From: David Dahlquist, Freelance News Photographer San Juan Capistrano, CA I was covering a three day breast cancer walk last month and we were on location 24/7 for all three days. While shooting interviews with some of the volunteers at night in small dome tents. I needed to light the interviews but did not want that camera light look. I had packed a fluorescent camp light with my gear. My…
From: Mike Venable, Chief Photographer, WLFL How many times have you gone into an old house or office and could not find a plug in? Especially a plug in with 3 holes (1-for the ground). My solution, I went to Home Depot and bought a “light bulb fixture” screw in adapter, plug in. Just remove the bulb from the lamp, screw your AC adapter in and it is magic! Camera…
From: Austin "Liveshot" Reeves, Orlando, FL Being a nightside photog, I have to use my batt-light a pretty fair amount. I’ve experimented with low watt bulbs, high watt bulbs, and finally think I have come up with the perfect setup. Using a fairly high watt bulb, take a piece of HEAVY diffusion (frost gel) and cut it the same size as a swing-door (for like a diffusion filter) on your…
From: Phil Fraboni, E.N.G. Camera / Editor — CHtv Hamilton, ON aka HamCam I came across this lamp dimmer while doing a "Get your closets organized" story at IKEA. It could be used nicely to dim a table lamp that we all love to set in the background of our shots. Nine times out of ten the lamps are not the 3 step dimming type. So just plug this dimmer…
From: Jeff Cools Here’s a great way to safe some time with your light gels. I cut them down to approx 9×12 and punched holes in the one side using a paper hole punch. Then I gathered them all together and put them in a school binder. I seperated the different colored gels with a white sheet of paper and now the gels are safe and easy to get to.
From: John DuMontelle, www.latincam.net How many times do we find ourselves shooting an interview in a situation where we don’t have access to electricity. All of a sudden we’re stuck with our camera light. Working in Nicaragua I end up having to shoot a lot of these interviews on remote mountain tops or backwater jungle. I carry two MAG-LITE flashlights. The big ones with six batteries in them. I cut…
From: Duke Taylor and Lisa Carlson All the photogs at my station have great light kits, but actually I usually only bring one light fitted with a Chimera (it’s like a big cloth box with black sides and a white front…it softens the light) into an interview. Figure out where you want the camera to be, where you want the iterviewer and interviewee to be, turn off the room lights,…