Tag Archives: lighting

Photography

Beyond one speed light setups

Expanding on the one light setup is nothing more than introducing a 2nd Speedlight with a blue gel that is set to output 1½ stops less light than my main light which exposes my niece Mina. The aperture on my lens was set @f11, so the Speedlight providing the blue backlight was set to output f6.5 or f5.6.


Once you have a handle on getting predictable well-exposed pictures with your Speedlight off-camera, that’s when the  fun really begins.

It’s a matter of finding willing subjects to be in front of your camera.

Yes, we’d all like to work with a shirtless David Beckham or a bikini clad Aishwarya Rai but that will have to wait.

At this point, you need to practice.

Wireless or Hardwire?

If you choose  hardwire, it will be cheaper and exposure controll will no doubt be easier.

More importantly you won’t get EMF interference.

(During my Small Flash Lighting workshop, when I had 10 photographers flooding the auditorium with wireless signals, we had some issues with Speedlights not triggering)

You get i-TTL (Nikon) or E-TTL (Canon) and even have High Shutter Speed synch capability because the cord fools the camera and the flash into thinking they’re physically connected.

Best of all down the road should you elect to buy another Speedlight from Nikon or Canon (OEM), you can probably use one as the Master and the other as the Slave, again simplifying your lighting setups.

If you’re not using OEM (original Equipment Manufacturer) Speedlights and opting for Vivitar, Sygma or some other brand, you have to be careful.

Some third party Speedlights have  voltage that can harm your camera.

In that instance your only option is radio slaves.

Wireless, radio or infra-red, systems use 1 transmitter and 1 receiver with options to add as many receivers as you have Speedlights.

Spring for 2 receivers off the bat, if you can.

That will give you more flexibility.
Continue reading Beyond one speed light setups →

Photography

One Speedlite setup for great-looking portraits2

Letty lit by one Speedlite without any reflectors. Photo by Greg Matthews

Picking up where I left off in Part One, I should emphasize again that you don’t actually have to spend a lot of money to get these types of results.

If you don’t have the budget for a boom, just get an assistant to hold  your one Speedlight which is attached to a lightstand via swivel bracket.

Two reflectors placed strategically in the right places can produce wonderful results.

The image on the left by Greg Matthews, a participant in my Small Flash Lighting workshop is such an example.

We placed Greg’s Speedlite on a swivel bracket raised it above Letty’s head about 5 feet behind Letty and to the left and aimed it downwards.

We fussed with the placement of the Speedlite until we got the image on the left.

When we finally got the hair and rim light around Letty to what we liked, we introduced one reflector on the left just outside the frame.

It helps to have a stand to which you can attach your reflector by the way.

You want to lock everything down as much as possible, so that you are only changing one element at a time if possible.

After I introduced one reflector on the left, I noticed Letty’s face on the right side was still under-exposed, that’s when I added a 2nd reflector. Continue reading One Speedlite setup for great-looking portraits2 →

Photography, Tutorials

One Speedlite setups for great-looking portraits1

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This portrait of Colleen Ember was made with one Speedlight fired into my home made beauty dish and a single reflector. Because the light was very diffused and coming mostly from the front, there was very little else I needed to do in the way of touching up in post production.

I don’t recall when exactly I realized I didn’t have to buy every possible piece of lighting gear to create a certain image.

Whenever I came to that conclusion, it signaled I understood how to break apart and deconstruct how an image was made, especially if the image involved lighting by the photographer.

Coming up with workarounds was a necessity for me when I was in college.

Years later even after I became a staff photographer at the newspaper, I would always find workarounds.

Hey, what can I say? The bossman was always a tightwad when it came to expenses.

For this blogpost tip, when you see what I used to create a very flattering image,you will realize how well finding workarounds has served me. Continue reading One Speedlite setups for great-looking portraits1 →

Photography

Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting

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If you pay attention to available light especially the time of the day in certain locations, all you need is one Speedlight to create great settings for portraiture. Naturally having a gorgeous model like Lindsey Martin makes it easier. 1/250sec @f2.8 ISO 100 outdoors. Backlit by sunlight and fill flash with Speedlite 580EX in home made beauty dish.

1.Set your Speedlite to fire on manual power

There is nothing scary about firing your flash on manual.

In the film days, you needed another piece of equipment–a flash meter.

With the near instant feedback and histograms in today’s cameras, figuring out exposure on manual is easy.

Dividing the Guide Number by the flash-to-subject distance will give you a good ballpark number for the aperture setting.

(Guide Numbers are always given in ISO 100, so you can easily find it’s equivalent for any ISO)

I usually set the flash to 1/8th power and sometimes even 1/16th power.

This reduces the flash-to-subject distance and allows my Speedlites to recycle fast so that if you’re after quick changes in expression, they keep up.

Continue reading Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting →