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Solving 12 Common Problems of Studio Lighting: 9

You don't have a spot for the seamless because I tend to rip mine I use the box is that they come in, but I don't know if maybe there's cases that you can buy online. I haven't really found any because I don't have, like a studio that aiken permanently store them, those cases it comes in or fighting there, they're just like big cardboard tubes basically were some of them coming the tubes tubes are much more sturdy, they're much better at I get all all minor savage that I ever buy and their tubes below. The savage wants a big role in the tubes, okay? All right, great, so they continue onward and later on, if there's more questions, we can kind of continue on from that. All right, so we have a favorite segment, okay? We're going to talk about how to avoid reflections on glasses, and I'm actually going to have you step out because she had some glasses, but they weren't shiny she had well, that leads into this one of the ways you can help avoid reflections on your subjects glasses is they ...

actually make non reflective lenses, and a lot of people nowadays do have those, and it's just reduces glare on the lenses, which makes a massive difference. Older glasses tend not to have this resistant surface so I was trying to photograph her and I'm like moving around and I'm like, well, that's not going to be good for my demo because it had that surface on it and so and I tried yesterday john had a pair of glasses on that had it too, so he brought his shiny or glasses in today so if when he's done if you don't mind I will make you be my subject so no, you don't have to do right now I could I could walk through this first, okay? All right, so a couple things that you can do is you can adjust right on your subject and part of would be the reflective surfaces sometimes people can pop their lenses out of their glasses. This doesn't work if they have what way wireless bring on the bottom on some people just don't want to put the lenses out of the glasses and I don't blame them like I get that three other thing you can do also is just like even tilting your glasses a little bit. And so if we get a close shot on that what it can do before and after hey and tilting it down just a little bit and here's why okay, do you guys remember high school? Okay, we learned about something that was the angle of incidence is angle of reflection, which basically means you're thinking of like kind of like it's ping pong ing okay it's like billiard exactly it's billiard that's just it's just like playing pool the angle that it comes in to the glasses we'll be the angle it reflects out and so if you happen to be at that angle with your camera it's going to show a reflection but when he tilts his glasses down just a little bit now he's changed the angle so it's it's going to pass right past the camera you won't actually get reflection on his glasses depending on the size of the glasses so that won't always work because if they're really small then it cuts in the middle of their eyes but sometimes with larger classes just like a little bit further down on the nose or he's actually s so that you don't have to move it down the nose which doesn't look natural he's popping up the back the back of the glasses a little bit to change the plane of the glass versus pulling it down on the nose it makes a little bit different so I would try that first but what it comes down to is you were playing with modeling lights and you were playing with angles you have to use your modeling lights which is this is one of the reasons I said yesterday is the downside of using speed lights because you're going to take a lot of shots a ton of shots before you figure out where you get rid of the reflection on the glasses and then you might change your subjects pose and have to do it all over and over again, so I recommend using modeling lights for this, so really what you're doing is you are just playing with angles over and over again and you were playing with all of these things could make a difference lighting from side to side like when I have my light more to the front and my subjects facing more to the front it's better chance I'm going to get a reflection, maybe off to the side is going to reduce that a little bit lighting up and down this is the big one you want to avoid having your light too low when your life is too low, it goes bounce and bounce right back into the camera, so having your light up a little bit higher will make a difference. Your camera angle also makes a difference because let's say that I'm shooting and we got that angle just right there's no reflection, but now I popped down and when I get lower all of a sudden I just had him pop his glasses down and now I passed down to the level that the reflection was going to be so you have to keep in mind like all of these things are going to make a difference another angle would be your subject's face. I decide subject classes and then also how you're using the light so give you dumb although it's funny because now I see like almost no reflections, right? You have all these reflections, anyone ever I'll give it? I'll move it in the center and a second something else that john and I were having a discussion about this what I'm struggling with glasses, I tend to try to avoid really large light sources because it ends up being a huge reflection in the glasses and very distracting, but john made a great point that something that whole dio is you is a large light source really, really, really, really, really close and so you still have the reflection, but it covers the whole glasses and it's not like it's a bright like solid white reflection. It might just be a little bit of a haze and its nest less noticeable, so if you were, you don't have a smaller modifier and you I can't do with some of these things I'm trying you can't figure it out sometimes moving the light really close might work, I have no I have never tried it, but we can try it here the glass is the size of you, so you want to avoid very large light sources in my experience, I try to avoid them that's just how I used smaller light sources you also you would you want to raise them up higher than you normally would or try raising the light up and moving it off to the side? And this is why, if you are using a five foot octo box in a room with a foot ceilings, that's only ten feet or so wide it's going to be very, very difficult because you can't raise it up enough to avoid that angle of incidence angler reflection to avoid that reflection and you can't move it off the side enough to help you out. So perhaps using a smaller modifier switching from five to three foot, I might actually be able to raise it up a little bit, move it off to the side combined with the subject, flipping their glasses down a little bit. I've got to play with all these things, so the answer to everybody's, how do you avoid reflections on glasses? It is playing with all these different angles because it will depend on how high is your ceiling and then similarly, one of the things that helps is raising the light up. We just mentioned that because if it's low, it just bounces right in the glasses and back, but if you raise the light up too high and someone has deep sunken eyes then they don't have light in their eyes. So you really do have to play with all of this, because no one solution will work for every single person so wish it were as easy as me just saying, raise the light up and pull it off to the side and turn your subject's face slightly away from the light. It's funny, because, you know, and that's that's always like, would you like a few shots with the glasses offers, you know, and, like, try to warm them up, but, you know, like my dad, he he always wears glasses or he used teo, and so when I first portrait with him, I did not know how to get rid of reflections and glasses and photographing my dad. He always wears his glasses, so he didn't want to take him off, and he was a very patient subject. Well, I tried to figure that out, all right? And then the other thing, you want to avoid his chin up because a lot of times, if somebody like I see this, especially in heavier subjects, that might have kind of the double chin going on, they will do this to try toe stretch it out because they feel like they're self conscious and they keep popping those glasses up to the light. So instead you might want to tune out and down a little bit and then pop those glasses down a little bit and raise their light up a little bit higher and off to the side and turn the subject away from the light a bit like all of those things would help. So my go to would be that to give you the quick summary, smaller, light source a little bit higher up. I'm not talking really high and well done. What? Here? Um, it's a little bit higher up a little bit further inside. Depending on what their face looks like. I might turn them slightly away from the light, which is called broad lighting. We talked about that before the shadows are falling away from the camera. Someone has a wider face. I wouldn't do that. I might just do kind of straight on, um, and then the tilt of the glasses watching my camera angle. So it's angle, singles, singles, lots and lots of angles. So just to take a look here like this is something. This is my friend dave. I love him, he's. Awesome. And he always wears these cute classes, but there were very reflective, and he still had the reflection reduction, and you can kind of see it there, it's not like it's, a bright reflection I'm so with us with a mid sized soft box it wasn't even that big this was like a three foot or uh three foot soft box so I switched over to a beauty dish so the reflection gets smaller but he had his chin up a little bit we had him do it because you now and down and it gets rid of the reflection from just that angle but the problem is when I'm using a beauty dish and when he kind of leans forward now the lights a little bit too high or I mean, I actually think it's fine, but maybe you don't like the shadows created by the glasses or maybe you don't like the shadows on his face so then I can add a reflector, but usually you're going to want to add white because silver will give you her reflection of the the reflector from the bottom so I usually use white for phil when people have glasses on all right, so I'm going to give that a quick demo with john and we're going to try to get that to look bad on you so here's all the things you don't want to d'oh you don't want the late low you don't want it centered let's see pushed up all the way to fix it up a little bit there we go okay, I got it he has more more resistant glasses so you two that did not meet her but looks very good ok, so we've got a reflection in this shot and so all of the things that will take a look at our things he could do so let's say I keep everything consistent, okay, I'm going to stay at the same level all they want you to do is pop those glasses down a little hey, I did not move and just popping them down a little bit and he also put his chin neutral for me the reflection goes away or can you put your chin back up and put the glasses where they were perfect? So right now I'm looking I have that reflection again, okay got their selection and then I get up a little higher and all I want you just to get you now and down a tiny bit perfect my angle with his chin out and down a little bit took him from that to that, so that angle made a difference or in this case, um, I got the reflection right here, okay, I'm going to raise the south blocks up a bit and I'm going to go to the same level, ok, right about the same height, you know, if you're not sure if everyone can tell them about the same height and with the light up from the reflection below before now there's no reflection but it's a little bit darker and has his eyes so I might need to compensate with the reflector and the other trick that I said as well as for sometimes if people face straight towards the light can you turn your head completely towards the light? Sometimes you're used to lighting like this waiting a bit short light perhaps see how this all right so I have him being lit short light in this instance or not wish but the shadows were coming towards me shortly tends to create more of a problem with glasses ethan broad light would so what have you kind of flip around and I will adjust so now he's gonna have the same thing and I've been traded the same angle this is the same and blow that no reflections this way. So the long and short of it is it's every angle you can possibly play with also the size of your modifiers where you place them so it's angle of light height of like angle of glasses, height of the subjects chin angle of your camera and so if you try to think of it like the billiards example, if the head of the light is bouncing off the plane of his glasses, what is an equal angle from and in this case it's kind of hitting at an angle that kicks it off that way that won't be a problem, whereas if I bring it to the front and he faces straight on, basically, the angle is to the glasses straight back at me. You're trying to find a way to avoid that. So it is the glasses answer groups. Are you gonna address that at all? Okay, so the difference with groups and what I try to do with groups is I try to figure out who has glasses, and I pose them in the way that they're being broadly meaning their head is turning away from the light. So if this was a large group of people, the person people with the glasses I try not to put facing this way looking back at camp, okay, instead, I face them, put them on the other side this way, and then I would do the same thing where I popped the glasses down a little bit and I'd still raise the light up all of that same thing, but it's more where he placed the subjects with glasses in the group. And if everybody has glasses, we have a little bit more masks to dio on your angles. Get the right high as possible, like a big umbrella we used yesterday for the group brings it up as high as you can try to tell end everybody's glasses so I can get it that tilts up aside the cannons going past you ideal again, something they do a movie sets that we don't think of still photographer the throw a white muslim on the floor to kick up some light couple of quick questions on the eyeglasses thiss ones from edwin, have you ever used a polarizer filter? Does that do anything with regard to glasses? Polarize er's should help reduce glare, but I would I don't think I would eliminate it with it might help, but usually there's a reflections from the skin that it kills two and it makes the skin look a little greater. Yeah, I've never used polarizes for portrait it's interesting thing now I want to test it out and see what it does, but that makes sense. And just for those of you who don't know for polarize er's, what you typically use it for is if you're shooting a landscape used a polarizer, it could spread of some of the glare in the sky, and it makes it a deeper blue or a riser worked from ninety degrees, so you want the light would have to be coming from the side anyway won't do anything about a strategy that makes perfect sense some things a lot of sense because you can't use it to get rid of glare on window, but you have to be at the right angle. I also want to try it. I'm store down the street, we'll go get a pole, right? Yeah, one more quick, one on glasses. How about using hairspray on glasses and old movie trick? Have you returned that I haven't tried it, and I don't know people would be amicable to it. That's. What going spray would expect that it would fog the glass and make it translucent instead of transparent, you wouldn't see the eyes behind it with hairspray. I don't know, I was a fun movie. Sounds interesting.