LED Lighting Overview
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
LED Lighting Overview
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Lessons
Class Introduction: Getting Started in Professional Food Photography
05:57 2Tour of a Modern Food Photography Studio
04:37 3Prop Styling with Malina Lopez
06:03 4Food Styling with Steve & Malina
03:28 5Working with a Digital Technician
05:19 6Food Photography Gear
24:29 7Why Use Natural Light?
08:01 8Natural Light Food Shoot Prep
30:23Food Photo Tools & Tricks
02:30 10Capturing Food in Natural Light
06:54 11Natural Light Shoot Final Touches
19:50 12Shooting For a Client
07:24 13LED Lighting Overview
08:51 14Prep for Oven Shoot with LED Lights
10:36 15Food Photography Print Marketing
04:49 16Food Photography Portfolio Tips
09:14 17Pricing and Negotiating for Food Photography
12:13 18Final Food Photo Career Advice
03:01Lesson Info
LED Lighting Overview
So I'm gonna go with the... What I use for commercial, anything that's not moving, I use LED lighting. And I use the data lights and the flex lights pretty much exclusively now. I got started using the ice lights and I'll grab one. This is actually how my style as it is now, got started. And I don't know why that was on. Why was that on? How long is the battery light on this? (laughs) (mimicking a light saber) I've actually had a cab in New York run over one of these and it didn't break. I was shooting in Dumbo in Brooklyn and I left it... It rolled out of my bag and I didn't know it, on the sidewalk, and a car ran over it. It was fine. It was totally crazy. But this is actually the Ice Light 2. But this is kind of how I got started. These had barn doors attached to them. These are fairly expensive, I think they're worth it. I really do. They're tough and they're really strong and powerful, especially the new ones, have a lot longer battery life. But I had the barn doors, I closed them...
down and when I was on location in a restaurant, they would have a plate of food and I would just go like this with the barn doors and I would double up daylight immediately with one hand and I would just take a shot with the other hand. Or I'd be down on a tripod preferably. But this is a really good tool. If there is one tool that I could have that was reasonably priced, it would be this. The Flex is a step up from this. I would start with this, go to a 1x1 Flex. But they're commitments. They're like two grand for soft box right here. So, you get a couple of those and then you're starting to talk about some money. But they are amazing. And they last a long time. It's LED. It really is worth it. They don't burn out, they're fantastic, they're bright. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but we were shooting cinema 405 seconds, somewhere there. With just this light. And we had enough light to capture that much speed, with just these lights. They're really amazing. But I'll quit gushing about these. But this really is a handy light. Thank you very much. So, compared to natural light, LED is close. The reason I say that, there's a CRI Index, I believe, I don't know the science behind it very well. It's just the index of how, like I said, light reflects how light reflects colors in a scene. And daylight is like 99, I don't know why it's not 100. Maybe it is a hundred. But these are 96, I believe, don't quote me on this but they're super close. So, it's really hard to tell with the naked eye the way that these light up food, they look really natural. So, as far as... Well, I wanna head there, tools and modifiers. This is where it gets really nice. Because I'm using... We have a lot of natural light spilling into the studio because otherwise you wouldn't be able to see me on the camera, but fortunately we're inside of an oven, which is a really controlled environment. It's like a mini studio. So, this is gonna be great as far as getting the shot without any influence from the outside. However if we did have these blacked out, which we will be doing, this is where you can really control a light. So, if you have a light right here, you can come in, let's say you just have this and you don't have a strip light, but you get this and one of these, you can just come in with this and just, you know, you can shape the light, you can have just a little bit come up and you can continue, you can have a scene that's really dramatic. I love light like this. I love to flip strip lights horizontally and just put them right down below on the table. It looks fantastic. It looks a lot like what we just accomplished with this, only even more dramatic. A lot break in light, a lot more shadows. The edges of the shadows are a little bit harsher and it just has a little bit more drama. So, don't feel like you have to get every single piece of gear to do every specific thing. You don't necessarily need the data light but it would be really good to have, if you're a food photographer this is it, in my opinion. This is like the piece. Because you can have a strip light, you can actually just put (mumbles) foil over this or you can drape duvetine over it. There's so much you can do with this and it rolls up into your backpack. It just rolls up into a roll this big. And it's light. And you can bring it with you. You don't need a strobe. It's really powerful, it can capture quite a bit of action. Not perfectly sharp but it's close. Yeah. So, people ask me... so when you use an LED light, you won't feel like you're getting a natural light look. Sometimes it'll be... you won't be able to put your finger on it but it just won't look like window light. And it's hard to describe what you're not seeing and what it is that's causing that. So, when you have natural light, you're just getting a gorgeous window that in relation to your food is gigantic. It's massive because you're just shooting a little plate and you've got this bank of lights. So, either you would take one bank and just eliminate it so that you at least have some focus, but the important part is to just really control the light vertically. I just like to get down and low but that takes away from the natural kind of light looks. So, what you're missing is that fill, so what I do is I usually get a light like this and I will get like a piece of 8x4 foam cord, just the whole sheets that you get, like the massive ones, you kind of bend them in the middle. You can actually attach them to a C-stand. So, you take the top of the C-stand and you clamp the foam cord to the top here and this is a C-stand that is fully extended with the arm kind of coming out like this, so, you'll actually take the the top of the foam cord, jam it in there and kinda have it create a little V, so it will hit the ground, come in and then come back out. And that will create a massive amount of fill, similar to what you're seeing in natural light. So, if you just have a piece of foam cord, you can create that very soft, if that's what you're looking for, you can create basically the same as natural light. It's almost impossible to tell. Like a pro can look at highlights and see and possibly guess but if you're really good about it, it's just creating that dramatic fill that's usually the issue. But that's opposite of what I do, I come in and I get rid of fill, I don't like the fill. And I'll create little spots of fill here and there but it still looks somewhat natural. There's scenes that I have that are dramatic, that look like the window is just really small. So, it's just a matter of using the high quality lights as opposed to the florescents. You really get a good response when you invest in that. This is gonna be kind of a cool shot so it's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna be shooting into an oven. We have roasted chicken that we've just kind of glazed with a marinade, a lot of vegetables. We're gonna be assembling this so it might be cool to have a shot of just the assembly of the actual product. And then we're gonna put it in the oven, we're gonna kinda problem-solve and then we're gonna blast it with a lot of steam. What we're trying to achieve is the look of you just kind of opening an oven when a chicken's three quarters of the way done, just checking on it. So, it's already got a lot of color, it's already almost there but not everything is just burnt it's not roasted to a crisp. It still has a lot of life in it. Can you just reiterate for us Steve, what is the Westcott light that you're using inside the oven? And also the one on the side there? Okay. So these two are the... These came out recently. This is the Westcott Flex 2'x2'. This is the, it's really hard to see because it's just rolled up in here, but attached to the top here is a 1'x3' Strip Light. And they both have the option of, you can actually get these in casements. And I believe they also have (mumbles) for these too. These actually fold up into nothing too. So, you have a full... I mean these are, it's really remarkable. There's a diffusion panel on the front too which is spaced just far enough away from the LED lights so that the crossbeams kind of merge and it's a very neutral light. The only time you see it is when you do a backlight situation, so you do need to double diffuse it. Because if you're doing window light, unless your F-stop is just like F2, you know, if it's really shallow, you won't see as much but I don't shoot that way so you do see like the dots of the lights. So, if you put a scram like the white scram or any kind of diffusion paper in front of it, it really helps to diffuse a little bit more. But beyond that, this just looks, I mean it looks like a window, it looks like a bright window. It's perfect! So, this would be like if I had to tell you the one light to get, I have a lot of local food photographers see it in my classes and on set too and they say, "Oh, I really want one of those. "I didn't know they were out." They're really good. I use the strip light more because it just fits in my style better but that's just a window in your pocket basically which is amazing. So, we've got a camera set up in here. I'm gonna be showing you the multiple uses of what I love 3 inch gaffer tape. I have 1 inch and 3 inch, I don't have 2 inch. I do know why actually. (laughs) And I have 3 inch painter's tape too because I just like the way, if you use painter's tape to, you know, it wraps around things, it's just better. And I'm actually going to, one of the troubleshooting things I'm gonna show you how to do is to actually create a mock kind of (mumbles) situation with this light by actually taping it to the ceiling to block, I'll show you in action, it'll make more sense at that point. But yeah, as far as the business stuff, we're really gonna dive into that in the end. It's gonna be a lot of good content so be prepared for that.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase