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Manual Mode

Lesson 9 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

Manual Mode

Lesson 9 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

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Lesson Info

9. Manual Mode

Next Lesson: General Q&A

Lesson Info

Manual Mode

Manual mode are you guys ready to learn a new manual mode? Okay, we're gonna do this with a nikon ok? We've had enough cannon for right now we're going to do this with the nikon and we're going to shoot in now when I say manual mode by the way we're gonna shoot the camera in manual mode we're not going to shoot with a flash in manual mode yet we're not ready for that yet we had a grow up a little before we're ready for that we're going to show how to shoot this the camera in manual mode and so john actually let's get the now we can't use a tripod sorry because I have a bracket on here that won't come up so no tripod where is gonna win it? So what I'll do is I'm gonna go into a live view here on my nikon camera so you can see everything that I'm doing don't try to hold this is still a possible oh, sorry not to make everybody sick on we have a couple of things going on I'm going to point this at the floor so in every camera there is some kind of meter so the nikon it's at the right side ...

of the screen with a cannon it's on the bottom of the screen this is what you would be looking through when you look through your view finder there's some kind of thing that tells you if you have too much light or not enough light on, and I need to put this in manual mode to so weaken actually do this. The other thing that we have is somewhere in your screen, you'll have something that says what the aperture value is, and something that says with shutter speed is so on this I can move the aperture valium, doing that with my finger on the front so that's on the front on nikon cameras, it's on the back on canon cameras, you use that little dial there? Um, so one of these guys, I'm moving this aperture value, so if you don't know how to move your aperture value at home looking your user manual or just fiddle with switches, and you'll find that one of those dials moves your aperture on some cameras there's only on this camera there's two dials, there's one back here and there's one up here on a canon camera. They'll be a big rolling dial here in a big dial here. Some cameras don't have that, but what they have is a little button, something around here that has a plus minus or a navy or a little, the symbol that looks like an aperture, little leaves, and so what you can do is if you only have one dial you push this dial back and forth and change the shutter and you push and hold one of these back here and move that and it will change the aperture so depending on your camera is different is anybody have one that doesn't have to dial's here I think we all have the to thailand's eso but like the rebels of the d ninety's those kind of guys they usually have one dollars so what we're doing is we have to figure out which how we set these two things theis so the aperture and the shutter speed so through your lens you're going to see all of these things so what we'll do first is we first have to sit where s o is going to be so in here we have a lot of light I'm going to take the ice so as low as it will go um this camera only goes to two hundred so icon people two hundred so I have taken it all the way down now that where should you put your eyes so it base it's based on how much light eyes in the room or outside so normally I keep my eyes so as low as possible because the lower the I s o the cleaner the images are so I like to keep it low so in here two hundred if we were shooting outside at night which we're going to be doing um if it doesn't rain tonight, I will probably have my eyes so much higher and with the camera like this sorry cannon people this is a d three s it can shoot it I associate twelve thousand eight hundred and it really doesn't have any noise at all this is insane so five d mark three khun do that the one the x can do that the defore can do that a lot of newer cameras can do that it's it's pretty spectacular so right now I so low, so now we have the question of this where should we put these two things? We have to start somewhere so the question is what's more important? Is shutter speed more important or is aperture more important? The only way we know that is to say is motion more important to me or his depth of field. This is not a basic photography class, so I can't go into details on that come to the tour, but we're going to say the basic thing is this if you're shutter, speed is slow you're gonna have a lot of blur ifyou're shutter speed is fast it's going to freeze that blur if you're aperture is a small number, it means it's really big and wide and not very much is in focus if you're small like two point eight if you're aperture number is high like twenty two it's actually really small and lots of stuff is in focus so we have to choose which one of those things is more important to us. So for me right now what I'm going to say is I want to control how much is in focus so I'm going to change my aperture value and I wanted to be I'm just going make something up here in fact sarah, can you come on out here? We're going to do a portrait and I want shallow dip the field, which is something like like this picture right here we have flowers out of focus, but we have a model in focus that's what shall adopt the field is to come on over and actually we'll have you stand right here. There we go good right there so what I want to do here is I want to make sure your and focus and the background falls out of focus so what I'm gonna do here is this