Skip to main content

Mark Wallace: Studio Strobes on Locations Part 2

Lesson 25 from: SkillSet: Best of Lighting

Sue Bryce, Scott Robert Lim, Mike Fulton, Tony Corbell, Clay Blackmore, Mark Wallace, Zack Arias, Joey L, Felix Kunze, Joel Grimes

Mark Wallace: Studio Strobes on Locations Part 2

Lesson 25 from: SkillSet: Best of Lighting

Sue Bryce, Scott Robert Lim, Mike Fulton, Tony Corbell, Clay Blackmore, Mark Wallace, Zack Arias, Joey L, Felix Kunze, Joel Grimes

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

25. Mark Wallace: Studio Strobes on Locations Part 2

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Sue & Felix: Shoot: Natural Light Portraits - Maisie

21:30
2

Sue & Felix: Shoot: Natural Light Portraits - Katie

25:45
3

Sue & Felix: Shoot: Natural Light Portraits - LaQuan

15:36
4

Sue & Felix: Shoot: Studio Light Portraits - Maisie

39:40
5

Tony Corbell: The Power of Light Part 1

18:50
6

Tony Corbell: The Power of Light Part 2

37:39
7

Tony Corbell: The Power of Light Part 3

23:58
8

Scott Robert Lim: Live Shoot - Natural Light

1:21:40

Lesson Info

Mark Wallace: Studio Strobes on Locations Part 2

I would like to show you something else and this is something that um just so you know that it's possible there is a way to shoot outside in ambient light where you don't have to do all this crazy meeting so I need a volunteer from a student which all right come on over come on over okay I'm gonna let you walk through this and you have you ever done this before what we're about that you don't even know we're gonna do right you haven't told us nothing okay so I need the other transmitter which is in john's pocket and jones bucket ok so um this is a different system that a lot of it was created for wedding photographers and for location shooters and pro photo has this if you use a pocket with your many in flex with the alien bees you khun do this and then I know there's some other brands that are about to launch products that do this and so I think it's unfair not to show this thing so the first thing I want to do is show you how to use this neutral density filter okay so people at home ...

know how this could be done and then we're gonna let you shoot with this new light over here this is a pro photo be one okay we're not gonna use a light meter at all all right so what I want you to do is take this camera you can shooter I'm not okay that's okay you could figure it out so what I've done is I've set this tio two hundred two point eight just like normal when I have to go this way so we have you at two hundred two point eight I s so one hundred right so you're not going to change any exposure here but when you look through the lens at the bottom there's a little light meter just adjust this to the background until you see that that meter correctly okay so do that uh where's my shutter button there we go all right about there right about there okay take a picture of lex alright good it worked right yep balanced yet looks good looks good wait you think that that's the new system it's it's all t t l meaning so there's the tpl stuff that we learned yesterday works with with this unit and I'm guessing many other brands and so um you can either go out and get the profile toby won or use a pocket with your many in flex with tl meeting with some studio strobes which I think are the alien bees and they einstein's um well I know there's some other brands are gonna have this but what it does it allows you to use through the lens meeting to balance both ambient light and studio strobe the exact same way that we learned how to use our speed lights yesterday there is no difference in fact we're just shoot a few shots here so looking great excellent look into the flash a little bit beautiful it's like that and it just works so there is a way to do this that is a little bit simpler actually a lot simpler and having to do all the exposure compensation stuff on a meter and meeting everything and the reason I showed you that also is if you're a wedding photographer or an event photographer man what a difference in your workflow right you just go out and shooting and you're done so there is that as well okay what we want to dio unless you guys have questions we're going to continue on our journey we're gonna keep using this the tpl stuff for a little bit because it's so fast and unless people right in from online saying show us more of the meeting stuff we could do that but I want to talk to you about some different light modifiers and how they work outside as well so what we want to do jonah's let's let's take this gold just move the we'll put that over there on that yes we're gonna use a magnum reflector on on this be one like that we'll turn that is that on yes it is let's make sure that this sink is on so um for this we don't want it to be yeah we wanted to be out to the edge right there there you go good I'm gonna show these guys what we just did if you can hold that thank you so what we did is um if you can show right inside here we wanted to make sure that this wasn't too far inside because they will waste from light so you put it even so this light is going to fill this as much as possible and this is where having you know the other uh flash that we had had that little globe that came out I prefer that for a reflection like this because it's going fillmore of this surface but this is going to be pretty efficient but this is going to do it's almost parabolic so it's going to be very directional we're gonna do is we're going to pretend that we're going to shoot a photo of lex but she is let's say bride at the end of a church runway or she is a celebrity that we can't get close to she looks a little bit like angelina jolie doesn't she uh reese witherspoon is that what you get all the time yeah you love that or let's say that she is I don't know you're a paparazzi person I don't and this can't get very close we'll check this out uh we're gonna take this and we're gonna walk away over here so we're not very close to lex how far away is that what you think john that's probably for thirty seven thirty something like that all right so let's see if five hundred watt seconds can illuminate a person at thirty feet and see what I mean and I don't know if this is gonna work enough we're just gonna try it out so we're gonna do here that's turned off great we're gonna try this a two point eight will try to some other settings as well so we're we're back quite a ways I've got my ambient light exposed correctly we're still a two point eight and then lex is going to smile boom no problem at all it is perfectly illuminated from that distance which is pretty crazy so depending on the modifier that you have you can get some pretty astounding results and I like this because it's very speculative looks like we're out in bright sun it looks pretty good here still angelina yeah um and we can also work a different angles now I can actually get close leave that over there and let's have you turn toward me just a bit now we're going to get some side light you can see on this shot that we actually have a nice side shadow to that image and so we can start working with our direction of light let's have you turned this way just a bit beautiful and a little too close awesome and on that shot this looks almost like a sunset shot because the light is streaming from the side and so I'm changing myself in relationship to this light because that light is so punchy I don't even have to be close I can do a full length shot aiken do nice close shots I can do really flat light I could do sidelight we could do silhouetted light we could do anything so is that are those showing up yep perfect uh the other thing we khun do is use a parabolic umbrella so we'll try that out for that guy we're not gonna be able to get these types of distances so it's right on the ground there john we're probably gonna need some help on this one from john yeah and make this work lex we're gonna have you come over here stand right there and then here's what I'm going to dio I'm gonna shoot I'm gonna shoot this way so these guys can see from right here also we're trying to make sure the wind when it blows it blows it this way onto me not intellects power stick that right on there yes question away hardline especially given the distance doesn't that kind of contradict with the background was looking like and like totally looking fake it will look absolutely faith it's gonna look yeah but don't look like is something you haven't described yet called a light isolate and so light isolate is when you have let's say a very cloudy day like today but uh clouds are broken just of it and the sun sort of peeks through the clouds and you'll get maybe like the top of mount rainier is sparkling and great and everything