The SmallRig RM 03 is a flexible and versatile LED lamp useful for both tying and photography
When I started tying flies over fifty years ago, I tied them by the light of a window or a desk lamp in the winter evenings. These days I need some assistance from a pair of glasses and considerably more illumination. My tying station has an LED lamp with two lighting bars which give good coverage of the bench so I can find stuff, and of the vice so that I can see to tie it onto a hook. This set up works when tying medium to big stuff, but recently I’ve found that I need some more light focussed on the subject when I’m tying tiny critters.
As well as tying flies, I also photograph a good few of them, so when I saw a new light designed for macro photography that looked like it might be useful for both fly tying and fly photography, I ordered one. The RM 03 Macro Photography LED Light is made by SmallRig, and I got mine through Amazon for £49.90.
I have been using a SmallRig Mini Cube LED for several years for fly photography as described in my book Imaging Imitations. It’s around £15 cheaper than the RM 03 but the rechargeable battery life is fairly short, and you need to have a small tripod or a magic arm to position it for fly photography. You can’t run it while charging, which you can with the RM 30, so it’s not suitable as a tying lamp.
TRM 03 is a LED lamp on the end of a flexible rubber covered spring which is bent to position the light and stays exactly where you put it. At the other end is the battery and control unit with two buttons that control the intensity and colour of the light, and a USB-C port for charging the battery or running the light continuously from a USB plug. Holding down the power switch turns the light on, and short presses cycle the LED through five levels of intensity. Pressing the second button cycles the light through five different colours.
The casing of the lamp holder has a lens in the end and sliding the casing back and forth alters the angle of the emitted light allowing a small circle of illumination to be directed onto a fly in the vice. The base of the control unit has a standard ¼/-20 threaded socket which allows it to be attached to a tripod or any other standard photographic mount. The RM 03 comes with a sturdy metal spring clamp with an integrated small ball head which screws into the lamp base. I use the clamp to attach the light to the back of my tying station, but it could equally well be clamped to the stem of a tying vice. It’s very simple to position the light by bending the stem and adjusting the coverage by sliding the lamp casing in or out.
Like the Mini Cube, the RM 03 comes with a number of lighting modifiers for macro photography, including a diffuser dome and a barn door which can be used to direct and shape the light on the subject. The light is also supplied with a gobo holder which fits on the end of the lamp holder. Gobos are thin sheets of metal with a pattern or design cut into them that are placed between lenses to project a pattern of light onto a subject or background. They are commonly used on large lights in theatrical lighting and studio photography.
The gobos that come with the light look like they have been laser cut from 0.2mm stainless steel and fit in carrier that slides into a slot in the side of the lens unit. To get a more random and natural background effect, like sunlight shining through leaves, I made my own gobos by cutting out small sections of aluminium cooking foil, placing them on a piece of foam and pricking holes with a pin
The RM 03 is a very versatile light for a fly photography, used either on its own or in conjunction with natural or other forms of LED lighting. Should you want to use it outdoors, the battery provides over two hours of light and the unit is weatherproofed against rain and dirt.
The gobo attachment was the thing that attracted me to the RM 03 to go with the diffused variable intensity LED panel and the Micro Cube that I have previously used for photographing flies. Using a gobo to illuminate either the fly or the background adds an extra dimension to an image over using just flat panel lighting or a spotlight.
Using the gobo attachment to light the background in a fly shot can add depth and interest to an image when combined with one or more other lights. The image below was shot with an LED panel overhead, a Micro Cube with a snood shining on the fly from the right to highlight the silk body and the hackle and the RM 03 switched to its red LED shining on a slab of rippled stone in the background.
The image below of a nymph tied with natural silk ribbons was shot with a dimmed LED panel from above and Micro Cube with a barn door modifier closed down to shine a narrow beam of light across the fly. The background is a piece of red cedar bark which I picked up on a beach in British Columbia illuminated with a homemade foil gobo in the RM 03.
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