aperture value needs to be a small number, so I'm gonna go down I want to go all the way down to two point eight, which gives me really shallow dip the field so you'll be in focus that'll fall out of focus, so the question is, what should my shutter speed be that's the question? I don't know, but what I do know is I have a gauge that will tell me so I'll have to do is put this up and then this is going to really fun because I'm doing this backwards I am going to roll my shutter speed until my gauge says zero right man oh now it's a little blurry because I don't have a tripod and I was shooting with my head looking to back way but I was doing this give me some credit here um so that gives us an exposure that is pretty close white balances offer me something fix that yeah ok so let's talk about still alive you let's talk about exposure compensation much better white balance what if we wanted tio do expose your compensation and make this under exposed normally in aperture priority mode when we change exposure compensation it changes what shudder right yes if we're in shuttered party mood and we use exposure compensation that changes what amateur yes right now what's the most important thing to us we are he said it what is it amateur yes so my exposure compensation is going to be me changing my shutter right so what I'll do is I want to have this looking backwards again I want to have this picture underexposed just a little bit so what I'll do is I will change my shutter speed until it says I'm under exposed to over there on the right hand side it says I'm under exposed by one stop my two stops click click I'm under exposed by two stops that's exposure compensation emanuel note I did it myself so that's that's how that works there isn't exposure compensation you just use your little scale now cannon people you don't have this plus minus scale what you have is a little little square thinking that moves back and forth and what you want to do is you want to have that in the center that's what you want to have you want to move your aperture and shutter until it shows up right there in the center it's the same thing it just doesn't have plus minus but it works the same so what I'm gonna do is kim just call out a number to me between one hundred and five hundred to fifty perfect I was thinking that that's crazy so what we just did is we said now we're shooting and shutter priority mode that's what we're going to do so we're going to set this to two hundred fifty and doing that with my thumb right here. This is two fifty what should our aperture value be? I don't know I don't know so what we're gonna do here we're gonna put this up we're going to take a look uh oh what's the problem underexposed can I let in any more light? No I can't because my aperture is is why does it can go what do I d'oh frasier I can raise my I s o just like this and check it out I also sixteen hundred seems to work just fine that's how manual mode works you say I'm going to start with this and I'm gonna just until everything balances out if you want under expose or overexposure issues your little beater works all right let's do the same thing but now let's throw a flash on the camera okay people at home are you following along chime in if you are please try this if your home try this out your camera put in manual would look through see the little thing point your camera around at whatever you're watching the tv the computer in fact I want in the next ten minutes at least ten pictures on twitter of people that have taken a picture of this broadcast in manual mode with their camera you can't use your iphone all right let's see if we can in less ten minutes at least ten people that will do that may be the coolest picture maybe we could use that as an inspiration for prize instead of a quote I don't know I can't I can't break the rules because it's all law and stuff but anyone say we'll see what happens we'll see what happens but tell people again when it was in case they just kind of really put it in manual mode but your camera manual mode and take a picture of the broadcast using your camera in my new mode and then tweeted and I think we're gonna look for creativity somebody that can do something really creative with picture in manual mode I'm not saying you have to be super creative, but maybe you know that a slow shutter speed gives you some nice motion and you could maybe twist and blur and zoom and I don't know some cool stuff okay? And and and sorry and you're used the hashtag wallace live use the hashtag wallace live I want people to try this try it out none of this is going to sink in your brain unless you try none of it is in fact you guys get your cameras where your cameras get him put him on manual mode where you start shooting here okay? Yeah cbrc there uh that's okay, polaroid is invented for that very reason. Ok? Like no that's not what you're thinking right now what I've done here when we're in manual mode we're thinking now how is the flash going? Tio automatically know what the exposure should be? The ninja still lives okay, so what we do all this stuff the only difference in that whole act in four parts that happens is when I take a picture instead of the camera meeting the ambient light it's allowing me to figure that out but the ninja the pre flashes still going to come out figure out how much light should be in there and then take a picture so in manual mode you could still leave your flash and auto because they're two different things which is sort of fun so I have my flash in just tl mode that's all we needed to be in t l mode it's really cool um yeah still todo so um what I'm going to do is I'm going to say that aperture is the most important thing to me I'm gonna take my eyes so it's that two hundred we're gonna leave it there I'm gonna go teo four point five I think that's gonna be pretty good again I'm gonna try to do this with looking backwards I don't know why I did that ok so we're well under exposed correct well underexposed and by the way on this camera I don't focus well there's early work unless they push this little button okay did my flash fire it did so check this out under exposed in manual mode proper exposure from the flash we want to increase how much ambient light is coming into our scene how do we do it? What did we learn? What controls that average no aperture does not affect your controls this shudder controls ambient light right so the more the slower are shuttered goes the mohr ambient light will get to get more of this let's, prove it out. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here or two hundred fiftieth of a second? Our ambient light is underexposed apps going down, going down mohr ambient light, more ambient light, so still a little underexposed. See if we can focus a little bit, but boom way! Got mohr ambient light, slower shudder. Faster shutter. Okay, so this one was at uh oh. Here we go. Twenty eighth of a second. Lots of ambient light, two hundred fiftieth of a second. Almost no ambient light four point five four point five what changed the's air the same twentieth of a second. Let's, go forward. You're going the wrong way. Sorry, I was so aperture the same. The only thing that changed was shuttered fast shutter not very much ambient life slow shutter, more ambient light. So are two explosion trainers. Let's, try one other thing here. This is mike on people. This is how I love to shoot regardless if it's nikon arkan and instead of using that exposure compensation, I let selective rolled the shutter upper down. So let's, just do a couple things. So this controls my shutter going backwards put this in manual mode to see if I can actually focus very sorry okay, so what we're going to do here is we're going to be just a really a couple of fast things look at the dia the on the meter on the right and it says that the ambient light is how far under exposed one stop that one big thing is one stuff maybe it's to stop sorry one stop it could barely see it wow now that looks cool one stop underexposed let's do the same thing now two stops in you're exposed about that background is coming down let's go three stops under exposed all the way down here it is click there we go so just rolling are shut her up and down changes are ambient exposure but it doesn't change our our phil flashing all this is being blurry because it's slow right but that's how we can very, very quickly change those two things and it can happen really fast so let me just show you on a canon cameras were tethered how fast this can happen people trying this at home made a posting stuff. Okay, I'm gonna use the cannon because it's tethered and we can show things uh uh right next to each other that's the only reason I'm using this putting it in manual moon and then sarah just come over this way really fast ok? So I'm looking through my lens I'm setting this I'm going to set this at six point three I'm gonna zoom in I'll just show you what the very first picture looks like in manual mode here so I'm having to use a very slow shutter so this is a very very slow shutter um so we're gonna have some blur we're gonna have balanced light and so balance ambien and phil right but this was at one sixth of a second so very slow so to sixth of a second at six point three the ambient light is actually illuminating part of her face and so as my cameras moving we're getting that blur so if I under expose the ambient light I'm going to start removing that blur you still with me we have with me at home I hope okay so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna do this very very quickly I'm just gonna call out what I'm doing and then we'll see them in order so right now I am it a sixth of a second I'm going to a thirtieth of a second click going to sixty eighth of a second click going to one hundred sixty east of a second click all the way up to two hundred click ok let's look at these pictures and what we should see here is the background getting darker and darker and darker we'll see as they come in here so the guys in the back will be showing these to us if we can see like maybe the last four pictures side by side, we can start to start seeing that stuff so I can see how this background is just starting to go down a little bit at a time. And if I go to high speed sync to go past two hundredth of a second now watch what happens now instead of just two hundredth of a second, we're gonna go up to a thousandth of a second and then I'm gonna go to two thousandth of a second. Let's, take a picture, take a look at these just came in now. Lookit, I'm really starting to dial down the ambient light so that really starting to dial that down now? This last one her face is a little under exposed for me. What can we possibly do to fix that? Yes. Flash exposure compensation because the ice so and the aperture set. The third thing is output from the flash, right? So I'm gonna push my flash exposure. Compensation is so button right here I'm gonna crank it up by about two thirds of a stop. I'm just going with it. Okay? So I am going to take a little picture here and we'll show the last two pictures now, one of the things is in our defense, this isn't a terrific monitor, a here to judge. So we'll look so we got a little bit more from that not very much I'm going to take that up even more somebody go up this should overexpose just a little bit this is one in two thirds stops we'll take that up even more and there's a point where you just can't get any more out of the flash okay, so