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How to inexpensively take your lighting for social media to the next level

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Lighting isn’t something that many of us take into consideration for our social media. Sure, if we’re posting photographs of our clients to social media, they’re already lit anyway, but if we’re shooting images or videos that are just for social media, it’s usually ignored. Because, well, it’s just social media, right?

Well, there’s a lot you can do in terms of lighting for social media that’s fairly simple to achieve. You can do it with some relatively inexpensive gear and it’s pretty easy to set up, too. In this video, Mark Wallace walks us through a number of different types of lights and lighting setups to show how we can get the most out of our setups for social media.

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This photographer thinks Godox isn’t a brand for professional photographers

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All the photographic groups and forums have been vaguely on fire in the last 24 hours due to an inflammatory video posted on YouTube by a pro photographer giving his opinion about Godox (and other similar level) lights.

As you can imagine, opinion was quickly divided with the Godox supporters getting their knickers in a twist and those that can afford the more expensive brands feeling delightfully smug. I watched the full 23 minutes and 57-second video so you don’t have to. You’re welcome!

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$33,000 Hasselblad vs iPhone comparison shows the importance of lighting over camera

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We often see the “expensive camera vs smartphone” comparisons, but they’re not typically performed with this level of attention to detail. Especially when it comes to the lighting. But if you’re photographer Karl Taylor, the lighting is very important, especially when it comes to comparing images from one camera to another.

Karl recently photographed a custom Harley Davidson motorcycle in his studio using his 100-megapixel Hasselblad H6D-100c medium format camera. But with the lights already set up, he decided to give it a try with the iPhone, too, to see just how similar the images could look.

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Follow these three tips to create dramatic portrait lighting with a single light

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Lighting is one of the key elements in photography. It can make it or break it, and it adds a lot to the story you want to tell with your image. In this video, Adorama teams up with Emily Teague who talks about the use of dramatic lighting in portraits. She tells you about how to use it, and gives you a lighting demo to show you her simple setup for dramatic, moody portraits.

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The must have tool for color addicts – the Rosco MixBook

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Color.  Such an important tool to help bring a time, place, or even emotions into an image.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have something that makes working with color easier? Inside this little package is a new tool by Rosco called “Mixbook“. To help creators pre-visualize gel and LED colors.

Essentially Rosco has digitized the old gel swatch books, as you can see in my reenactment of a Rosco scientist at work. Note the old gels from my swatch book flying around as the new Mixbook arises from the smokey pot.

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Watch and learn the difference between “YouTube lighting” vs “cinematic lighting”

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I thought this was quite an interesting video. It’s an interesting take on how we light for different subject matter. It isn’t saying that one method of lighting is necessarily better or worse than the other, just that the goals of the shoot are very different, the final use for the footage is also very different and so the lighting needs to be different.

In this video, filmmaker Tyler Stalman shows us how we can light both ways using the same equipment. But as well as simply showing us, he also goes into the why of how we light these two things differently and the motivation behind it.

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Watch to learn the how and why of lighting male portrait subjects

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Lighting human subjects can be pretty tricky sometimes, especially when you’re used to photographing people of one gender and you try to photograph somebody of another. You’d think they’d all be lit the same, but that’s not the case, as wedding, portrait and fashion photographer Jerry Ghionis demonstrates in this video.

It’s not difficult to light male subjects, but there are a few misconceptions out there. Jerry wants this video to help “demystify lighting male subjects once and for all”, with a bunch of tips and tricks he’s developed over the past 20 years using minimal gear.

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This software lets you test movie lights without leaving your home

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It’s no secret that we use Set a Light to test our photo lighting before we start a shoot. (We talked about it here, here, and extensively here). We even used it to play around with models under lockdown. While I used the software quite a bit for photo projects done with strobes, it lacked in the cinema section. But now, they released a new version, and I am blown away by the possibilities it opened.

If you want to play, there is a trial version in this link; if you need some motivation, though, read on.

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