Is lighting really that important for photography? Anyone familiar with the Zhiyun X200 RGB?

[LINCOLN]

Hey all,

I’ve been shooting mostly with natural light for a long time, and honestly never thought too much about artificial lighting. Lately though, especially when shooting indoors, I’m starting to feel like light control might matter more than I gave it credit for.

Not even talking about fancy setups — just having a consistent light source seems to make framing and exposure a lot less stressful. At the same time, I’m still not sure how far I actually need to go with this, or if it’s easy to overthink lighting as a hobby shooter.

While browsing around, I ran into the Zhiyun X200 RGB. I haven’t used it, just saw it mentioned a few times.
Has anyone here tried it or looked into it? Does it make sense for photography, or is it mainly a video light? And do you actually end up using the RGB part, or mostly keep it on white?

Would love to hear how you guys think about lighting in general.

[eatstoomuchjam]

I, for one, would like to welcome Zhiyun's marketing team and/or their spam bot to this forum.

As to that specific light, if it doesn't come in an ugly leather case and have Cam Mackey's signature all over the light and all of its accessories, is it even worth considering?

[newfoundmass]

I dunno if it's a spammer or not, but in the event that it isn't: 

Lighting is very important for photography (and videography), especially indoors. Aside from producing nicer images, it overall helps you become a better photographer as you experiment and put more thought into your shots. Even as a hobbyist it's a good idea to learn and use lighting. 

I've never used this light specifically, but unless you plan to experiment with RGB and need a ton of output when doing so, you'll probably save some money getting a non-RGB light. If you need to add a little color to your shots you can get a cheaper RGB light to throw on the background or add a little stylish color to the subject. 

If you're strictly a hobbyist, you can start out with cheap clamp lights and LED bulbs, using things like shower curtains for diffusion. I still do this when I'm in smaller areas where I don't have a ton of room. There are also very affordable soft box sets that come with soft boxes, stands, and bulbs. They are very simple, but serve their purpose. 

[zerocool22]

for pHotography def not. Use flash, so MUCH MORE power in a smaller body. For video its ok, but I would go for something more with an bowens s mount (so you can easy use softboxes, fresnells, spotlights,...)

[kye]

Lighting is critical - without it the files are just blackness.

The debate about artificial vs natural light is a large and complex one, but the fundamental is that you must learn to understand light and its various qualities.  Soft vs hard, directional vs flat, etc.  Especially what it does to the human face, assuming your work includes people.

Perhaps a good exercise is to practice shooting light rather than shooting the physical objects that it hits.  Take your phone and go out and just shoot as many different types of light you can.  Do half-a-dozen photo walks with this as the only subject and you'll leapfrog the majority of photographers.

[Snowfun]

It’s all about the interplay between light and shadow. By controlling the light you control the shadow. Particularly true for monochrome photography when you don’t have subtle tones of colour to rescue a picture. 

[Clark Nikolai]

4 hours ago, kye said:

Perhaps a good exercise is to practice shooting light rather than shooting the physical objects that it hits.  Take your phone and go out and just shoot as many different types of light you can.  Do half-a-dozen photo walks with this as the only subject and you'll leapfrog the majority of photographers.

This is a good idea. One thing that art school students get are assignments. This provides them with opportunities to explore things and learn from them. If someone isn't in art school (or film school or whatever) they can still give themselves assignments. Set parameters that they have to get creative within, do a series on a theme, etc.

[lalan45]

On 12/22/2025 at 12:59 AM, LINCOLN said:

Hey all,

I’ve been shooting mostly with natural light for a long time, and honestly never thought too much about artificial lighting. Lately though, especially when shooting indoors, I’m starting to feel like light control might matter more than I gave it credit for.

Not even talking about fancy setups — just having a consistent light source seems to make framing and exposure a lot less stressful. At the same time, I’m still not sure how far I actually need to go with this, or if it’s easy to overthink lighting as a hobby shooter.

While browsing around, I ran into the Zhiyun X200 RGB. I haven’t used it, just saw it mentioned a few times.
Has anyone here tried it or looked into it? Does it make sense for photography, or is it mainly a video light? And do you actually end up using the RGB part, or mostly keep it on white?

Would love to hear how you guys think about lighting in general.

Totally get where you’re coming from! Even a simple, consistent light source can make a huge difference for indoor shots. I haven’t tried the Zhiyun X200 myself, but from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly geared toward video, though the adjustable white light is useful for photos too. Most people I know keep it on white and only use RGB for creative effects. Honestly, for hobby shooting, I’d focus on getting consistent, soft light first and worry about fancy setups later—you can always layer in color later if you want.

[kye]

9 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

This is a good idea. One thing that art school students get are assignments. This provides them with opportunities to explore things and learn from them. If someone isn't in art school (or film school or whatever) they can still give themselves assignments. Set parameters that they have to get creative within, do a series on a theme, etc.

Absolutely.

I am a huge proponent of doing tests.

Pick a lens and go out and shoot with it for a day, edit, grade, and export it, then watch it over and over again for a week or so and see how it makes you feel.  Do it again.  Do it with a different camera.  Do it with a different technique.

Pick a sequence of 5 shots and then shoot that sequence with several lenses, edit the sequences together and then compare them.

Shoot a latitude test (the same shot but with each at a different exposure) and then work out how to grade them in post to match the shots.  This will check if you have your colour management setup correctly, and will also show you the limits of your camera.

Take a series of shots and lower the saturation on all of them, and duplicate the shots many times in a timeline.  Then test every method you can find to raise the saturation again, label and export them.  Over a week or so look at them, compare them, see how each makes the footage feel, makes you feel.

Take the same series of shots as above, but try every LUT, try every method to add contrast, every way to apply a tint, every way to change WB, every way to add a split tone, every way to sharpen, every way to soften, every way to grade.  Test every look..  film emulation, VHS emulation, etc.  Test every resolution.  Every way to add grain.  Every way to reduce noise.  Every aspect ratio.

The goal is to learn how to see.