we're getting it where it's pretty much dialed in now the thing that's cool about this and I hope you're falling with me. We're in a place right here we've got a crane behind our model we've got camera guys, we've got windows, I could and I I'm starting to do that right now. I'm carving her out of that I'm not saying you know what? We're in an environment that doesn't look very good back there, maybe it's a a wedding reception or a event where there's like changing fans or there's some other event going on there's somebody else's pick snake or there's something and you just have to work with what you have in that background isn't really what you want, you can use this kind of technique to drop that stuff out. Um I could do something like that I'm going to take the aperture, I'm gonna open it up by opening up the aperture what I'm doing is I'm allowing my flash my high speed sync I'm lying that flash will let in more light so I don't have to increase this so much so I'm gonna put my flash exposure compensation back down to zero some letting in more light and then I'm going to increase my shutter speed to try to get rid of this but anything that remains should be out of focus in fact I'm gonna include our camera guys right back there just this sort of make the point watch this we have camera guys back there all looking in these windows group the gun, your gun or if I want to include them a little bit watch this I'm gonna include him just a little bit not a lot just a little bit I can do that too is in this collect I'm controlling these two things opposite see there they are what if I want him to be in focus? I can do that I can't take my eye my aperture right that control step the field and I will increase that just a little bit so I'm gonna do that I'm going to really need a lot for my flash and you'll see that I'm gonna have to do some things I'm gonna have to let this shuttering even go slower than that to get him in there but now I'm getting him and focus on what I'm doing is I'm using these two separate exposure triangles to control motion what's in focus and how the exposure is is happening ok do you guys have questions right now, josh I can feel it no I see something going on mark we're getting some fabulous photos that people are posting of their of their manual mode of this event got some barbies we've got some manual camera barbie shoots and emanuel too and that we'll show those to you bright pretty great keeping going um can I ask a question from thais marcello and the flash exposure compensation works the same it is set in the camorra or in the flash so I think some people are still confused about that it's the same it's the same there is one exception to that and that is you may have um if you're shooting remotely where you have multiple flashes and those multiple flashes air on zones which we haven't done yet we're going to get there and those multiple flashes were controlling them independent of each other so maybe I have a hair like and I have a key light and I want to take just the key light up I would change the flash exposure compensation on just that flash but once I get that dialed in if I think everything looks good but everything is just a little under exposed on my camera on some cameras not all of them but most when I changed my exposure compensation it changes all of the flashes and in other words the tide rises for everything and then all of the light increases for all of your addition flashes not just one specific one and so that's more of an advanced thing but we'll do some of that tomorrow by the way don't you love this little jerk stop right here people were asking about yeah this is from tether tools I keep stepping on my cable and keeps it from falling out so that's a jerk stopper and I've actually I think broken it because I just know I didn't say yes no still it's good okay and mark I have a question from uh let's see veiled fuji can you please address doing shoots in a row with people with light skin and then people with darker skin would you change aperture? Would you change flash exposure compensation or power output to deal with that? Yes. So the issue with skin tone definitely changes exposure from your camera. Definitely. So if you have somebody that's very, very pale skinned um then what will happen is the equivalent of shooting a white dress or a white wall something's really like so remember that is going to throw off the exposure and make the camera think it needs to be darker and if you have somebody with really really dark skin the same thing is gonna happen it's going tio make the camera think that it needs to be leiter and then you'll have things that are over exposed the other thing is so sarah has really, really dark here black hair if you had a really white complexion just shy north dakota white right? And we took a picture of you because you have black hair we're really not gonna have big issues with that because the black will offset the white it will average out it'll be fine but if you had really really white in order to go to skin and really nordic blond hair we're going to have issues on dh so it's not just the skin complexion it's the skin complexion it's the hair the clothes is the whole scene and so yeah it's just sort of treat those tones as tone's not just skin but what are the tones in the same yeah, it will and so to fix it flash exposure compensation is what's illuminating your subject that's what you would change another another question from brent h what is the closest that you should be? Tears subject using a speed light mounted on the camera six point two inches no it's usually it's about five to six feet we're gonna we're gonna show you how you can get a little bit closer than that when we get to the twist