else is sort of grey um that that's what I like isolate does so what we're doing is we're mimicking that like almost a shaft of light is coming down and you know uh so that's that's what it looks like okay yeah but it does look um a little artificial a lot artificial people voted home how artificial doesn't look it goes to eleven artificial okay this what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna shoot right in front of this this life is going to go around me and it's very very directional and it's going to give light fall off on lex and john you might have to stand behind to make sure it doesn't fly away no that's good that's good just like that's good it's all good just like that perfect okay so we're gonna do the same thing here I'm gonna use my neutral density filter to adjust for the background and there we go we'll see how much punch this has this is this requires quite a big bit of punch and we can see that lex is freezing perfect it works it works we have a crane right through your head now there are more cranes in the skyline I can see one two three four five six seven there's like seven cranes h nine we're in the middle of like an airport construction zone in the rain is awesome um so forgive us for that this is an ideal location but this what we're seeing here is that light fall off john I'm gonna have you hold this just for a second and I'm gonna go to my laptop so we can take a peek at this I'll see I'll see if I could do this all right so you can see me I'll take this off always funny way um so we're looking at is how this light falls off on the edges here and looking at this I can see that my focus was off so I couldn't see that through the camera when I shot but my focus was definitely off on this shot but we're seeing how this light actually gives a nice hard shadow at the edges let me shoot one more picture where I'm in focus and we'll see how that works sometimes by the way uh that can happen with a neutral density filter and so what I'll do is I'm gonna bump up my aperture value to about seven we'll see at seven I know it's cold at seven we don't have enough natural light so we're gonna shoot five and a shutter speed of two hundred perfect all right hold that we'll see if that works out okay we're looking at us how this light is falling off on the edges of her face and her ears that type of stuff and you can see that we get sort of this outline on her body of light fall off and that's what a parabolic umbrellas if this is a little bit mohr parabolic you'd see that even more pronounced on dh so it's just it's a very interesting look that you can get with a parabolic step I mean nervous that this thing is about to fly away so let's uh let's move to a different light modifier I feel like I'm about to have another a few hundred dollars mistake going crazy okay I'm ready for even more questions I think that was thunder was that thunder way don't get thunder here I would like to know I've seen this umbrella used with a front diffusion panel when used with the diffusion panel doesn't have the same effect as a fifty and soft box and I know we talked about this yesterday but would you mind reiterating please mark yeah so it has a similar effect is a fifty inches off box so what's happening is the lights being reflected and diffused the the only difference is if you if you have a soft box the light is actually coming from the flash is gonna come from the flash through the soft box and threw the diffusion material and so it's going to be very directional and very punchy and very very even when you're shooting with an umbrella what's happening is the light's going to the umbrella being reflected and going through that diffusion material so you're losing a little bit of light sometimes a lot of light based on that reflection and so a soft box is going to be a little bit more directional you're gonna get a little bit more light but you can also move that soft box much much closer to your subjects if you want to use the inverse square lots to drop light off you have a question yes I was wondering with your neutral density filter can you simulate in this environment with this light night time and light yeah let's see if we can do it I like that so for this john let's go ahead and use our punchy reflector so what we're gonna do uh is we're gonna take our neutral density filter and drop it far enough that it just we underexposed everything to make it look like nighttime like they're going to shoot you this way do you need this you're fine okay you positive yeah okay we're all gonna go home with colds after today gonna be great it's like I've got a session for uh sneezing great actually buddy from seattle was like you guys are lambs that was happening okay so I'm gonna take my neutral density filter want to come over and we'll just do the scaler I know oh my gosh you're live we'll try this out so what we're gonna do here this is the neutral density filter that you khun make things darker and are you a cannon shooter okay I'm gonna have you do this then I want you to look through this and you could take it off the tripod if you want yeah crooked driving you crazy all right we have that so look through there and on the front so don't take a picture yet on the front grab your hand here on rotate this until it's it shows three stops underexposed okay there's a little there's a little thing that's moving back and forth on our where the three yeah so move it there's a little there's a little dot this moving back and forth you wanted that dot to go all the way to negative three it's the left hand side okay is that what it is I think so I can't really see them blind okay okay so it's it's three okay not take a picture okay all right let's take a look it looks like guard looks like dark yeah so it might be that it's so dark in here they were mad because I will take a look it's on the three years that yeah so it's about their what's happening is we need more punch from our light and we can't see lex she's like a dot in the distant okay there lookin like night there's like nighttime yeah right amazing so we just weii did that that's the exact same thing that we did with our light so in the studio downstairs and we're using speed lights remember we we closed the aperture we sped up the shutter speed so that the lamps were underexposed making them essentially look like they weren't turned on we're doing the exact same thing here we're taking our new tradition filter and we're turning it and so the light the natural light is just getting under exposed more and more and more until it actually is going almost too black and then the