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Looking for an inexpensive way to add lighting to your video blog? I think I’ve got just the solution for you.

Lighting is very important because poor lighting leads to dimly lit video, and it just doesn’t look very good. Ideally, the best source of lighting that you can get for your video blog is going to be natural lighting. That is always going to be the preferred way. I was actually watching a video blogger who is a YouTuber, and she always shoots pretty much at the same time in the morning because she has natural light coming in through a sliding glass window, and then she has a white satin curtain that goes over the top that kinda neutralizes the strength of the video. In fact, you can see right now what lighting is doing for me. I actually am using natural lighting that comes in from the office. It’s the later part of the day, so I’ve got the blinds partially closed, and that’s why I’ve got lines on my hands.

If you want to add lighting, this is the device I recommend. This is a halogen light that you can get from your local hardware store. You can get it online. This is a great way of adding light to dark rooms. Some disadvantages to the halogen light. Number one, it runs very hot, so you want to be careful you won’t have the light near you, which is actually a good thing because it’s also a very strong light source. That is, if I had this on next to my face, it would cast a very strong shadow and it would not look good. Typically, if you’re going to use a halogen light as a source, it needs to be far away because light falls off very quickly. It diminishes in value very quickly or a lot of times, what people will do is actually bounce this off of a white wall or a white ceiling to add some additional light. However, this unit here has very short legs. Therefore, it’s not going to work very well to bounce light off the ceiling because it’s short. There are some other units that are on tripods. The benefit, the key benefit is these are very inexpensive. You can find them around $15 plus each. That means if you need to buy multiple ones, you can go ahead and do that. In fact, let’s jump on Amazon real quickly and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.

On Amazon, I did a quick search for portable shop light. This is one of the units I came up with. This product here is $17.90, and it’s similar in design to what I have here. These are typically 500 watts. They’re going to be a little bit on the warm side as far as light goes, and you want to be careful of that and make sure you adjust your camera correctly.

The other option is, and this is actually preferred for me, is this unit here. This is 1000 watts, two individual sources, 500, 500, you get 1000, but it’s on a tripod mount. These are really nice for two reasons. One, if you don’t need a lot of light, you can just turn one unit on. If you need more light, you can turn two units on. And because it’s on an adjustable tripod, you can bounce light off. If you want to have light coming from the left and the right side, you get two units, and you can go ahead and set the lighting up. The disadvantage, again, to using halogen as a light source is that it’s very strong. You want to find a way of diffusing it and be careful of heat. The best way to diffuse light that I have found is to actually bounce it off a wall. There are other solutions that you can find on YouTube. They’re just not typically the best solution all the time. These are excellent light sources, though. You can get them not only on Amazon, but you could also go to your local hardware store. The other nice thing about this solution besides the cost is that you can get replacement bulbs very easily.

This is the low-cost solution for blog lighting. If you have any comments, questions, or thoughts, I would love to hear them. All comments, I make sure I respond to in a timely manner. Take care.