Skip to main content

Diffuse It, Twist It, Pull It

Lesson 12 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

Diffuse It, Twist It, Pull It

Lesson 12 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

12. Diffuse It, Twist It, Pull It

Lesson Info

Diffuse It, Twist It, Pull It

So diffusion is, was this thing here that pops on? And kelsey, I'm missing that the cannon diffusion panels. So what we can do here is a nickel. I can just say off like kelsey make it happen, and I listen, she'll run in everybody needs one of those. So by what this does is this light is very directional when he added diffusion panel, it takes that light and it does exactly what it says it spreads the light out, and when you spread the light out, it allows it to start doing things, especially if you're in a small environment. Now the light can bounce off walls, off ceilings, off floors instead of having like this coming straight into you. You have light that sort of surrounding you, and it really helps when you bounce the light and so you can get these things. This is, um, just called a stuff in omni bounce um s t o f e n still thin, easy. I'm looking at it like this that the light because there's one way that this goes and so have to look at it to see which way is up and this will thro...

w will fit right on a five day ttx two I think this actually goes on a five fifty. Yeah, so I get a different flesh but you see outworks speaking by these little things so I've got a different flash this goes to that's not out here but you can stick that on there and it's going toe allow that like to sort of diffused now the other thing you can do with your flash we'll talk about why you want to do this in a little bit but let's say right now if I have this up what's going to happen is this light is going to go all over the place and so if I had a ceiling the lights going to go there it's going to go toward my subject is gonna go to the the bottom of the floor and bounce around is going to come over here so in a small environment what will happen is that lights gonna be bouncing all around it's going to really saw from the light so that's what this guy knows right here softer, light harder like what it does yes sir diffuse evenly throughout the boxer like it's still going to be stronger directionally words which were pointing it in the lights like besides going to les that's correct that's correct it's always going to be more like coming this way then coming this way but there is a consider about a considerable amount of light coming this way one of the fun things to do if you can. If you have a couple cameras, stick a flash with the diffuser next to a wall and then take a picture of it, triggering that flashing and see exactly where he's going. It's really fun. So way did that with some studio lights in a video on youtube that I made on you can see how it spreads out. Google me on youtube. I think you will see a couple business. All right? Yes. Thank you. Kelsey just brought this out. She read my mind. This is called a gary fawng adapter or something. Very fucking something like lights. Fear. Thank you. And it collapses like a fancy when that collapses on what this does is it allows you to put this on a flash and to stick this I ask gary, finally, how do you get this thing on there so difficult, he's like you got smash it first. Like this smashing and then this just goes on to your flash. I thought I'm gonna break my flash doing this, but it actually works. So I recommend if you use one of these things to do it before. Yeah, there's like that. Ok, here it is, it's all my flash, okay, if it was like that. Anything you see that that's going to do nothing was coming straight up right? But what this guy has is this little sphere that khun go inverted or ex con favor are what's the other one convicts thank you so you stick this on the end of this and what this allows you to do is point this up you know, make sure I think I missed a little adapter that's supposed to go in here. Yeah, there is, right? So you point this up like this and now what this is going to d'oh is it will hit this and the light will go all over the place and this is great for shooting in a small environment where you have a ceiling because what it does is it throws the light all over the place and you're supposed to do it this way the reason for that is if you're shooting horizontally shoot this way when you shoot vertically, shoot this way so it will just allow you to go back and forth and everything bounces around so that's what the gary fong does some people love gary fong's whereby it I think it's the best thing since sliced bread it's pretty cool going to use this tomorrow uh when we do some some balancing stuff okay, so that was the diffusers we have diffuser questions if not going to keep twisting say home one second it's okay he's would you use a stuff in outside this is from my fook would you use a stuff in or diffuser outside? Um you can I don't because if I'm outside I want a larger lights or so those guys are meant to be in environments where lights bouncing off of something like the wall and a floor and a ceiling because then the wall on the floor and the ceiling become sources of light and bounce like when you're outside, all you're doing is you're making the light source larger, which will make it a little bit softer but not that much and what happens is you're taking so much power from the flash you're just sort of robbing yourself and so I don't really shouldn't use those outside unless I'm shooting um and I just want some catch lights in the eyes they just want some little highlight sometimes I will use the diffuser like this and then put my flash at an angle like this so it just gets this little highlight in ice, so sometimes I'll do that but that's that's about the only reason I'll do something like that? Ok sir, we're going to use you for just a second again, so I'm going to shoot tethered here I'm sure you something else, so we have twisting okay twisting now the twisting is tio balance light so we're going to bounce some light so what I'm gonna do is seven come over here and we might have to sort of cheat a little bit and have you step back just a little bit come forward a little bit a little bit more I know you're like what? Tell me where you go ok, we're going to do is I'm gonna bounce light off this wall and can I take this off that work? Yeah, okay john's going to take this picture of sam bander who one of the best models to live off and we're going to bounce off this now here is a gotcha this is yellow it's going to cause a yellow color cast to come on your face so we'll know we're gonna have a little yellow they're actually come over here just a little bit more every good so what twisting does it allows us to bounce light so I'm going to use this to make some sidelight on syria's face, so in fact I'm gonna back up just a little bit lower here we go. Okay, take a look at this picture as it comes up and I think you'll be surprised at how much sidelight we get just by bouncing this light off the wall lot three crazy high so it looks almost like we have a soft box on this side so what we did was not only to be balanced the ambien and the flash but we have more interesting I'm much more interesting shot our colors a little wacky way also can do something like this so john's going to come over here hold this up and then I'm gonna pull it back just a little bit more john there you use your muscles you can do it okay here it goes we're gonna pull this out just a little bit okay we're bouncing the lighting and thank you john and we'll see sort of a similar thing we have sidelight we have a nice catch light ah and sarah's eyes there we have the ambient light back there but balancing the light allows us to make the light source larger thank you sir um I will show a couple of things here let me show you something that I think is really important to understand someone go to this camera here see how large this light sources not very largest decides a couple fingers right? Small sources of light like this make uh really hard like get hard shadows and so if you could take that and make it much larger that's happening is that