flash is able tio uh give us enough light to expose correctly on lex and so it looks like we have lex outside in the dark so on the on the shot that I took it was very dark what did you do you fix it yes I did fix it so what I did is on your shot let me go over here and and I will look at the computer so walk with me to the computer you know interactive part of the workshop right so on the first shot when you took this shot some things were going on here one lex was not the main part of this shot okay so I used the rule of thumb when gauging my main subject if I can cover my subject with my thumb is not small wager so I needed to zoom in zoom yeah because we don't even know where she is there so that's gonna help the tt l meet a ring that was that and the other thing that was happening is when you rotated the neutral density filter so the exposure guide said it's exposed negative one negative too negative three but it was flashing which meant that you kept rotating it so it's probably four five stops really dark yeah like way dart three stops we'll do it and so you rotated that neutral density filter so far that the flash couldn't pump out enough light to get through it and so we had an underexposed lex okay yeah that's how it works all right I want you to do it one more time I'm gonna reset it they want you to do it again because there's somebody home that's going to try the same thing okay and the chances are if you have ah mistake like that they will too so let's just try it okay ready or you're brave I'm standing here standing here ok try to get I've taken this okay I do have a question of when what if I don't want to be zoomed in like really tight on her so do I zoom and get the meat oring hold the button down and then click or do I just no so now you want a human super super close uh you wouldn't have rotated the nutrients I felt there so far so probably the flash would have gotten it right but if it didn't we're using this as we would a speed light right now okay so you would use flash exposure compensation to increase or decrease the flash so that's what we do it let's say we weren't using it like a speed like we would have needed it and we would have known that the light was it the correct uh power output they don't have a meter won't meter I know you won't meet her we're not gonna meet her forget this but all these things that we're doing right now we'll work with the speed like the stuff we're doing right now okay so I've reset this so that you're gonna have to do it from scratch I know I'm so mean I want you to try it out you can you can go that way I remember you have to rotate your neutral density filter so that that orange and everything and so that you can see so you can see the meter sea going negative one negative too stop when it's negative three if it's if it's flashing your god too far all right I'm just going I don't see anything flashing okay holy cow she's sitting there smiling good don't get me a fake smile let's take a peek here you go uh try it one more time when there's three tonight looks like he's mid sneeze okay you're beautiful okay totally like blinking no it looks good yeah so we have light at perfect yeah you going out going up well that's how that works okay all right wait a little question yeah was here so couple of minutes ago you had the one light pretty far out I'm gonna come right over because your I can't hear you say uh uh couple minutes go you have that one light out about twenty five thirty feet so was that an example of using the inverse square law outside it wasn't because if we're trying to eliminate lex and the entire city aye that light is not powerful enough but that that would be the inverse square law right where the light is dropping off and it's going really low we have the same amount of light on lex as we do the building's way back there but we're not trying to do that so all that example was I was showing us how the parabolic shape was ableto push a lot of light a great distance that like none of the energy was wasted going to the sides he was all directional and so were able to shoot at a greater distance with that modifier then we would there's no way we could have done that with a four by six soft box or even any other soft box or probably even an umbrella because the light is being defused so much not enough it's going to hit her at twenty five feet away or thirty feet and so that's what that that is an example of okay you have a question and a microphone to questions on the microphone okay so we haven't used the color checker or done any white that's right normally this would all be incorporated yes the reason we haven't is we're trying to move along a pretty good clip and so on and that's the only reason we haven't done any post production we haven't done any of that stuff so all of the things that we would normally do we're trying to do it in little chunks and then only do those chunks and so one of the things that that is bothersome to me when I'm doing any kind of workshop like when I look at these photos they're orange they're blue and they're the very color casts and stuff that I wish I could correct but because our time limits you know we only have so much to do each individual thing on and so what I normally do is at the end of the day I look at the stuff and go we could fix this and fix this and actually we're gonna do some of that in the next segment yes next segment all right and we're gonna keep going do we have other questions from the folks at home actually people are saying they would like to know how to do all these techniques inside inside me to think like you hitting okay mark this is a question driven segment so please throw them throw them in okay are you going to survive twenty minutes yeah all right all right if you can stand in we could do that all right so let's try to do see what else we can do out here with uh billy man this building has got some color over here so we're going to try to do the exact opposite thing so we talked about under exposing the background so we have so we could sort of squish an ugly environment so we're going to try to do now is see if we can bring in a different environment so like what we're gonna do is we're gonna have you stand right here all right there would be great and for this one I think we'll just use an on access for basics soft bodies senses they're one of the questions that was asked during lunch actually was why did I switch to my seventy two two hundred millimeter lens today so as some of you asked me that yes yeah so I was like hey you've been using your twenty forty seventy lens and all of a sudden now you're