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Tired of feeling like you need to remortgage your house to buy quality photography equipment? Think again. In this episode, we reveal five game-changing items you can get for under £20 to significantly improve your skills and efficiency in commercial photography. From must-have gear to mind-altering concepts, we give you the tools and ideas to elevate your work without breaking the bank.
What you’ll learn
- Low-cost gear that transforms your shots: Discover two affordable and essential pieces of photography equipment that will drastically improve how you manage light and capture stunning images, whether you’re working with natural light or studio flash.
- How to see your work with fresh eyes: Learn about two influential books that will change the way you think about your commercial photography and help you develop a deeper understanding of your craft, turning you into a more intentional and creative photographer.
- The one small investment that could save your shoot: Find out about a simple solution that allows you to see your shots in a whole new way, helping you make real-time adjustments and impress clients with a professional workflow.
“Show Transcription”
Hi Marcus.
How are you doing?
I am very well.
Thank you, Sam.
And how are you?
Very good.
Thanks.
Okay, Marcus.
So you’ve got some things to talk about with ways we can spend very little money
and gain lots of our business.
So I’m all ears.
Let’s go.
Yeah.
Well, here we go.
So I’ve got five things that you can purchase for under £20 or well, I guess
the equivalent is $20 these days.
So five things you can purchase for under £20 that will make you into a better
photographer or better image.
Right.
I’m ready.
My list is here.
My Amazon shopping list is started.
Let’s go Marcus.
Number one.
I did check these prices.
So we’re just about okay.
So number one is we’re going to go for the collapsible reflector.
So I’m sure a lot of photographers have got these already, but for me, it’s one
of my most used bit of kit.
What it basically is, it’s a, you can imagine a white card or white bit of fabric
that bounces light back into the subject.
So light, natural light normally comes from the top from the sun.
So this will sort of bounce it back into filling under the subject’s eyes or
chin or whatever.
So it will be useful and to be used with natural light or flashlight.
So there’s the, they’re that cheap are they nowadays?
Oh yes.
I did check in the price.
I mean, you can get different sizes, Sam.
They vary from about, you know, three, you know, 12 inches, 300 centimeters up
to, you know, absolutely massive.
So I’m obviously that price is on the smaller side.
Um, but you can,
It’s 300 centimeters.
That’s three meters.
Oh, sorry.
You mean 30 centimeters.
30 centimeters.
I’m certain.
I’m definitely not on the metric age am I?
Yes.
Um, 30 centimeters.
Thank you.
Uh, up to a lot bigger.
Um,
Okay.
And are they generally that round sort that you kind of twist and then you
collapse?
Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, you’ve got to let me finish what I’m talking about here,
mate.
Sorry.
Go on.
So we start again.
Okay.
So I, you’ve, you’ve kind of paused.
I thought you’d finished.
Carry on and I’ll just cut that bit out.
Okay.
Yeah, please.
So the size is 30 centimeters, as you say, up to very big.
And, um, yeah, basically they all fold up into a nice little bag, like a pop
up tent or whatever.
Uh, and I’ve got various sizes and they are certainly, I use them a lot.
So when you buy them and they, you can get them for under 20 pounds.
Um, obviously the smaller size, um, when you get them, they come in.
Different colors of reflection.
You get some odd ones.
You get, you can get a kit of five, uh, which is like a black in there, a gold,
a silver, a white, and maybe a see-through as well.
But the, um, the most useful one by far is the white and silver side, the gold.
I would never, they call it California bands.
I would never see you using.
Sounds like you’ll end up looking like Trump.
You’re right.
That’s exactly right.
So you will end up looking like Trump.
So, um, the most useful ones are white and silver.
Um, and I would recommend maybe if you can afford it, pay a little bit more and
get something that’s a little bit better quality, they do last a bit longer.
The silver can sometimes flick off a little bit and they get a bit tattie.
The better quality ones last longer.
Um, man photo and last delight are the best quality ones.
You can also get them with a handle that, so they’re like a triangle shape this
time with a handle that you hold onto.
Yeah.
And that makes it, you can have, you can have a camera in one hand and hold
the reflector in the other.
That makes it a lot more useful.
