Back in 2012, I went to the PhotoPro Expo in Cincinnati – it was the first photography seminar/trade show I’d ever attended.  That was also the year that the original Westcott Ice Light by Jerry Ghionis first debuted, and both Jerry Ghionis and Westcott were at the Expo doing demos with the Ice Light.  Back then, it was revolutionary — the first handheld, daylight-balanced LED “wand” light that you could carry like a light-saber, run-and-gun with, mount on a stand, or throw in a bag.  I thought it was the coolest piece of photography gear I had ever seen, and I’ve always wanted one ever since.  But a couple of things always held me back from buying it.  Firstly, it’s not cheap, and secondly I was never sure that I would use it enough to get my moneys worth.  Jerry Ghionis is a well known wedding and portrait photographer.  I don’t do wedding and portrait photography – I mostly do product photography.  It’s actually rare for me to photographs of people at all.  So the Ice Light remained a piece of equipment that I admired from afar.  But I always suspected that the Ice Light could actually be quite useful for me in the studio when doing product photography.

Fast Forward to 2025 and Dodd Camera Store’s annual sales event in Cincinnati Ohio.  It was there that I had learned that Westcott had recently released the third iteration of the Ice Light.  It’s now offered in two different versions – the traditional bi-color LED and a new RGBWW version, which is the version I selected.  If you’re like me, you may be asking “what is RGBWW?”  RGB LED lights have of course been around for a while.  But instead of just mixing colors using RGB (which is fine for effects but terrible for natural-looking light), RGBWW adds two dedicated white LED channels:

• Warm White (approx 2700–3200K)
• Cool White (approx 5600–6500K)

This instantly solves the biggest problem of RGB-only lights:  RGB light alone cannot produce accurate, clean, natural white light.  If you’ve ever seen that “plasticky,” almost “neon white” look from cheap RGB lights. That’s RGB-only struggling to make white.  RGBWW fixes that with real white LEDs.

I finally decided to give the Ice Light a try – and purchased one of the Ice Light 3 kits.  I purchased the version which includes the barn doors, rechargeable battery, and carrying case.

It also comes with an AC adapter, and a 16 ft (you read that correctly) USB-C charging cable.  The cable and adapter allow for running the Ice Light plugged in to an electrical outlet.  It’s a nice option, but plan on buying the accessory rechargeable battery:

The barn doors and rechargeable battery are essential accessories

I’ve already been using some admittedly cheap LED lights in my studio for the product shots that I do, as well as to light my YouTube videos.  On one side I use a 60W LED with a large round modifier and a diffusion screen.  On the opposite side, I use a smaller LED panel as a fill light – and for the most part, this setup works quite well for me.  It works extremely well for me when I record my talking head videos.  But sometimes when I’m doing product shots, because the light is coming in from the sides, I’m not getting as much light as I need in front of the camera.  Part of the problem is I’m dealing with small studio space in my basement.  There’s not really room in front of the stage area for both me (taking the photo) and a large, diffused light.  And part of the problem is I’m lazy and don’t want to move everything around because it’s a pain.  Sometimes I can position or reflector card to try and bounce some extra light onto the front of the product.  But because the light coming in from the sides is highly diffused, it’s often not strong enough to overcome the shadows on the front of the subject.  If I try and use a smaller LED light source in front of the subject, it usually creates harsh “hotspots” instead of balancing the light.  In most cases, I usually just push the shadows in Lightroom and make the best of it.  But in the first few weeks of using the Ice Light 3, I’ve pretty much overcome this problem in my studio set up.  There’s something truly magical about the quality of the LED light coming from the cylindrical diffusion on the Ice Light.  I’ve used it both with the barn doors positioned on one side of the subject, but I prefer to actually hold the Ice Light in one hand in front of the subject while I’m pressing the shutter release with my other hand.  This gives me the flexibility to move the light closer or further away from the subject or position above or below the subject, depending on where I’m trying to improve the lighting.

I’ve had such success using one Ice Light 3 I decided to order a second kit.  I may experiment with using it as accent lighting in my videos and perhaps using the RGB functionality to improve the background in my videos.  Westcott has a rich library of tutorials on using the Ice Light – I look forward to learning and expanding my knowledge and skills this Winter and really appreciate the after sales support Westcott has out there.

The retail price of the Ice Light 3 RGBWW with the included barn doors and rechargeable batteries is $299.00. To be clear, there are cheaper Chinese knockoff tube lights out there. With Westcott you’re paying for the quality of the light and the quality of the product as well as US based customer service.  Worth.  It.