The Discerning Photographer » Lighting

How to Light Absolutely Anything

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:00:31 +0000

Champagne in the studio. Two lights: an overhead softbox, and a second fill light, lower right. Surface was a sheet of silver foil board, another light surface. (Copyright 2010 / The Times-Picayune, Andrew Boyd

Lighting Does Not Have to Be Hard.

Brian Auer over at Epic Edits asked about lighting tutorials in a post the other day. He’s got his first big studio shoot coming up and wanted to know where to turn for good advice. This got me thinking about how I first learned my way around strobes, so here goes!

This may be the most important post I ever write about lighting. If you follow these instructions, you’ll never again be mystified by strobe light in your photography.

What follows is my basic approach to strobe lighting. I don’t claim any of this to be original: I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks at the Maine Photo Workshops back in the mid-1980s in a Master Class with Michael O’Neil, who really taught me everything I know about studio lighting.

At the time, O’Neil was transitioning from being the premier tabletop and still life photographer in all of New York to being a large format portrait shooter. He had just gotten bored with shooting all of the high-end jewelry and watch ads and wanted a new challenge. A small group of us (about 12, as I recall) were lucky enough to spend 2 weeks in the attic at the Maine Workshops with him, learning how he approached light, and shooting in the studio with light. It was all large format 8×10, big transparencies and lots of really, really expensive 8×10 Polaroid film.

The most fundamental message we all had to learn was very, very simple: start with one light. Take it off the light stand, hold it in your hands. Move it around your subject (whatever that might be), and really, really watch the light on your subject. O’Neil liked to tell us to try and look at the light naively–leave all of your assumptions at the door and really try and see the light, what it was doing as it hit your subject. It might be a hard light, a softbox, whatever, it doesn’t matter. When you like the way the light looks on your subject, grab a light stand and position that light in that spot, where you liked the way it looked. Shoot a frame with your camera. Chimp! Study the result! (This is harder to do without modeling lights, but not impossible. You’ll just have to shoot and chimp even more, experimenting.)

What else does the photo need? Where else would light be interesting? Where else would you like to see light coming from? Now, with the answer to one of these questions in your mind, grab a second light! Position it in the spot you think it might be a nice addition….now shoot another frame! Chimp the shot! Do you like the result? Is it too much light? Not enough? Incorrectly positioned? If it’s too much light, adjust the intensity of your lights, either by dialing down the light (if your strobes allow this adjustment) or by using a piece of gray neutral density gel (which comes in ½ stop, full stop, 2-stop gradations). Once you’ve made the adjustment, shoot another frame! Now chimp the result. What do you think? Are you done? OR DO YOU SEE THE NEED FOR ANOTHER LIGHT? If so, add the third light in….and so on.

This is the key. IT’S VERY, VERY SIMPLE. You shoot, chimp. Shoot, chimp. START WITH ONLY ONE LIGHT. ADJUST THAT ONE LIGHT AS NECESSARY. Now add another light, if needed….and so on till you’ve created the perfect, perfect photo!

Two lights: one big softbox at the front/left; white foamcore fill card at the right, acting as a secondary light source. The key was getting the 'NOLA' on the cuff link to illuminate. (Copyright 2010 / Andrew Boyd)

This is how to build a big, complicated photograph, in the studio, one light at a time.It doesn’t matter whether you’re shooting cars in Detroit, Rolex watches in New York, whatever. It’s intuitive, because you’re always only using the light that you see, that you know is needed. In the end, you may have a big, complicated, complex arrangement of light, but only if that’s what the chimping and the lights and your own creative imagination deem to be the correct solution.

One light at a time. Set up the one light. Shoot. Chimp. Add the next light (if needed). And so on.

This is the way to light. It’s never any more complicated than this. One light at a time!

Simple, but really, really profound! Try this approach and you’ll be amazed at your results. I promise.

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Related articles on the web:

Getting Started with Flash Photography at Camera Dojo

Flashing at High Noon at Pixsylated

Lighting Techniques: Lighting Equipment at YourPhotoTips

Strobe & Blur: How to Harness Motion Blur in Your Photographs

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:45:57 +0000

One of my favorite times of day to shoot is right after dusk, as the light fades. It’s a great time to play with long shutter speeds and a bit of strobe, just to freeze and focus something within your frame. But how do you control these effects? That’s the subject of this post!

As it’s starting to get dark….and then as it actually gets dark—is a great time to do some cool work with your on- or off-camera strobe gear. I like to use mine off-camera most of the time since it gives me more interesting lighting, not coming directly from the camera axis point. So as you start to shoot that outdoor evening parade event, or band, or whatever, slow your camera shutter way down-start at about ¼ second-bump your aperture up to compensate and put some dialed-down strobe into your recipe. Shoot a couple of test shots and take a look to see if you’re even close to what you wanted. Not enough blur? Too much? How’s the overall effect?

This can produce some startling and beautiful results. But one thing you’ll need to do is decide whether to use front or rear curtain sync on your flash.

Front curtain sync is the default setting for a camera/strobe setup: you press the shutter button and the strobe fires. The important point here is that the strobe is firing at the beginning of the exposure. With a long exposure, the exposure begins, the strobe immediately fires, then the rest of the exposure takes place. This can be fine, beautiful even, but will depend upon the movement that you’re shooting. It can also lead to some strange and unwanted blur effects.

For instance, in this example here, my tiki torch subject is moving from right to left in the frame. Using the default setting, my strobe fires at the beginning of the exposure, then the exposure records the continued movement of the torch through the frame. Good exposure, but weird result: how can the flame precede the subject like that? Or is he walking backwards? This is due to the fact that the strobe fired at the beginning of the exposure.

Switching to rear curtain sync will solve this problem for you. As its name implies, now your strobe will fire at the end of the exposure, right before the shutter closes (or more accurately these days, before the electronic signal to the CCD stops.) So now we press the shutter, the exposure begins, records flame blur, than –pop!-records our tiki torch subject. The result is a believable photograph with beautiful motion, located where it should be.

So this is a great technique to learn! Each image will be unique, depending upon your exposure settings, the movement of your subject, and upon your own movement during the exposure. I usually do this type of photo in completely manual mode since I find this easier to make the tweaks necessary in the exposure combination.

On my Canon 580EX strobe, the front and rear curtain sync is located on the strobe itself. With some of the Nikon cameras that I’m familiar with, you control the sync from the camera. You’ll need to check your strobe literature to see how to utilize this feature on your camera equipment.

Good luck and happy shooting!

How to use light balancing gels

DiscerningPhotog — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:52:26 +0000

Once you’ve gotten good at exposure with your portable strobe-both on and off-camera-you’re probably going to start looking at the quality of the light you’re producing. Getting the right color temperature match between your existing natural light and the light you’re adding with your strobe can go a long way towards improving your results.

In order to get this balance, you’re going to need light balancing gels. What gels are these? Well, start by remembering that your strobe is designed to always put out the equivalent of “high noon daylight” strobe light-the color of light in the middle of a bright, sunny day, about 5500 to 6000 degrees Kelvin. How often is that the light you’re trying to match when you shoot? If you’re like me, that’s not very much of the shooting situations I find myself in. Things are always some other color temperature-warmer or colder, or some other funky thing altogether, like maybe fluorescent. What to do? That’s where my basic kit of light balancing gels comes in.

In the flap of my camera bag I keep a wallet with gels cut to fit my portable strobe. The gels all have velcro strips permanently attached to match mating pieces of velcro attached to my strobe. The gels I use the most are made by the Lee company of England, although you could assemble a similar kit with Rosco gel material.

The colors I always keep on hand are:

No Color Straw(#159)-a very pale yellow. Perfect for warming up almost any Caucasian skin. I use this gel color all the time.

C.T. Tungsten(#204)-an amber/orange gel. “C.T.” refers to “Conversion to Tungsten”, and this gel takes you from 5500 degrees down to 3200 degrees, which is a tungsten bulb, similar to interior incandescent light. This gel material also come is 1/4 C.T.(#206), ½ C.T. (#206). All three of these are useful to have on hand.

Fluorescent Conversion(#219)-a greenish gel that roughly matches the wavelength of most fluorescent lighting. Although this is technically a tungsten-to-fluorescent gel, I find it does a great job of cleaning up an imbalance between daylight strobe and a fluorescent background.

Red gel-when I need a reddish cast to a photo, usually as a secondary light source in the background

Blue gel-ditto the red gel. I use this gel a lot, it’s a great background complementary color for a warmish foreground portrait

I buy my gel material from a New York supplier in the Photo District, The Set Shop. When you place your order, as them if they can send you a sampler gel pack, which will have small samples of every Lee gel and a description of what it does, useful for future ordering.

The gel comes in sheets, 21″ x 24″, which is a lot of gel material if you’re just getting set up for portable strobes. If you have a local photography group or club, you might want to go in together and place an order. Either way, the gels are not expensive, currently running $7.50 per sheet. You can place your order over the phone with a credit card and have a tube of gel material at your doorstep in a few days.

Cut your gel up, apply your velcro strips to your strobe and gels pieces, and you’re ready to light balance!

I’m going to explain how I would use this material in a couple of real-life situations.

Let’s say you’re going to be shooting a wedding reception in a room with a lot of incandescent can lighting. If you just use your on-camera strobe (or off-camera with a strobe cord) you’ll have a big discrepancy between your daylight-balanced foreground and your tungsten-balanced background. So, take out your full C.T. gel (conversion to tungsten) and velcro this to the front of your strobe unit. Change your camera’s White Balance setting to tungsten lighting. Now everything matches! Shoot a couple of test images to check. You may find that the ½ C.T. gel actually looks better, depending upon the room lighting.

Now say you’re at a party that’s in a fluorescently-lit reception hall. Again, if you put your strobe on with no gel, your foreground will be daylight and your background will go either a sickly green or green/yellow, depending on the overhead tubes. What to do?

Get out your fluorescent gel material and put it on. Put your camera’s White Balance setting on the fluorescent balance. Shoot a test. You’ll find that the gelled strobe gives you a cleaner overall image with no foreground/background color change.

These are two examples of situations I run into all the time. The gels will dramatically improve your shooting results. Give them a try!

The left photo shows ungelled strobe on the foreground and the camera's White Balance setting set to match on Daylight, with the background going yellow from the ambient fluorescent lighting. The right photo has fluorescent gel over the strobe light and the camera's White Balance setting on fluorescent. Everything in the photo cleans up nicely and the colors are far more accurate throughout the image. (Copyright 2009/Andrew Boyd)

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Understanding Photographic Lighting, Part III (Article Series)

DiscerningPhotog — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:55:51 +0000

Studio Strobes: What to consider, what to buy

Jumping up to studio strobes is a move that most aspiring professional photographers eventually must make. It doesn’t really matter whether your dream is shooting products in a New York studio, running a portrait business or being the team photographer for an NBA basketball team. Having access to studio strobes quickly becomes an issue once you’re shooting for your livelihood.

There are simply too many jobs that you’ll have to pass on if you can’t produce this type of light. What studio strobes give you is this: big, bright, color-corrected light, and lots of it, when and where you need it. Any time you need to light a room of any size you need this lighting. Any time you want to shoot through a big soft box, you need this lighting (products, portraits, etc). Bidding on a job to shoot a promotional campaign for a company? (This could be a multi-doctor medical practice, a law firm, a trucking company, you name it.) You’ll have to be able to handle everything from portraits of the company president to interior photos of their offices to shots inside their production facilities-you get the idea. It’s going to take much more than your camera-mounted portable flash to get this type of job. Studio strobes are the answer.

Picking a lighting system

You should view lighting purchases as investments in your long-term photographic career, maybe even more so than camera purchases. Your lighting needs will remain fairly stable while cameras will continue to change and evolve. So picking a good lighting system is a critical decision.

What to consider

You want to buy a system with enough power. Most of these systems use power packs and separate light heads. I think this is the way to go for your studio lighting system since you can send a light head off for repair and still have a functioning system. By enough power, I think the minimum for the first set you buy would be a power pack with at least 1200 watt seconds of power. More is always better. My big pack is 2400 watt seconds and there have been times I needed 2 or 3 of these to do the job. The heads that go with this type of gear will each be capable of firing the full power pack through a single unit, in my case, 2400 w/s per head.

Picking a system

What system to buy? I use Speedotron Black Line power packs and light units. I like them for several reasons: they’re very sturdy, almost never break, and when they do, they are repaired by Speedotron technicians in Chicago. I’ve never had one really go bad, even though they’ve been banged around for over 20 years. The strobe bulbs and modeling lights are easily available, too. And they’re reasonably priced, as these things go. In addition to the standard heads, they make a quad head unit, very fast recycling times, which is very popular with NBA team shooters that need very fast strobe exposures.

Regardless of which brand you buy, make sure you can get fast service! You may find a good part of your business revolves around these units and when one needs repair, you can’t afford to wait weeks to get it back. (If I were a European shooter, I’d probably try to find a brand made closer to home, for the same servicing considerations.)

Other brands

Other brands I like: well, there’s a lot of this stuff. Two other good brands I like are the Comet and Dynalite flash systems. The Comets are very nicely designed with incremental strobe power adjustment; but pricey; the Dynalite units are small, something to consider if all of your business will be involve travel. When looking at these systems, talk to photographers that own these systems and see what they recommend. Look at your budget, and think about the most power you think you will ever need. Double that amount, and start shopping for your system.

Also

If you think most of your strobe work will involve travel and location lighting, another system that a lot of photographers are using now is the Alien Bees flash system. These are self-contained units but surprisingly affordable, with a 1600w/s self-contained strobe unit available for only $359.95. You might buy three of these units and some light stands and a soft box and you’d be set to go. They also make a DC power pack adapter for this stuff which makes the whole thing useable away from AC power, a big advantage in a lot of situations. (I plan a separate story about battery-powered strobe systems later.)

Buy at least three heads

Whatever brand you settle on, you need to buy at least three heads when you take the plunge. This is the minimum number I would be comfortable having. With three lights you’ll be able to do a lot of interesting and varied lighting, and if one of them breaks, you can limp along with two lights while one is being fixed. But three light heads is the bare minimum for this kit, if you’re serious about this type of work.

Your kit

So to get started under this scenario, you’ll need to buy three light heads and a main power pack. The light heads will come with a standard reflector, probably something around 7 inches, which works with an umbrella. You’ll also want some larger reflectors for these heads, and definitely a couple of grid adapters, whatever your system designs. Grids focus the light more narrowly, an important consideration when you need more of a beam of light. Also, buy at least one extension cable for your strobes, which you’ll use when you need to set a light up further away from your power pack. Get four 8-foot light stands and a shorter stand, and at least one soft box. If you’re buying one, the first one to buy would be a 3ft by 4ft box. I use the Chimera brand of soft boxes but the Westcott boxes are an economical alternative.

Summary

That’s about it. You’ll find that studio strobes open up a whole new world of lighting and photography for you. Shoot, shoot, shoot! Experiment. See where this new direction in your work takes you!–DiscerningPhotog
Related posts:

Understanding Photographic Lighting Part I

Understanding Photographic Lighting Part II

Understanding Photographic Lighting–Part II (Article Series)

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:13:35 +0000

[Editor's note: In Part I we looked at the essential role that light plays in all that we do as photographers. We examined available light, and began a study of the role added light plays in photography in the form of portable strobe. Today we'll explore more about portable strobe and how to use it creatively in your work.]

One of my goals with this post is to convince you that lighting does not have to be complicated or mysterious. Some lighting explanations get so complicated, with diagrams and lighting “setups” that most readers tend to throw their hands up in despair…don’t do that! To learn lighting, start with one light…learn how to use it…then add a second light. Learn how to light with two sources, then start to think: do I need anything else to make this photograph interesting or compelling? Always proceed one light at-a-time, keeping things simple.

Exercise 2: Bounce flash. Does your strobe have a “hinge” that allows you to rotate it up towards the ceiling? If it does, then you’re ready to work on bounce flash technique. There are several considerations with this approach that you’ll need to understand. First, if you have TTL (“through-the-lens”) settings working for you, then bouncing will not affect your camera/strobe’s ability to meter the light hitting the subject and make a decision about when to cut the strobe off for proper exposure. (You’ll have to judge whether the camera/strobe made the correct decision.)

Beyond this basic consideration, how/where you point the strobe for the bounce has a big impact upon your results. Generally for most shooting situations-say, you’re shooting a group of people lined up for you at a party-you’ll want the strobe pointed up but slightly forward of 90 degrees. Also, if your strobe has a built-in white “bounce card,” you’ll want to extend that out before you shoot, or try using my “two finger” bounce technique that I’ve described previously.

Fire away and check your results. How does it look? Is the light more flattering than the straight strobe version? Is the overall exposure correct? Do you need to make adjustments for this approach, either increasing the amount of strobe or slowing down the shutter speed? Understand that what you’re doing with a bounce shot is actually turning the ceiling into the light source, with just a bit of light bouncing off your bounce card or two fingers, to add some light into everyone’s eye sockets in the shot.

Exercise 3: Off-camera portable strobe.

Now we get to the “graduate school” section of this article! For this you’ll need that off-camera strobe cord. Hook it up and connect it to both your strobe and your camera. With this in one hand and your camera in the other, you now have an infinite number of possible “light sources,” since anything you bounce it off of becomes your light source. So instead of just the ceiling, maybe a wall makes a better bounce surface….or does it? Remember that the light will take on the color of the wall, so only neutral colors work well here, unless you find the color cast that results to be pleasing.

You will also discover that pleasing results can be had pointing the strobe right at your subject, but off camera axis and raised up…or if you want an Orson Wells, horror film lighting look, try putting the strobe down low, below your camera, pointed UP at the subject. Eerie, no? The main idea here is to experiment! Try different stuff out. See what works, what you like!

Exercise 4: Adding another light

Once you’re comfortable with using one strobe unit, consider buying a second one with a built-in slave capability. A “slave light” is any light that triggers automatically when it senses another strobe going off. You can get another unit made by the same brand as your main camera and strobe, or you can buy a different brand, it doesn’t matter in this application. There are also some really cool little auxiliary strobe units available. My favorite is the Morris Midi Slave Flash, which runs on two AA batteries and has a tripod socket built in. You can hide this little strobe light almost anywhere and get just the accent light you need in the back corner of your composition.

This is a lot of material to absorb. Get your camera and strobe unit out, and practice! Shoot some photos!

Part III: Studio Strobes: What to consider, what to buy

Understanding Photographic Lighting–Part I

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:04:37 +0000

[Editor's Note]

Light is the essence of all we do as photographers. Everything begins with this most basic of all things photographic: without light, we take no photographs! So thinking seriously about light and the essential role it plays in our lives as photographers is time well spent.In this series of articles, we’ll look at the different types of light you’ll encounter as a shooter and teach you what you need to know to use and control that light.-DiscerningPhotog

AVAILABLE LIGHT

Available light-as in “available light photography.” This is most of the photography that most of us do. It’s pointing your camera at a subject that interests you and snapping a photo, no light added. It’s how we all started shooting, aiming our cameras and firing away.

Pretty soon you looked at those photographs and you weren’t completely satisfied. The colors were maybe not as intense as you recalled them to be, or the exposure was off, or there was blur in the shot that you hadn’t intended. You knew you could do better. Part of getting better involved learning more about how your camera operated so that you could better control that available light. You got better at controlling over and underexposure. You learned how to change depth of field, or use shutter speed selectively to keep action crisp. All of these adjustments involved the available light in front of you. You started to notice how much nicer photos came out that were shot early and late in the day, when the light was warmer. You noticed how different your images came out when you shot on cloudy days. You began to control available light.

ADDITIONAL LIGHT

This is where things begin to get interesting, and maybe more challenging. Once you start adding additional light to a given situation, everything changes. Now the light you add becomes an integral part of the photograph, and your photo’s esthetic success frequently depends upon how well you add this additional light. If you’re interested in portraiture or want to learn how to shoot product (tabletop) photography, you’ll find you need to learn how to add this light in interesting and creative ways.

Portable strobe

This is the first additional light that most of us acquire and use. On-camera flash is where we start with extra lighting and ironically, it’s one of the hardest light sources to use well!

Straight strobe is frequently harsh, ugly, and jarring. Unless that’s the effect you’re looking for, straight strobe may scare you off from learning more about lighting. DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN. I know professional photographers, talented artists, who are scared to death of strobe because they never mastered the basics of portable strobe.

First of all, read and understand the instructions that came with your strobe unit. Is it made by the same manufacturer as your camera? While not required, buying a unit made by the same company assures you of better compatibility between these pieces of equipment. The TTL (through-the-lens) metering between camera and strobe is an important function that you want to have working properly for you. And when you start trying to drag your shutter during strobe exposure, use rear-curtain sync, etc., you’ll be glad these pieces of gear are truly designed to go together. So I recommend buying a strobe made by your camera maker.

While you’re buying this strobe unit, go ahead and buy an off-camera strobe cord for it. You’ll need it when you get to the exercises listed below.

Exercise 1: Straight strobe.

Hook your strobe and camera together and put it on full automatic, TTL mode. Your strobe unit will most likely list camera aperture and shutter speed on its display readout, so you’ll know this is all “talking nice” together. (If your unit does not have a TTL capability, that’s okay, just put it on Auto mode.) Now aim your camera at a willing subject. This works best in an interior setting, preferably with an 8 or 9 foot ceiling. Fire away! Check your LCD display to see the results. Does the shot look natural? Is the strobe light too hot? It detail blown out of the subject? How about the background? Is it now too dark, relative to the subject?

Second photo with the shutter slowed down, aperture opened up, to better illuminate the background. 1/13th @f2.5, ISO 400. The strobe provides a crisp foreground even at the slow shutter speed. (Copyright 2009 / Andrew Boyd)

Now we get into adjustments, and how you decide to proceed. The most frequent problem with this lighting setup will be results that are overlit but properly exposed for the subject with the background going much too dark. To solve this problem, you can try a couple of things. You can slow the shutter speed down (say from 1/250^th/sec to 1/30^th/sec, or even slower, gaining at least 2 stops of exposure for your background). Or you can dial the strobe back while you slow the shutter down some, playing with both of these variables. You have to experiment some and see how this all works with your equipment to come up with the best solution. Your aim is to make your strobe lighting less noticeable as additional lighting, while still providing your photos with the needed illumination. You may be surprised at how much you are able to improve upon your first result while still using straight strobe. Give it a try!

Next: Bounce flash, off-camera strobe and adding extra lights