SmallRig RF 10C LED photography flashlight review: a clever pocketable spotlight

SmallRig is a China-based company that produces a wide range of photographic and video accessories, including LED lights such as the SmallRig RM01 mini LED Video Light Kit which is perfect for lighting toys or products in a home studio. For more power in a studio shoot, they provide the SmallRig RC 60B COB, which costs twice the price of the mini LED kit mentioned earlier. The subject of this review – the RF 10C – is an even cheaper LED than the RM01 mini kit, but unlike that desktop-based kit, the RF 10C deserves a place in your camera kit bag as it can do a lot to enhance your location-based portraits.

SmallRig RF 10C: Specifications

SmallRig RF 10C: Design & Handling

The SmallRig RF 10C is a grey metal (aluminum) flashlight-shaped LED that fits comfortably in your hand. My first impression was that this was a quality product due to its metal body and weight. At 422g it feels much heavier than its small size would suggest. It certainly has a solid build to house its 7500 mAh battery.

At the front of the flashlight/torch, you can see four LEDs behind a thick plastic lens. These LEDs enable the RF 10C to emit four colors - Sunset Orange, Icy Blue, Fiery Red, and Cool White. This makes the RF 10 the most basic LED that I’ve used in relation to color. It’s not a bi-color light (where you can dial in a wide range of color temperatures in degrees Kelvin). Neither is it like a typical RGB COB LED where you can dial in thousands of different colors. However, it does have several useful tricks up its sleeve in relation to the shape and texture of the light that it produces as I’ll explain in the Performance section (and on my accompanying video).

The SmallRig RF 10C has a tactile notched button that is designed to turn the flashlight’s LEDs on and toggle between their four colors. If you pull the tip of the torch away from the rear you can extend its length and change its focus between a narrow 10º and a wider 60º. At the tip’s full extension, the LED circular beam narrows. When pushing the tip back into its original position (thereby shortening the length of the flashlight) you get a much wider beam. This clever design saves you the trouble of moving closer or further away from your subject to get a wider or narrower beam of light and color.

The SmallRig RF 10C also ships with a circular silicon bracket that slides over the front of the LED. This bracket has a circular mount that’s designed to hold one of the twenty supplied filters over the lens. These black filters have shapes cut out of them, enabling you to add a wide range of stylized shapes and textures to the light produced by the RF 10C. These filters are a springboard to a range of creative lighting effects!

SmallRig RF 10C: Performance

To test the RF 10C I popped it and its 20 filters into its supplied cloth carry bag and packed it into my currently favourite camera backpack. Because I was shooting a professional model (Instagram: @olgasolomodel) I decided to pimp up my iPhone 16 Pro by placing it into a sturdy Rode cage. As the SmallRig RF 10C has two 1/4” threads on its shaft (and one on its rear) I was able to mount the flashlight on the top of the cage to create a more impressive-looking rig. I slid the rubber silicon bracket onto the front of the torch and mounted one of the 20 stencils into the bracket.

Shortly after meeting up with Olga, I let out an expletive (sorry Olga!) because I suddenly noticed that the rubber/silicone mount attached to the tip of the SmallRig Flashlight had dropped off during my earlier wanderings. Fortunately, Olga saved the day by donating one of her hair bands which helped me fit each of the remaining 19 stencils over the tip of the LED. I learned a valuable lesson - not to set up my kit too early in future shoots (and always carry a hairband!)

To complement the light from the RF 10C I placed a Harlowe Blade 10 on a tripod and set it to emit a teal light source. I then pressed the RF 10C’s one and only button to toggle it to shine a fiery orange. This gave me a contemporary teal and orange lighting set-up which is still the ‘go-to’ look for countless TV crime shows and thriller movies (indeed I often annoy my wife by saying ‘teal and orange’ whenever I spot that look in a show that she’s trying to enjoy).

The planned theme of my test shoot was Film Noir and the RF 10C was the perfect lighting accessory to achieve this look. Instead of a bland circular pool of light, the RF 10C’s filters produced exciting patterns of light and shade. I then positioned Olga so that parts of her face were illuminated by patches of teal and orange while other parts of the frame were obscured by angular shadows caused by the filter mounted on the LED. This textured mixture of light and shade added mood and mystery to my Film Noir shoot, turning Olga into a Femme Fatale. The 20 plastic stencils supplied with the RF 10C LED range in style, from a less useful planet Saturn-shaped stencil to a range of more effective window effects that I found very useful on my test shoot.

The RF 10C was very easy to use. By rotating its control knob I could turn it on and adjust brightness. If I rotated it clockwise it flashed twice to confirm that that it had reached full brightness. Rotating it left reduced its brightness in increments (with it flashing when reaching each increment). As it’s a 10W LED I left it on full brightness for most of my shoot and was happy with that intensity. As it can run for 3 hours I had no concerns about the RF 10C’s power to go the distance as I had only booked Olga for a two-hour shoot, so the LED was powered down in between location changes with a long press off its button.

SmallRig RF 10C: Verdict

On one hand, the SmallRig RF 10C could be dismissed as a glorified flashlight. But for its relatively cheap price, it can make a huge difference to the look of your portrait and video shoots.

I really enjoyed using its supplied plastic filters to add textured patterns of light and shade to my location. The window-shaped shadows that the stencils added to my Film Noir themed subject helped accentuate the shape of my model’s face as well as enhance the crime thriller mood created by my teal and orange lighting set-up.

The unit is also sturdily built so it should last for multiple shoots, and I like the way you can slide the tip to create a wider or narrower spotlight effect. I was disappointed to lose the silicon filter mount during my test shoot but SmallRig where kind enough to send me a replacement so that I could continue testing the RF 10C and generate some product shots for this review.

Alternatives

Joby Beamo Reel Color LED: This isn’t a torch-shaped LED like the SmallRig RF 10C, but as a circular disc-shaped unit it is very compact and portable and it can add a wider range of creative colors to your portrait and product shoots than you can achieve with the RF 10C’s limited collection of four LEDs. It has a fixed beam angle of 60º compared to he RF 10C’s wider angle range of between 10º and 60º. However, you can change the width of the pool of light emitted by the Beamo by moving it towards or away from the subject. As a bonus, it costs around half the price of the Beamo Reel.

Nice Veedi Photography Flashlight: We could only find this alternative to the SmallRig RF 10C on the US Amazon store but it has very similar specifications to the RF 10C. You can slide the tip to change the focus of the light emission for a large or tight spotlight effect. It also has the same four LED color options of red, white, blue, and orange. The Nice Veedi flashlight is also cheaper than SmallRig’s RF 10C, but it has a cheaper build with a silicone body compared with the RF 10C’s mostly aluminum frame. The Nice Veedi flashlight has a silicone diffuser to soften the shadows that it produces, but it lacks the creative filters that shape the beam produced by the SmallRig RF 10C.