Category Archives: Light

Lunch time!

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And when you are a photographer like me, you may take that as a photo op. I cannot even look at a can of soup without thinking “Hmmmmm….”. In terms of photos.

And that leads to this quick setup:

The remainder of lunch about to be photographed with speedlights (Photo: Michael Willems)

The remainder of lunch about to be photographed

That setup was a TTL setup, to save me time. (Connecting Pocketwizards and so on would take a few minutes. Hey, I was hungry – what can I say).

I have, here:

  • Main light, on our left, a 430 EX II speedlight with a Honl Photo Speed Snoot
  • Edge light, a second 430 EX speedlight with a Honl Photo Speed Snoot and a blue/green gel.
  • The umbrella is merely being used as a reflector, to fill in the right a little.
  • A striped place mat for the subject to sit on.
  • A wall, far enough away to be dark, as background.

The camera is a 1D Mark IV with a 580EX II speedlight on it.

And that gives me…:

Lunch, lit with speedlights in wireless TTL mode (photo: Michael Willems)

Lunch, lit with speedlights in wireless TTL mode

So now to bed quickly: I am teaching “Advanced Flash” with Guest Star David Honl (yes, that David Honl) today Saturday 11am-3:30pm in Toronto.

Wireless flash tip

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In keeping with the “flash” tips, in anticipation of Saturday’s Advanced Flash course in Toronto, with Guest Star David Honl, for those of you who are trying wireless flash for the first time: here’s a beginner’s problem to avoid.

A picture of one of my favourite items (not) lit with an off-camera flash on my left using a Honl Photo Traveller 8 softbox; and a reflector on my left:

Can you see the problem? If you have eyes, you can: that horrible shadow.

You see, even though I used the off-camera flash with the Honl softbox, I failed (for the purposes of this demo, of course!) to disable the on-camera flash.

The on-camera flash (which can be the popup, on a Nikon or on a Canon 60D or 7D, or else an on-camera 580 EX or SB-900) is there to direct the off-camera flashes with “Morse code” pulses that happen before the shutter opens. So you need to make sure that when the actual flash happens, that on-camera flash is silent.

And you do that by setting the on-board flash to off. “–” on a Nikon, in the CLS menu, and just “disable” on a Canon. On the Canon, look, there are no rays coming from the flash head:

So then it still looks to you like it is working, but in fact it only fires its “Morse code” instructions, bu nothing else.

Now we have:

That’s better!

—–

One more recommendation, if I may (you will forgive me): there are spots open for the all-day “The Art of Photographing Nudes, 2 April 2011, Mono, Ontario. We use the same lighting techniques you are learning from me here, and more. Same model as last time, same two pros teaching! Click here to book.


Snoots

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Leading up to this Saturday’s Advanced Flash course in Toronto, with Guest Star David Honl, (just a couple of spots left), I thought I might share another flash modifier tip today.

And that is the use of snoots.

A snoot is a long appendage to your light that causes the light to be directed in a narrower beam.  So when you really want to direct the light to go just where you want to, and nowhere else, you use snoots.

The best snoot for small flashes like a Nikon D700 or D900 or a Canon 430 EX II or 580 EX II are Honl Photo snoots (and no, Dave is not paying me to say that – it’s just that I use them almost daily in my flash work, and love them).

The snoot is also the bounce reflector, just rolled up. So it stores flash and mounts as a sturdy snoot in seconds:

Remember, from yesterday’s post, the plant lit with a grid? If instead of lighting up the whole wall, I want to direct the light to a smaller area with a nice soft edge, I use a grid, like so:

But what if I want a more clearly defined light area?

Then I use a snoot. If instead of a grid I stick a short Speed Snoot to the flash’s speed strap, I now get this:

And if I want a smaller area? Simple, then I use the long snoot:

How do you often this type of snoot? As a hair light. Or in creative lighting: remember, creative light is not about what you light: it is about what you do not light. And that is what snoots are all about.

Grid and bear it

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When you are shooting with multiple lights in a studio-like setting, one of the most important things is to shape the light; to control where it goes. And the problem with a bare flash is that its light goes, well, pretty much everywhere.

And one of the most annoying of the “everywheres” is the background. If you want a darker background in a small basement studio, say, you have the following problem: your flash, even if it is a side flash, lights of the background, so you just cannot get a dark background. You get something like this:

Darn, but you wanted a dark background!

In that case, you have three options:

  1. Move everything away from the background.
  2. Paint the background black.
  3. Direct the light more specifically.

Since options (1) and (2) are not always easy, I recommend you learn option (3). Use barn doors, or snoots, or gobos: anything to direct your lights more.

For small flashes, the grid is a fabulous option. A 1/4″ Honl Photo grid stuck onto the speed strap on the speedlight makes that picture into this:

That was easy! The grid stops the light from going everywhere – now we have a much darker background, since light no longer falls onto it.

The Honl grid is affordable (I have several), small, and looks like this:

Honl Photo 1/4" Grid

Indispensable for users of off-camera flashes.

(As you may have read here by now, David Honl, the inventor of that range of Honl small flash modifiers, will be my Guest Star in Toronto on Saturday. Don’t miss it if you want to learn Advanced Flash from the pros.)

How did I do this?

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This was taken in bright daylight:

Otherworldly leaves

Otherworldly leaves

This looks otherworldly because:

  • I underexposed the background by two stops
  • I used a wide open aperture of f/4
  • I used a flash

How can I do that on a sunny day? 100 ISO and f/4 gives me 1/2000th second. (If you know the “sunny sixteen rule”, you will see that this is basically just another version of that: after all, f/16 at 1/100 means f/11 at 1/200th and hence f/8 at 1/400th, f/5.6 at 1/800th and f/4 at 1/1600th).

So that is what I set. 100 ISO, f/4 and 1/2000th second.

How, when I was using the flash? You know there is a flash sync speed limit of 1/200th second, depending on your camera’s shutter, right? So how was I able to get to 1/2000th?

Here’s how: I used fast flash. High speed flash/FP flash fires a series of pulses, so the light becomes continuous. Turn it on and you will see you can go to any shutter speed (if the subject is close, since with this technique you do lose power).

High-speed flash is among the many subjects I teach at my Advanced workshops, like the David Honl Special Guest “Advanced Flash” special on Saturday in Toronto, for which I believe there are just a couple of spots left.

Do try this at home

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Did you know that if you have a modern sophisticated flash like a Canon 580 EX, you can set it to strobe/repeated flash mode (“Multi”)?

This makes the flash fire a number of subsequent pulses, at a certain frequency, at a certain power level.

To activate this mode on a 580EX, Press the MODE button until MULTI appears; then set power level, number of pulses, and frequency in pulses per second.

Which then gives you pictures like this, of my hand dropping a slice of dried banana:

And another version:

Those were taken with the flash set to fire 10 pulses at 50 Hz, each at 1/32nd of full power. The camera was in manual mode.

(You do not even have to meter: look at the back: the flash indicates how far away the subject should be with your chosen flash/aperture and ISO settings!)

Challenge to physics students out there: use this image to estimate the acceleration of gravity, in meters per second squared. Or, if you already know that it is 9.81 meters per second squared, use this to work out the size of the banana)?

This (the flash part, not the physics part!) is among the many subjects I teach at my Advanced workshops, like the David Honl special on Saturday in Toronto., for which I believe there are just a couple of spots left.

Portrait weekend

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One setup at yesterday’s music school shoot was this one:

We did four setups:

  • One traditional “three strobes” setup.
  • One setup with one strobe and a reflector, in a small piano room.
  • One drum room with just an on-camera bounced flash.
  • The above “overflow” three speedlight setup: main light through an umbrella, fill into an umbrella, and a background light.

The first three setups are pretty straightforward. For the last, the question was: TTL or manual?

Yes, you can use the flashes on manual and still use wireless “commander mode” to drive them.

But when you are only going to use a setup for a few shots, it is often just as easy to leave the flashes in TTL mode. Works fine.

But there is one very important thing to keep in mind. TTL measures reflected light. And with a black background, keep in mind that the more background you get onto the image, or the darker your subject is, the higher the exposure will be (the camera’s metering system is dumb: it does not know what your subject is: it sees a darker picture). And vice versa. So you need to compensate for this with flash compensation. When using TTL, be ready to use flash compensation for many shots. If I had set the flashes to manual, and metered, each shot would then have been perfect, independent of the subject or composition.

So why did I use TTL instead of metering? Ease of use. Only a few shots at this setup, so why make it difficult? Sometimes the easy way out is the best way out.

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This weekend I shoot (with a camera, I assure you) music school students.

Like this, from last year:

Music School Shoot

Music School Shoot

With two other photographers, I will make parents happy with great images. To do that, I use (as I thought you would appreciate hearing):

  • Manual camera settings (1/125th, f/8).
  • Manual flash settings; with lights in umbrellas or softboxes.
  • White balance set to Flash (though I shoot RAW).
  • Simple backgrounds if I can.
  • A good zoom lens – 16-35 “L” or 24-70 “L”. Good lenses are costly but they do help in terms of sharpness, among others.
  • A light meter
  • Pocketwizards
  • Standard to slightly wide or sometimes slightly telephoto lenses
  • Personality.

Most images were like this, with a backdrop:

Music School Violinist

Music School Violinist

A grey background gives you some separation whether the subject is light-haired or dark-haired, and separation is very important.

As are catchlights: I am sure you can see them.

And you noticed the rule of thirds being applied. Right?

But do you need all that stuff? No (but “personality”probably helps). The first photo was taken with a simple SLR, zoom lens, and one on-camera flash bounced off the ceiling.

You can make these things complicated, or sometimes you can keep them simple.

Next blog posts will be longer: tonight, however, I need to sleep before packing 500 lbs worth of gear into the car.

Warm up the colour

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When the light is very dull and you want to add some quality, you can add a bit of flash outdoors, I am sure you all do this.

But do you also think about colour?

I often add a gel for a little colour. Like in this image:

A family celebrating their late father, Burlington, 2010

Burlington, 2010: A family celebrating their late father and husband

A half CTO gel (CTO means “colour temperature orange”) allowed me to warm up the light on the family here. I use the Honl Photo speed strap and gels: incredibly easy system that has revolutionized small flash use.

Make sure that if you want the effect in the image above, your white balance is set to “flash”.

TIP: If you use a CTO gel and set the white balance to Tungsten (light bulb), the family would look normal – but now the background would turn blue.

(I probably don’t have to mention it again – David Honl himself is joining me as Guest Star in Toronto on March 19, at the School of Imaging, for a special four-hour “advanced flash” course! Book now – there is still some space).

One is a great number.

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As you know, for a good flash picture you need many flashes. Or at least several.

False.

Sometimes you want to do it the dramatic way. In that case, the number of flashes is not very important; the location of the flash, however, is.

And the worst possible location is “on your camera”.

So you take your single light source off the camera. If you own a Nikon camera, or a Canon 60D – or the Canon 7D I took this picture with in yesterday’s Canon 7D class in Toronto, it’s simple.

  1. Using your camera’s menu, you make its pop-up flash into the “master” (Canon) or “commander” (Nikon).
  2. Ensure that you disable the “master’s” own flash function: it should only fire commands (“Morse code”) at the remote flash (430EX, 580EX, SB600, SB800, SB900, etc) that you are holding in your left hand…
  3. …which you have set to “slave” (Canon)/”remote” (Nikon) mode.
  4. You then ensure that the cell on the slave flash (on the front of a Canon, on the side of a Nikon) can see the command flashes emitted by the master.

A lot of words. What it means is that with just the right camera and a simple single hand-held flash you can create dramatic side-lit images like this, of a student in last night’s Toronto course:

And this, of another student:

Aren’t those great images? They show, I hope, that you can indeed take interesting images with a single flash aimed straight at your subject. As long as that single flash is not positioned on top of your camera.

About the settings. I set the camera in Manual exposure mode, and I made my settings right to create a dark background – i.e. I wanted to basically see only the flash light in the image.That meant 400 ISO, 1/125th second, f/5.6 on my 50mm f/1.2 lens. Razor sharp and dramatic light.

A note. I just want to remind you all that to learn these and many other advanced techniques, you have one chance to learn from me and, all the way from Los Angeles, my special guest star David Honl (the inventor of the great range of Honl Photo modifiers) on March 19, in Toronto. Just click here to book – in one day, just three weeks away, learn how to use flash, the most exciting light. There is still space, but to be assured of a spot, you need to book now. I promise you will be delighted with what you learn.