The Ultimate Guide To Using Off-Camera Flash Part I: Indoor Photo Sessions

1. CourseIntroduction: Hi, I'm burning raffia professional photographer and instructor based in the UK And welcome to my course on using off camera flash. I'm a big fan of using small flashes like this to get dramatic looking images. You know, if you take photos in light that's a bit boring on Interesting, there's every chance you'll end up with boring on or an interesting photos. In this course, you're learned how to get a more interesting, more pleasing and more dramatic light for poor trades Using off camera flash. You don't need very expense, expensive equipment, either. But what you do need is that know how, and that's what I'm going to pass on to you. In these videos, you'll learn about, like how to choose the gear, how to put it together. How to trigger the lights, how to expose how to modify the light coming out of the flash to get different effects out of balance. Flash with ambient light on how to put that all together to take stunning photos. On a swell as the theory, there are currently around 16 indoor and outdoor life photo shoots with mostly gorgeous models. Your watch me setting up the lighting taking the photos and immediately showing you the results along with camera and flash settings. Now I'm sitting in the guards next to my house. It's not that big. Well, it's about car size, obviously, so you'll see that you don't need a large space in order to take professional looking photos with small flashes. Up until a few years ago, this type of portrait photography was mainly the preserve of professional photographers, with their expensive flashes and triggering systems. But more recently, the price of the equipment has come tumbling down, and now you can shoot these types of photos on a small budget. Tell with that are provided shopping list, supplementary material of the best type of equipment to buy. And it's generally stuff that won't break the bank if you have an external flash gun but cringe at the thought of messing around with buttons and dials on the back, don't worry, it's all explained it in very simple terms. On as I said before, it needn't cost too much money. If you already have a digital camera and an external flash gone, you already own the most expensive parts of the equipment. Most of the other items are really relatively cheap, and so you can put together the whole package on a reasonably tight budget if necessary. This is a very comprehensive, simple to do course now. Years ago, when I started using off camera flash, I had made me it made mistakes, just like everyone else does. But since those early days, my technique has evolved, and I'll be passing on all this information so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did. I've broken the course down into easily digestible chunks. Sure, there is some boring technical stuff, but great photography does require some science and Tamar on. In these videos, I'll be showing you both. This course is for photographers who want to take great portray its with their DSLR Millis or more sophisticated compact or bridge cameras. Even you certainly don't have to be an advanced photographer. It's easy to do and easy to learn, But like all skills, it does require some practice. You'll be amazed at the results you can get with the simple set up, so I'm about to show you. So why no Imo now and discover what the wonderful world of off camera flash could do for you and your photography 2. Cameras and Flashes - Just what cameras and flashes are suitable?: I'm obviously going to spend a lot of time actually demonstrating the light in and shooting . But before I do that, I'm going to discuss the equipment you need on a good place to start is with the camera. So just what type of camera do you need for off camera flash photography? Well, you have to have a way of wirelessly firing the flash so your camera needs to have ah, hot show on. Although you won't be placing a fresh on the camera, the hot shoe is still required in order to fire the extra no flush. All dear sellers have them most Miller's cameras, due to a swell as many bridge and some of the more sophisticated compact campus for this type of photography, the best method for getting consistent, accurate exposures is to use the manual exposure mode. That is, I won't be using aperture or shutter speed quality or the P mode. Instead, I'll be using the manual mode the M mode on, and I'll explain why in a later lecture on exposure. But this doesn't mean you're going to need a camera that allows you to set the aperture and shutter speed manually and as far as I know, all DS Alaskan do that and probably most, if not all Miller's cameras, too. Your point and shoot. Maybe maybe a bird. Your combat camera might well allow it to, but that's something you'll have to check for yourself. I'm sure most of you will already have a suitable camera. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't even even be watching these videos. So you should all be set to go in that department. Now we come to the flashes, sometimes referred to as flesh guns or speed lights. This type of foot photography does not require a super duper, all singing and all dancing detail. Flash those flashes. Generally, the manufacturers own models are great, and they will work beautifully here. But if you don't already have one, then you don't need to go out and buy one that they are expensive. The main thing we're looking for in the flash is the ability to set it to manual mode and to be able to adjust the power are poor up and down from the back of the flush. For example, in the flashes manual mode, I might have it set to say half power and that might be too bright on causing overexposure . So then I might want to be able to hit a button on the back of the flash to make it go to, say, quarter power. That also might be tube like So I should be able to lower the power even more to an 8th 16th or 30 tooth. And so and so on. Some flashes could only goes, lowers the 32 power, but some to 64th and some can even go as low as 128th power 1 30 Tooth power is fine for what we're actually going to be doing. In fact, you might think that love of power, such as 121 128th would be useless, but it just provides a tiny wink of light, maybe for use. If you're photographing something really close up. Well, sometimes uses the manufacturers own flushes the nick on SB 608 100 both discontinued models. Now the new ones are D SB 709 100. There's also the cannon equivalence e X for 35 80 and 600. Those cyber flashes, known as dedicated flashes, generally cost in the region of 2 to £300 depending on the model. If you've got one of those, you're in great shape. They'll work just fine. But if you're buying a flat specifically to do off from off camera flash, you don't need one, but one that has the fancy. I t T o R E T t Almost Those features are great, but if you have them, I use them myself quite a bit. But could it stop of photography? I'm going to show you in this course you only need a manual flash. Come on. For those on a budget, that's good news, because you can buy the flashes you need for this for between 40 and £60 that's almost 1/4 of the price of the higher end flashes. Means you could buy two or three of them, but I'll start off by using my manual. Young No. 5 60 mark to this is a terrific flash on DYoung. No are becoming very popular, probably the leading brand in the starts of flashes. The mark to has now been replaced by the Mark three, and I'll talk about the difference later on in the lecture on triggering the flashes so I can recommend the young knows. In fact, the day after I bought this, this one, it fell from a height of about six foot onto the concrete floor. Through no fault of my own, Obviously, no, seriously, I forgotten to tighten it up on the stand anyway. It bounced a couple of times, but it was fine. They're really very well built. Other manual flat flashes you might like to consider are the Loom a Pro LP 1 80 The knee were V. K 7 50 Nissen neatness in D I 466 I haven't used any of those but have heard good things about them. My own personal recommendation at the time of making this film in November 2014 is for the young No. 56 60 mark three. I've only actually used the long, newer ones, but see the shopping list supplementary material for a list of the other flashes that you might like to consider now, although all of these classes very on features and settings, the quality of life is the same because if you're firing through a 30 inch umbrella, no matter what flash you use, you'll get a 30 inch umbrella type of light, so the choice of flash can be a little overwhelming. If you have a canon camera, you might prefer to go with a cannon flash saying with Nick on or any of the other manufacturers. Or you might want to go with Canon or Nikon compatible flashes from the likes of Sigma, some packs or mets. Some are built better than others. They may have slightly more or less output, but it doesn't really matter for this type of photography. Also, you may have an old, basic external flash lying around which you think may just do the job. But if it's very basic, it may not allow you to adjust a flash output, which is a deal breaker. Most flashes of this site bill of this size, I should say so he built within the last few years will be fine now, by the way, that flashes do go through batteries fairly quickly. I always used to be chargeable once nickel metal hydride or N I. M. H. For short, you could recharge. These are hundreds or even over 1000 times. One little niggle with them, by the way, is that I lose 4 to 5% of their charge every day, even if you're not using them, so make sure you charge them just before you want to use them. There's a new type of rechargeable battery called the Emmylou, invented by Sanyo, I believe, which holds their charge much like ordinary batteries so you can charge them and leave them in a drawer for a while until you need them. That's all for now. See you in the next video. 3. Stands and Brackets - Where to put the flashes and how to mount them: Let's take a look now, how you actually mount the flash. First of all, you need a light stand, something like this. They come in a variety of sizes and price ranges. The cheaper models are usually fine, but they're not really quite so sturdy, so they're suitable for indoor photography with small flashes. But it might be worth paying a little more if you think you'd like to use them outside where it might be windier. Professional studios used large strobes for the lighting much larger than speed lights, so the stands need to be much heavier and sturdier. There's no harm a tool in getting one of those, but they're obviously more expensive, and you don't really need them for indoor off camera. Flash photography using small flash comes Also. There are very compact type of light stands that kind of fold back on themselves like this one way around. This is a very cheap Chinese one I bought some time ago, but man Fratto made one called the five Double 01 B Nano, which is very similar, and I've listed it in the supplementary material shopping list. They're a good option of storage. Spice is at a premium. Now the speaker on the end of these of these stands are designed specifically for large type studio flashes, so you can't just come along with your flash and try and fit it on, no matter how hard you try, and you can tie yourself in knots