Small handheld video light are a good addition to your location photography kit. Perhaps the most useful video lights come from Lowel Light, a video and hot light manufacturer. Lowel’s 100 watt dimmable iD light, which is ultracompact, does not get too hot to manage and is ideal for hand holding when your other hand is holding a camera. Barn doors are part of the kit and the light is crisp and bright and, more importantly, easily feathered to produce the desired on location lighting effect.
David Williams uses video lights to augment existing light at his weddings. To bring the white balance back from tungsten to about 4500°K (slightly warmer than daylight), he glues a Cokin filter holder to the front of the light and places a medium blue filter (a 025 Cokin filter) in it. The result is a perfect warm fill light. For an even warmer effect, or if you are shooting indoors with tungsten lights, you can simply remove the filter.
David uses these units when shooting wide open, so they are usually just for fill or accent. They can also be used to provide what David calls a “kiss of light.” For this effect, he holds the light above and to the side of the subject and feathers the beam back and forth while looking through the viewfinder. The idea is to produce just a little warmth and light on something that is backlit or lit nondescriptly.
Alternately, David will use an
assistant to hold two lights, which cancel out the shadows of one another. He often combines these in a flash bracket arrangement with a handle. His video light has a palm grip attached to the bottom to make it very maneuverable, even when he has a camera in his other hand.
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