For all North American readers: go to ALL your cameras NOW, and set the time to the correct seasonal time.
Assignment
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Monthly Archives: March 2012
Four flashes with David Honl
Last year, when I taught my flash workshop in Toronto I was joined by David Honl, of the excellent range of Honl modifiers I use. We set up a shot like this:
- Background light with a short snoot;
- Two gridded side lights (1/4″ grids) aimed forward from slightly behind;
- One light on camera with a Traveller 8 softbox
- All fired with Pocketwizards.
That looks like this (with Dave on the right):
And the resulting shot is this:
Now you know how those shots are done!
Another suggested technique… following up from yesterday.
Try this: have people throw something during the shot.
Your flash takes around 1/1000th second at full power. So whatever is thrown will be frozen in mid air. Like this piece of clothing:
Again, as in yesterday’s shot, you will need to pre-focus, hold the shutter half way down, and then press when the item is where you pre-focused. A little tricky but worth it when you get unusual photos as a result.
For this to work, make sure your camera only sees the flash light. Manual exposure mode, 400 ISO, 1/125th second, f/5.6 should do it indoors. Test this by shooting with the flash turned off: your photo should be black.
Tricksy…
Here’s a trick. Oops, I mean technique!
When shooting long-haired people using flash, for effect try to have them throw their hair every now and then and shoot when their hair is in the air.
It takes a little practice, and you need to pre-focus where they will be when you click. With a little patience, you will get something like this:
Can’t be bad…
During a coaching session with a talented student last night, I tried to make a bad picture of him, to show him what not to do.
Problem is, I just could not do it. Here’s the picture:
Even when trying, subconsciously I…
- Tilted the camera.
- Used a lower f-number (a wider aperture) to blur the distractions in the background.
- Aimed my flash behind me.
- Composed for the rule of thirds.
- Used the Willems 444 rule (400 ISO, 1/40th second, f/4) to get a nice background.
You see, these simple rules aren’t about how great I am. They are simply good guidelines to follow, which, when we follow them, make things better. And with practice, these will become automatic, like when you drive to work.
So… learn the rules, and then shoot a lot.
Beginner’s tip: exposure compensation
This I frequently repeat: your camera’s light meter assumes you are pointing it at a grey subject – grey in terms of brightness. The moment you point at a predominantly light or dark subject, you need to tell the camera that. By using “exposure compensation” (the +/1 control) if you are in an automatic mode, or by setting the meter to “not zero” when shooting manual.
Like in this shot of a car I bought for my son:
To get the black car I needed to set exposure to minus 1 stop (-1). Else the car would have looked grey, not black.
Lens for Alaska?
Reader Tyrone asks:
I’m going away to Alaska on a cruise and was wondering if you had any recommendations for particular lenses that I should get for this trip.
Sure.
First, it is not easy. You will want a wide range of focal lengths, from very wide (say a 10-20mm lens on a crop camera – this will give you depth and National Geographic type shots) to long (say, a 70-200); as well as a fast lens (a prime 50, say, for indoors portraits, or a prime 24 or 35).
The long lens is for faraway scenes and whales – but long lenses need fast shutter speeds and even then, when a ship is not steady (it is a ship after all) you will blur many images. Still, there will be whales and you will want the long length. A stabilized lens (IS/VR) is a big bonus.
So I would say, if at all possible: one wide, one long, and one prime fast.
Why not, say, an 18-270 all-purpose lens? Because its image quality is not as good, and its smaller aperture will reduce your available shutter speeds.
Two final notes.
- You can also rent lenses!
- Bring a spare camera, spare batteries, storage.
And finally: have a great cruise!
Lightroom 4 is out today
It’s out now (Thanks Jerzy for the tip). Link here.
I am waiting with my production system of course… a few days or longer until we see any issues. But I am upgrading as soon as I feel comfortable: on the laptop first.
Black and why?
Why do we still shoot (or rather: process) in black and white?
Here’s why.
- Black and white (B/W) takes away distractions: you concentrate on the subject, nothing else.
- Grey tones are beautiful.
- In black and white processing, you can apply “filters”, in effect making any colour show as light or dark (you can turn a yellow shirt into white, black, or any in between).
- Skin tones are easier to fix – you can get rid of skin imperfections by brightening the red and orange parts of the original image in the B/W conversion.
- Mixed colour light (eg tungsten mixed with flash) is no problem in B/W.
- Finally: black and white is much more forgiving. If you have under-or over-exposed, you can fix it in B/W without showing much degradation.
That’s why.
And as to how: I strongly recommend that you shoot in RAW and convert to B/W after the fact, on your computer. That way you can decide on your “colour filters” later (in Lightroom, Photoshop or Aperture – but I recommend Lightroom), and you can try different settings.
My suggestion: go convert some images to B/W now!
Chiaro?
“Chiaroscuro” lighting, invented during the renaissance, means “bright and dark”. Like this shot of tonight:
This kind of lighting means you need to:
- Make sure your camera is set to ignore room light. Like 1/125th, f/5.6, 200 ISO.
- Put a flash off-camera and drive it with your on-camera flash using light control.
- Make sure the on-camera flash does not fire itself (except commands).
- Put the off camera fl;ash off to the side.
- Put a grid or some such on the off-camera flash to avoid light going “everywhere”.
That gives you creative and modeled, three-dimensional, and above all dramatic light.