Lessons

Lesson Info

Lighting Gear

the other thing and lighting short course is to make sure you think about the color of light and this is also something that a lot of tigers overlook is we can change the mood even if a little rim edge light from just a plain flash to putting a warm gel and now it's got this candlelight evening feel to it with a warm glow on the edge that makes such a big difference in a lot of people just don't take the time to grab little sticky filter or regular jail and slap it on the front of their flash it's really easy to change the mood of your photo by just coloring the light one way or the other that's something we're going to play with two okay we'll use a neutral density filter to control the ambience and I want to talk a lot more about this guy this is a really great technique for you guys to learn t control to create moods in places you would not think it possible to create a mood bright sun you make it look like nighttime ok one of the things with the neutral density spilled gets out a h...

igh speed sinkers he's heard of high speed sync when your flash can actually flash at a faster than normal shutter speed nikon cannon both have this and the beauty of high speed because I could go outside full sun got a flash of my subject I mean son of my subject I want to fill it out I can turn on my flash and even at eight thousands of a second it'll put some flash out their light up her face problem with high speed sync is that the power is really limited when you start to use it at the faster shutter speeds so say your flash was puppet out full power what's their cycle time normally in a flash it full power give me a ballpark three seconds four seconds seem like that right full power it's four seconds so imagine if you're high speed saying what the flash is doing is actually strobe it's going and blasting off repeatedly in without eight thousands of a second it's actually cranking out multiple flashes so there's no way it could actually put out a full power blast each time strove aske optically over in a thousandth of a second so your powers limited here is the coolest thing as I'd discovered that with my neutral density filter the same flash and full power I was able to get the sky nicely exposed get enough light to barely light her face inside of a little light box right here knocked a box barely lighter face at full power but if I change this to a neutral density filter instead got the same exposure for the sky but my flashed at full power I got almost two f stops mohr out of that flash and that's again a really important thing to know when we start doing things were going too outside with mixing flash and daylight and you really can't get enough flash to get that look you want trying to it's a density filter instead of using high speed sync okay here's an example shooting a sixty days like this where you're shooting through a window and you have bright lights outside in this scene right here I was inside a dark little lounge and outside the window was just totally bright I wanted to have some texture and color almost make it look like evening in the background so putting the neutral density filter allowed me to drop down my exposure the whole background outside and then I just adjusted my flash to give me the indoor exposure to match what I had on the outside I also want to shoot this att f one point four for the twenty four millimeter lens and that was the key thing to soften my background in wide angle lens shoot it if one point four I have to be able to neutral density down the back of another example twenty four millimeter f one point four outside in full sun can you shoot outside in full sun in f one point four and flash st normally you would not be able to get that without neutral density filter over the lens and that's a look that I love I love that soft painterly look of a one four one eight maybe if two outside in the full sun I just personally I like that look a lot feels very uh painterly photo impressionistic similar here we're in full sun but I want to shoot a f one point four to get that soft background and the saturation some color in the sky the only way to do that was with the new tri density filter and the flashing an octa box coming down is a very simple set up one flash speed light in an octa box following her nose this shot here was done in the middle of the day right son middle of the day this little edge light rim light on them and they glo here which looks like moonlight is actually the son and this is from a giant seven foot octa box with three speed lights here's what the set up look like right there you'd never think you could make something like that look like an evening in the pool but a lot of times this is a job I did for a local lodge and bend that they wanted some promo stuff for their marketing and they want people in the pool and want a romantic and I didn't have the op opportunity to come back in the evening and shoot it the way I wanted to see how we do this in the middle of day and still make it feel like this romantic evening poole moon that swim and that's all there was to it so neutral density filter brought my shutter speed down to two hundredth of a second which enabled me to get full use out of my flashes I had three speed lights in this big doctor bank right here three speed lights and then I could shoot it if one four eighty five lens brought the ambien down one point seven and the trick to getting it all blue was a set my white balance to tongue stone so that the blue the normal daylight became blue gets followed that so pure tungsten white balance everything goes blue outside but the tungsten looks normal and then I put tungsten gels on the flash to make that normal so it's kind of a little used this technique years ago when I was shooting on the house of blood and using film gets me with that stuff film like frankly camera like this could take a team to check yes it's crazy but it's kind of kind of had a nice something to it it's algae feel and we would shoot album covers and I wanted to shoot this one it was out in the middle of this junk yard had his old cadillac and cowboy guys hanging out there and we could use tungsten film and shoot in the daytime and then put tungsten gels in the flash of the sky vic super blue and then the flashlight parts were normal all right hey let's talk about lighting tools in a little bit uh one of my favorite ways to light is simple and simple can mean flashlights and we're going to play with flashlights maybe today in the next couple of days and I want to share with you just a couple of cool tools that I found the led flashlights have become so popular I mean so powerful now than they actually are usable in normal that situations rooms like this ah this is a video light that I use the little square one on the left that's from scott rubber very very nice very powerful that's what was in this box that we were just using there we go we'll be sure can you hold up that uh box right there please bring that in so you can see what I've done here is I've took in the video light and just strapped it to the back of my speed ring in this octo and this becomes ah nice little manual light okay good enough to add just a little kick even hint at it to me in a room that's fairly brightly lit we don't need a lot just enough to get some shaping and direction and that's something sometimes you use the existing light and to say it just needs some he's a little kick and that could do it you know I could bring it close and bring from here to here it actually makes a pretty decent life is he reflecting in your eyeballs to it's you so that's one of the ways to use flashlights and also a spotlights I have a diving light um this little flashlight here is one that I got from the website called merit line dot com guys into flash and we have a fetish for flashlights your husband does ok so he can relate like I just gotta buy flashlights when their school there's this list website they import stuff from china and it just like a million flashlights on there but I have a uh lincoln my blog's to the actual one that I have here it's this amazing light twelve dollars and ninety nine cents there's like five hundred lumens the head zooms like you push pull and it goes from spotlight where is it uh here is my flashlight tag so here zooms here from nice little wide to a spot anywhere between you you could see the sensor there so you could do like a cool little spot light kind of a look on somebody uh resume it for wider coverage is an overall fill light it has a different power levels there's a low level really low level destro cobb stopping tio what everyone slow yeah what's that yes it's fairly even which is really unusual for a lot of lights is the you have a real hot spot and kind of weird edges where this one has a beautiful pretty even spot twelve bucks ninety nine cents can't beat it so uh check out merit line if you want some flash lights if you want this actual model number it's on the block or let me know I'll post it on there for you um this other one's a diving light scuba diving light this one also has a nice big pattern a little bit different little more powerful doesn't zoom but is this for scuba diving so I started dig through my flashlight collection what would work actually for photographic work and something that has even pattern something is powerful and that's fairly close to daylight balanced and most led lights now are okay so some options we're gonna play with these later on this week too this uh shot here very interesting we went to shoot this uh uh pregnancy shot and I had all kinds of crazy stuff planned at all my lighting gear a truck full of stuff planned to do this with light panels and flashes and all this stuff and we get down to shoot this scene and we're setting up you know just focusing my camera through the cameras on a boom connected to my computer remotely and as I start shooting or start focusing my assistants like how hold the light up for you cite a flashlight and he held his diving light and like tell it's beautiful right there forget all the other selves shoot so we started shooting the scene with a flashlight a single diving light is all that lip the whole scene and you could even see the flash light reflected in the water right there which I thought was like a crescent moons I just left it in there instead of photoshopping it out but to me the important thing is that you get the mood you want and it's not about the gear and how much lighting stuff so I could have done this whole thing with you know a camera my computer and a flashlight and said I had all this other gear which is fine because you never know what you're gonna do um here's our little scene here in the pool and the model again lying floating pregnant women don't inherently float so you needed some sort of support system which I discovered and my my solution was to get a light stand and put it under water and then you know what I'm talking about you know like stick it under her booty and hold her up on that didn't work very well because she wasn't comfortable with that and so I said well it's wrapped like a towel around it pad and get duct tape you know and then we could stick it in her booty and under water and hold her up and that kind of came apart and flew away so then I'm I think maybe alicia came over the radio just gets a little yeah there's alicia floating around in the water over there and she's like well this use the life preserver and put it under her and let it float so there's like a little ring like little donut you know so she's got a little floaty under bottom keeping her afloat while we photograph so she didn't sink and then it was just a matter of keeping her from drifting down stream as two shots and she's away so setting up that shot was the uh the hardest part taking it was and lighting it was not where they went underwater with the diving light and I shot underwater with my underwater housing in my camera but this again one flash light from the surface shining down into the light was all that was all that was used and I had again I've brought waterproof lights my diving slights flashes and had positioned them and plan to light them for all the water but didn't really like any of that when it came down to it the simplest thing was one flashlight and that's what we ended up going with here's another one bride in a pool one flashlight on her face one flashlight in the background shining through find them there is a set up again one light with a warm tungsten jail you could see the jail kind of glowing on the end there one flashlight in the back following her nose with the main light this one here one flashlight on her face one flashlight behind her toe add a glow and a little edge light you can see on her hair and on the floor eliminating highlighter boots that's just one flash light reflecting off the ground one flash light on her face there's little set up there okay well senior shoot again we used the ambient light added one flashlight just add a little kick on her face that's a senior yeah I see her it's hard to believe is that the senior spot the senior workshop but anybody she said no it's not a spot for you to say that's a senior yes over explaining the scene yes that was a senior and dressed up and uh one spotlight right on her face one flashlight okay um there was a lot of discussion about the neutral density filters on questions about that um cheryl s is wondering what's your opinion on a variable andy filter versus single rated ones that we're gonna be stacked yes my uh I've used both and the single ones are nice if you can get exactly the exposure you want with that one layer but once you start stacking them um it becomes increasingly more difficult to control and also gets thicker and thicker suffusing wide angle lenses which I use a lot you'll get thin getting on the edges unless uses big fat gel ones over the front so my preferences used to variable which goes from to f stops like eight f stops of difference