Before you use the studio strobes–See the light first

Nikon D4, 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 5000, ƒ/1.8, 1/250

Today was the first class of lighting I was teaching to the School of Photography at the University of Nations located in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. I asked one of the students to be my model.

Bethany is helping me as the model for the first assignment on Rembrandt lighting using just one light with a 10º grid on the Alienbees studio strobe.

The top photo here is the first photo I took showing what the fluorescent room light looked like before we used lights.

Nikon D4, 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 12800, ƒ/1.8, 1/250

The first thing I did was turn all the lights off in the room except for the modeling light that is on the Alienbees with a 10º grid on it. Rather than jumping into shooting with the strobes I showed the class you can see what you are going to get with the strobes using the modeling light.

Here you can see the triangle on the cheek which is the classic Rembrandt lighting with a little twist of me not shooting her looking straight on but slightly behind her.

To see the rest of the assignment you can go to an older post that walks you through the Rembrandt light exercise. here is that link

You need to see what you are trying to create first before using flash.

What is TTL Flash and do I need it?

In my last blog post I explained there are three things that affect the exposure when using flash.

• Flash Power—How bright the flash is will influence if the picture is over, under or properly exposed. You can control the Neewer flash from 1/128 to full power in 1/3 stop increments.
• ƒ-stop/Aperture—You control how much of the light is coming into your camera by the camera iris called the aperture. These are fractions. The focal length of the lens over how wide the opening of the lens is. 
• Flash Distance to Subject—The closer you put the flash to the subject the brighter the subject and the further away you put is the darker it gets. This is assuming your Flash Power and ƒ-stop are constant. 

TTL—Through The Lens

TTL metering has been around for a while with cameras. Your camera helps make the proper exposure settings based on what light hits the sensor of the camera. The TTL flash is a very sophisticated flash system, which sends out a flash that tells the camera what to set the camera and then the flash fires again taking the photo at those settings. This happens so fast that to the human eye it looks like one flash went off.

The most accurate way to take a reading for any photo is using an incident meter. This is where you put the meter where the subject is located and take a reading of the light falling onto the subject. The white dome needs to be where the subject is to get an accurate reading. 

Most of the incident meters have a available light setting and flash setting where you can measure the light. 

TTL metering is a reflective reading. You are reading the light that is reflected off the subject. If you take a reflective reading of a White Wall, a 18% Gray Wall and a Black Wall all three photos will look like an 18% Gray Wall.

If you use the settings you get from the incident reading meter for all three walls then they will look like they should.

TTL Metering has a variable

As you can see the TTL metering system has one major disadvantage of using a reflective reading to set the aperture, shutter and ISO on your camera—the color and tone of the subject will influence the exposure and white balance whereas the incident reading is consistent.

Incident vs Reflective

As long as the situation allows you to use incident metering you will get the most consistent results. However, there are situations where this is impractical.

At parties where you are moving around the room getting a incident reading and then taking a photo may be impractical to get the "moment." This is where a flash with TTL can get you really close on exposure and white balance. You may have to check the LCD for histogram and make an adjustment to the EV of the camera and/or EV of the flash. This often is much more practical than incident reading.

When the subject is moving toward you quickly like a person on a red carpet walking towards you the TTL will adjust pretty quickly. If you are shooting RAW you most likely be close enough to fix in post if necessary.

Most seasoned pros have both TTL flashes, which are hot shoe flashes and some studio strobes that are not TTL. Most pros will have a incident flash meter to make the adjustments to the lights and camera.

If you just do portraits in a studio setting TTL flash isn't necessary, but if you shoot situations that are pretty fluid then the TTL system can help you get photos that may be impossible without them.

Great Photos Often Start With Dramatic Subjects

Fuji X-E2, XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/5, 1/105

How can you go wrong with a fire eating subject? Well if you miss the exposure maybe, but if you get a well exposed photo of something average and then something more dramatic you get the idea of why start with a more interesting subject.

Fuji X-E2, XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/5, 1/140

Look for things like this Luau in Kona, Hawaii for example.

Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 640, ƒ/4.5, 1/100

For this Fire Knife dance I photographed him at Truett's Luau in Fayetteville, GA.  So, you don't always have to go to Hawaii to get your photo.

Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 640, ƒ/5.3, 1/3200

Now later I photographed the same guy the following day, but this was outside in the sunlight. This should help you see how much a location and lighting can help a situation or not at all.

Personally I think to make your photos better, don't light everything. This is why when they turned off all the stage lights and let the fire dancer be center stage that the photo is more dramatic than in the bright sunlight.

Without flash. Photo by Clara Kwon

With off camera flash. Photo by Clara Kwon

In these two photos you can see how Clara Kwon had no flash and then by adding flash helped to make the subject "pop." She is not lighting everything and the rest of the scene is slightly darker which helps the subject stand out.

Remember to pick interesting subjects and try your best to put them in the best light.

Nikon D4, 14-24mm, ISO 200, ƒ/22, 1/13 with two Alienbees B1600 with CTO being triggered by Pocketwizards

Student's work from the YWAM School of Photography 1 2014

Photo by Clara Kwon

These are examples of the students work from this past week on lighting that I taught in the School of Photography 1 which is part of Youth With A Mission's University of the Nations campus in Kona, Hawaii.

This was the first time for most everyone in the class to use studio strobes.

Without flash -- Photo by Andrea Klaussner

With flash -- Photo by Andrea Klaussner

They learned how to use off camera flash on location. The assignment required them to hand in one photo without a flash and one with it. Some of the students photos looked better without a flash and sometimes there are times you don't need a flash they found out.

 Without flash -- Photo by Lizz Busby

With flash -- Photo by Lizz Busby

The bread and butter assignment for a photographer is the environmental portrait. Being able to take a poor lighting situation and improving it was the purpose of the assignment as well as to know how to make it.

The students took a baseline photo without a flash and below the sync speed for their camera. Then they made a flash reading setting the strobe to be one stop greater than the aperture reading without the flash. They then only changed the aperture to the one stop great aperture that the flash is set. They were also encouraged to see if more power from the flash was better for the photo.

1:3 Lighting Ratio Assignment

You can see the assignment the students were given here in an earlier blog post. Basically they needed to have the main light [key] at 45º from the camera, with the model looking straight into the camera. We did this to help them see the shadow across the nose. They then had a fill light one stop less than the main light.

They could use different backgrounds from White, Gray or color.

Photo by Debbie Smit

Photo by Erik Wuesthoff

Photo by Keziah Khoo

Photo by Lizz Busby

Photo by Oo Shinoda

Photo by Melissa Kelsey

I think the students all did a great job and in less than a week each person had a potential of a couple of photos to add to their portfolios.

Sports Photography: High Speed Flash vs No Flash

Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 12,800,  ƒ/5.6, 1/400 -- Flashes used (4) Alienbees B1600 with  11" long throw reflectors with PocketWizard Plus II receivers and being triggered by the PocketWizard Mini TT1.

High Speed Flash vs No Flash

In the photo above I used a flash with an output just about the same output as the existing light.

This is the histogram for the above photo.

Nikon D4, 120-300mm, ISO 11,400,  ƒ/2.8, 1/1000

Here is another photo where strobes were not used. I had to change to a faster lens and used a faster shutter speed.

This is the histogram for the second photo.  There are two things I notice that are different.  First of all the shadows in the available light photo have less information as compared to the photo using flash. Second the entire dynamic range appears greater with the flash, which results in less noise in the photo.

ISO 25,600

I wanted to just see what the Nikon D4 looked like at 25,600 without strobes.  Here is that result.  I am showing the same player so there is little variation as possible except for ISO.

Nikon D4, 120-300mm, ISO 25,600,  ƒ/4, 1/1250

Here is the histogram for ISO 25,600

Color Temperature

The ability of a camera to reproduce color accurately depends a great deal upon the color space with which the object is photographed.  The dynamic range of color is the greatest with Daylight or 5500º Kelvin. As you move away from this color temperature to the sodium vapor lights in this gym that are 3700º Kelvin and then must add 27+ magenta to color correct this to get a neutral grey the color space actually shrinks.  The dynamic range is less.

For the most accurate color if we had used only the strobes and no ambient light at all the color would have been the most accurate. Also, I could not have bounced the flashes off the ceiling, but would have to point them straight at the volleyball players. You see the flash that is bounced will have a color shift of whatever it bounces off. If the ceiling was red then there would be a red tent to the light.

Setup

Here is a photo of one of the four Alienbees B1600 with the 11" long throw reflectors. You can also see the PocketWizard Plus II used to trigger the flash. I dialed down the flash output to 1/8 power. Again with todays full framed high ISO camera chips the results are quite acceptable and the flash is less disturbing to those in the room.

This is a wider shot of the room where you can see the results of all four strobes going off.

This is the histogram for the overall shot above.

Here is that same angle with no flashes.

This is the histogram for the available light photo.

One last comparison

Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 12,800,  ƒ/5.6, 1/400 -- Flashes used 

Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 12,800,  ƒ/5.6, 1/400 -- No Flash

High Speed Flash Sync

You may have noticed that the flash shots were done with studio strobes and syncing faster than the 1/250 sync speed for the Nikon D4.  How did I do that?

Here is an explanation from the PocketWizard website.

PocketWizard’s HyperSync™ feature throws x-sync out the window, allowing never before possible shutter speeds with full power flash – any full power flash.  With some camera and flash combinations even 1/8000th second is possible.   (Alienbees with the Nikon would only sync up to 1/400)

HyperSync is simply the ControlTL® system’s unique ability to adjust the timing of the flash burst so that you can use as much of the light output as possible as the shutter opening passes over your sensor.  With the systems “through-the-shoe” communication, a ControlTL transmitter with HyperSync can automatically detect the camera type connected to it as well as the shutter speed. Read more ...

Lighting a conference room

When the ISO needs to stay low I will often light a conference room. A few years ago I owned the Nikon D2X camera.  This camera most people felt comfortable shooting up to ISO 800 with little noise, but above that was a concern.

While I could have shot these photos with the room light, there are a few things you would have to take into consideration. First of all mixed lighting. While the lights in the room with fluorescent, the room also had a large window where some daylight was spilling in.

For me the easiest solution was to over power the room lights just a little and clean up the color.

I put the lights down to 1/8 power to insure they would all fire. I didn't want to put a radio remote on every light. So I have a PocketWizard Plus II receiver on one light while I am triggering it with the PocketWizard Plus II transmitter. If I put the lights all the way to the lowest setting sometimes they do not always fire.

I was pleased overall with the results.  Good skins tones and colors throughout the photo. This was important because I wanted to show the diversity in the classroom, and if not careful some of the people would of been just a silhouette rather than seeing the skin tones that we do here.

Lighting African American on black background

This is one of my favorite photos that I have ever made. I think the model brought as much to this session as I did lighting her.

I love her hair, the turtle neck and her wonderful skin and smile.

Simplicity is what makes this work so well.  You need to have the background far away from the soft boxes.  There is easily 10 feet from the model to the background.  So the amount of light hitting the subject drops off pretty quickly and what little light is hitting the background isn't enough to register in the photo.

She is around f/8 on the Mamiya RZ 6x7 camera system. I was using a 100-200mm zoom lens and shooting with Provia 100 transparency film.  I didn't know how good it was until I got the film back from the lab a day or so later.

Sure I shot a test shot. I shot that with a Polaroid back using Fuji's Polaroid film.

Lighting a science lab

I love shooting in science labs.  I enjoy learning what the scientists and engineers are working on and creating that will impact our lives in the years ahead.

Here I used two color gels to help communicated "science." I used blue on the background and red on the foreground.

To get a gel to be the same color it is in the shot it needs to to -2 stops darker than the main light on the subject.  So here the main is f/11 and the background blue is metering at f/5.6.  The same for the foreground red at f/5.6.

You will notice the power for the blue is full power.  The reason for this is the blue gel absorbs more of the light than red does.

The main light is a 30º grid on a monobloc. This is the keep the light from spilling over onto the red or blue and watering down the light.

Shaping the light is how you light metal

Just throwing light on a metal object 

This is what you see a lot of on ebay and other websites of people selling metal objects. My examples are using my Yamaha YTR-734 Silver Trumpet, which I pulled out and started playing again.

After cleaning it up I didn't want to waste not preserving this for myself.

You would think just putting a metal object like this Silver Trumpet on a blue background and using two off the camera flashes at 45º angles (like copy stand) would give you perfect light. This is how this is lighted.

Here is the setup for the photo above.

I have two hotshoe Nikon Speedlights (1 SB900 & 1 SB800) lighting the trumpet. They are setup like a typical copy stand photo shoot. Works great for objects other than metal. Perfect for copying flat art work and books.

This is the same photo as above with just the room light and no flash.

This is the available light without the blue background

By removing the blue fabric the white table wrap the light around the metal and give it more shape.

Two flashes

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My recommendation is Tent Lighting

Here I am using tent lighting. I pulled back the front panel so you could see inside.

When you wrap an object with light all around it you get much better results.

There are four flashes lighting this setup. Two Alienbees B1600 up in the ceiling pointing towards the back and two on umbrellas as you see here.

This is the setup with white seamless background.

I think you might do a better job of selling this trumpet on ebay with lighting like this than the light above.

Notice how in the bell the blue fabric is reflected. if you look really close you will see just a little black spec. This is the camera peaking thought the front panel.

Here the only difference in the above photo is using a blue fabric.

Somewhere in between?

Maybe you want something in between the top photo and light wrapped all around the object. Instead of tent lighting just use white foam board and cut it into different shapes. You can then put a black sheet out of the photo but blocking light. Then just place the strips of white foam board to place you want to add white verses the black. Slowly you can give different looks. Use different color foam board and you can add color to the reflections like the blue fabric is doing here, but just put it outside the view of the camera but in the reflection of the metal.

Rather than me showing you everything, go photograph something yourself and see what you come up with.