Fabulous for travel
I like the RimeLite OneTik 36 so much I’ve started getting the rest of the OneTik range to replace most of my other modifiers. It’s super-fast and easy to put up. Great for travel, as it packs flat with 75cm length with all the diffusion materials still attached, and weighs just 850g, with most of that weight at the mount so it puts very little force on the light when mounted. The “90cm” is misleading - it’s the diameter of the whole front including the black hook-and-loop. The illuminated face is only 85cm across, and that’s the maximum diagonal between the corners of the Octa. The illumination evenness is good, but not perfect. The inner diffusion is surprisingly close to the front diffusion and you can see its shadow in the light pattern, creating a brighter ring around the edge (which I don’t mind too much) along with a minor hot-spot in the middle, which I’m less keen on. It’s fine for portraiture, but if I were using its reflection as a specular highlight in product photography, I’d prefer the more even light pattern from the Aputure Light Dome II, which diffuses the light better with its greater depth. The photo shows the light pattern of the Amaran Light Dome II on the left with its heavier 2.5-stop diffuser, and the RimeLite OneTik 36 Octa on the right.
The RimeLite can swap between my Bowens-mount video lights, Godox-mount strobes, and PCB Einstein strobes just by swapping out the ring, which is almost instant to do - no tools or screws needed. The RimeLite is the same as “Parasnap Glow” and also “SMDV” brand, and these have just about every conceivable type of speedring available - and they’re said to fit the RimeLite.
Compared to my Amaran Light Dome II, the RimeLite 36 is close to half the weight, packs WAY smaller in length and width, has a slightly smaller illuminated area (the Light Dome II is a true 90cm diameter), it’s slightly less deep, and the light quality is not quite as good as the Amaran. The RimeLite wins hands-down when travelling - it’s not even close - while the Light Dome has a slight edge in light quality if you've got the space and it’s not moving around. Compared to the Amaran Light Dome III mini which has a similar collapsing mechanism, I much prefer the RimeLight. The RimeLite has a smoother, easier tension that is easy to put up one-handed and is much less explosive to collapse. It’s so smooth that you can collapse it while mounted on the light and light stand to go through doors etc and they put it up again - while the Light Dome does the same in theory, I’m just not going to risk the Light Dome's explosive collapse while attached to a light.
Any things I’d change? The release lever to collapse the softbox is easy to use, but it sits at the apex of the ring so it juts out when collapsed and adds an extra 4mm to the closed length. So when you’re travelling, all the impact from knocks and vibrations will be taken by the lock mechanism instead of the solid aluminium ring. Those extra 4mm also make it JUST too big to fit in the common Pelican 1615 with TrekPak dividers. I’d prefer the release button on the folding part of the ring (where it is on the similar Aputure Light Dome III models) so it’s protected.
But overall, a very definite 5-stars. Turns the heads of other photographers/videographers, and saves so much time, weight, space and messing around it has paid for a large chunk of itself after 2 weeks’ use.