using a seventy two two hundred why well the reason is when we were shooting inside downstairs we have to do everything in a very small environment have to be able to illustrate a point with you know lex sir john somebody like three or four feet away when normally I'm going to be shooting at a much greater distance and the reason for that with a longer lens like this guy this is a seventy two hundred which is what I normally used for shooting there are three things that happened the first is you get a nice comfortable distance from your subject and so yesterday I was shooting lex and then we were inches away from her face remember that when we're like that is not something that I would normally ever do in fact I'd like to shoot probably about this distance so we're about fifteen feet or so away from each other and it allows the model to be ah lot more comfortable you don't wanna have that creepy weird guy feeling and if you get really close you creepy feeling so this helps with that the second thing that happens with the lens like this is your compression you get a lot of compression and so what we're doing now is we have lex and behind lex we have that apartment building back there and if I use a wide angle lens the apartments behind her are going to look like they're really far away so the longer the lenses that you use that compresses that making it looks like it's closer and closer to your subject and so for ah a situation like this where I want that background in I'm going to use a longer lens and then the other thing that we get from a longer lens is our angle of view is narrower so instead of seeing all of this stuff we can compress that and see much less so when we're shooting downstairs with those v flats we kept seeing the edges of the background and the reason for that is normally I would have been about ten or fifteen feet farther back zoomed weigh in and so instead of seeing the back we would just seeing lex in the pristine background and for a situation like this we have this apartment building but on each side of the apartment building we have construction and cranes and all kinds of nasty stuff so we want to toe compress that and make sure we don't see any of the extraneous nastiness and so that's that's why I'm using this and also it's just a cool white linen so why not so mark have a quick question from jim who wants to know why you're not losing using a lens hood out here the reason I'm not is that this neutral density filter is larger than I can't put it on and the lens hood so that's the only reason I'm not doing that normally if you if you get a kit with neutral density filters or any kind of filter there's a kid that actually screws to the screws on to the end of your lens and it allows you to put what's called a mat box on there which is like a lens hood and then you're dropping in filters so that's the preferred method I don't use my neutral density filter enough to invest in the fiver six hundred dollars kit s oh I've got the less expensive one all right so john let's take that and turn it toward her loose in the wind till you're ready to go ok but it was like that's where it is just a wind sock right now wants helicopters where they can land awesome okay so we're gonna try to do this vertically vertically all right we'll do this on a tripod and lex let's have you take a half step this way little bit more there you go stop right there stop right there perfect and we're gonna first adjust for ambient light and that looks pretty good and now we're just going to snap a shot I want to do that one more time because I got a warning sound from my flash there you go there you awesome so what we have here is we have a starting point we have some compositional problems I'm gonna fix those her fingers chopped off and part of the building that I don't want to see is showing up so I'm gonna fix that so I'm gonna have you step just this way just a bit there you go too far come back perfect perfect yes let us smile we're gonna shoot excellent excellent now we have that blue background it looks better I don't necessarily like the windows there are there but we are able to really quickly shoot something in balance a background with a nice soft light just very very quickly it works great I know you guys can't see it but it's it's pretty good he's good and then normally what I would do is come over uh to my post production over here and I take a peek at this and on this it looks a little underexposed but I'm going to trust my history ram here we might be able to do a little bit of that take this white balance bring it down just a hair so it looks normal then we take these blues we saturate those blues just a bit and be cool on my crop that a little bit to get rid of the bottom right down here we don't like that um that's a good starting point like that I like that as well okay have a comment from s p photo who says the amount of lighting knowledge I'm gaining from this course is astounding valentin thank you marc incredible I've so that's very cool looking to questions here or do we have any final questions for you guys you guys are doing all right for a pretty good year you people ask questions and you answer them how much that's what's going on we're gonna do one more thing the way you look at that great since since we have the time um we can also uh add a second light so why not let's take this guy and instead of taking the sandbags yeah well this have you hold it you turn this on and this is sinking to this so it should just use tl and so if you walk around and we're gonna do is we're gonna have you just give us a uh more hair light we're gonna play with this just a little bit to see what happens when we add something to maybe uh yes so let's see if you can get a little closer to the edge of the building keep going you got it there you go it is like that and then what we're gonna do is we're going to try to hit the back of her head with the back of her hair beautiful click awesome so now we're getting that this sort of side light and it's two side lit for me so we're going to do john is going to have to keep going this way until you're almost in the scene alright take about a half step back there you go beautiful excellent now what we've done is we've made this look a little bit like um it's very artificial at this point so we've added a kicker light and we take a look at that you can see that we've separated a little bit from the background um what we'll do is we'll go in here to the develop module we're going to bring over the adjustments we made in that first photo and apply them to the second photo we'll say sink settings were going to think all of them really quickly and then what we're going to do here let's take a look at this and you can see that now this looks a little bit more chiseled from the background and again we're seeing in this focus issue I think this focus issue um and I've seen this before um the neutral density filter can throw off your auto focus a bit so we're seeing focus issues constantly today and so what I would normally need to do is take that and either manually focus and slow way down and make sure we're tack sharp or shoot tethered with something I can really see to try to compensate for that eso this neutral density filter is definitely altering the auto focus so we'll look at the end and see if there's a there's an issue with all of the photos of so we know ok it's the filter if not then we know ok it's the wallace is going to be one of the two but I've seen at least three out of focus shots so far so something is something is wacky they're filtered or the wallet the filter of the wallace could be that right those are our options right out of the question from fashion tv from singapore if we want to shoot a low contrast image while outdoors so a soft look how would we shoot it while balancing ambien and flash okay here is a that's a terrific terrific question because so they want low contrast which means no shadows and they want a balance ambien and flash okay you have to work in the environment that you're given right now guess what we have low contrast light so what I would do is turn my flash you're done why would you use a flash in that situation because you ready have low contrast light and it's already balanced with the ambient light and so there's no need to use a flash in that situation so instead of like trying so hard to force a piece of equipment on tio something that you're trying to accomplish a lot of times you just get rid of that piece of equipment and you're done and so yeah that and I'm not to pick on I'm gonna column digital realm he's not you know it's fashion tv fashion tv s o v e is not alone and I'm not saying that is wrong thinking but in that type of thinking where you're thinking I have to use my flash because I brought it with me and we're shooting outside and you're trying to get a certain type of lighting that already exists and that happens in the studio is well you might have one like that's going to do the job but you tend to like start adding more and more and more lights when you just don't need them so the answer is don't overthink it don't overthink it now let's pretend we're in a different just pretend it's two days ago and we have bright bright bright light son in that situation what we would have done in fact we're going to set this thing up it's not gonna work here we're gonna go ahead and set it up anyway okay because it is to do exactly what he's trying to do so we're going to set something up that we're not going to use because we don't have the right type of light all right select we don't need you for a little bit so you can freeze in peace for just a second we don't need students so I need at least three of you to come over here I'm gonna move you guys to the side so step on out come over here I'm gonna get one of these come on over okay well have you hold this just like that and just like that mean another one okay we're gonna pretend is we're going to pretend that if you could give me that umbrella just stand right there for now right there yeah good yeah don't open it up we're not going to use it we're not gonna even we're not going to shoot a picture and so you're going to just hang out right there for just a second we're gonna actually let you stand right here you're actually the model now okay so let's pretend like we have sun right there and this is going to represent your shadow okay so we have a son and we have shadow coming this way actually let's pretend this because the cameras won't be able to say we have shadow going this way okay son over their shadow going this way and so on you in our fake outdoor really bright sun we've got morning movie this way we have shadows being cast all across her face all right are you visualizing this good are fake son so we want to do is we're going to take this we're gonna put it right here at a ninety degree angle to this shadow and what will happen there is immediately you are in shade and so the contrast on you is just going to go boom it's going to go away down and so what we'll do over here because you are going to go right here and hold that we're building a little box and then what we do is we take one more and we put it across the top of those and you would actually have a black square a black box and what will happen is you're going to be about two stops less exposed than the background and then we could add a flash over here that has more frontal light so we have and big big soft light and then we can control the light that's here and balance that with the background and that's that's that's how you do that way wanted to do that today but then we realized there's no sun so it wouldn't work because you notice that when we put these up the light on you doesn't change it all so it doesn't work but if it was really bright sun we would build this little box you would be in little contrast light and then we could bring a flash out here throw that in and do some other things the other thing we could do with this set up is if we had no flash forget the flash we'll do is back here we'll add two white panels and then what will have is the sun is going to illuminate these white panels they're going to be nice and white you're gonna be a nice soft light and we have built an outdoor natural light studio and those lights look those shots look great I've done a few times they look terrific and then the other thing you can do in a situation like this where you have a nice white panels right here is you can uh when you're shooting from this direction I know you put those down if you want it's like it's so windy you can actually add a very small cats like to your eyes by adding a speed light to the camera so the speed lights not actually going to illuminate you is just gonna pop a little bit of light into your eyes and that's how that works all right good job you guys spectacular okay so that's the answer to that um we don't have that light out here so we can't demonstrate it but that's how that would work and I'm ready for another question if you have it so jim the chat rooms would like to know your opinion on constant lighting versus strobes and mon alights all right so wait touched on that a little bit last couple days constant lights are normally hot unless they're led lights so they're gonna be difficult to work with sometimes led lights are okay but constant lights aren't nearly as powerful of light output as a studio strobe and so you're normally having to do is open up your pretty wide increase your s o and depend on your shutter speed to freeze action and it's really uh it's difficult to freeze action with constant lights so there's war in the second thing is going to be very very hot and you don't get all the light modifiers that you would normally get because they have to be built specifically for high temperature situations and so you're limited with hot lights when you're trying to do uh anything it's freezing action or really sculpting light and last year shooting with the shooting video and when you're shooting video you have to have hot lights because you can't illuminate stuff with studio strokes right it doesn't work so generally I stick to that rule if I'm going to shoot something that needs uh consistent light all the time video I used my hot lights and any other time I'm using strokes for those two reasons now the other thing to consider is hot lights are generally a lot less expensive than studio strobes and so there's nothing wrong with starting in and using them for entire career actually but there's nothing wrong with using hot lights it's just my preference okay well interesting question from guild rod if detail for a speed light is stupid why is the detail on the pro phoners dude pro photo studio flash smarter it's not smarter is not smart it's still gonna have a lot of the same issues because it's not the pro photo um it's not the pro photo light well there is there are two differences it is a little smarter also that I don't want to sell these lights because that's not what I'm here for its a little smarter for this reason if you have um so jonathan I want to use you as this example if you have a speed light you have this pretty flash that happens and the meat oring is dependent on the pre flash so I want you to come too close so stay back like you had the play just a little bit okay like that perfect say we're using a speed light and let's say john's even farther way but let's just leave you there for now and let's say that you're the speed light right so we click the shutter the pre flash comes over here bama reflects come back through the lens of my cannon or nikon or whatever camera and it tells me what the exposure is well if I'm using a a flash as ten times the power that pre flash is going to be stronger he's coming brighter and come back and so theoretically you should get better results from your tt l meet a ring because the light that's being used to judge that it's a little bit better so that's that's one of the reasons but the actual thiel meeting that's happening is happening in the camera not the flash and so it's the same it's the same thing it's just that the light that's coming out is a little bit different so it could be uh um yeah so that's the other thing is that it's more consistent from shot to shot the battery and fresh rates are a little different and in my experience we actually did a demo for pro photo or I had to show that the the flash wasn't working right and it took me forever to make it not work right it was really difficult so yeah I don't know you have a question yes yes mine's maura universal are there certain trends in lighting that are coming in and are in style right now and ones that are kind of passe and going out and you see things on the horizon that air kind of progressive I don't really pay attention to that so I don't I can't answer that specifically and no any answer I give it's going to be like a million people going on what what does he read so I don't know I do I read a lot of different magazines but they're they're not mainstream magazines to sort of see that kind of stuff I have seen a trend in nasty lighting where is like on camera lighting like terry richardson that type of light where it's just like a speed light blasting somebody so I started to see that in a lot of the malls and the little you know um ads and stuff you see in target and not target but like other brands of clothing better out there um yes I've seen that and I think I've only I noticed it cause it's so bad to me it's it's like it's horrible but I've started to see a lot of that other than that there's not some thing that really sticks out to me but that might be something that people watching could say oh yeah there's this lighting style I'm emulating whatever stylish shoes it's them we're supposed to myself and I think mark we're trying to make the subject look good we're not trying to identify ourselves in every photo we take by having some weird thing going on right yeah and I know there are photographers like rincon is a photographer I really admire and he shoots with a very distinct lighting style and a wide angle lens and so and from a low angle of view so you always get like bill clinton hands on like abraham lincoln and it's just the sort of stretched out stuff with the vigna on the background so there are our photographer said definitely have a style that's very recognizable annie liebowitz uses soft light and pools with grids all that moody stuff look at the sopranos posters she's done all that kind of stuff and so there are those types but I agree with john I'm wanting to make sure that the person is eliminated appropriately in the environment that they're in so that's sort of where I'm going yes all right well let's do one more review question and then we'll wrap this up okay there was a question from gilda rod again who asked well mixing light sources like the pro photo with alien visas background like create light temperature consistency problems can yes it shouldn't depending on which which things that you're mixing you might have inconsistencies so I had a uh for a while I bought a nova tron uh three light kit that was at least twenty years old but I got three lights and impact for think I paid seventy five dollars for it and it was in a case and so I'm like how can you pass that up but I used to use it to do light up things like curtains and backgrounds and things like that and there was definitely a shifting color on those s o I would always use them in a situation that you have to worry about it but uh you shouldn't have too big of an issue with color ships between brands unless it's a very very inexpensive brendan you might see that the biggest thing is when you start making speed lights and studio strobes you might start to see some color ships but not significant enough to worry about it I don't think

Class Materials

Free Downloads

Studio Set Up - Learn to Light

Ratings and Reviews

Vincent Duke
 

I am pretty new to Creative Live and this is my first purchase so for me I am loving this! So many good gems of information and having some of the repeated content from different speakers with different perspectives really helps drill in these concepts. I say for anyone who's looking for an great all around drill it into your head lighting bootcamp this is a winner. But if you're like the others here and have purchased videos from these authors before then you will probably want to look elsewhere as this is a bundle of highlights from previous sessions on lighting.

Camerosity
 

If you’re just starting out with photographic lighting (especially studio lighting), this set is a steal. I already had the set by Sue Bryce and Felix Kunze, and I’ve bought all of Joel Grimes’ tutorials. Since I’ve watched them recently, I didn’t watch their videos again. If you’re into commercial photography OR darker moods and low-key lighting, anything by Joel Grimes is well worth buying and watching. If you’re into glamour portraiture, everything by Sue Bryce is worth buying and watching (although I haven’t been able to acquire all of her tutorials yet). However, the videos by Sue and Felix are not where I would begin. The two videos by Joel Grimes in this set cover aspects of lighting that aren’t often discussed. However, most of his knowledge of lighting (from his other sets) isn’t covered in this set. If you’re thinking about going into commercial photography, Zack Arias’ discussion of how to gear up to open a commercial studio is a must-see (as are Joel Grimes’ two sets on commercial photography, neither of which is represented in this bundle). I agree with virtually everything Zack said. Although there are a couple of areas where I might have gone a bit deeper than he did in this video, it’s a much-needed reality check – with great advice before you start spending money on equipment to start a photography business – and he gives a LOT of great advice. While his lighting style and mine are very different, his thoughts on equipment for a startup photography studio (or just beginning to learn studio lighting) are right on target. (Zack’s and Joel’s videos on the business of commercial photography cover different areas, and there is very little overlap between them.) One of the reasons why I bought this set was the lighting wisdom of Tony Corbell. Tony is the closest thing to the late Dean Collins at this time (I have all of Dean’s videos on VHS tapes AND DVDs), and Tony holds nothing back. Great stuff! Joey L covers material that I’ve seen covered in many other tutorials (on CreativeLive and elsewhere), BUT he gives a MUCH clearer explanation of why he does certain things than I’ve seen elsewhere. For example, he gives more information about feathering light than I’ve ever seen in a video, and few people besides Joey and Joel Grimes (but not in Joel’s videos in this set) give as good an explanation of WHY they’re changing the position of a light by two inches. Clay Blackmore was a protégé of the late Monte Zucker, and he’s as close as we can get to learning from Monte (aka the master) these days. I have Monte’s VHS tapes, but they’re worn out, and there’s nothing to play them on. While they apparently were also issued as DVDs, the sites I’ve found that are supposed to have them all lead to 404 (page not found) errors. Clay covers both posing and lighting – and how to fit the lighting to the pose – in great detail. I haven’t watched any of the videos on speedlights. I still have about a dozen Vivitar 283’s, 285 HV’s and 4600’s that I used in combination during my photojournalism years (back in the film days), but you’re much more likely to see me lugging 1,000-watt second strobes outdoors to overpower the sun than using speedlights in studio (or on location) these days. I’ve seen some of Roberto Valenzuela’s work and tutorials, and I’d say he is the Joe McNally or David Hobby of wedding photography at this point in time. He knows his stuff. One or two of the videos are slightly dated in terms of the equipment being used, but that doesn’t make the information about lighting less valuable. Equipment may change, but the principles of lighting, the things that determine the quality of light, and the elements of “good lighting” have changed very little if at all since the days of the Dutch Old Masters painters. There’s a lot of great lighting information in this bundle for the price.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES