Lessons
Introduction of Working with Flash
17:42 2Reasons to Use Flash
04:11 3Mixing Flash and Ambient Light
19:14 4Understanding Flash Duration
13:00 5Direct Flash Done Right
06:22 6Direct Flash vs Bounce Flash
11:30 7Light Qualities
13:19 8Overhead Bounce Light with Fill
17:46Lesson Info
Direct Flash vs Bounce Flash
Ambient versus direct flash versus bounce flash okay so let's talk through what we're doing here now what we're doing this shot is this is the first thing that we're going to do to show you how to get your flash your on camera flash to look like an off camera light so here we have ambient light with brandon twenty four seventy one one hundred second half to eight thirty two hundred that's ambien on lee looks kind of booby not so good I say poop a lot like that word especially with two kids here is twenty four seventy and one two hundred to eight, four hundred direct flash we're not using a bracket so that flash shadow is awkward and is placed off of the side of him not really that great here word is using a bounce we show you that now let's show you the bounce all right let's do this can I have john come and help me course he's gonna come back and you know what let's get sally back in a way I think your would be great to have you for this look too yes come on take this moment to re heu...
rtaux subject my batteries to brought a batteries I'm a very precise kind of person all I need just kidding I just figured that have more here which they do so we need more we'll get more do you want it to be your slut um you know what let's put up the reflector I want to build into it so let's start with just the reflector and then what we'll do is I want to show them a little bit of light control all right guys have we talked about zoom on the flash? I don't think so yet right so your flash has a zoom setting which everyone is going to a little bit different but what that does is it it pulls the head inside the flash either back or forward when it's forward it's going to be wider like the lights going to spill out in a wide angle when it's back it's going to shoot forward more so it's it's basically making it more focused right more telephoto like so with those the punk shot that we wanted to if you want to actually pin the light just directly to her face I could have zoomed it in and just a light directly face let the rest of her body like fall off and it looks kind of cool what we do here though is let's just do something where I'm gonna widen out so I expect everybody to go pull after this one I'm just going to give you a heads up right now if you don't you're out of here I'm just getting we can't do that ok let's bring this reflector right over here I dialed maya zoom right now tio twenty four millimeters so now it's going to shoot wide ok? We're using the same settings that we had one, two hundred of a second half to eight and now I have a reflector here so can you imagine what I'm going to probably do with the reflector? We're gonna bounce off of it, right? So I'm gonna have allie come forward a little bit won't you come too right here and then let's bring this right about there and I'm gonna switch out to my sigma fifty this is the best care you're going to see me taking you know of these lynch is because this is the fifty art yes, you know, we loved I got the signal thirty five in the fifty and they were so good, that was like, I actually went to sigmund like guys we could actually let's use these, so we're sponsored by sigma now, but it is because any time we approach someone for a sponsorship it's after, we've already used it or like, these are amazing, so they're really great, and the best thing about him is affordable and you get really also images. Adam okay, generally, by the way, I usually if you're shooting this tight fifty mill because it's going to cause a little bit of distortion but will just do for this city this move over this way a little bit okay, so there's a nifty little button on here on the side of your camera that I'm sure you probably have hit five hundred times and been like why did they put that there doesn't make any sense it's the one that when you're walking to the bathroom at a wedding you hit it and you're like, oh, I'm so sorry and like like I would do that I'm walking by I guess I'm like oh, I'm so sorry I just flashed you sorry I literally actually do that like every single time but I was like when I started doing this and started playing around this I'm like, hey, that actually has a really great purpose this little test button it when you don't have flash on a lot of times it defaults to depth of field when you have your flash on and you can change the settings ok it's a depth of field preview or a flash preview so what is going to do is it cycles that flash very quickly you'll see that and it actually lets me kind of use it as a modeling light so I can actually see where that light is gonna bounce and hit her from my camera I'm gonna go allie tilt your chin a little bit towards that light and bring your eyes right to me perfect I'm gonna turn this right there, okay, now that was step one of turning this into an off camera flash right but there's gonna be certain issues we'll see it pulled up so do we have directional light yeah we do not bad it's not super great we still have a shadow on the back we have a lot of light spilling the back let's fix that this is my frankenstein area over here there's no way of getting that area to look good you know, I totally put the wrong flash on my camera to switch that professed any questions of what we have so far guys oh, just because um very good question I have ah four foa tex meet us over here um that one didn't have velcro on the sides I want to show you guys first I love using mag mods they're fantastic but there are a little bit pricey and if you're just getting started you might not want to spend one hundred bucks on the sets when you get like again it's a it's a item that does its job incredibly well it makes my life easier and that's why I love them on going to pay for that but there's other items that are cheaper that can do the same thing so I want to show you guys with that first and then just tell you hey, I'm going to switch to a magma and second this is a fellow grid fella makes a lot of very inexpensive items okay let's see what this is shaped like a honey comb right? All it's gonna do is funnel light in one single direction the tighter the honeycomb pattern the tighter light is gonna go it's gonna go let like spill anywhere so the problem with this is that we have light that's going if I angled a flash head like this towards that reflector right there right? Some of that light is actually spill directly onto her face and so this is going to control that so I have built on the side of this flash I was gonna take that right here to the side okay that's why I use this wash thes guys were like ten or twenty bucks for these ones so they're very expensive and in case you want to write it down this is a quarter grid so the smaller the fraction like a one eighth grid the tighter the honeycombs brits do one thing as well they cut down your amount of light just f y I okay, we're doing that same shot I'm going to power this actually know what let's do this I'm gonna wouldn't why not my appetite at one point four so we get a little more light and I'm gonna turn my eyes so low let's just do a quick test shot again same thing perfect oh, let me get that light right on that reflector perfect okay watch the second one so the first one actually missed the thing not bad yeah so now we've turned us into a basic off camera flash granted you're going to use this kind of stuff in the studio for the most part but I do this on site a lot if I don't have my my necessary gear with me okay there's one other thing that I want to do I want to add avi flat just to flag up we're going to now is we're in a flag light so all this means is when this hits this little reflector most lights going to be pushing to her right but if I'm shooting the background some of that light spills in the background as well so what we're gonna do is just add in let's do black side we do a black flag so we're gonna control the bounce let's just bring it in let's bring it right next to the stroll of this there you go okay that little bit of overlap right there now blocks off everything against that wall okay that's all we need now we can get a darker wall on god create more separation the kind of look that we're going for guys can you guess based on what is our ambient light look like we're cutting away and being right adding a lot of flash powers so what? We're kind of going for something that's more dramatic okay so have you step a little bit this way and go a little bit back actually go towards the wall there you go perfect perfect. I'm just looking at where the light now is falling on her face that alley stepping back a tiny tiny bit and then in towards the reflector right there okay kick that hip perfect just like that okay, if you get a low flash powers most like because your flash isn't quite hitting the reflector so there we go now turn the chin a little bit into the light right there perfect you're gonna see something on the very last shot my angle is that we have a little bleed so I'll show you it's not easy to see from here see if you can if the room were dark doubt you'd actually see flash bleed right here so what I've done is I tilt it a little bit towards the reflector just allow a little bit that light to come back and flare in the lens so it creates a like nice little look ok, but what do we use here? We used a thirty forty dollar reflector you can use any reflector to do this we use a twenty dollar grid on a flash your basic on camera flash and we basically turned this into a studio soft box right pretty simple let's do this I'm gonna go to the next slide okay well, you can have a seat for one second. Let's. Go back to the slides. So here's, those two shots of brandon with the bounce. What we've done here is like all we did was drop this in the letter, and we want to show like, how minimalistic the post production is. We put in the light room, pop a little preset on there. We used the aesir lounge preset system for all of our developing, and we'll just put a radio filter to pull down the outside edges and bring attention into him. Very simple. This is all done for lighting, one one demonstration stuff that we did for the course.
Class Materials
Bonus with RSVP
Ratings and Reviews
BALPhoenixPhotography
Not only is this a great class, but Pye is entertaining to watch. I'm a natural light photographer and I wanted to learn more about what a flash could do for me and my business. After watching this class I have not only learned more about flash photography but also learned that it can help boost my photos and create more beautiful photos even for my family clients. Great class I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about flash photography.
samphotopro
Great course, Considering that I am a professional photographer that is always searching for new ways to work and make my workflow more efficient and my work more creative, I find this class to be very helpful and interesting. I already own 3 pocket flashes and I realize that I don't exploit them as I could. It also made me realize that I was more in the «the more gear you buy» mode and not enough in the «exploit your gear and be creative» mode. So for the price, I think it is worth it !
Ali Plantz
"Working with Flash" was a great introduction for learning the basics of using a pocket flash, as well as providing opportunities to explore more advanced concepts related to light and its manipulation. I would definitely recommend this class for anyone who is wanting to familiarize themselves with the how flash can transform your photos and how its control can provide a creative avenue with artistic results.
Student Work
Related Classes
Lighting