The Complete Lighting Package in the Palm of Your Hand
I had several opportunities to use the tiny Lume Cube for location lighting during the Chromasia Venice Carnival Photo Tour. This amazing little LED light offers the ultimate in portable lighting.
The amazing Lume Cube is a powerful LED light that can be controlled through a mobile app!
One of the fun stops in our itinerary for the last tour in 2016, was the Nason Moretti glass factory in Murano, just outside Venice proper. We had the privilege to photograph on the factory floor, up close and personal with the craftsmen making the famous glass! I ended up using my Fuji X-E2, which I had converted to infrared, to capture the hot glass in action…
One of the master craftsmen working with the hot glass—this was captured with the Fuji X-E2, infrared converted—then re-colored in Photoshop!
We also got some time to photograph in the showroom where the exquisite finished products are displayed. Unfortunately, the lighting in the showroom was mixed overhead fluorescents and daylight coming in from a large window running along the side of the room—not the best for the highly reflective glass. Here is where the tiny Lume Cube came to the rescue!
Many beautiful examples of the Nason Moretti craftsmen are displayed in the showroom, but the overhead lighting leaves much to be desired.
I made it a habit to carry 4 of the little Lume Cubes with me wherever I went in Venice and they came in handy more than once. In this case the tiny lights were perfectly suited to create a still life photo-studio without disrupting the display area, and in a matter of seconds to set-up! The trick with shooting glass is to light the background behind the glass, rather than lighting the glass directly…
The tiny Lume Cubes take up very little space, so they easily fit on the glass shelves next to the glass.
Arranging the lights so they cast a pool of light behind the glass was easy due to the tiny size of the individual lights, and the brilliant intensity of the light was more than enough to overpower the ambient light!
The light coming through the glass provides beautiful tonal sculpting.
The other photographers on the tour were struggling to get interesting shots until they saw what I was doing and borrowed my lights! I managed to get several good shots off before I gave up my lights for others to use…
Nason Moretti’s famous multi-colored wine glasses, shot with a Fuji X-T1, 18-135mm zoom, and lit with two Lume Cubes!
Champagne flutes glow in the backlight.
Backlighting is the ideal way to reveal the sculpted form of the glassware!
The beauty of this particular Lume Cube lighting technique is that it rivals the quality of an expensive studio lighting setup at a small fraction of the cost, is more portable than even a modest speedlight, and being a continuous light source, its perfectly adaptable to video!
These lights are so tiny, so versatile, and soooo… inexpensive, that I can’t imagine why any photographer would go anywhere without at least a couple of Lume Cubes in his or her pocket!
You can grab yourself a Lume Cube with a 10% discount through the link below—enter the coupon code: Lee10 at checkout:
The Amazing Lume Cube
Go here to see more photos from the Nason Moretti glass factory:
Stay tuned for more photos from Venice!
