Shedding Light on The Subject(s)

Shooting off the iPhone can be tricky at night.

We found this dimmable light ring from Neewer.

It’s $110 on Amazon. It is lightweight and easy to pack.

And it works – even for vacation videos or shooting a Facebook Live or IM with friends.

Here we’re shooting some on-camera lead-ins for an upcoming show in Season 3.

Notice how the ring illuminates us while allowing you to also see the great background which is lit by the slowly dropping sun.

And this is shot at dusk – or as all photographers call it “magic time.”

And you can see why. The pool, the mountains, and trees are gently brushed with sunlight.

And we didn’t want to lose that.

But we had two things working against us.

The first is the sun drops fast in Las Vegas in the winter because mountains surround the valley.

The second is we used the house in front of us to prevent any wind from interfering with the mics.

That prevented a lot of light on our faces. The ring solved that while giving us the great background.

Once the sun went down we would lose the mountains and the sky.

So we raised the ring so it would illuminate the pool and forcing us to look up and making sure we had no chance of double chins.

In these photos here we used a tripod for the iPhone so we could get the camera up higher.

But the stand for the ring also has a phone holder which is quite sturdy and reliable.

If you use the ring as a camera holder too you may have to adjust the ring so it leans forward toward you.

Always remember to do a test ahead of time before shooting to see what it looks like.

If you need more info on how to shoot your videos or create your own TV show with the iPhone just grab our book.