Portrait Photography: Overcoming Your Fear Of Studio Strobes

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Albert Pedrosa, and I've been shooting with strobes for more than a decade now. I'm a commercial photographer and a teacher, and I love shooting portraits. I'm a Canon Professional, and I do workshops for Canon Digital Academy. I'm also an Adobe-Certified expert. Let me welcome you to my world of portraits. If I'm going to describe the type of photos I'm creating, I would say that my style of portraiture is artistic, conceptual, and editorial. It is very much close to fashion and beauty, but strongly influenced by my imagination. My objective when shooting my style of portraits is to capture the emotions and try to find the mood expressed by form and elegance where elements are in symphony and all expressing deeper thoughts and feelings. Shooting with strobes allows me to do more control over my lighting and gives me the flexibility of creating a mood to express my art. This class is about understanding how to set up a strobe when shooting portraits. Learning how to use strobes is a bit challenging at the beginning, but quickly you will realize it's really not that hard. I will not attempt to make you masters of light in this workshop, but rather to arm you with essential skills to start your journey in shooting with strobes. In this course, we will go through the strobes menu and functions and discuss how to operate them and answer a lot of whys. Our project for this course is to produce portraits using strobes only. We will produce images shot in soft and hard light and we will also produce images following the different lighting set-ups that I will be teaching you. After this class, you should be able to shoot portraits confidently using strobes. Your new found skills should allow you to journey into many creative explorations. Are you ready? Let's start. 2. Course Project: Guys, before we formally start our course, let's talk about our project first. Since the objective is to comfortably and confidently shoot portraits using strobes, after this course, I will be asking you to do a portrait session using a strobe as your only light source. You can use one or two lights for this project. Here's the project instructions. Number 1, shoot indoors, whether in a bedroom or any indoor area inside your house with less ambient light. You can also shoot in other areas as long as there's very limited available light. Number 2, shoot a set where you will use a modifier to produce a soft light. Number 3, shoot another set, but this time using a modifier that would produce a hard light. Number 4, for both the soft light and the hard light output, although this is a lighting workshop, try to compose it properly just the same as you compose it when you're shooting in available light. Number 5, share it in the project's panel so I can guide you based on your submissions. Now that we've got the project out of the way, let's get the ball rolling and I hope you'll enjoy the ride. In the next chapter, I'll try to answer the question, what is a strobe light? See you in the next chapter. 3. What is a Strobe?: Strobe is an artificial source of light where we experience a split of a second burst. Because it's just a fraction of a second, not much energy is needed, though I'll put this strong bright light and it's perfect for photography since we only need that fraction of a second to capture the image, something that is not possible in videography. Because strobes do not need a lot of continuous energy to produce a quick burst of light, it can easily produce high-intensity light in a compact device that you can modify into different forms and quality. You can make it into a soft light using a soft box or a hard drive through the use of a standard reflector bowl, you can make it narrow or wide and position in different angles and directions. There's so much you can do with strobe to create that perfect scene. Even in other situations, using strobes is very much sensible. In a situation where the natural light is not favoring your chosen angle, you can add your strobe light as your main light and you use the natural light as your second light source. One example of a strobe is a speed light, or sometimes called flash. It usually counts power using double A batteries. Speed lights can be mounted on top of your camera or on the light stand. Another example of a strobe is a studio light, sometimes called a monolight. This is the type of strobe that we will be focusing in this course. Monolight usually comes in different power ratings measured in Watts. It can come AC powered or battery packs. One of the notable advantages of an artificial light, such as this strobe, is access to a light source on-demand. Regardless of the condition at the scene, may it be a nighttime or daytime, outdoor or indoor. Since strobe is a versatile and controllable light source where you can use multiple light sources in your shot, you are also controlling the different tonal zones of an image that has contrast, highlights, and shadows. If a strobe is positioned properly, your shot can really be close to what your target results are. If you feel overwhelmed already, don't worry. We will be breaking down each and every basic and essential functions and features of a strobe so we can eliminate the fear factor and focus on our creativity. In the next chapter, we will get down and dirty operating strobes. 4. Wireless Trigger: There was a time that I decided to assist a professional photographer. It was a one time activity and I was just about two years shooting with strobes back then. I was actually visiting another country at the time, and I said that if I wanted to learn more, I need to put myself in a challenging position. The photographer asked me if I knew how to operate an Einstein Paul C. Buff strobe and I said yes. I never told the photographer that I only tried it once, and it was a quick and passing experience. He then handed me a PocketWizard trigger that I haven't tried, and a light meter that looks totally different than mine. He gave me a Lighting Diagram for me to set up, and that I understand. I was not a newbie back then, and two years of shooting was quite a descent experience already at the time. However, I felt like a newbie looking at strobe lights menu and other gadgets that are totally new to me. He gave me 30 minutes to set it up. Miraculously, I was able to set it up on time. I realized that the equipment might be different from what I'm used to, but they all have the same essential settings, probably named differently. The icons might not be the same, but if you understand the basic and essential controls that are found in every strobe device, I'm sure you'll figure it out as well. Our objective in this course is to eliminate that fear of handling and operating strobe lights by explaining to you the basic and essential controls, and their functions. I have multiple brands of strobe lights in my studio that we can compare as to user interface. But note that there are a lot more different models of strobe devices in the market today. Don't worry, no matter how old or high-end the device may be, they all fall in the same basic and essential settings found in every strobe device. I feel like the best way for me to explain how strobe light works is to go back from when I started to use strobe lights for the very first time. I will go through the experience by telling you a story of a fictional portrait photographer named Santiago. Please note that this is fictional. Santiago, like you, wants to upscale his portrait photography and thought about learning strobe lights so he can shoot indoors when the weather is not good or the natural light is not bright enough. He also wants to creatively explore the dramatic and moody lighting to express his art in portraiture. Santiago finally decided to buy a strobe light. He was so excited to try it out. He set it up in his studio garage of his house and invited a friend to pose for him. After assembling and mounting it on the light stand, he sets his camera to shoot in an aperture of 5.6 with a shutter of one over 125 seconds and ISO 400. Perfect. Just when he was about to press the shutter, he realized that his camera needed to sync with a strobe light, and in order to do this, he needs a sync cable or a wireless trigger. Let's pause the story and talk about wireless trigger or remote. As to the sync cable, although it's still the most reliable way of syncing your camera to your lights, only a few use it nowadays since the wireless technology came in. The reason why you want to sync your camera with the strobe, is because a strobe fires within the thousand of a second duration only. Therefore, your camera shutter should be exposing the light produced by the strobe at exactly the same time. Therefore, in order for both the camera and the strobe device to work together, they need to sync. There are many options when buying a wireless trigger. There are those that cost an arm and a leg. There are those that are very cheap and can still do the work. If you'll ask me, it's okay to use the cheap ones when you're starting up, but definitely buy something more reliable when you start getting professional work. Wireless trigger operates using RF or radio frequency. We need two devices to make it work; it needs a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is the device which is mounted in the flash shoe on top of your camera. The second device would be plugged into the sync port of your strobe light as a receiver. The basic idea is to simply connect your camera to the strobe light just like the sync wire does but wirelessly. These devices communicate through a radio frequency. It has the option to communicate in different channels, just like the radio in your car and living room. There are times that the location has some frequency disruption and the performance of your wireless trigger will become intermittent. By changing the channels, you can resolve the issue. Some triggers have four channels to choose from. There are those that have 32 channel options. Aside from channels, there's also groupings. You can organize multiple light setups by assigning a strobe light to a particular group. This will allow you to have more control over your individual strobes when you're lighting setup starts to become more complicated. Let me show you some of the triggers that I have in the studio just for you to relate the differences between brands and models of triggers when setting them up. Remember, they may not look the same and probably labeled differently, but surely, they will have the same essential features. This is a Yongnuo RF-603C wireless trigger. It's the cheapest wireless trigger you can buy. I'm not sure if it's still available since I had them eight years ago, but I'm sure there are still similar triggers like this in the market today. I haven't used them for many years. I hope it still works. I bought this for about 25 US for a pair. Each unit is a transceiver, it's auto sensing and can act as a transmitter or a receiver at the same time. It runs on dual triple A batteries, and just beneath the batteries is the channel settings. Just make sure that it looks the same as the one found in the receiver side. This type of device is not capable of group settings. Very straightforward and it works. How do you operate this? You need to attach one of them on top of your camera or the flash shoe is and it will act as a transmitter. For your receiver, you need to attach a sync cable to the sync port, and the other end of the cable, plug it into the strobe's sync port. In this demo, I'm using my old and battle tested Phottix PPL-400 strobe. Let's turn on the strobe and try to see if it works. There you go, it works. This is a PocketWizard trigger. It's a very popular brand and very reliable. It's also very expensive. I have four of these and I paid 125 US for each. I upgraded to a more expensive and reliable wireless trigger because I almost lost a client using a cheap trigger that did not work when I badly needed it to work. My advice is, use a professional device for professional work. PocketWizards are powered by two double A batteries. This trigger is also a transceiver. In the Mode section, you can set it to just be a transmitter or a receiver or automatic sensing as transmitter or receiver. It even has a long-range feature and can also act as a repeater if you want to trigger your camera or your strobe from about 50 meters away. PocketWizard can let you choose up to 32 different channels to make sure you have enough options when finding an undisrupted frequency. You just want to make sure that the transmitter and the receiver is on the same channel when using it. To manage and assign a group, just press A, B, C or D buttons to turn it on and off. It's also shown in the LCD display. To operate, just mount your transmitter to the flash shoe on top of your camera, and on the receiver side, attach a cable to the sync port of the device, and on the other end of the cable, attach it to the sync port of the strobe device. Again, make sure that both triggers; the transmitter and the receiver have the same channel and group. Let's turn on the strobe, and let's try if it works. There you go. The next trigger in the studio is Odin II. Odin II was made by Phottix light system. This is not a transceiver, it's a transmitter only. Why? Because all strobe devices under their system, except for the old models have an internal receiver. No need to attach a receiver trigger anymore. Just like the other triggers, it has a channel options. You can also choose to turn on and off each group, and you can also control up to five Phottix devices independently with this transmitter. To operate it, again, transmitter on the flash shoe of the camera. The strobe we are using here is an Indra500 by Phottix. With this strobe, we don't need a receiver because it's built-in. To set it to work with the transmitter, just look for the RX in the menu and set it to receive a signal from Odin II. The best part about the Odin transmitter and Phottix strobe is you can control all the settings in your strobe remotely in your transmitter. You don't have to go to the device and make adjustments. There you go. Lets try it. It works. The Phottix Indra500 can also be triggered by a regular wireless trigger since it also has a sync port found over here, just set the RX2 off so it won't use the external wireless trigger. Wireless triggers, even if they are made compatible to a specific brand or a generic type of device that can work with all brands, will always have the same essential settings. All you have to do is find it. Just make sure that both devices; the transmitter and the receiver are set to the same channel and group when operating it. Let's talk about the other essential functions of a strobe in the next Chapter. Let's find out what happened to Santiago after syncing his camera to his strobe. 5. Power Settings: Let's continue with the story of Santiago. Santiago is now happy and excited because his camera is now in sync with his strobe. He tested different lighting position as his friend patiently pose for him. After a few shots, Santiago realized that the results are heavily overexposed. The images look very bright. Because he has been shooting with natural light, his instinct tells him to adjust its camera settings to control the light coming in. However, he also wonders if it's the right thing to do or should he adjust the intensity of the light from the strobe device itself. More importantly, how to adjust the power of the strobe. Let's pause the story again and try to help out Santiago. If you're used to shooting outdoors, your first instinct is to adjust your camera settings. That's because you have no Godly powers to adjust the sun. Good thing when shooting with strobes, you can adjust the power of the intensity of the light. To do this, you have to find the power settings in your device. Some strobes percent