and be brutal, but you'll have to admit defeat. There's just no way they're going to fit. No, what you actually need is a flash umbrella bucket like this one. They're not usually very expensive, between 10 and £25. I prefer the ones with a strong lever to tighten up the angle, which a light is pointing at. Some just have a screw it knob, but maybe I'm just being picky. There's probably not much in it one end as a whole that fits over the light stand, which have been tightened up. Like so. The other end has a cold shoe that you your flash fits onto. Now, a culture is generally the same shape and size as the as a hot shoe on your camera, but it has no electrical connections. It's just a holder for the flash. Some of the flash umbrella brackets come without a culture, so you have to buy them separately and screw them in only a couple of pounds. There's a very neat culture you can get called a 30 which has a small catch to prevent the flash from falling off her little overpriced. Admittedly, I would say around £10 but they can save your flash gun from falling off the stand if you forget to lock it like I did with my young know the day after I bought it. There's a hole in the bracket which takes the umbrella shaft. Just push it through and tighten up to screw like So I've listed all of these items in the shopping list supplementary material. So take a look at that to get a feel for what's available on their prices. Bye for now. 4. Triggering the flashes - There's several way, some cheaper or more reliable than others!: in this film, we're going to look at the various ways to trigger the flash when it's not physically on top of the camera. Not only does the flash after fire, but it has to fire exactly the right time in order to synchronize with the camera shutter. Not that that's a problem. I just just thought I'd mention it. There are several ways of firing the flash in this film. I'll go through each method. I've also included a summary of the triggering methods in a Pdf document, a supplementary material complete with the clothes and the cons of each system. The first method of firing and off camera flash is by using a PC sing called Like This one and goes in a camera on the other end Plugs into the flash. Obviously, where else would you go? I'm not going to spend much time talking about these. The chances are that neither your camera or your flash has the right sockets to take the court. It's mainly older model flashes and cameras that have the required sockets, but you can purchase horseshoe adapters to fit on the camera or flash to take the end plug of the court. But really, but a time you've done all that, you might as well have purchased a Wyler system. Also, when using a PC court, you've got the inconvenience of an extra cable, which can cause accidents. I think I would say the only real reason for having one is in emergencies if you run out of batteries or the wireless system fouls. If you've got a higher India sell on speed like the chances are, you can simply fire the external flash by setting the pop up flash into the required mode on just popping it up. I'm talking here about Nikon's Creative Lighting System, or CLS, that is known, or cannons advanced wireless E T T L System or the Olympus R C system. Other manufacturers almost certainly have their own equivalents. These systems use infrared light, either from the pop up flash or special device that goes on the hot show, depending on the manufacturer. When using the pop up flash, you typically need to set the pop up into some kind of commander mode so that it can talk to the external flashes, which is then placed into a remote mode. In the commander mode, the pop up flash doesn't contribute to the exposure, it will only get used to set off the other flashes. When you use this method, the menu system on the camera allows you to change the flash mode. Here's how the pop up flash menu looks on my neck on camera, just changing the flash mode from TT oh to command to commander. Other cameras will have an equivalent type of menu, so these are set to the light modes. Let's give them a try. You should see the flash firing now, huh? Nicollin Cannon have dedicated in provincial and emitters. They do the same job. That's a pop up flash, but they're more convenient to use. Here's a nickel one is called A S U 800. The equivalent canon device is called an SD two or three. Now the advantage of these over using a pop up is first of all, you can dial in the flash power right from here, using batons on the back. Plus, you don't blind your subject with flashlight from the small pop up. Also, if you were shooting something very close, the pop up flash could affect the exposure. I don't know if other manufacturers have the equipment equivalent of these. Let's give it a try. I'll just pop the S U 100 onto the hot shoe so it should come back on. The flash is still set to the remote mode, so it should go off. Not sure if you can see that this to a couple of goes, you should see the flash going off. If you don't have a high end Dear Cell Island flash, you might still be able to use your camera's pop up flash by simply setting the flash into the slave mode. If it has one in the slave mode, any flash that goes off will fire the external flash. So you'd have to be kept what, Using a wedding, for example, when the guest taking photos in the same room could set off your external flash. The young no doesn't have any nickel nor canon features, but it has a couple of slave modes shown by the letter s here, so I can use a pop up flash of fire it. I would have to set the external flash power using buttons on the back of the flash, rather from the cameras menu system but that's not really a problem. I'd also have to set the pop up flash to manual and set the power very low so that it didn't affect the exposure. Let's give it a try. Remember that the pop up flash is in manual mode. The external flash is set to slave. Give out show. I should be going off good. None of the solutions I've mentioned so far are really ideal. The problem with using a pop up flash or one of the little devices such as Yes, You 800 to fire the external flash is that because they use him for red light, they require line of sight so it can sometimes foul. If there's something in the way of the sensor on the flash that picks up, the signal could be a soft book. So umbrella getting in the way, you just have to be careful that the sensor on the flash is facing the buy in the right direction. In my experience, they worked pretty well indoors, especially in a small environment like this one, and the one we're going to be you shooting in inside a large wedding reception venue. They may prove inconsistent Also shooting outdoors in the sunshine could also give inconsistent results and come that a flash distances are reduced because the imp, a great signal isn't bouncing off walls, etcetera. So these kind of infrared systems are all well and good. But I've really only mentioned them in case you already have the gear and you want to try off camera flash before you go out and spend any money. Arguably the best, most reliable way to trigger flashes is using wireless radio triggers by these. They don't require line of sight. They have a larger range and work of an commoners or through walls and that cheap, simple to use. And they worked just great. Now, just a few years ago, the de facto standard triggers were made by a company called Pocket Wizard. They work perfectly well but cost around £200 for each device, and you need at least two of them, one for the camera on one for the flash. Sure, there were cheaper Chinese versions on the market, but they weren't very reliable. So off camera flash work was mainly the province of professionals on will and feel enthusiastic, not to mention wealthy photographers to be fair, The pocket working with the pocket wizards are probably a little cheaper now, But in any case, things have moved on, and you can now buy trigger and receiver made by Chinese companies. Starting from around £25 they're very well made and worked just great. They seldom on Amazon with usually Amazon fulfillment, so you don't even have to actually get them from China. There's quite a few on the market made by companies such as cactus Ellen, chrome faux ticks, etcetera. But I use these young knows R F 60 threes. One goes on the flash, the other on the camera on. There's no differentiation between triggers and receivers. They're interchangeable. So let's see how I work. One of them goes on the or show doesn't matter which they will triggers all the savers. The other one goes on the hot show of the flesh. Talking that up switch to come on. The trigger is also have a small test bomb, which you can use just let's try them out. Yet it's working just to use for testing purposes. Obviously, with these type of devices, you do have to go to the flash to change the power level, usually not a problem, because the flashes nearby. But if you've got the flash high up on the stand, maybe behind your subject, it can be a little bit inconvenient. You know have recently bought a trigger called the T C 5 60 TX. It goes on the campus hot show. Obviously, on this little gem allows you to set the power levels of the external flash or flashes right from the common position. In the previous minute video, I mentioned that Young no have recently bought a Mark three version of this there y and 5 60 mark to flash. The new version has a bill in receiver, which works with either are if 603 or the new 5 60 t X. To my mind, that's probably the best combination to go for it just starting out right away. When you buy any trigger off of any manufacturer, you usually have to specify which brand of camera you're using. That's important part of long version, and it may not work reliably. Oh, there are also radio triggers. You can now buy that have the four TT A l capability on high speed sing features that these manufacturer devices have again young no comes to mind their around £100 for the trigger and two receivers, but you will need more expensive TT all type flash comes. You don't need anything like that for this course, but you might want to consider them for future use. In any case, I've listed them in the supplementary, um, supplementary material shopping list. Don't forget, I've also summarized the different methods of firing. The flash is in a separate pdf document. Also in the supplementary material it might help you to give it might help to give you an overall picture of the triggering systems. Bye for now. 5. Flashes and Triggers Update #1 - 2020: Hi everyone. Well, it's been coming up to six years now since I made this off camera flash, cause you can see I'll have even less hair now. And that time the march of technology has continued relentlessly on. So this is a short video to update the ones on equipment and on triggering the flashes. Now, first of all, it must be said that even though some new flesh and triggering equipment has emerged since 2014, the fundamental techniques that you'll learn on his course haven't changed one little bit. And even with the new Flash models, nothing has really changed a huge amount. And that's especially true for indoor of camouflage photography. However, for outdoor work, there has been some relevant new products arriving on the scene, but they are relatively expensive. So there was also a new video covering that topic later in the course. It's still the case that you do not need features like high-speed sink nor TTL for indoor off camera flash photography. Fleshes with those capabilities still cost at least a 125 town from third party manufacturers and over 250 pounds from the likes of cannon Omnicom. Having said that high-speed think, often referred to as HSS, is useful for outdoor photography. So if you already have an itss capable flash, you're in good shape. If you're planning some outdoor photo sessions and if you can afford one, then go for the HSS and TTL capable flash. So that's at a manual flushes, which is still relatively cheap alone, 50 or 60 pound. They're perfect for learning off-camera flash photography. The main development of the last few years has been the integration of the receiver to the flash itself. Meaning that all you need is a flash and a trigger to go on the horseshoe. There's no longer any need to use a separate receiver device to go underneath the flesh. Now, although this sets up was just becoming available in 2014, it's now a commonplace. Although you can still get those basic triggers. The newer ones have LCD panels that allow you to change power settings for light from the camera position. You will see me throughout the course constantly guy and go visit a flash on a stand to change the power settings. That's inconvenient and is just no longer necessary with the new triggers. The two manufacturers that seem to be leading the filled our young now and go dogs. I've used both and are both excellent systems because you've now system consists of its 5-6 Mach three among four flashes along with its YN foreign 60 TX trigger. The gold AAC system consists of the tt 600 spade line and the X1 t transmitter. It does make life so much easier just to be able to use the LCD on the back of the chair eager to change the power law than having to keep dying over sort of flash. The flesh power does also show on the rear panel of the flash. So when you change it on the trigger, you can see the change reflected on the flash LCD panel. If you plan to purchase either of the systems or in fact, any flash system might show you get the ones compatible with your particular camera. Usually done denoted by letter off to the model name. For example, Goldilocks, Higgs won t dash say for canon or X1 t dash N for Nick on. If you get the one for the Guam camber, chances are the flash one fora. So that's about it. I'll have updated a shopping list to reflect the new, new models plus a few other bits and pieces of equipment. Tell forget as another outdated equipment video in the outdoor chapters. So bye for now. 6. Light modifiers - Use Umbrellas and softboxes etc... to modify the light: way, Get to the fun part like modifiers. That's just a generic term for anything you put over the light. Teoh. What to modify in some way. Here's some of the ones I use, most of them up, all from a store, but there's one or two that are homemade, but what would actually four. Why do you need them in the first place? Why not just point your flash at the subject? Justices is on. Away you go well, the larger light source relative to the subject. The soft of the light notice, I said relative to the subject. It's not so much the size of the light source as the apparent size. So, for example, design is a fairly large light source, I would say, but because it's 93 million miles away, it's relatively small, and so it produces hard light with hard edged shadows. But unless you got cloud cover, of course, So why is a bigger light, softer? Well, imagine your head turning around looking at a small light source. Your head comes around, you see the edge of it. You see all of it at once, and then it's gone. So now imagine your head turning round, looking at a very large light source, see the edge of it. See a bit more of it, saying all of it, saying, moreover, seeing the edge of it and now it's gone. That transition time is exactly the same reason that a large light source provides a soft shudder, Reg, because it disappears into shadow a little bit of at a time and wraps around the subject. That's because of the apparent size of the life source, not the actual size. Another problem with hard line is that it tends to focus the light more, meaning that any slightly brighter areas of the subject will reflect back more. And so you may end up with shiny bits on your subjects, forward cheeks or nose. Bear in mind, though, that although softer light is generally more flattering and pleasing to the subject, Ah, hard life is not always a bad thing for certain faces and for edgy fashion, say you can get really cool effects and add more drama to an image by deliberately using a hard light. I'll demonstrate that in one of the videos, but generally speaking, for the purposes of this course, I'm going to strive to get a softer light to start off with. I'm going to talk about our brothers now. There's two main types, reflective and shoot through, and they each have their own advantages and disadvantages to some degree. When you use umbrellas, in effect, they become they become. Your light source is not the flash itself. This is a reflective type. The inside a shiny silver with a black out of fabric on the general idea is that you point the flash into the umbrella on the light bounces back onto your subject. I originally started off using these, as I assumed that would be more efficient, but I now mostly used to shoot through. I'm Villa, not with these. The flash is simply pointed through. The center on the light gets diffused and becomes larger. The difference to the light on the subject between reflective and shoot through, though, is quite subtle. You have to look very cut close to see any difference, but that's not the main