light is now surrounding your subject and giving you a really nice off like so what we did this when we twisted this we illuminated this whole wall and so are light source went from this small thing to something that was a few feet large and so we got this soft light you see how this transition is really soft that's the joy of balancing light most people think of bouncing light straight up I rarely bounced like straight up because then you get shadows here and under here I bounced light to decide all the time because you get this kind of stuff. The other thing that you see john zipped over here with that white panel. Another trick for wedding photographers what if this was a window? This is a window, right? And you want that beautiful shot but we're getting too much light over here we can't balance this out you could put a reflector over here if you're not getting enough light, you could bounce that way to fill in the light coming from this way bouncing is his possum, so twisting this guy is incredible tomorrow we're going to show you something else you khun dio you can shoot somebody this way with your light this way it bounces off a wall behind you that big wall becomes a large, soft source of light who almost no shadows at all twisting is the way to go so good so if you have to have your flash on your camera at least bounce that if you can't twisting it is great any twisting questions while we're waiting, I'm going to talk about one other thing and that's the pull it this okay do you guys have this thing I hear ok let me give you a warning it doesn't matter if you have a cannon or a nikon or vivid sir I don't care what it is something is going to happen when you pull this out two things let's see if we can get this on the camera right here see, this is thirty five millimeters right here. Thirty five millimeters I'll explain that just in a second when I pull this thing out I could get my females or anything yeah see, that goes to fourteen millimeters so it's in thirty five when I pull it out. Fourteen ok what's happening is some people confuse this as a diffusion panel it is not a diffusion panel this is a white angle panel. What that isthe this is if you're shooting with a really whiting a lens like a fourteen millimeter lens your flash has an angle of you just like your lens does okay? So as you're shooting angle of view is depending on how you resumed if you're white ingle injure zoomed way out you can see a lot when you zoom in on that angle of view narrows well your flash has to illuminate what your lindsays and so if you have a really wide angle lens, you need to pull this out so that the light can reach the corners of what your lindsays if you put this out just to defuse the light, what you've done is you've told your flash toe always be really, really wide, which means that if you're shooting something far away, the flash isn't going to get there and you decrease the power and you've done all kinds of bad things to your pictures. Great. Now is it all right? That was thanks for coming. We're done. Yeah, that is in there. There's another thing that's really important to know about this when you pull us out. If you pull it too hard it's gonna snap off and then I have seen this many times once it snaps off your camera is are your flash is now stuck at fourteen millimeters it's stuck and this next feature I'm going to show you won't ever work again unless you take it in for repair. Did you do this, susan? You know, how do you go back? You take it to a repair shop because mine it's now it's and stuck forever that looks like let's see fourteen oh, no, when you put this back goes back. So I'm just saying, if you if you think this out really hard and it flies out in your hand, your host so don't think that I really hard thea everything that you can do with this pull it thing I love this park feel like oh um this little white card so back in the day people used to use a rubber band and just like a three by five card all this does is if you want a just a catch light in the eye of whatever whoever you're shooting um if you're shooting outside and bright sunlight a lot of times you don't get that catch like if you use a fill flash it's unflattering light because it's just too much and so what you can do is just pull this guy out push back in the white angle and then when you take a picture this card will illuminate really really bright and you just get a little speck of light in your subject's eyes and it makes all the difference it's the difference between a doll with no little white dot in the doll with white dot the ones that don't have the white dot look creepy dead so we don't want that from people we want them to look very much alive and if you look at each other right now look at whoever is at home sitting next to you or look at yourself in the mirror you'll see we all have those catch lights and when they go away scary all right look at comic books the bad guys they take out the spectator highlights they don't have any of those good guys always have ok, so that is the pull it. Do we have questions for twisted or pull it? We do. Ok, way interested? Ok. Um, let's see there's quite a few graces. Mommy ask. Could you bounce off a reflector instead of a wall? Yes. Absolutely. Graces mommy. I have. Grace is awesome. I'm sure she is. Why would you name yourself that? If she wasn't just awesome? Grace was me incredible. Um, so I love that kind of stuff. Yes, you can use. Ah, gold reflector, silver reflector, a white reflector. One of the things that I love to do is when I'm shooting and I'm in it like an outdoor environment or something where I don't have a wall nearby is just to grab an assistant and a reflector and have them do this kind of thing a lot of times, if I'm doing a like let's, say, a bowling work party where your bowling or something like that and you want to do like the photo booth fun shots. One of the things that I've seen a lot are just a camera on a tripod with the flash backwards. So flash like this, and then somebody will just take a little stand with a big reflector and stick it back there and then people can just take pictures and you get nice really soft light that doesn't look like nasty light from a flash just using a reflector so that the balance stuff play with that a lot so people at home try this in your living rooms and around the house just to start balancing the light around not just up to decide and you'll see isn't really fun stuff cool uh question from ed photo what do you do if you can't find a white wall to bounce do you have to have a gel to match the wall? Well you don't you can uh it depends on what color that wallace you know if you have a super redwall what will happen is that red dark color is going to absorb a lot of light to first place and so when it comes back it's not going to have much to offer on when it does it'll be really read to find a gel that matches that random redwall accurately it's going to be very, very difficult. So if you find yourself in a position where it's just like a really, really saturated color, you might want to avoid that that's one of those that's not gonna work or just bring a portable reflector that you can stick up but I think it be really, really difficult to find gels that match but um one of the things I love about this, but there are tons of reds and blues and yellows and stuff for that type of thing. And so I think with a little bit of practice and experimentation, you could start to find hughes that match, which is why those exists. Yes, sir, he looked okay in the picture, but does bouncing off a wall mess with the t t l like the exposure if it's exposing, assuming that you're shooting straight out the subject and then you're actually I don't think I was increasing the distance that it's traveling against. Yeah, so it doesn't because it's the ninja. So what an engine does all right, pro flash is when you bounce right and your flies over here, hits the wall and hits the subject's face, it still goes through the lens, so it's still measuring that whole round trip and that's the beauty of the pre flash, it doesn't matter how you bounce it, it eventually still has to come through the lens and be measured.