their intensity settings through fraction. One over one would mean full power while one over two or one half is 50 percent of the power. One over four means one fourth of the power, and so on until you reach one over 128, which is equivalent to less than one percent of the full power of the strobe. Every time we divide the power into two it's called one full stop. So between one over one to one-half is one full stop and so as one half to one fourth is a one full stop and so on. Often you are given three steps to move between stops. This is helpful when you need to make final adjustments to your light intensity. Others strobe devices might present their power settings through steps. In the case of Elinchrom Ranger, the range is between 1.5-7.5 where the 7.5 is the highest power. Between 1.5-2.5 is one full stop. But what makes this device more accurate is the ability to have 10 steps in-between stops. Unlike in other strobes, you only get three steps. Every strobe is rated based on its full power, which is measured in wattage. A typical strobe would be 300 watts, but some strobe can go as high as 2400 watts. When you work and adjust your power settings know that there's this, what we call a recycle time and power dumping. Recycle time is the amount of time needed to get the strobe ready for the next firing. When you're shooting in higher power settings, the device might meet a couple of seconds to fill in the capacitor with enough power to fire the next burst. Some expensive strobes can go less than a second to recycle at full power. Power dumping is a part of the protocol when you're adjusting your light from high to lower power settings. The idea is to release the stored power in the capacitor before firing it again. When power dumping is not performed, it can be confusing for the photographer when evaluating the results with the adjustments because the same intensity will be fired by the strobe. The way to dump the power is simply as firing a light test which can easily be found in your strobe head or in your wireless trigger. Some modern strobe devices can handle this for you. It's called auto-power dumping. Not all devices though have this feature, so sometimes it's still best to do light test to dump the pre-loaded power, just to make sure. In the next chapter, we will find out what other challenges Santiago will be facing as he tries to explore more about the strobe. 6. Slave Mode, Modeling Lights and Camera Settings: The situation with Santiago is starting to get exciting. He can now control the light intensity with ease. Suddenly it's a different creative environment which is totally different than his experience shooting available light. He then now thought about adding more lights to his set up to control the shadows and add some highlights to the subject. After setting up his second light, he quickly realized that he only had one set of triggers. The big question is how to sync the second strobe with the first one. Let's pause the story again. I hope Santiago can wait as we explain this part. While having another wireless receiver would be a good solution to Santiago's problem, there's another way of doing it. There's a mode in every strobe that you can set to. This mode is called the slave mode. This means that the second strobe set to slave mode, will fire when another strobe fires. When you set the second strobe to slave, the optical sensor is activated and will wait for a sudden burst of light from another strobe, and as soon as it senses it, immediately, it will also fire. You might think that there will be a delay since it will only fire after the first strobe fires. You're actually correct. There's a delay, but since the delay is just a thousandth of a second, it shouldn't matter. Remember, in your physics class, light travels very fast. There are times when a strobe device set to slave mode will not work. Often, this situation happens when the optical sensor of the device is not picking up any sudden burst of strobe. One of the reason could be that the main strobe device might be too far from the other strobe, and that the light is not reaching it. Another reason could be that the main strobe device light is modified by a grid that limits its light to a particular direction only, and again, not reaching the other strobe. Either way, the optical sensor is not getting any amount of strobe to trigger it. It can be either one of any reasons but know that you can always sync it with another wireless receiver set to the same channel to trigger the other strobe device, so having two or more receivers would be handy in these situations. Before we head back to Santiago, let me talk to you about some other essential features of a strobe device. This feature is called modeling light. The purpose of a modeling light is to simulate the light direction. It will help you get a glimpse of how the light will fall into the elements inside the frame. Knowing where the shadows would fall will greatly help you decide on where to position your light source. You might think about modeling light as a source of light that you can use in your shots. You can actually use it, but it's too weak to light the scene, especially if you're shooting at smaller openings like apertures f/5.6 or f/8. Since I mentioned about apertures, allow me to give you a quick discussion about camera settings when shooting with strobes. I will only cover basics since this topic requires a whole other course to properly discuss it all. Anyway, when shooting with strobes, you need to make sure that your shutter speed is not set to more than one over two hundredth of a second. Otherwise you'll get dark horizontal bars in your image. The aperture on the other hand has no hard rules. You can set it to any settings you'd like and it will directly affect the exposure. The aperture is recommended though to be set at round f/5.6 or f/8, since in these settings, less to none ambient lights are able to pass through the lens, and only a stronger light, such as a strobe, will be able to go through a small opening. When shooting with strobes, it's all about controls. As much as possible, you don't want any light to come in that is not controllable. In the next chapter, we're going to talk about light modifiers, light stands, and grips. I'm sure Santiago is going to ask about these topics. See you in the next chapter. 7. Light Modifiers, Stands and Grips: Now that's Santiago is full on playing with this light setups and very much comfortable controlling his strobes, and is feeling excited, and what else can he do with this new-found interest, he wondered if he could modify the quality of light coming from the strobes. Can he make it soft light like in the late afternoon sun, or hard light like in the middle of the day? Santiago is definitely pushing the boundaries of this new-found interest. Hold on, Santiago. Let me explain about light modifiers. As a lights guy, I'm crazy about controlling and exploring lights. I try to understand the characteristics and the behavior of how the lights react, and being molded through the different modifiers. A strobe is a simple light source that is raw, and would definitely need modifications. You can turn the strobe light into different light qualities such as soft or hard, directional and wide. You can bounce it through a reflective surface, or just plain white surface. There's so much you can do with a strobe light. When modifying lights, the idea is to produce an image based on your concept, and the light modifiers are your tools in shaping the light to mimic that image that you have in your imagination. Choosing the type of light modifier is really very much dependent on the output that you want to produce. Before we start introducing the different light modifiers, let's talk about mounts first. Many brands carry their own mount designs. The most popular ones are the Bowens Mount. It's important to know this because there are many light modifiers options that you can buy in the market out there. You want to make sure that the mount of modifiers you're buying fits the type of stroke that you have. Quickly, let's define hard light and soft light. A soft light gives you a smooth transition of light from highlight the shadow. The hard light on the other hand, presents a harder transition. The related been shooting natural lights, you would experience hard light outdoors during clear skies in the middle of the day. While in afternoon or cloudy overcast sky will give you a soft light. Let's start with a softbox. Softbox comes in many sizes and shapes. There's a large, medium, small, rectangular, strip, and many more. The rules is the bigger the light source relative to the subject, the softer the light becomes. A softbox slide modifier creates extra soft light because of the two baffles or diffuser that the light passes through before it gets out of the box. The first baffle found inside the softbox is the first layer of baffles that spread the light, and reduce the concentration of light in the middle where the light source is. The second baffle is the one you see outside the softbox and spreads the light further towards the edge of the softbox. The light then bounces around the reflective wall inside the softbox and goes through the baffles, and comes out as a big soft light. Of course, that depends on how big your softbox is. You can add the fabric grid to the softbox to control the amount of light spilling towards the side of the modifier. Using a grid, it makes the light more narrow in terms of volume, and not spill on the sides. When mounting a softbox, usually there's a slip with the Velcro on the sides near the mounting plate, that you can open to hold the softbox properly during mounting. Once mounted, there's a lock screw that you can release or lock to allow and prevent the softbox from rotating. The next modifier is the standard reflector bowl. Often this modifier comes free when buying a strobes' device. The output of this type of reflector is hard. There is no diffusion and it's relatively small. Another characteristic of this type of modifier is it amplifies the intensity of the light source by concentrating all the light coming out of the strobe towards the direction the device is facing. You can also add a honeycomb or grid to this modifier. Again, the purpose of the grid is to narrow the volume of light, and that spill to the sites. This is a beauty dish. It's a bit of a tricky modifier. I never really understood this modifier until some years of using it. The idea of bouncing the light towards the center plate and bouncing it back again towards the bowl is what makes it tricky. What you'll get is a bit of a soft light because of its double bounce, and a lot of light fall-off happening during that process. It's also a bit of a hard because of its size and the hard reflection of the reflected liner of the bowl. In the end, you'll get details of the skin and some soft tones to even out the skin complexion. If it's not that complicated enough, then you love this modifier. I myself, cannot live without it in my studio. I know it takes some getting used to before you become friends with this modifier. Often, this is used for beauty types of shots. Next is the umbrella. The light is somehow very similar to a beauty dish but a bit softer. It depends on the size and the additional baffle that you can attach to it. Positioning the light closer or farther from the bottom of the umbrella changes its light quality. This modifier is a lot easier to carry around than the beauty dish, because you can fold it into a typical umbrella. There's really a lot to talk about modifiers, and I can talk straight for a day or weeks about it, and I'd still won't be able to cover all of it. Right now, what's important is to start understanding the basic ones, and move on to other types as you keep on shooting. When mounting large and heavy modifiers, I would normally suggest mounting it downwards. Position the strobe facing upwards and slowly move the modifier downward towards the strobe. Make sure that you hear a clicking sound, or check your modifier if it's in place, and not loose before you position the strobe to its desired angle. When setting up light stands, make sure that the legs are spreading to its fullest length. This will offer better stability, especially when a heavy modifier is attach to the strobe head. When mounting the strobe head to the light stand, you want to make sure that the stud or the pin is fully inserted before tightly locking the knob. Always double-check. When adjusting light stands, always consider the weight of the equipment mounted on top. Absolutely, never release any friction knob or angle lock without supporting the weight with your other hand, or asking somebody to support it if it's too heavy for you to hold yourself. Generally, you also don't want to tighten any knob so much that it will already damage the threads. Most of the fear when working with strobe is the idea of everything falling apart. I'm not going to tell you that it's not true, because it is true. You need to make sure that everything is in place and stable when setting them up. You need to be a bit paranoid in making sure, and double-checking the setup before you start shooting. Now back to Santiago. He is now busy spending a lot of time experimenting with the slides. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to Santiago. Sure he will be spending a lot of time experimenting and creating more beautiful portraits with this new-found skills in working with strobes. Goodbye, Santiago, and keep on shooting. The next chapter is going to be exciting. I'll be discussing an easy and basic lighting set up for you to try out. I'm even going to show you a behind the scenes shoot where I will explain to you what I'm doing. See you in the next chapter. 8. Light Setup: Hi, in this Chapter, I'll give you a front row seat on how I do my shoot. In this parted session, I will show you basic and easy lighting setups for you to try it out. I'll be watching it together with you and explain what I'm doing in the video. Ready? Let's go. Before we start shooting, I would like to emphasize that when shooting your subjects, you need to set the mood right at the beginning. The energy you set when you welcome your subject and exchange of pleasantry is very important and will very much affect your shoot for that day. A simple question asking them how they are and how was their trip coming to the studio or maybe offering coffee or water when they arrive will go a long way. Spend a good few minutes establishing your rapport. This will start to open a connection and a line of communication which you will definitely need later. Hi guys. Welcome to my workshop. I am here with the beautiful Hanna. I've been working with her for a long time already. She's been a good friend, she's a good friend already. She's going to help me for my workshop today. Thank you Hanna for doing this. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much. She's a professional model and she's been modeling for quite some time. I'm going to ask her how long was that, but I'm not sure if she's going to answer it. Please Hanna, please introduce yourself to our viewers. Hi guys. My name is Hanna. As my really good friend, Albert Sighn, I've been modeling for quite some time now. Professionally, I've been doing it for five years. Currently I live and work in the Philippines, I'm a freelance models. You guys can follow me. My IG is @hannaweiser. You can follow me on IG and on Facebook, it's Hanna Weiser as well. What nationality are you? I'm Brazilian. Cool. So there you go guys. We're going to be spending time taking her photos and teaching you at the same time. Cool. Cool. Ready? Let's work. Let's go. In this shoot, I did Hanna's makeup. I don't normally do my subjects makeup, but at times I do. I went through a formal makeup class so I can do a decent makeup, but not as good as experienced makeup artist. In this shoot, we won't be doing high fashion difficult makeup, so I decided to just do it myself. I've worked with Hanna before and I know that she has deep set eyes and strong cheeks. So even if you position your light a bit straight to her face, her facial structure would create enough shadows to break dimensionality. Forcing a lot of shadows in Hanna's face will amplify her features to the point that it wouldn't compliment her and more. Lighting is just one part of photography. There's more to that, but we need to learn them as we keep on shooting. You will also notice that I'm tethering my camera to my laptop. I do this as my standard set up so I can get a better display in terms of color accuracy and better judgment in terms of output since I get to see the image in a bigger display. Also, I can apply minor color adjustments and it will apply to the image on the fly. Tripod is another important equipment in the setup. By resting the hammer in the tripod, I can move around and focus on setting up my lights and other stuff. My hands are free and I can do all other stuff. In this lighting setup, I'm doing one light with a soft box modifier. There's no hard rule as to the best position of the light source. You need to study the results and test it in different angles, making small adjustments until you are satisfied with the output. One light works perfectly fine, but make sure to explore different lighting positions so you'll have more images to choose from when sorting out your shots later. The second setup is a two-light setup where the second light source is used as a fill light. The main light is still in a position, lighting majority of the face, and the second light fills up the shadows just by a bit. By adjusting the power intensity in the second light, you can decide how much shadows you want to remove or retain. The third setup is still a two-light setup but I use the second light source as a hair light. This setup will separate the subject from the background, especially if the background is mid gray to dark. It also adds depth to the entire image. The fourth setup is still a two light setup positioned side-by-side where both light sources will act as a main light. Depending on the subject's position and where she's facing, one of the lights will act as the main light respectively. In this setup, I also asked Hanna to give me poses more on the sides and not facing straight to the camera. The last setup is back to one light, but this time, I used a beauty dish. We should expect harder and stronger details, but still get a smooth tones. Again, find the right angle, both sideways and angle of height. There you go guys. I hope this behind the scene answered some questions you had in mind and inspired you at the same time to do it yourself and explore more shooting portraits using strobe. 9. Summary: If you've reached this part of this course, then it's already an achievement. I'm sure that there's going to be some exciting shoots coming ahead for you. I should try to explore the world of strobe lights and combine it with your skills in natural lights. Note that, when working with strobes, there will always be a problem that will arise and they need to be solved in order for you to get the right lighting that you expected of the set. Familiarity and experience will play a big role in solving these problems. As cliche as it says, practice makes perfect. No matter what type of portraits you're shooting, the basics of lighting are always the same. The characteristics of light will never change. It's just a matter of relating to our everyday life and experiences. Before we go, here are some common mistakes when shooting with strobes. Number 1, wireless trigger not set to the same channel and group as with the other. In this case, the light is not firing, it means that either the transmitter or the receiver is not set to the same channel and group. Number 2, shutter speed set to more than the flash sync, which is 1 over 200. You cannot set your camera to more than 200. It should be 1 over 200 and below. Otherwise, you'll get those darkening on the side of the frame. Number 3, when shooting with multiple strobes, some lights are not triggered. There are many reasons why it's not triggering. It could either be the batteries died already on the receiver or the trigger, or sometimes maybe if it's set to sleep, maybe the other strobe is not receiving any signal from the other strobe. Sometimes this happens a lot and you won't notice that one of the light is not firing anymore, and you will only realize after shooting maybe 50 shots. Number 4, light reflections in the eye wear. Sometimes we don't notice this immediately as the big soft box or the big umbrella will reflect on their subject's eye wear. Number 5, people forgetting that the set is an accident-prone area. A lot of things can happen in the set, somebody tripping over the legs of the light stand, or the tripod legs, or some cables, you might trip on it. A lot of things can really happen in the set, so being careful and putting safety as a priority when setting up your studio is very important. I hope that I have imparted enough knowledge for you to start shooting with strobes. I am excited to see your work in the project's panel. The learning never really stops. Even me at this stage I'm still learning so much. See you soon in my other courses, and keep on shooting everyone.