The use of video lights is a regular theme on the Tangents blog. Specifically, the best LED video light is a versatile must-have piece of gear in my camera bag. Not only do I use it at weddings, I also use it on location shoots. For example, while photographing the interior of one of the largest hardware stores in Manhattan, I used an LED video light to bring up some detail in the more shadowy areas in the shelves and corners. Easier to just point the hand-held video light than to set up off-camera lighting. Especially because the Read more inside...
The dramatic look that video lights lend to photographs, is a regularly explored topic on Tangents. I also cover the use of video light in my book Direction and Quality of Light.
The video lights that I have been favoring, are the Lowel ID-Light (affiliate), but like other halogen video lights, it tends to run hot. LED video lights (affiliate) that are meant to be hand-held or mounted on a camera, also tend to be under-powered for some uses. And since video lights tend to be small light sources, their light is quite Read more inside...
What sets Litepanels Croma LED video light (B&H / Amazon) apart from most, is that you can vary the color temperature. You can vary the WB between 3200K and 5600K by dialing a knob. No more need for a gel to be clipped in and out. The gel (or lack of gel) would mean a specific WB with the LitePanels Pro. With the variable adjustment of the Litepanels Croma, you have every color balance setting inbetween. Read more inside...
Exposure metering when using video light for photography
In response to the article on how to shoot romantic wedding portraits, using video light, someone asked about exposure metering with the video light.
"Much in the same vein as using flash, do you establish the ambient exposure first (to your taste) and then add the video light to expose ‘correctly’ for your subject? How do you meter for this video light and therefore adjust the light power to the right level? By chimping on test shots?"
While this would certainly be a correct way of doing it, the practical way of doing it, Read more inside...
With the recent lighting workshop in New York, we again played with the use of video light ... and then took it out to the street. The blue-ish tones of the shady side of the building here, contrasted beautifully with the warm glow of the video light.
As with the article, gelling your flash to get a blue background, this is something that can work very well when we use light sources with different color balance, thereby attaining those complementary colors. The rapid fall-off in light also helped give the photograph a dramatic Read more inside...
Photography composition - Finding the other angles
At the same photo shoot-out that the stunning Film Noir Fight Scene came out of, I again worked with a model, Jill. Her hairstyle and dress were strongly reminiscent of the flapper era. Therefore a more dramatic and sexy pose and styling was suited. And of course, dramatic lighting. For off-the-cuff / on-the-fly dramatic lighting, a video light is hard to beat.
The photo at the top is the angle that my friend Peter Salo found, while I was standing on a short ledge, shooting from above. The irony here is that the first time Peter Read more inside...
wedding photography: bride & groom portraits with video light
For that dramatic Hollywood look, a video light is probably the easiest light to use, especially when there is the need to work fast like on a wedding day. With Alli & Scott's engagement photo session, I knew I'd be working with a couple that would easily go along with any ideas that we'd come up with. We worked indoors at the Temple Israel in Long Island, New York, and there were all kinds of interesting nooks to explore. Read more inside...
Video tutorial - Using LED video light for photography
Regular visitors to the this website will know that I favor video lights for dramatic portraits. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature of continuous light, makes it really easy to get interesting light on your subjects. But it does need some finessing in how you position it for portraits. Meeting up with Anelisa, one of my favorite models, we created this tutorial video clip to show exactly how I use the video light for portraits. It also explains my starting point in choosing the direction of light, and also shows how I often Read more inside...
using a gelled LED video light for a change in color balance (model: Rebekah)
Continuing with the theme of combining dramatically different color balances in a single image, there is this striking portrait of Rebekah. She is one of our models at the workshop at Treehaven, WI, this week. Working in the fading evening light, I had Rebekah pose somewhere in the middle of a large clump of trees. I knelt down so that I could shoot up and catch the last remnants of the evening sky as the background.
The blue light filtering through the trees was then exaggerated by using an LED video Read more inside...
using video light as fill-light for the romantic wedding portraits
Having just photographed my first wedding of 2011, I'm back in the groove of things. Keeping to the recent theme of showing how video lights are used for photography, I'd like to show a small selection of images of Cherryl and Jim's wedding where I used a video light to enhance the existing incandescent lighting at the reception venue ... Read more inside...
