off camera lighting issue 1

7/31/2019 Off Camera Lighting Issue 1

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Everything you ever wanted to know

about off camera l ighting, but d idnt

know who to ask. We DEBUNK many

myths about l ight ing your subjects

and show you how to get real results

f rom relat ively INEXPENSIVE GEAR!

W H AT S I N S I D E : Softboxes, umbrel las,ref lectors, beauty dishes, gr id spots, l ight

stands, and much, much more!

V O L U M E O N E : T H E S T RO B I S T ED I T I O N

AN EYE OPENER FOR BEGINNERS AND PROFESSIONALS ALIKE


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Alien Bees B1600 with largesoftbox on a br ight and sunnyday . I was ab le to cont ro l theambient l ight by overpower-ing the sun . I purpose ly t r iedto not make the sky too dark ,which i s a common mistakemade by beg inner s t robis t s .


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BASIC LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

1. HOW TO CONTROL YOUR LIGHTING (THE EASY WAY

2. ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS

3. ADVICE FOR ADVANCED STROBISTS

ADVANCED LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

4. DIFFERENT TYPES OF LIGHTING:

A. HARD VS. SOFT LIGHT

B. FEATHERED LIGHT

C. REMBRANDT LIGHTING

D. BUTTERFLY LIGHT

E. BROAD LIGHT

F. SHORT LIGHT

THE GEAR

5. EQUIPMENT:

A. UMBRELLAS

B. SOFTBOXES

C. REFLECTORS

D. GRID SPOTS

6. COMMON MISTAKES AND MYTHS DEBUNKED

7. SOFTWARE AND POST PROCESSING

SUMMARY


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TTL blunders - These shot s weretaken back when I re l ied so le lyon TTL solut ions . You can seefrom the two family shot s onthe upper le f t and bot tom thatthe ir sk in i s way too hot . Thiswas caused by the camera th ink-ing too much and me not be ingable to see th is on the back of my LCD screen on my Nikon

D700. Don t make these samemistakes when i t rea l ly counts ,thankful ly for me , these werejus t shot s for fun .


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1. HOW TO CONTROL YOUR LIGHTING (THE EASY WAY)

First things f i rst, do yourself a HUGE favor a shoot inmanual mode. Shooting in TTL or ETTL ( for Canon shooters)does not give you ful l control over your l ight ing. There arecertain rare instances when I wi l l use TTL, l ike when I donthave t ime to setup or stage a shot or when the action re-

quires me to move unpredicabley around to capture the mo-ments. We are talking about off camera l ighting in this mag-azine, not running and gunning. If you are a ser ious strobistwho wants to have total control over your images, manuamode is the only mode you need to be in. The problem withTTL, Nikons Creative Lighting System is that the cameradoes most of the hard work for you and you have very l i t t lesay in what you are doing without taking more t ime than i tsworth. Another HUGE downfal l to shooting with the NikonsCLS is that you have to use their speedlights, which cost alot more than buying economical and much more powerfu

studio strobes for f ie ld or s tudio use. I know there wi l l be alot of nay-sayers out there who wil l rebute my claims andthey can happi ly go on about thei r bus iness. I s tarted outas a so cal led strobist using the TTL functions describedabove and soon learned that the system thought too muchfor me and made crazy adjustments to my exposures whenI real ly didnt want it to. TTL or ETTL systems dont care whatlook you are try ing to achieve, the l i t t le t iny computer chipand l ight meter ins ide of your camera try to take an over-al l reading of the scene and then the cameras onboard

processesor tr ies to make a best guess at what the l ightshould be doing. Thi s can wreak havoc in your images i f youhave a huge var iance between the ambient l ight and youoff camera l ighting. This is why I completely gave up on any-thing automatic a long time ago. TTL is al l wel l and good ifyou can l ive with the camera being the creative master andnot you, but I m not as wel l off as Joe McNal ly and cant af-ford to buy or carry around 30 speedlights everywhere I go30 speedl ights would also cost me over $23,000 just to buythat many speedlights. I f I ever got sponsored by Nikon, might not complain so much about the price. So, i f you ins ist

on shooting using TTL or any other automatic modes, mycondolences and remember what I am saying now when yousee the l ight. The benefits of TTL in portrait photography arereal ly drawbacks to anyone who is ser ious about control-l ing their l ighting s ince the camera compensates for what itsees and nine t imes out ten, you end up with something thatyou real ly werent ask ing i t to do.


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2. ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS

So now that weve gotten that bitter debate behindus, i f youre st i l l reading, lets move on to how to controlyour l ight the easy way. Remember, there are only f ivethings that contr ibute to your exposure.

1. Shutter Speed

2. Aperture

3. F lash Power

4. F lash to subject distance

5. ISO

When shooting in manual mode, youve got three ofthe f ive variables already under your control from the getgo. Most cameras have either an adjustmen t wheel or menuselct ion that controls shutter speed and aperture and the

ISO should be set to one manually user selected setting(auto ISO cannot be used whatsoever - turn this feature offi f your camera has it avai lable when using strobes in man-ual mode). Now that weve got the basic sett ings set cor-rectly, assuming you are in manual mode, lets look at howeach of the f ive items l isted above affect your exposure.

Shutter speed - The shutter speed controls your ambi-ent l ight. This means that anything that is a constant l ightsource, such as the sun, l ights on in a room, car headlights,f lames from a campfire, candles, f lashl igh ts, etc.. . are con-

trol led by your shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed,the darker the ambient l ight wi l l be. The s lower the shutter speed, the brighter they wi l l become. Stick with me, thiswi l l al l make perfect sense in a minute when you read andunderstand how the other var iables can work together in toyour advantage. The ISO, which wel l talk about short ly canalso have an affect on your ambient l ight as wel l . When Idescribe ISO settings lat er, this wi l l al l make sense. For now,

just remember that your shutter speed controls the ambientor exist ing l ight in the scene.

Aperture ( f/stop) - The aperture controls the f lash or strobe exposure, this means off camera or supplementall ighting from instantan eous bursts of l ight from a speedlightor strobe. If you take a shot and your subj ect is overexposed,stop the aperture down. If the subject is underexposed byyour f lash/strobe, open your aperture up. (The weird thingabout apertures is that the smaller the number, the bright-er the f lash wi l l be, the higher the number, the darker theflash wi l l be) For instan ce, f/22 wi l l be a very small apertureopening and f/2 wi l l be a large opening. The aperture also


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This shot was t aken at one of myloca l workshops in New Je rsey inear ly 2010 . Shot in manual modeus ing a 60 re f lect ive umbre l la andan Al ien Bees B1600. The s t robewas t r igge red with a cybersync ra-d io t ransmit t e r and rece ive r.


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plays a role in how bright or dark your ambient l ight wi l lbe as wel l , so they sort of work together. I f you dont un-derstand what I mean, try sett ing your camera in manualmode and shooting a scene with no off camera l ightingat 1/200th sec at f/2 vs . 1/200th sec at f/22. The overal lexposure wi l l be s ignif icantly darker at f/22 (small aper-ture) than f/2 ( large aperture ). I know, the numbers dontmake sense, just get used to i t and learn to l ive with i t . Justremember that when you are shooting in manual mode,

the shutter speed controls the ambient l ight and the ap-erture controls the f lash/strobe (off camera l ighting).

Flash Power - The f lash power affects the exposureby del ivering more or less power to the f lash/strobe,which results in more ambient exposure control. Thinkabout the scenario described above... The aperture or f/stopcan affect the ambient or ex is t ing l ight in the scenein exactly the same way as the f lash power can. Increaseor decrease the power and you wi l l have to adjust youraperture to taste. Lets say you started shooting in the

midday sun (noon) on a hot summer day with no cloudsin the sky. You are us ing a 640 watt second strobe, suchas an Al ien Bees B1600 at half power. When you starttaking the photos and notice that you want the ambientl ight to be darker, what are you going to do? You are go-ing to either increase your shutter speed (my Nikon cansync the shutter speed with a strobe at 1/250th of a sec)or you can bump up the f lash exposure to ful l powe r andshoot at your fastest sync speed. (*Note - Flash/Strobesync speeds vary by manufactuer, please consult yourowners manual to detrmine the fastest your shutter cansync with the strobes at) This also applies to speedlights,which have about 80 watt seconds of power on aver-age. Compared to an Al ien Bees B1600, with 640WS ofpower, you can see where the y can be a huge benefit toyou in the f ie ld when try ing to control the sun (ambientl ight). Just remember here that t he more power you haveavai lable f rom your st robe/f lash units , the more latt i tudeyou wi l l have in control l ing br ight ambient l ight.

Flash to subject distance - Flash to subject distancegets a l i tt le more complicated due to some physics guruwho came up with a thing cal led the inverse squarelaw. The Inverse Square Law: Br ightness at distance A =(brightness at distance B) [(distance B)/(distance A)] 2.What in the world does that mean to a photographer?Lets think about i t in apertures for a moment or what Il ike to cal l the l ight depth of f ie ld. Your lenses have adepth of f ield and so does l ight so to speak. Theyre notexactly the same in relation to on e another, but i f you re-al ly try to digest this information it wi l l make sense, hope-ful ly. The l ight fro m a l ight source, such as a f lash, strobe

or star i s br ighter at the source of l ight. I f you have a


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This shot was t aken us ing a 60 re -

f lect ive umbre l la and a Nikon SB-800 by me at a Zack Arias work-shop I a t t ended in At lanta , GA.This shot i l lus t rat e s the degree of l i gh t f a l lo f f f rom the d i s t ance tothe subj ect to the background . Sheis proper ly exposed , ye t the back-ground i sn t comple te ly white dueto the fact that the d is t ance of thel ight fa l l ing on i t i s furthe r awaythan i t i s to the mode l . Use th isto your advanta ge . Pocket WizardPlus I I s .


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correct exposure at f/22 and 6 away from thestrobe, the l ight wi l l decrease by by one stop ofl ight everytime you double the distance from thesource of l ight. So, i f you took a l ight mete r read-ing from your strobe start ing at 6 away and gotf/22, another 12 away would read f/16, another2 away would read f/11, anothe r 4 away wouldread f/8, another 8 away would read f/5.6, an-

other 16 away would read f/4, another 32 awaywould read f/2.8, yet another 64 away wouldread f/2 and so forth. Notice a trend here? Every-t ime the dinstance doubles, the exposure decre-ses by one stop of l ight. A general rule of thumbto remember f/stops is to remember these as onestop of l ight di f ference from darkest to l ightest.( f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22)Once youve committed those f/stop dif ferencesto memory, youl l have a greater understand-ing of how f lash to subject distance real ly works.

Wel l cover why this is important to rememberlater in this magazine.

ISO - The ISO in modern digital camerasmeans exactly the same thig that it did to mewhen I was using the old f i lm ASA term back inthe good old days of f i lm. Al l this basical l y meansis the sensors sensat iv i ty to l ight, just l ike the f i lmswe once used so prevalently had a bui lt in sen-sat iv i ty to l ight. Thankful ly , we no longer haveto change our our rol l s of f i lm to accommodate

large var iances in shooting condit ions l ike weonce did, but how does this real l y make our l iveseasier? Not having to remove a quarter usedrol l of f i lm to load another f i lm that i s more sen-sative to l ight helps us save money! If youveever shot f i lm and went from a bright sunny daywith ISO/ASA 100 f i lm loaded in your camera toan indoor wedding or broadway show where itrequired ISO/ASA 3200 speed f i lm, youd ful lyunderstand. I real ize that most new photogra-phers have never shot with f i lm, sort of l ike mostteenagers have never l i s tened to vinyl recordsor 8-track tapes. They grew up with the internet,CDs and DVDs al l around them, so why wouldthey look back to old technology? Why, I l l te l lyou why, to understand where their roots camefrom. Ok, I m going to stop myself there beforeI go on a tangent and start preaching to thechoir , but there are some useful bi ts of info thatyou need to understand about how your ISOcan help you. ISO increases your digit al camera


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These shot s were t aken with a ha rd-

ware s tore f lood l ight with a s i lve rre f lector (cont inuous l ight ing) .I was t ry ing to ach ieve a v intage1940 s Hol lywood l ight ing look tothe image . The l ight i s de fin i t e lyhard and re f ined , which lends i t se l f to th is lo ok , but you don t have touse cont inuous l ight ing to ach ieveth is look . I l l t a lk about a way touse s t robes to do the exact samething la t e r in th is i s sue . . .


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SB-900 into 60 umbre l la camerale f t with bare SB-900 bounced off o f wh i t e s e amle s s mus l in in thebackground .


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sensors sensit ivity to l ight, which means that you can shootat a higher ISO and maintain a shutter speed that wi l l a l -low you to hand hold your camera without camera shakeor blurry images.

3. ADVICE FOR ADVANCED STROBISTS

Strobe/flash brightness is i r relevant to me when Imshooting portraits s ince the aperture controls the f lash ex-

posure. I ve seen a lot of beginners t ry to control thei r f lashexposure by moving the l ight further away from their sub-

jects to control the br ightness. This i s the wrong way to thinkabout control l ing your l ighting or f lash exposure. You shouldreprogram your brain to think i t terms of the qual i ty of l ightand then set your aperture to achieve a proper exposure.You should control the l ight and not let i t control you. Whyis this important? Well , for starters, i f you want a softer l ightwith nice soft shadows you need to br ing the l ight in c loserto your subject. A lot of peopl e may think that this wi l l maketheir subject too br ight, but thats why we control the ap-

erture. L ight and shadows have a completely di f ferent lookwhen the l ight i s c lose to the subject than when i t i s backedout away from the subject. Also remember that the closerthe l ight is to your subject, the faster i t wi l l fal l off as it cross-es their face or fal ls onto the background. This is a direct re-sult of the inverse square law, which I talked about earl ier. I fthe proper exposure is f/8 and your l ight modif i er is 6 awayfrom your subject, the l ight wi l l decrease by one stop whenit reaches 12 away from the l ight source. Lets imagine youtook a ruler whi le your subject was s itt ing 6 away from the