Ratings and Reviews

Gary Hook
 

Mark's wealth of knowledge combined with his engaging and 'fun', experimental approach to teaching is a winner. I learned a great deal but what truly reinforces the learning is that he actually shows what he is talking about. He gets a question and quickly sets up the practical demo for the answer. Brilliant. Given that this session took place some time ago ( but by no means diminishishes the tremendous learning value) the lessons and knowledge are based techniques that will stand the test of time; however, if I was advising Mark on his teaching techniques, the main are a of 'focus' would be to be more effective with his demonstrations. He holds the back of the camera up, makes his point quickly and then moves on, just as the video is locking on. Great idea to talk about what button you are pushing, but when your fingers are obscuring the 'learning point' it diminishes the effectiveness of the demo. Overall great course which I will watch parts again and highly recommend it. Thank you PS Give both Kelsey and John and huge hug as they are all-stars making things happen!

Alexander Svishchenkov
 

Great! I'm so thankful to you, CreativeLive, for providing this great opportunity to learn an important subject of photography - Speedlights - from the professional Mark Wallace. He is such a good teacher and explains everything in real-life situations and on slides. As he fires his flash, I instantly see the resulting photo on my screen, so this is theory combined with practice. I'm in fact watching you from Belarus, and it's midnight, so I'm fighting with sleep, but I can't get myself away from the screen. this is my 1st CL experience. I'm very grateful for running a rewatch of the previous Day the following morning, so I woke up and saw what I'd missed. And it's totally free! Thank you so much for a true first-class education!

Aussie David
 

Truly a fabulous class. Mark has such a gift for taking a complex subject and making it so understandable and fun at the same time. Mark is easily one of the best instructors out there. Highly highly highly recommend this class.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES