—or birthday party—shots, when they come back around. And they will. They will.