Author Archives: Michael Willems

Fun with gels

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Look at these images, and see why you need gels.

A gel is a piece of sturdy plastic that you put in front of your flash. (At least if you use something like the Honl Photo system it is sturdy; the ones that come with your SB-900 flash are very fragile and will melt quickly).

So assume you have some good, easy-to-use gels. Look at what just two gels and a bit of knowledge of my camera can do. And this takes mere seconds to set up!

Case One: Warm Face, Neutral background. Flash equipped with a CTO (“Color Temperature Orange”) Gel, white balance set to “flash”:

Case Two: Neutral Face, Cold Background. Flash equipped with a CTO Gel, White Balance set to”Tungsten”:

Case Three: Neutral Face, Warm Background. Flash equipped with a CTB (“Color Temperature Blue”) Gel, white balance set to “Shade”.

I mean – is that fun, or is that fun?

Note that the effect may not be totally right in camera – gels do not exactly correspond with white balance settings, which in any case vary per camera – but that is unimportant: you can fine-adjust later in Lightroom. The essence is that you throw different light onto the subject than onto the background.

Now do you understand why photographers are always going on about gels? Secret weapon – but now you know the secret, too.

Fast Flash!

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To exceed your camera’s maximum flash sync speed (which is something around 1/200th – 1/250th second), you need high speed flash (Auto FP flash, in Nikon terminology) where the flash pulses at ca. 40kHz instead of firing all at once.

You need an external flash for this, like an SB900 or a 580 EX.

  • When you need it: when you need to exceed your flash sync speed, e.g. when taking an outdoors picture of close object with blurry background. That means low F-number, which means even at 100 ISO you’ll need fast shutter speeds.
  • Advantage: in theory, you can you can go to any fast shutter speed and still use flash.
  • Drawback: you lose much power, so that Fast Flash is usually only suitable for close-by subjects.

The Shot: Shoot a close object or person with blurry background. To achieve this, set your camera to A/Av mode, and select a wide open aperture (f/2.8,say). (If your lens cannot go down to f/2.8 or it is a very dull day, you may need to go to 400 ISO).

You should now be exceeding your flash synch speed-if you set your flash to Fast Flash. Else you get an overexposed picture (your camera will refuse to go faster).

Note, your object has to be close, especially if you get to speeds of 1/1000th o rfaster. Else, your flash will not have enough power.

And now you can get this – the following image was lit by flash at 1/1600th second, at f.2.8!

The importance of being saturated

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…as in colour. Today:

I took this picture yesterday and it shows a few things:

  • Lower the background’s brightness = increase its saturation
  • To add excitement, add a splash of colour!
  • In particular, add red to the green and blue you find in nature
  • Dramatic lighting = contrasty lighting

Five speedlites were used in the production of this picture. Four on the sides and one behind me. they were fired via pocketwizards.

In any shoot, the worst thing a photographer can encounter is bright light.

Why?

Here’s why. Think along.

  • The available (ambient) light will be fill light.
  • That, and the fact we want these saturated colours, means it will have to be darker (say, two stops darker) than the main, flash light.
  • That means the flash light has to overpower it (by, say, two stops).
  • That means the flash has to be two stops brighter than the sun.

That’s why we call this “nuking the sun”.

For which we needed five flashes, four on the sides and one behind the camera. Firing at full power, mostly.

(That much because ambient is controlled by ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Shutter speed cannot go beyond 1/200th second (or whatever your synch speed is).  ISO is low already. So aperture is the only way to affect the background.  But Aperture also affects flash exposure so for each stop you close the aperture you need to double flash power.)

Grids and why you might like them.

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Grids,  like the Honl grid attached to my flash here, are very important modifiers. A grid ensures that the light from a flash does not go “everywhere”. Instead, it goes to one cone of light, that drops off softly at the edges. This was taken by a student a few hours ago:

Oddly, that cone is a bit softer than the straight flash.

TIP: Use a gel if you want to see where a light is going, That way you can identify easily which light is shining where:

And have fun.

Improvise

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Sometimes you need to improvise. Scrap that. You always need to improvise.

For a model or portrait shoot I would like at least several lights.

Recently, on a shoot I had only one available flash, a 430EX speedlite in an umbrella on a stand. So I used the 580EX on my camera to fire that 430EX flash through the umbrella on the camera left side:

I did that as follows:

  • 1D Mark IV with 580EX on the camera as “director” (master) only, otherwise disabled
  • 430EX in slave mode firing through a useless Opus umbrella (useless because it broke and kept coming apart) on a stand
  • Flash compensation of +2 stops – this is what I needed because of the white wall. I set the Flash Compensation so that the histogram went exactly to the right edge.
  • I moved the umbrella as close to the moel as possible. This makes the light softer. Farther away makes it harder.

I would have liked the umbrella on the right, since that is where she is looking – but during a model session you cannot keep moving the umbrella.

And it worked, didn’t it?

Phoenix a couple of weeks ago:

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The bicycle team! Myself, David Honl’s assistant Korry, David Honl, and Jasen and Christy of Studio Moirae.

And myself taking a picture of Christy, surrounded by students. Dave Honl on the left.

Thanks to Elisha for the great pictures. Including one that makes me look handsome – um, I mean, one that shows my true handsomeness:

It’s amazing what a modifier or two (or just one!) and some knowledge of flash can do.

Studio Settings

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A few words to get you started on studio portrait setups.

When you are shooting in a “studio” (i.e. controlled) setting, your camera settings might be, as I recently pointed:

  • Camera on Manual
  • 100 ISO
  • Auto ISO disabled
  • 1/125th sec
  • f/8
  • “Flash” white balance

Why as small as f/8?

Because lower aperture numbers than 5.6 can give you too selective a depth of field; and with most lenses, higher numbers than f/8 create diffraction, meaning slight blurriness. If you like sharp, stick to f/8 or perhaps f/5.6.

You also use f/8 or similar because studio lights are powerful. (Someone the other day searched for “how to shoot wide open with studio light” – often, the lights are so bright even on their lowest settings that the only way to do that  is to use a neutral density filter on your lens).

And lenses?

For portraits, I use 50-200mm. Smaller focal length (like 50-70 on a full frame camera) makes a woman’s body smaller (if I shoot at head height). Larger makes the nose smaller, but can make the body slightly bigger. I.e. larger gives you no distortion, but sometimes ever-so-slight distortion is exactly what you want. My favourites are:

  • 24-70 2.8L
  • 70-200 2.8L IS
  • 50mm f/1.4 (for use on the 7D, or for body shots on the 1D Mark IV or 1Ds Mark III)
  • 35mm f/1.4 (for environmental portraits)
  • 100 mm f/2.8 macro (yes, a macro lens is a great portrait lens)

But you can keep it simple! A Canon Digital Rebel or Nikon D90 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, for instance, will allow you to take great razor-sharp studio portraits. It’s all about the light!

Last chance

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There’s still some space left on the weekend workshop Joseph Marranca and I are arranging this weekend in beautiful Mono, Ontario, an hour north of Toronto: but you need to be quick.

Two days of intense learning about lighting: we will teach you studio lights as well as small flashes; one as well as many; traditional portrait lighting as well as edgy lighting like this:

If interested, go here right now and sign up online while you can. You’ll go home with some portfolio pictures.

And for the rest of you, I shall post some pictures after the weeknd.