Uh, the other way is by getting a stand and you can, obviously that’s extra the
£20, but you can get like a little stand that it goes on.
So very, very useful for natural light outside flash in the studio will
really change your
Perfect.
Ideal.
Perfect.
Number one tick on the list under £20, but better if you spend slightly over
will last you longer.
Next one then.
Yeah.
Cool.
The next one I get, I’m going to go for is what we call a scrim or it’s a diffuser.
And this time this is a piece of fabric and I have many since before on shows
that goes up in front of a, like a window to block off the sun this time in order
to fuse the sun when you’ve got a really sunny day, which we’ve sometimes do get
in the UK, this is great to put over a window, but my cheap way around it is just
to go and buy a shower curtain.
Okay.
Um, they’re about five or six pounds.
Uh, they’re about 1.8 meters by 1.8 meters base and folds up into, yeah,
just like a little square.
You can put it in your bag.
And then with the, and they’re about six pounds as I say, and with the extra
money left over, you can go and buy some clips to hold it on with.
So even less than £20.
Amazing.
And, and we’re not talking about then a diffuser for a flash.
We’re talking about just for the, for the natural light coming in through the window.
Actually Sam, now you mentioned it.
You’re right.
You can use it for a flash if you wanted to.
Um, the, the, the flash kits that I’ve got, I’ve got diffusers built in, but you could
use it, but yeah, I use it when it’s, uh, I’m using natural light.
Or, and it’s by a bright window.
It just helps soften the light and balance it up for the exposure.
Okay.
I’m going to tell you a quick story about this Marcus, but give me one
minute because I’m just, I’m just searching the place.
Give me one second.
Does it involve something to be bathed?
Here we go.
So, yes.
So I, it’s funny that because we were at, um, I was in Croatia recently on a
holiday and went to a place called Pula.
Um, and in Pula, if you’ve heard of it, it’s this huge Roman amphitheater.
It is the same size as the one in Roman.
It’s much, much better condition.
So it’s like really impressive.
Um, it’s really cool.
And it’s so funny at sunset, my daughter suggested going at sunset.
So that’ll be nice.
And obviously it’s a tick tock thing.
And at sunset, you cannot move for people doing selfies at this place.
It’s mental.
But anyway, so it got a bit later and my daughters had got dressed up and they
wanted some nice pictures with the Roman amphitheater, um, and as it got darker,
they were struggling with, uh, the light and they’ve got kind of fancy automatic
cameras, you know, so they’re quite good.
They’ve got a huge zoom for Safari and stuff, but it’s still, you know, the
flash, you know, the little flash pops up and when the little flash pops up, it’s
really harsh to the light, isn’t it?
It’s like, no flashing you really dark or you’ve got this rabbit in the headlights
job.
So I made a diffuser Marcus from the receipt I had in my pocket, a receipt
from the supermarket over the flash.
And then it was lovely instead of that rabbit in the headlights or the dark, it
was perfect diffusion.
So yes, there we go.
Even less than, even less than the 20 pounds markets.
I found the receipt in my pocket, little diffuser over the flash.
Perfect Sam.
Perfect.
You’re spot on there.
That’s exactly.
And that’s what I used to do in the old days with my point and shoot cameras.
And you can even get the old galaxy street rappers, you know, the colored
little color rappers, and you could use those and put them in the flash and they
give you like a little colored shell effects.
Okay.
Oh yeah.
We’re back to looking like Trump again now.
We are.
Okay.
So my third one on my list is a tether cable.
So what this does, it connects your camera to your computer.
And when you take an image, you can see instantly on your software of choice,
which could either be Lightroom or the one I use Capture One.
So the advantage of this is that you get to see your image, first of all, a lot
bigger than the back of the camera, depending on your screen size, of course.
But also this is more important.
You see it as a raw file because when you look at an image on the back of your
camera, you just, you’ll see the JPEG.
So if you’re shooting in raw, which I’m sure everybody is, you get to see the
actual, what the actual file looks like when you shoot tethered.
Um, okay.
Yeah.
So it’s a lot more accurate in, uh, in its exposure.
