Home Made Lighting Kit

Light is a fundamental part of photography you can either settle for the light your environment provides or you can choose to take matters in to your own hands. In this post I'll share with you my home made go to lighting kit that is perfect for when you want to start manipulating light.

If you've been doing photography for a little while someone somewhere has probably told you that you need to get 'that flash off of your camera' and while having it up there can be great (especially if you use bounce flash) having a controllable light source off camera unlocks a whole new level of creative freedom. 

You might think you'll need some fancy bit of kit to do this but the truth is whilst you are starting out this off camera light source doesn't need to be expensive or complicated.

Here's what I use:

A desk lamp - one of those cheap bendy ones

Grease-proof paper - for when I want the light diffused 

&

A mirror - to bounce light back on to parts of the subject

This kit doesn't sound very professional but it does give great results and has always worked for me. It also happens to be compatible with ALL cameras (phone, point and shoot, bridge, mirrorless, DSLR, you name it and it'll work)

Does using the mirror as a reflector actually make a difference to your photos?
Well here I have a comparison of a still life with and without the use of the mirror as a reflector. For this particulat shot I was aiming to reduce the amount of harsh shadow present on the right side in the image.

Will this set up work for portraiture? Well my wife has always loved this photo.

So that's my go to equipment for off-camera lighting without breaking the bank - depending on your style and what you're capturing it could be all you ever need!

Just so you know all images in this post were taken using the equipment and techniques described above and any edits to comparison images were made identical through the 'Copy' and 'Paste' feature on Photo Director 10.