in any where in between their thin mounts so you can use it with wide angle lenses and to me it's just so much faster to just dial it exactly where you need it twisted like a polarizer and it basically gives you any where exactly you need the amount of density unique controlled so I really prefer the variables um if you're on a budget though and you can only afford you know stackable ones and you're not using really wide angle lenses that may be a way to start out ok another question from laura images boston who asked does a grid make a soft light harder does a great make a soft light harder uh it does make it a little bit harder but it mostly makes it more directional so if you put a grid on a soft box you'd still have a fairly soft because of entire surface area is large but instead of spreading wide and illuminating the sides of the walls and bouncing off the ceiling it's not going to be contained tomb or directional so it doesn't necessarily make it harder but it does keep it for directional or less spread so sometimes we use grids on soft boxes when we don't want the life going everywhere just wanted staying on this one little error uh still clay from shenzhen china is wondering how many stops is the nd filter you're using for those outdoor shots uh well the filter them using is the very indeed which goes from today eight have stops and some of the shots there I'm generally using about four to six sometimes even the full eight stops to be able to shoot especially at one point four which is where I really want to be if I could nail my focus at one four sometimes cheating go to one eight but I want that look that really wide open lens and to shoot a one four in full sun you almost got to use the full sixty eight stops question from nubia does the kind of light I'ii harsh versus soft also affect the transitional smoothness of light at closer distances people are getting technical on you yeah I'm not released holy should understand that question but um it's a close distance any light source so the same whether it's if it starts is a hard light source and you move it closer it becomes softer relative to the size of the object if it's a soft light source at a distance and you move it closer and it's even softer so the distance really has a big difference in that shaping life you're not going take a hard light source you know there's this big to my face a flashlight move it right here it's not gonna make it soft on my face because it's still small in comparison but if we're lighting something like a flash light lighting a little still life and bring it here and then I bring it closer the relative size is much much larger now so we'll be softer and hope that thing does thank you you guys are welcome to jump in any time if you have questions grid you have this white rather than black yes that was a top secret prototype grin this is actually when you get this road great if you buy it it comes to the black grid and this is one that they sent me to try out to sea and what I'm seeing what this white grade is it it's a little softer and a little smoother transition more feathering of the light okay so it's it's kind of nice actually gives it a real smooth feathered edge where's the darker one is much more controlled and kind of transitions a little quicker it's not a huge difference but it's a nice thing to play with you so those are currently available not there the whites not currently available it would be black but the black one works beautifully and that's what I've used for every shot that I have in my portfolio with black just started using this white one s o nic ray is wondering what kind of bracket used to fix three speed lights within the octo box for the shot over the pool yes I have a custom made photo flex bracket or a custom modified you khun by this this bracket kit right here is an automatic like stan you guys haven't seen these they're awesome for when you're working by yourself for assistance but we don't have toe set the legs okay so this bracket right here uh this is what you get from photo flex and it comes with one of these brackets for speed lights and good question is what I did is I bought additional brackets about two extra brackets and I drilled a little extra hole you see ones here on this side and one here on this side so that I could actually mount a bracket here and a bracket there and then have three heads together through here and that's great when you need a lot of power outside if you have a big soft box is gonna eat up a lot of that power that works great most of time in this box I used to say that this was actually a customization by putting an extra hole in the top I was able to screw an extra bracket on the top of this speed ring it's all you need is just a little tiny pinhole because this has a little mounting pin locating pin and just needs a place to go the threads already there and just need to make a hole for that mountain pin it's you're good to go now you come out to speed lights you saw so many questions about the nd filters will take one more I have a question from thomas shoe and then also h g one seventy one no I'll go later g one seventy man no actually h j j that better man that changes everything for a woman um when using an nd filter how do you use auto focus because the nd filter blocked so much of the light yes um and actually good indie filter well the one that I use is a sing ray it's expensive it's close to four hundred bucks but it is by far the best and I can auto focus right through it now the only time I can't sometimes auto focus is when I'm at the full eight stops where it's literally almost black sometimes you could barely see it and what I do is I'll find out what my exposure needs to be where that filter needs to be but the nice thing is it's variable so twisted open focus and then just put it back now my focus is locked and boom boom boom boom boom I can just go ahead and shoot so because it's variable I can quickly open it up lock my focus and put it back where needs to go and continue shooting so that's one of the other benefits of the variable is you could do that or if he had stacked filters you have to take him off completely to do that do you buy one of those for each one of your lenses duties no one for one great question I only buy one that's the largest size my largest lens so seventy seven millimeter is my largest and then I buy step up rings to adapt it to every other size that I have so I just need one filter works with all my lenses big dog daddy for one drink okay so that's my mom my mom I guess this goes without question but when you shoot with flash when your shoot with flashlights your shooting white aperture yes yes gently wide aperture and higher so my cameras I used a d three s tonight twenty three ass it's beautiful upto you know thirty two hundred s o have no problem shooting it that high but generally with these bright flashlights I'm shooting you know in the eight hundred four hundred eight hundred is arranged and it's great