You can get cables that vary different lengths, but the, you want to get the
longest one really possible, which is about five meters after that, the signal
starts to slow it down or get slowed down, something like that, and it doesn’t work.
So well now my price point, I give them a 20 pounds.
People are going to be saying, Oh, Marcus, you’ve got that wrong because there are
certain cables of a certain color that are a lot, a lot more expensive than that.
Well, I’ve used those cables and they are very good, but I’ve also used the cheaper
ones and really that almost just as good.
So, you know,
that’s it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
On client saying it was shooting tethered in terms of the client.
Oh yeah.
No, I definitely, I definitely use it.
I definitely use it when my clients, so my clients can see it.
It doesn’t bother me at all.
It opens up a great conversation.
Yeah.
You know, it just means they can see what you’re shooting and they can, they
can make sure they’re happy with it.
So no problems with that.
It helps.
Okay.
So it’s a bit, it’s a benefit for both of you.
You can see much more clearly rather than that lid because it, you don’t see much
do you on that little screen, it gives you a, you know, you can see if you’ve got
the composition, but you’re right in terms of that exposure and stuff.
If you’re really bad, you can see, but you can’t see subtlety much, can you on those
screens?
No, exactly.
And I keep saying, you know, it’s a JPEG you’re looking at, not the raw file.
So there is quite a bit.
So there’s already lots of stuff happened to it.
Yeah.
It’s going to be a lot more, well, it’s going to have a lot more, be a lot more
worse than contrasting than it would be on the, on the raw file.
So you get it.
And now of course it’s a fast cable connected to the camera, et cetera, et cetera.
But I shoot a lot of it and it really has up my game on photography because you
can really hone in on the details.
If you’ve got a little bit left over from your 20 pounds for this cable, you
can, I would recommend buying a little clip or block that attaches it to the
camera so it doesn’t pull out from the socket.
It doesn’t fall out accidentally.
Yeah, it doesn’t fall out.
That makes sense.
So that sounds good.
And I guess the other thing is try, if you’re going to do this with a client, try
it first, so, you know, cause it’s going to be, isn’t it the first time you do it,
it’s going to be, Oh, what do we do with the software?
How’s like, you know, try it first.
Don’t do it the first time with a client.
Yeah, back in the day, Lightroom, when Lightroom did start off doing it and
their tethered was not too good and it would always keep dropping out, which is
why I swapped to Capture One primarily because their tethering is a lot secure.
But I think Lightroom have addressed that issue now and it’s a lot more stable.
Okay.
Excellent.
So we’ve got so far our collapsible reflector.
We’ve got our diffuser.
We’ve got our tether cable.
What is next?
Well, I’ve got two things that aren’t equipment based and they’re more about
ideas based, of course.
Okay.
So I’m just going to read from my notes.
I’ve got these cause I’m going to be talking about, excuse me, one second.
I’m going to be talking about two books that you can get two books at about a
tenner each I’ve looked on Amazon or other bookshop sellers and you can get them for
this, the first book and they’re both books are like the rigor for university
students.
So anybody who’s done a BA photography degree will recognize this book
straight away.
The first one I’m going to go for is by Susan Sontag and it’s called On
Photography.
Okay.
So I’m reading this out.
So it’s a highly influential yet polarizing work of cultural criticism
published in 1977.
Composed of a series of essays, this book is not a technical guide, but a
philosophical and aesthetic examination of how photography affects our
relationships with reality, our understanding of history and our social rituals.
Okay.
So it’s a heavyweight book and you might even put you off photography.
It’s about, it’s all about critical thinking.
So you might agree with it.
You might not, but critical thinking will start you thinking about really
what a photograph means.
So a nice book.
And in what way is it polarizing?
What, what, why is it polarizing?
Ah, gosh, it’s a long time since I read it, but I would say when I did read it,
it was a bit anti-photography.
Strange.
It’s a photography book, anti-photography.
Okay.
Mark, this is a tip is put yourself off photography.
Yeah.
I just, I just said it’s critical thinking.
So, um, it’s not necessarily, um, you know, it’s going to say, oh, this is
going to make you, you know, whatever.
You get the idea.
Just as a little side note, Susan Sontag was the partner of Annie Leibovitz.
Ah, okay.
Which reminds me, Mark, is over the quick into Sam’s second story of the show.
Over the summer, I was also passing through London.
Yeah.
Went into the BNA.
I’ve not been in for a little bit.
I hadn’t realized they’ve got a whole photography section there.
So yeah, but when you’re mentioning all these photographers in the show, it was
like one photo from each of them, as I went through the ad, a lot of photos, you
know, just like one from this famous photographer, one from another, and then
like whole series of cameras and all sorts of things.
Yes.
Well, well worth the visit if you’re in the area.
Yeah.
Anything that stuck in your mind?
Any photographs that you remember from it, Sam?
Um, I’m trying to remember some of the old ones.
It was like some of the, like the very first, very first photography ones.
And I can’t remember the photographer, like some of the black and white, the
original, you know, back from the 18, 18, 1860s, 1860s, 1880s when it first started.
They had some kind of really original glass, you know, I think they had the
first picture with a person in or something like that.
So I think those really stuck out because they were just so like, it’s
just kind of such a shock at the time.
They do.
And they make their hairs in the back of your neck stand up, don’t they?
Because they’re a bit spooky, aren’t they, when you look at old photographs?
They can be.
And one was interesting, it had a train and it was saying, you know, that was
coming in at just the same time, so those two revolutionary things coming in
together, the train and the photographs and the kind of the photography of the
train was bringing them together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, a golden age for sure of invention.
That’s very true.
Um, and enough of my digression.
Number five, Marcus.
The second, no, no, we’re still on the number.
We’re still on the book one.
Oh, I see.
Number four is split into two.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Sorry.
I thought four and five were booked.
Go on.
Four part two.
The second book is Ways of Seeing, which is a 1972 book and BBC television
series by the art critic, John Berger.
Um, that changes traditional Western art aesthetics by revealing the hidden
political and social ideologies in visual image.
Uh, okay.
It’s a bit, you know, high profile, but the work argues that our perception
of art is not natural, but shaped by history, power structures and the
economic traditions of painting.
Wow.
There you go.
So yeah, it’s another classic.
It’s not necessarily about photography, but it’s about how we see things
and how we perceive again, it’s all about this word, critical thinking.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay.
So two bucks, sneaked two for the price of one in that.
Marcus.
Very good.
I checked the prices.
You can get that.
I’m like, my final one is also, um, about critical thinking and it’s
it’s actually, but this time it’s a TV series and this is brilliant.
We used to show this to the students at uni all the time.
The first week they’d be watching the six episodes of the genius of
photography, um, which came out, I think it was in a 19 eighties or 19, very
early nineties, you can, you can see it cut parts of it on YouTube, but
it’s not very good quality.
Um, I really recommend that you get the DVD and that’s I’m afraid all
you can get is the DVD and it is 20 pounds.
So I did check.
And it is actually brilliant, Sam.
I have you seen it at all?
Why don’t you?
No, not heard of it at all.
Yeah, it’s really, really good.
So the genius of photography and I’m reading this out again.
The genius photography is a six-part documentary series produced by the
BBC exploring the history and impact of photography.
It covers the evolution of the art form from its beginnings with the
gear type, which you were just referring to earlier to the digital age,
examining various aspects like portraits, uh, photojournalism and advertising.
The series includes interviews with prominent photographers, such as
William Eggleston, Nan Golden and Martin Parr.
Um, the series, the six series are one school fixing the saddos, one school
document for artists, right place, right time, paper moves.
We are family and snap judgements.
Uh, the documentary has also has an accompanying book by Jerry Badger.
He used to be my old art teacher that further explores the history and
significance of the photograph, including discussions and with the
renowned photographers and images.
Um, so there we go.
Sam, that is amazing.
Really?
That is brilliant.
It’s absolutely brilliant.
It will really restore your faith in the importance and power of photography.
Yeah.
So we’ve got a nice balance there of kind of just practical things that you can
put in your kit bag and ideas as well.
I like that Marcus.
Thank you.
Right.
Um, that’s brilliant.
Um, really good to chat to you Marcus and I will see you next week.
See you next week, Sam.