is a bit too thing um so we'll show you there's some secrets to your flash for that specifically ok, yes, but if you have a light modifier like a soft box or bounce, um, or you're bouncing off a wall or something, you can get very, very, very close. I would not do that with your flash on the camera because the lenses going to distort everything. It looks bad. In fact, the first thing I would do when you're learning how to control the light with this thing so we're close to getting this dialed in to appropriate amount of light when we get to flattering light, which is mostly tomorrow, the first thing we're going to say is get this off your camera think that you've got to get this off your camera is leaving it on here is sort of like if everybody walked around with a giant spotlight on their head that's what it is is nobody sees the world like that, but we take pictures with this giant spotlight over our camera and that ok, another question, pam, art us, um typically, one should not point flash had directly at a subject because the subject becomes blown out or has red eyes in this case, mark has his flash pointed directly at all of the photos are just fine, is it his flash head? I am magic, no. It is not that we have video lights on in here and so the video lights what they're doing so let's have you come over here and stand beside me saul show people how this works so sarah is going to do something she doesn't know about stand right here next to me okay and we're gonna look right and so if you can zoom this light actually come over here come over here come really close we're gonna zoom the camera in right on sarah's eyeballs and you can see that her pupils are small and her pupils are small because we have video lights here that are illuminating everything and we have lots and lots of light ok so so you can come back here and red eye is coming from it's called the angle of reflection and so and there's another single angle of incidence so basically what happens is wherever light is is traveling it's going to bounce back at the same angle so if you have a flash going straight into somebody's eyes that reflection is gonna bounce straight back into the lens and if you have wide open pupils what happens is the back of your eyes which is called the cornea is that right? Yeah, no john knows he has a book on at night and we get back to your eyeballs yeah back there some optometry please fix my for more understanding of the eyeball but it's the back of the eyeball and it bounces back red that's where red eye comes from so what happens is those red irene do sir cameras you know and that goes a little bit about has the blinding stuff what happens is when you do that iris shrinks on somebody's eyes and by shrinking that it gives a smaller target to reflect light and it eliminates red eye so in here where we have a lot of light we already have small people said you know they're really small so we're not getting that if we were in low light returned all these lights off block that waited around ten minutes your eyes would violate and we would get tons of red eye we would have a lots of it so another reason to move your flash off your camera is when your flash is not going straight into somebody somebody's eye balls then the angle of reflection changes so instead of it bouncing straight into the camera it bounces at the same angle so it bounces down here getting your flash off your camera eliminates red eye there you go yes that was a good question I like down do another gun like that way all right, we will try to find another good one like that one okay um oh, this way because you're in the camera that's right? We'll keep moving you forgetting from moxie blue so willis shutters speed at one twentieth of a second one over twenty not won over one twenty soft and the focus or will it remain as sharp because of the flash depends on the ambient light let's do it let's do it let's break this down I'm going to use the cannon again because we have a tether so this works it doesn't matter what camera an iphone will do this same thing is going to shut off for shutting off the flesh right now and what we're doing is remembered two exposures ambient light light from the flash both will impact how the picture looks way have lots and lots of ambient light here right so several having you just stand right over here he's gonna work out and she great okay um yeah she looks like an actress and I can't remember the name of the actress was yes and it's on just shoot me she's the actress anyone um okay no flash somebody's gonna write in who this is it's an actress on just shoot me you look just like her um okay so what I'm gonna do is it put it on twenty eighth of a second really slow ok and I'm gonna look through my lens and I'm seeing that I am well I'm exposed correctly so I am going to learn so I blurred on purpose so we're going to see a blur on purpose show up here um the question is can we get rid of that blur using a fast flash, right? So as soon as this pops up there it is so at home write down what you think will get rid of it. What do you guys think? I don't know the answer is no it's not going to get rid of it here because if I add a flash all it's going to do is add more light and so the blur is still gonna be there that's not going to take anything away from that so we might have a ghost in there that's faint we're still gonna have blurred but let me show you what it looks like so flash on just normal ninja gtl mode same exact settings I'm shaken okay, now this next one's going to come up and as I suspected, we have ghost sarah on top of blurry sarah and michael back there that's a little weird, huh? Ok, so we do have this is a great illustration. The frozen sarah comes from extremely short