Technique Tuesday: Recession Lighting: A Poor Man's Guide to Lighting Gear

Good Morning Everybody,
Sunday was such a "rush-rush" day at the show, we didn't get a chance to see much of it, as the time passed quickly. Yesterday while at the show we saw some pretty cool stuff. LumaVue Arts had some really cool back light frames - the images were back lit in the frame and seemed to pop off the wall. Photodex was showing their new ProShow Gold 4. This looks like a very viable solution to quickly building products that combine the new video capabilities of our new DSLRs with still images. I'm heading back there today to take another peek.

And in the completely unrelated to photography department, we stopped by the Stop-Pain booth. This is of those vendors that show up at so many shows like this demonstrating special electronic massage devices that will cure all that ails you. We were all wiped out on Sunday so it seemed like the perfect place to relax for a few minutes. LaDawn, my buddy Kent Smith, and I sat there for about 45 minutes getting the full treatment - we ended up buying two units. It was kind of a fun experience - ahh! No more neck pain - yep, they seemed to work just fine. I'll keep you posted on more interesting items tomorrow. But for today, how about on with the show...

Recession Lighting: A Poor Man's Guide to Lighting Gear Well folks, I think I've got one of the best Technique Tuesdays I've ever posted. I shot the footage while in Florida last week with my new Canon 5D Mark II. I've always been challenged with trying to create the most beautiful images with the least amount or at best, the least expensive equipment.

As you know, for me, it's always about the light and the direction of light that we put on the scene and our subjects. It's never about the flashiest, most expensive gear. That's how today's technique Tuesday came about. I'll show you how to use a $25 mini flash unit, the same one I featured in gear bag Friday a few weeks ago, to create some beautiful portraits. Hit the play button below -- I think you'll enjoy the show.


Footnote: I know a few readers have commented about the sound quality of last week's Technique Tuesday. The problem was a result of me using a monaural microphone which, when plugged into the Canon 5D Mark II, only picked up one channel of sound.

I checked with my friends at TechSmith and asked why Camtasia Studio, my edit software, didn’t just combine the channels into one monaural signal when rendering the finished file. They unfortunately had no answer for me. I picked up a mono to stereo adapter plug from Radio Shack and I hope this has solved the problem.

Now in addition to that problem we encountered another during our shoot in Florida. I'm not using the most expensive wireless microphone, (are you understanding the man is cheap-Ladawn) in the world for these videos so there is, one point unfortunately about halfway through the video, in which we picked up a little static.

I watched the video a couple of times and, although it was slightly distracting for a few seconds, I don't think it detracts from the information contained in the tutorial, so I decided to run the post with the small annoyance. Anyway, those are my disclaimers and I’m sticking to them. I still hope you enjoy the tutorials. See everybody tomorrow, -David