l ight and then you measured12 away from the l ight ( I dontrecommend you try this for obvious reasons). Youl l prob-ably st i l l be on the face or at their ear. This makes the fal loffof l ight half as br ight f rom one s ide of the face to the other.It wi l l also give the shadows a softer appearance as theytaper away from the l ight, but this i s only a part of how tomake l ighting softer. What makes l ighting softer or harder?Its not the br ightness, i t s the SIZE of the l ight source. Thelarger the l ight source is , the softer the l ight wi l l be. Addto that how close you place the l ight source and you canmake your l ight that much softer by bringing it in closer or

more def ined and harder by placing i t further away. Letslook at two scenarios to give you a better understa nding ofhow the characterist ics of the l ight and shadows changewhen you change the s ize and distance of your l ight. Letsstart out with the s ize of your l ight source. When i t comesto s ize, bigger is better, r ight? Well , not always, i t dependshow you want your f inal image to look. Its al l subjectiveand there is no r ight or wrong answer here. I f you kept yourl ight at 6 feet away from your subject and shot your subject

at a 45 degree angle with a speedl ight, how do you think

the l ight would look? Its going to have very


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The same l ight ing se tup as abovewas used for th is shot . Be l ieve i t ornot , th is was shot in my o ld s tud iowith 7 foot ce i l ings too . You canwork in conf ined spaces and s t i l lproduce n ice images !


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hard and defined shadows, r ight? Yes it wi l l . I f you addeda 60 umbrel la to your speedlight stand and shot eithethrough or bounced into i t , how do you think the l ight wilook? Its going to be much softer than the bare speedlighwould be. Why is that? I ts the s ize of the l ight source! Foease of this explanation, lets st ick with the 60 umbrel lafor a moment. Now, i f you moved that same 60 umbrel la incloser to your subject, the l ighting wi l l then become even

softer than it was at 6 feet away. Why? Because the l ighsource just got bigger in relationship to your subject bymoving it in closer. I f you moved that 60 umbrel la 20 feeaway from your subject the l ighting wi l l become hardeand more ref ined. So how does this affect our exposure?When you have a proper exposure of say f/8 at 6 feeaway and you move your l ight in to say 3 feet away, youwi l l need to either stop your aperture down to somethingaround f/11-f/16 or you can s imply adjust your f lash poweand decrease it by a stop of l ight. I use a l ight meter totake al l of the guess work out of deter mining a new prope

exposure, but you can also use the back of your cameraif you dont have a l ight meter. I f you moved your l ighto 12 feet away from your subject you wi l l need to openyour aperture up from f/8 to f/5.6-f/4. The other alternativewould be to increase your f lash power by one stop andtake a test shot and see how your exposure has changedor use a l ight meter to speed the process up l ike I do. Alof the information provided above is why I feel that worry ing about br ightness i s the wrong mindset to have whentry ing to control your l ight. You can choose any degree oexposure by changing your aperture, so YOU control thebr ightness by not lett ing the l ight control you. When starting out testing these concepts there is no perfect sett ing to get the perfect exposure every t ime. For beginnersId recommend start ing at -1/2 power on the strobe, sethe camera to f/5.6 and 1/125th shutter speed at the lowest ISO possible. Then you can decide what you ideal aperture that YOU want wi l l be based on what effect youare going for. I f you have mult iple rows of people standing on bleachers at an event and you need to take theiportrait, there are two considerations youl l need to thin

about f i rst. I always ask myself, how much depth of f ielddo I need to keep everyone in focus and how much l ighdepth of f ie ld do I need to cover the ent i re group evenly? Remember when I talked about the l ights depth of ie ld ear l ier and the relat ionship to how fast the l ight fal loff of your subject or in this case subjects? You wouldnwant to start off taking a group of people that are 3-4 rowdeep and 10 people across by bringing your s ingle l ight inclose to the subjects. The reason is that the people closest to the l ight source may be properly exposed, but thedepth of f ie ld of the l ight wi l l s tart fal l ing off quickly as i


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I captured th is shot whi le she wasf l ick ing her head/hair around .Large Paul C . Buff softbox wasused with an Al ien Bees B800 andan SB-800 on the ground a im-ing back up at he r for a r im l ight .Both l ight s were to the camera le f tand the softbox was about 2 abovethe model s face . Trig gered withcybersync s .


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passes the f i rst row and each subsequent row and theresult wi l l be a very unevenly l i t scene.What you wouldwant to do is to increase the l ight depth of f ie ld so thathe front row to the back row are within the same rangeof exposure. I f you took a meter reading of the personface standing closest to the l ight and got f/8 and walkedto the back row and took a meter reading of the last persons face, youd ideal ly want f/8. You achieve this by

moving the l ight away unt i l the f/8 range stays cons istenfrom the f ront to the back of the group, but dont forgethat youl l need to bump up the f lash/str obe power everytime you change the distance of the l ight to your subjects

Let me break down ISO, Aperture, and Flash power as stops of l ight before we talk about ISOs. Eachone of these wi l l be wr i tten out in stops of l ight andhopeful ly you wi l l understand how you can makethem work for you instead of against you. *Remember, each change in one of these affects the others

ISO 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400

Aperture f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22

Flash Power - Ful l , 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128

ISO f/stops of l ight explained - Notice how the ISO doubles each time? Each subsequent higher number repre

sents one extra stop of l ight (sens i t iv i ty to l ight) . This cancome in handy i f you want to show at night and keepyour shutter speed higher. Lets say you started shooting handheld at ISO 100 and had a s low shutter speedof 1/20th sec and wanted to keep the image sharpby using a fast shutter speed. You could bump up theISO by 4 stops of l ight sensit ivity by changing your ISOto 1600. Keep in mind that your image wil l get nois ierbut sometimes gett ing the shot in focus i s more important than how clean the image looks at ful l magnif icat ion. When you bump your ISO up, you wi l l need to eithe

turn your f lash power down, which helps conserve batt eryl i fe or increase your aperture to compensate for the increased sens it iv i ty to the power of the l ight i f you didnchange it. See how al l three variables work together now?

Aperture f/stops of l ight explained Each one of the fstops l isted above represent one stop of l ight, but thenumbers are backwards. f/22 lets less l ight in to youcameras sensor or f i lm than f/1.4 does. Each aperturenumber (22, 16, 11, 8, 5.6, 4, 2.8, 2, 1.4) represents anincreased sens i t iv i ty to l ight. I f you were shooting a


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- Large Softbox on camera r ight with Al ien Bees B800 -


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f/8 and increased your ISO from 100 to 800 (3stops of l ight increase), you could decrease theamount of l ight entering your camera by stopping down from f/8 to f/22. This i s assuming that youdidnt touch your f lash power and also gives youthe abi l i ty to shoot at higher shutter speeds to prevent the image from suffer ing from camera shake

Flash power f/stops of l ight explained Depending onthe type of f lash/strobe you are us ing, you wi l l havepower sett ings in manual mode that range from 1/(Ful l power) to 1/128th. That means that at 1/128thpower that i t i s only putt ing out 1/128th power f romthe f lash that it would produce at 1/1 (Ful l power). MyAl ien Bees dont go that low, they only go down to1/32nd power. Each number essential l y cuts the poweof the strobe by half . Look at the numbers and see foyoursel f . (1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128) Notice how each subsequent number (power level) is cuin half? These are al l s tops of l ight. I f I need an extrastop of l ight, I l l bump i t up f rom say 1/4 power to 1/2power. I f I want to decrease the output of l ight by onestop, I can drop the power level down from 1/4 poweto 1/8 power. I l ike to shoot with my 85mm f/1.4 lenin the studio at f/1.4 a lot. I achieve this by decreasing the f lash power to i ts lowest level and then moving the l ight to the proper f lash to subject distance. usual ly shoot in the studio at my base ISO, which onmy Nikon is ISO 200. I can eas i ly achieve this with my

Nikon speedl ights because they can go al l of the waydown to 1/128th power. When Im using my Al ien Beestrobes, I need to use the B400, which is the lowespower unit they sel l and set i t to the lowest power sett ing, which happens to be 1/32 power. Since I alreadyknew what my target aperture was goin g to be (f/1.4)I had to adjust the l ight source power level and thedistance of my l ight to achieve a proper exposureOnce again, this is much quicker with a l ight meter

4. DIFFERENT TYPES OF LIGHTING:

A. HARD VS. SOFT LIGHT

As I mentioned earl ier, hard or soft l ight is a subject ive decis ion that can only be made by you. Thereare no r ight or wrong answers as to what type of l ighlooks best on your subject, to your c l ient or to you. Onthe next page I wi l l show some examples that contrasthe di f ferences between hard or soft l ight, why I choseto use them and let you make a decis ion on which typeof l ight ing you would want to use for your own cl ients


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H A R DThis was shot us ing an Al ien Bees

B800 with a 20 degree g r id spotat about 8 fee t away from the sub-j ect and about 10 fee t h igh . Thisl ight i s not iceab ly harder edged inthe shadows that the image on ther ight . I chose th is s ince the sub-j ect was further away in the frameand to prevent the wind from blow-ing over my l ight s t and on a ve rywindy day . Which one you dec ideto use wi l l be up to your personalpre fe rence .


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A large 42x30 softbox was

used to take this photo. Youcan see now that the shad-ows s lowly wrap around herface compared to the muchsmal le r g r id spot on thele f t . The softbox i s probablyequal to 10 t imes the s izeand was only about 5 fee taway from the mode l s face .Br ing ing your large l ight inc lose r to your subj ect wi l lg ive you a n ice soft l ight

such as in th is image . Onceagain , ne i the r one i s be t -t e r than the other , i t s a l l amat te r of what look you areshoot ing for !


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B. FEATHERED LIGHT

What is feathered l ight compared to non-feathered l ight?Feathered l ight means that you turned your l ight source awayfrom your subject and s imply skim them with l ight. Imagine turn-ing an umbrel la toward the camera, as I did in the example onthe r ight, and just lett ing the edge of the umbrel la l ight the sub-

ject. The feathering also uses the l ight modif ier as i ts own go

between (gobo) to block the l ight from fal l ing where you dontwant it to fal l in the f i rst place.

I also feathered the l ight in the image below. You can seethat the l ight doesnt fal l on the legs of the satel i te dish or thefront of i t e i ther. I actual ly feathered the l ight away from thecamera in this particular example.


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C. REMBRANDT LIGHTING

All four of these images are examples of Rembrandtl ighting. What makes them rembrandt? They al l have a tr i -angle of l ight on one cheek that is surrounded by shadows.

The shot above was made us ing a largesoftbox on camera le f t up h igh at thelowest power se t t ing . The lens was aNikkor 85mm f/1 .4 shot at f/1 .4 . Id id th is to rea l ly i so lat e he r f rom the

background .


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D. BUTTERFLY LIGHT

Both of these images are what we cal l butterf ly l ighting.What makes them butterf ly l ighting? The sharp shadow under-neath her nose in both images is supposedly shaped l ike a but-terf ly. I personal ly have never seen a butterf ly shape undersomeones nose with this type of l ight ing, but thats what theexperts have cal led it for years. I personal ly think that this typeof l ighting looks best when using a beauty dish or gr id spot onyour subject. I achieved this look with a s imple 20 degree gridspot in an Al ien Bees 7 ref lector dish that comes with the unit .Raise your l ight up high so that i t points down at your subjectand ever so s l ight ly off to one s ide or the other and youl l have

the butterf ly look cooking in no t ime!


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50 Westcott Apollo softbox withSB-900 speed l ight ins ide se t to1/4 power.


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E. BROAD LIGHT

B r o a dlight s imply put,shines the l ighton the closestand widest partof the face asseen in these

examples. Theshadow side ofthe face is fur-ther away fromthe camera andthe highl ights ide is closerto the camera.Having catchl ights in botheyes i s a bonus!


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Shot w i th an SB-900 in s id e o f a50 Westcott Apollo softbox oncamera le f t with a 20 gr id spot .Al ien Bees B400 behind on camerar ight . The lens was a a LensBabyMuse at f/2 .8 with double g lassopt ic and the 80mm zoom lensadapte r at t ached .


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F. SHORT LIGHT

Short l ight is the exact opposite of broad l ight, meaning thatyou l ight the subject more f rom the far s ide of the face and let theshadows fal l on the closer s ide of the face. This creates a s l imminglook for someone with a wide face or who is a l i t t le overweight.

60 umbre l la with Nikon SB-800


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THE GEAR


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UMBRELLAS My favor i te do i t al l l ight source would have to be a 60umbrel la. This is the f i rst l ight modif ier I ever purchased and Ihad used it for a long time before f inal ly tryin g out other modi-f iers . I f you are just s tart ing out and dont have a lot of moneyto invest in l ight ing equipment, def ini tely get a 60 convert ib leumbrel la. A convertible umbrel la al lows you to take the blackouter cover off so you can shoot through i t .

The images on these two pages i l lustrate some of the ef-fects you can achieve with only one umbrel la. If you can af-ford to spend $80 on an umbrel la, I h ighly recommend theSoftl ighter I I umbrel la. Its essential ly three l ight modif iers inone. I ts an umbrel la, i t s a shoot through umbrel la and i t alsodoubles as a softbox/octabank when you add the diffus ionmater ial to the f ront of i t . Another advantage is that the um-brel la shaft is removable, this al lows you to get that muchcloser to your subject and not have the shaft enter your f rame.


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SOFTBOXESA softbox, is basical ly, nothing more than portable window

l ight. Have you ever not iced how soft and gorgeous the l ight i swhen you take a photo of your subject s i t t ing next to or just behinda window? The larger the softbox, the softer the l ight wi l l be. Thediffus ion material and internal baff les diffuse and spread the l ight

evenly ins ide the softbo x and this creates a look s imi lar to what youwould get i f you had your subject s i t in f ront of a large window onan overcast day. Very soft, yet directional.

I use two softboxes - Paul C. Buffs large softbox and a West-cott Appol lo 50 square softbox. There are many other manufactur-ers out there and tons of s izes, but these are the ones I f ind the mostuseful for me.


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50 Westcot t softbox as ma in l i ghand a g r id spot speed l ight l ight inthe wate r . The red l ight on the toof the wate r i s f rom the ambienst ree t l ight above the mode ls headThis was t aken whi le I was at t ending a Zack Arias workshop in Atlanta , GA. Normal ly , I d converth is to b lack and white to removthe co lor var iance , but in th is casI k ind o f l ik e i t!


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SOFTBOXES CONT.


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Large Paul C . Buff softbox andAlien Bees B 400 se t to 1/4 power .


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Alien Bees B800 wi20 degree g r id spot


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GRID SPOTS

A grid spot is a honeycomb device that we place overour st robes or speedl ights to concentrate the l ight into a very

direct l ight. The shadows are very hard and defin ed, but youcan control where the l ight fal l s better and keep i t f rom fal l -ing on areas of the portrait that you dont want l ight to fal l .


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Alien Bees B1600 with 20 degreegr id spot . The background was ac-tua l ly white behind her and by us-ing the gr id , I was ab le to keep a l lof the l ight focused in a n ice c i rc learound her .


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GRID SPOTS CONT.


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GRID SPOTS CONT.


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I N S E R T P H O T O O F C Y B E R S Y N C S A N D S B - 9 0 0 O N T H I S P A G E

A young Obi-Wan engaged in a f ly -ing at t ack aga inst TTL l ight ing .Background l i t and ge l led with anAl ien Bees B1600 in my t iny base -ment s tud io . Main l ight was a 50

Westcot t Apol lo sof tbox on camerale f t .


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6. COMMON MISTAKES AND MYTHS DEBUNKED

Some common mistakes I often see beginner strobistsmake is that they think they need to buy the most expens ivegear. I am a working photographer and dont have a bigcompany sponsoring me, so I have to make do with the l imited budget that I have and to make every dol lar s t retch afar as it can. A great way to get started in off camera l ighting is to buy qual i ty gear that works just as wel l as the more

expensive stuff, but costs only a fraction to acquire.

Heres what I would recommend for a one l ight setupto get you started. Go to B&H Photo Video or Adorama andsearch their used department for a qual ity Nikon f lash. Thebrand real ly doesnt matter that much, but Nikons old f lasheshad PC sync cables to attach to your radio tr iggers way be-fore Canon ever did. You can get an SB-28, SB-28DX, or SB80DX for around $100 used from these two sources. They runon AA batter ies and have a PC sync port.

Next, youl l need a radio tr iggering system. I use Cy-bersyncs from www.al ienbees.com. Youl l need a CybersyncCST on your camera and a CSRB attached to the f lash. Youlneed addit ional CSRBs for each addit ional l ight i f you havemore than one off camera f lash. At the t ime this magazinewas publ ished, the prices on Al ien Bees website were $59.95for the CST and $69.95 for the CSRB. Compare the pr ice othese units to Pocket Wizard Plus I I transceivers. Pocket Wizard Plus I I t ransceivers cost $169 on B&H Photo and althoughthey are nice, they are over twice the price than the Cy-bersyncs. I have used Pocket Wizards and they dont offe

any performance advantage for any shooting Ive ever encountered, therefore I cant just i fy the extra cost. Anotheadvantage to Cybersyncs is that i f you break them, they arerelatively inexpensive to replace compared to Pocket Wizards. One of these days I l l inv est in some heavier duty PockeWizards, but my budget wont al low i t at this t ime. I f you canafford it, knock yourself out and get some Pocket Wizard s! MyCybersyncs easi ly sync with my Al ien Bees strobes and Nikonspeedl ights at 1/250th sec. Dont bel ieve the internet mythsthat claim otherwise. Dont forget to turn the standby function off i f you are us ing them with speedl ights though. Thesl ight delay that is caused by the speedlight trying to comeout of standby mode wil l cause the speedligh t to only sync a1/125th sec or s lower.

So now weve invested in a qual i ty Nikon speedl igh(used) and a set of new Cybersyncs. Weve invested a totaof $229.90. Thats less than i t would cost to buy two PockeWizards! Now do you see


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why I cant just i fy spending so much on something thatdoesnt give me any extra performance advantages? Cy-bersyncs can tr igger your speedlights from over 350 feetaway. What? 350 feet??? Yes, and I never shoot that faraway from my models. There may be a case where I wa nt tostrategical ly place background l ights in an old abandonedwarehouse far f rom my subject, but I think 350 feet wi l l coverit for me. Pocket Wizards are a l i tt le more rugged and studyfeel ing overal l , but don t get me wrong, they can st i l l break!

Ok, so we have the l ight and the radio tr iggers , nowthe only thing thats left i s a l ight stand. I l ike Paul C. Buffs(www.al ienbees.com) l ight stands. I use thei r 13 foot heavyduty l ight stands, which cost me $69. 95. They are heavy dutyand dont weigh a ton. I f you ever invest in a set of Al ienBees and a Vagabond I I battery pack, you can attach thevagabond I I to the l ightstand l ike you saw in the setup photoa few pages back. Dont make the mistake of thinking thatyou need to pay thousands of dol lars to get started with offcamera l ighting, i ts s imply not true!

A few other common mistakes I see newbies make isthat they leave thei r auto ISO turned on. I f you do, the ISOwi l l adjust for the ambient l ight and in most cases youl l haveblown out pictures that are way overexposed. Turn it off whenusing off camera l ighting. Remember, we are NOT using TTLor any other automatic camera sett ings. Another mistake isthat they shoot in P, A, S modes. These are automatic modes,only shoot in M (Manual mode). The last big mistake I seepeople make is that they dont turn on the Highl ight warn-ing feature in their camera (refer to your owners manual todetermine how to turn this feature on). When you are review-ing images on the back of your camera, i ts hard to tel l i f theexposure is just r ight or i f you are losing detai l in the cr it icalareas. Us ing the highl ights feature wi l l a l low you to see bl ink-ing white areas that have lost al l pixel detai l in your imagesand to adjust your aperture accordi ngly. I always want to re-tain al l of the detai l in my subjects face. Your shooting stylemay permit s l ight variances depending on the look you aregoing for, but I general ly do not overexpose in camera.

NOBODY WILL TELL YOU WHEN

YOUVE ARRIVED, SO KEEP

PRACTICING!


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I N S E R T I M A G E O F S O F T B O X E S , U M B R E L L A S , G R I D S P O T S , L I G H T S T A N D S , C A M E R A S , E T C . . .


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An ambien t l i gh t sho t o f t he bandBuddy Mercury - Spot mete red theexposure off h is face with onlys tage l ight ing adding to the expo-sure . Had I used Matr ix mete r ing ,Buddy would have been comple te ly

b lown out .


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7. SOFTWARE AND POST PROCESSING

Somwhere along the way, you wi l l want to start tweak-ing the look, feel and colors of your photographs. I m notgoing to tel l you how to do this s ince there are way toomany different ways to achieve th is. Since the main point ofthis i ssue was to help you learn how to get the most bang foyour buck, I m going to give you two options.

I f you are a Nikon shooter, buy Nikon Capture NX2There are rumors of a new vers ion coming out soon, but unt ii t does, NX2 is the only program that can actual ly processwhat you see in your camera and translate it into the sameimage (does not apply i f you shoot in JPG, only NEF/RAW).Yes, Adobe Photoshop can open the NEF f i les, but the colo rsand shadow detai l real ly sucks compared to NX2. The sameholds t rue with Adobe L ightroom. Why is that? Nikon appar-ently hasnt released its camera profi les to software devel-opers so people would st i l l want to buy their proprietary soft-ware, NX2. A lot of people complain about NX2, but once

you watch a few how to videos on youtube.com, youl l bef ine. I dont l ike work ing extens ively in NX2, because i t i s areal ly s low way to process photos. I use i t to convert my f i lesto either JPG or T IFF and then import them into PhotoshopCS5 for f inal process ing. I f you shoot JPG, you wont have tomess with NX2, but you wi l l not have the 14 bit RAW detai lin the f i les ei ther. Sometimes you need that extra detai l topul l out 2 stops of shadows or br ing back 2 stops of blowshighl ights . I s this always the case, no, but i t s nice to have i twhen you need i t .

I f you shoot with any other camera manufacturer, buyAdobe L ightroom 3 or spr ing for the more expens ive Photo-shop CS5. I f I could only afford one software program, I dget L ightroom 3 and the Scott Kelby book cal led, L ightroom3, book for digital photographers. L ightroom has many ofthe same features as photoshop and doesnt have many ofthe same features. Dont expect to bui ld layers or do ex-tens ive photo manipulat ion. I ts al l about workf low, coloradjustments, tethered capture, cataloging, etc.. . This is agreat program to start with and I use i t specif ical ly for quickedits and cataloging al l of my photos.

To get your photos to pop, you need to adjust the levelsand curves. There are tons of videos on youtube.com thatyou can watch for free that teach you how to use these. Toget the best color , I a lways switch to LAB mode in Photo-shop. In L ightroom, there are vibrance, contrast, exposureshadows, highl ights, etc.. .s l iders that


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Paul C . Buff 22 Beauty Dish


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40x32 Paul C . Buff soft -box on mode l with 20 degreegr i s spot on wal l behind her .Leaves l i t by the sun sh in ingthrough behind her .


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40x32 Paul C . Buff softbo


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3 l ight se tup - B1600 with60 umbre l la as main l ighton mode l f rom camera le f t ,B800 with 7 re f lector as r iml ight behind mode l f rom cam-era r ight , and a B400 with 20degree re f lector on the back-ground from camera le f t .


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2 l ight se tup on both pages -50 Westcott Appollo softboxas main l ight on mode l with a20 degree g r id spot as a r iml ight behind her .


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off camera lighting issue 1

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