flash duration that froze that right we freeze action better with their flash than we do with their shutter. The blurry sarah came from the ambient light so we still have two exposures. Frozen sarah is from the flash exposure blurry sarah is from the, uh, ambient light exposure now here is something that you can do that's fun and I love this if you're shooting weddings if you're shooting on location, I'm putting my my flash on rear curtain sink that's what I did really curtain sink and I did that by just pushing this little high speed sync button push it one more time it goes to rear curtain sink on your nikon you do that from your camera body so I had to do here is I'm going to intentionally under exposed the ambient light I want to do that by making my aperture small so I want to make that f eleven so f eleven I'm shooting in manual mode so I'm going to get a little bit of the amp ambient light not a lot so here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna jiggle my camera around so we have some blurred but I'm gonna free sarah with my flash now this would be great if you were dancing with your dad at your wedding and we wanted to see your dress was going around but we didn't want you have a blurry face right let's see what happens okay, so I'm actually going to blur a little bit blurring okay slow shutter speed and I think I got you blinking, which is awesome this is going to come up here we'll see both a blur see these air blurred right here learn and frozen let me do that again where we don't have you quite so blinky ok like this and what we'll have is more blurred from this when it pops in there we go so we have some blur here a little blur here and we can even exaggerate that even more so take my shutter speed down a little bit more I'll take my aperture up so I'm really gonna do some things said you come out just a little bit it's like that good I want to be able to see behind you so I really slowed things down there we go now watch this this is even a better example so have you stand back here so they can see blur freeze blur freeze this technique by the way if we were in low low light like a normal wedding reception what happens is all you get are little lights back there and maybe little edges of dresses and things moving and it's a great technique to use for this kind of stuff and so when we get outside tonight we're going to more of this um and when we do some stuff tomorrow we can control the life we're gonna do more of that is gonna be awesome you know my george dr saving me every time did you see that again? Okay more questions from the guys here the girls here the women here the people here the students here do you have questions I'm looking I see I love how you get your dialing this stuff in or how about online? Uh, doug stride would like to know. Is there any reason to not use rear curtains? Sing all the time? Um, there is, if you like the car that I showed earlier. If you have a really slow shutter, it matters. We'll have to do that in pitch black to show. But let me let me explain it this way if you have to use your imagination cause there's too much light in here to do this. So let's say, sir, come on out here. Let's say, sarah is dancing at her wedding. Dok pretend like you just did that. You married? No. Yeah, ok. Not married there. You guys. Um, so let's pretend that she's dancing at her wedding and I am a confident and I am a wedding photographer and I want to get I want to capture that motion. That movement, that emotion of the moment because motion isn't always bad. Blurry pictures could be spectacular on dh, so I want to catch some blur. I want to catch your dress moving and want to catch the look on your dad's face. Is he's giving you way in the tier and all that stuff, right, so let's say that you're dancing and I use front curtain sink with a slow shutter. Right I mean he's a really slow shutter like a half a second so I'm gonna have you moved really slowly we're going to do this in slow motion so I go could click right the shutter opens and they're gonna start to move really slow so start moving so now she's starting to blur right pau the flash freeze is hurt but she's still moving what is the camera seeing the movement right and so what will happen is you'll have frozen sarah and dad and tear in emotion covered by blurry sarah and dead we don't want that what we want is the opposite of you know we want to control and have the flash fire at the very end to do that so the reason why you wouldn't always have your flash uh fire at the end is sometimes you want to do the other thing where you have the frozen thing first maybe she's about to throw her her what is it called the flowers ok yeah yeah I've got a wedding for dr right okay it's the opposite so she goes back like this she throws it bam the flash fires and now we want the blurred trailing right so your curtains sink wouldn't do that what we would get is frozen bouquet up here and blurry arm so we can control where that starts and stops help me help me and you guys are waiting people yes you're like yeah we are rocks another question okay from fashion tv what is your view on flash brackets are they even you know flash brackets yeah yeah um yeah yes and we have a couple about that watching flash brackets I am pro flash bracket and sale I have a really write stuff flash bracket that I love that I used my quantum flash I didn't bring it with me unfortunately but the thing with the flash bracket is when you get your flash off the camera and say it's right here a flashback it allows you to mount your flash up high so a couple things that gets that gets that flash from right in the eye ball up you can add modifiers and stuff it changes the property of light and then when you go vertically like what happens now your flashes over here on I was just talking to a photographer who in fact to see if we can do this let's try I don't know if you can let's get you closer to this wall I mean to show you what happens when you just do a vertical shot so I'll do this I'm gonna put my flashback on normal I'm gonna put my camera on aperture priority mood because I just want to do this really quickly okay what we're looking for is the flash shadow behind sarah on this wall ok so right now hopes I had my exposure compensation blasting here so let me change that way don't have snow white okay so we when we do this first one let's take a look at the shadow that's on the wall not this one but the next one we don't really see a shadow on the wall right why not because we're shooting this way the light is going straight it's sarah she's hiding the shadow that's behind her right because everything is lined up so we don't see that when I do this now the flashes coming at an angle and let's see what happens to a shadow on the wall we might not get one because we have a bunch of stuff here let's see what happens here shadow on the wall so flash bracket yes because when you go this way if you have a flash bracket you can mount your flash up here and you could eliminate that shadow it doesn't change how the light is falling on the subject plus a lot of other things getting the flash up the camera is much much better so yes I'm pro flash bracket sounds like something from them mattel flash bracket go flash bracket sorry billion hyphen photo I would like to know if you can recommend a good flash bracket really write stuff really right stuff yeah really write stuff let me tell you really expensive stuff but for tripod heads flash brackets um things that hold your camera really write stuff is really right stuff it is very expensive but it is I think the some of the best built flashback other than that there are many many different brands of flash brackets and no flash points got a bunch there are a lot of branded flash brackets at different cameras doors there are um I think uh I'm not sure if westcott has some but really write stuff is the stuff that I use on and it's you buy at once in thirty years from now we're gonna hand it down to somebody else that's really rock solid cool and a question from jim rosario any tips for panning I have a hard time staying in focus with the subject on panning yeah that's really not a speed light thing is normally panning you're doing something that's at a distance and so I would say just from a general photography standpoint you want to use the center auto focus point make sure if you're shooting on a canon camera you have aye aye servo mode which is continuous focus if you're in a nikon or any of the camera is called continuous focus make sure that your drive motives that to continuous you know shooting once and then also make sure that you follow through on your subjects and just like a good golf swing don't stop when you take the picture make sure that you're shooting at the fastest frame rate you can you really want to get it right there dialled been used a long lens use a slow shutter but that's a basic photography question that's with the flash what will happen is to focus there's a flash focus of system mean but I'm guessing if you're I don't know what you're shooting panning but if it's bicycles or runners or cars or motorcycles whatever it's going to be too far away to make any kind of a difference so it's more of getting get a really good linds to you want to get on ellen's if you're a cannon shooter limbs that has a two point eight aperture exit will focus about twice as fast as a different lens no matter what brand so help that is a starting point thank you I think we're ready oh okay we're going to keep moving on let me make sure that we have um all this stuff because we're getting close tio a place where we think we're about ten or fifteen minutes away from from a breaks let me make sure I got all this oh I go back don't you love that it's awesome here we go then I have to rebuild it oh the anticipation more okay, who cares shots let's talk a little bit more about who cares shots the who care shots and I'm stealing this term and applying it to a different meaning for my friend brian peterson do you guys know brian peterson spectacular this guy brian peterson yeah, he wrote understanding exposure and seeing creatively and all kinds of stuff so I love brian peterson but he has something he calls who cares? Aperture values I have something I call who cares ambient light shots and what I mean by that is sometimes you just don't care if the ambient light shows up or not okay? You don't care so who cares? So if is there good if it's not there, who cares? So in manual mode this is great because you can control camera shake and up the field both in low light ok, so let's try this. You guys can try this also try this at home get your camera grabbing cameras. Put a flash on there, sally we're gonna get you a flash let's see if kelsey can grab one of the flash is for you because we have one now we're gonna have you guys run around here for a second cannon got a cannon fully ash keenan flash on and here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna shoot you seem more like yeah that's why I'm here that's how I roll okay, so what I would do is I'm gonna put my camera on manual mode now one of the things that people try to do in manual mode when they first start shooting is they believe that the camera will allow them to just put it on whatever aperture value and any shutter speed and take a picture and it will give you a proper exposure which we just figured out is not true but it's sort of true when you have a flash mrs sort of cool because what we're going to do here is I know that my camera is going to start shaking if I have I'm gonna get some blur in the lens if I have my shutter speed lower than sixty eighth of a second so I'm just gonna roll my shutter speed to sixty eighth of a second was gonna put on sixteenth of a second okay? Because I don't care about the ambient light do I know who cares put it on sixty in fact, I'm going to go teo one hundred for good measure so I know I'm walking around I don't want things to be there I want controlled up the field so I wanna put my dip the field at five point six weeks I know I've shot a lot of portrait's and I think that's sort of a sweet spot for this stuff that I shoot canned I'm just gonna start shooting and see what happens so let's have you come right over here? It was like that good I don't care about the background okay? We're gonna show these as I go so this first one shows up and you'll see that the background some of it shows up some of it doesn't have you sit right over here in front of kennedy and susan right there that's good so we've got this big bright light behind you so that's going to show up we have some ambient light that's going to show up here in a second uh we'll have you go out of this way when a shoot almost shoot so based on where we are thiss might be something that I'm shooting maybe a reception or an event or a birthday party would be let's say a kid's birthday party where I don't care what happens in the background I just want to make sure whatever I'm shooting isn't out of focus isn't blurry and it's properly exposed so it's a cheat I'm just saying but my camera in manual mode said it where I get good exposure I mean good uh depth of field good control of shake and then whatever happens to the backer and happens to the back and I just don't care that's who cares mood so you guys just tried out a couple things to try shooting a couple pictures of us trying just to get up out of your chairs to try shooting a couple of pictures of cnn's susan these guys love it when you take pictures of them they love look at this he's gonna smile, smile no no I'm not gonna do it but the camera operators amazing way ever introduced everybody know yes ok, this is tracey right here it's awesome. He was up at five a m this morning because he did the shoot all night long did you know that I didn't know that I think he rocks. Okay, so john's back there to see if I could get a shot of john back here take a picture, ok? I'm just going to show you one of the problems that you might have with this so here's john john cornyn cello hasen did you guys watch his creative life? You should toss him this is a reflector right here. So when I shot this this reflector bounce light back into my lens in that light threw off the meeting so that can happen because what do we learn this morning? T tl is stupid that's right? So it's thinking that that is should impact the exposure when it shouldn't so my after use exposure compensation to fix that because we know it's stupid okay, so that's really, really cool the quick adjustments. Thank you, sir. So I was like, I'm just sort of hanging out the quick adjustment we're gonna go back to our keynote here in manual mode when we're shooting shutter speed changing shutter speed changes ambient light, faster shutter speed less ambient light, slower shutter speed mohr ambient light flash exposure compensation changes, the output of the flash, higher flash exposure, compensation, more flash, less last exposure, compensation less flash like on owners rejoice because that's, how you control those two things independently and I think canon people, you should do the same thing shoot in manual mode, it's easy and you have a total control. Why not? That's? What I like ok, last is this don't forget about s o so we've been talking about, uh, shutter speeds and aperture values and shutter speeds and aperture values and flash explosion compensation. And now that's, we haven't talked too much about eso eso eso is sort of the tide, the higher the I s o the easier is to capture all light, whether it's flash or ambient light. Okay, so the more sensitive your camera is, the less light your flashes going tohave to output now, if you're shooting a wedding or an event, that is important because your battery's going to die if if your flash has to keep pumping out like pumping out like so going from an esso value of one hundred to two hundred isn't really going to impact. The noise of your image is really at all but it's one stop, which means your flash has to output half the light. To give you the same exposure half the light just by changing from one hundred, two hundred which means that it's going not heat up is much it's going to recharge faster. You're gonna get mohr from that flash and so you could go to four hundred, maybe eight hundred so you can save some battery. You can save some, uh, of your flash, you'll have to melt it it just by doing that one little teeny thing, but it really could andan also, ambient light is going to be easier to catch. So in a really dark environment, if you want mohr ambient light and you want to shoot let's, say a sixtieth of a second because you don't want a bunch of blurring your images, but you're not getting any of that. You don't have to take your shutter speed all the way down did thirtieth, their fifteenth of a second. You can just increase your s o two, two hundred or four hundred or eight hundred, and you'll get that and your flash is going to realize you've done that and it's going to reduce its output and it's gonna work just fine. Two separate exposures they work and in hand it's pretty cool.

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

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