Reddit reviews Designers Edge E245 150-Watt Incandescent Clamp Light with 6-Foot Cord

This is a pretty good primer. It seems daunting, but it's actually pretty simple once you dive in. You can do this on any scale, from a half-gallon nano tank to as big as you can imagine. If you choose to try live plants, the cheapest lighting there is consists of a clamp light or clip-on desk lamp with a 23 watt 6500k compact fluorescent bulb in it.

I shot this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjbarnett/5154877335/in/set-72157626544818300

with 4-5 cheapo clipon work lights using daylight-color compact fluorescent bulbs, probably 100w equivalents.

http://www.amazon.com/Designers-Edge-Incandescent-Clamp-6-Foot/dp/B00076Q0FQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1310523061&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Watt-Energy-Smart-CFL-Replacement/dp/B000UYF80S/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1310523104&sr=1-2

They were clipped on the top shelf of a bookcase, with a dollar-store white shower curtain liner hung in front of 'em for diffusion.

Maybe $50 total?

(Background was 3-4 yards of primed canvas from the fabric store, painted on the unprimed side with black house paint. $20-25?)

Since the camera doesn't have a hot-shoe, you're definitely going to have to be more "creative" with lighting.

The gear used in studio portraiture is there because the photographer is controlling all aspects of the shot. You can substitute other equipment to give you similar control, resulting in photos that achieve similar effects. However, without the specialized gear, you'll be improvising. And while you're doing that, you'll need to know what's being accomplished by the specialized gear, and what you can and cannot simulate by other means.

The camera used for most portraiture is generally a DSLR (or 35mm film). The large sensor (in comparison to the point-and-shoots) results in better image quality, and higher resolution images suitable for larger prints. Your camera has a much smaller sensor, so you'll have to be content with the resolution it gives you.

The lenses used are often "fast" -- f/2.8 or wider -- allowing for fine control of the depth of field, and creamy bokeh (the blurry background), which in turn makes your subjects "pop" in the image. Your camera has a single lens, which you cannot change. You should be able to adjust the aperture setting in some of the shooting modes -- you'll have to look at your camera manual to figure out how to do that.

The multiple flashes and flash modifiers allow for fine control the amount, direction, and quality of light. The flashes can be set for varying intensity, moved to different locations, and fire behind softboxes, bounce off walls or ceilings, through a snoot or grid to eliminate spillage, etc. These multiple light sources illuminate the subject, and give depth and texture that gets blown out when using the on-camera flash (note, this happens with both point-and-shoot as well as DSLR cameras -- on-axis flash tends to flatten textures).

Realistically, you only have control of the light. You can use some clip on utility lights similar to these on Amazon, with total spectrum CFLs or incandescent bulbs. You can build some DIY light modifiers (like a screen for a soft-box) to soften the light hitting your subjects. Plus, you can never have enough clip lights for working on stuff around the house!

Combine the clip lights with dimmer switches, and you will be able to vary the amount of light coming from each source. Of course, you'll have to pay careful attention to the white balance of the image, and I recommend getting a grey card or cloth, and shooting that after you change the light intensity. One great tool for this is the Datacolor Spyder Cube, which has 18% grey, white, and black faces, an absolute black hole, and a reflective ball for specular highlights. But again, that adds gear. Without a neutral grey card or the Spyder Cube, make sure you include something white or grey in a test shot to white balance against. If you use something white, just be aware that it's easy to blow out the white when exposing the image, and that makes it lots hard to use as a reference for white balancing...

You can get acceptable results with a single light source (whether that's hot or cold continuous lights, strobes, studio flashes, or something as simple as a North-facing window where all the light from that direction is diffuse reflected light). You can get decent results with a single light and a reflective surface on the other side (effectively behaving like two lights) as the key and fill lights. You get better control with two lights, key and fill. You get better results if you can add a hair light to bring some directional illumination from above. And still better results if you can control the amount of light on the background. In each case, you need to understand what each light is doing and experiment with different placements so that you know what looks best with your subjects.

The other non-gear aspect of studio portraiture is the positioning and posing of your subject(s). That also requires a lot of research and practice...

The best thing about digital though, is you can start shooting right away, and keep looking at what you've done, and keep getting better!

What is your budget? That is most important here. Im assuming 300 for the camera since you were gonna go with the go pro and maybe around $100 for the rest of it? I say no on the Go Pro as the Wide angle lens is gonna make people look ugly. I say go on ebay and search for an HV30 or or HV20. You can get them for $300
and if your luck enough sometimes with a shotgun mic. But make sure you look around at prices because the mic included inst worth the huge jump in price seeing as its only around $50 new.

Next I say go with about 4 of these and follow this tutorial as best as you can. You'll want to defuse the light, the best option for no budget is just use wax paper.

I am not super familiar with Consumer Camcorders as I only use DSLR and read up on prosumer things but I can vouch for the quality of the HV30. I borrowed one from my school once and the image can be very sharp.