reason for me switching. No, the reason I now use the shoe proves Mawr is that you can get them really close to the subject to make a very large light source just like this, as you saw before. If you try to do the same thing with silver with a reflective Angola, the shaft gets in the way. And if you're not careful, you can take your subjects. I out what we're still You could get the end of the shaft in the flame. Some shoot through. Umbrellas like this one have a sat in type of effect inside which I like, and some come with a removal cut removable cover so you can use them as reflective on brothers as well. In these videos, I'll be using these 43 inch umbrellas. If you've got a bit more space than I have, you could go up to maybe a 60 inch Gambella. But I personally find the 43 inch ones a good compromise, import ability and quality of life. Soft boxes are another type of diffuser very popular, of course, and they offer a more directional light without the light spill of umbrellas. One of the most common questions I'm asked is, what is the difference between the umbrella and the soft box? I would say that although the light pattern on quality of life is different, between the two. It's quite subtle and not that noticeable unless you look really hard. The main difference is that the shoot through umbrellas allows a lot of light to kind of spill out, and so well, like more more of the environment you're in. The reflective umbrella allows less light to spill in on a soft box. Being more directional throws even less light around of them. It can be a bit of a problem for the umbrellas. There's depending on the set up. They can spill light onto the background when you don't really want it. But there are simple ways around that which I'll be demonstrating in another video. So for the most part, I'll be using. I shoot through umbrellas. They're cheap, easy to manage and easier to put up and down on a soft box. As I said, I'm good as a January cheaper than soft boxes, and you can get a white silk lines, a convertible Androulla for about £20 although I've seen one or two for half that price. If purchasing a soft box, you'll need one specifically for speed lights like this last a light one. Here's another small soft box I sometimes use if I want a harder light, but not too hard if it's directly over to flash it, which you'll see in another video. This particular one is from a company called Blue Request. See the shopping list for more info. There's some other modifies I sometimes use. These. Restrict the light on so that you can get a more dramatic look to an image and make it more interesting by not light in certain parts of it. This is a set of honey comb grids fit over the flash head and prevent the light from spilling. Outwards are for one at the background so you can see the effect it has. I tend to use these either. His hair light was a background light. In both cases, only want the light to go where I need it. I'll be using one of these in the lectures. In this course, there's another one called a snoot. Again, it fits over the flash head to restrict the light, and you can make them shorter or longer on may restrict the like to different degrees. These ones are homemade, but you could make them out of cardboard with some duct tape as well, or you can obviously by them in stores. This particular one is made out of black funky foam and some duct tape. See the shopping list for more information? The final modify I want to show you is called a gobo. Sometimes when using the flash without without a modifier, maybe to light the background or to output some light somewhere else, the lycan spill back onto your subject. A gobo can be a small piece of material like this, or maybe even a large panel. Place between a flash on the camera position just to prevent light, spill or light entering the lens and causing flair. Other objects and also be used as go boats to create patterns on the background or the subject, which I'll be doing in another lecture. This small gobo one has some Velcro on it. My flesh head does as well, and it fits neatly onto the side of the flash to avoid spill. Coming back from the flash, I think the word gobo comes from the phase Go between or possibly goes before optics anyway , That's it on modifies Bye for now. Here's a few photos that just showed the effect of using the grid on this newts. Obviously, you can change the pattern of the light by moving a grid of this new over to one side or moving it backwards or forwards. 7. Flash heads are small, modifiers can be large, avoid this problem.: Why again? There's an important point about using large modifiers, which I touched upon in a previous video. But I didn't go into a great deal of detail. Now, when you think about it, these flash EDS They're quite small on they and the modifiers could be quite large. This is a 43 inch Gambella on. You can go larger than that for an even softer light. Here's a 60 inch Gambella, which gives you a really, really soft light. Okay, but you can be a little cumbersome to you. So throughout this course, I've used the 43 Gambella. So that means that the light from this small flash has to spread out in order to completely fill the umbrella. Pretty obvious, really. But if you're not careful, that might not happen. And you won't completely fill the umbrella with light. I'll show you what I mean. I've set up a flash behind the umbrella to food to shoot for it on the flash power on the camera. Settings aren't really important at this stage, so I'm not even going to mention them. I'm going to take a photo of the umbrella as though I was the subject. Let's see what happens as you can see the outer edges of the umbrella a darker than the center. So how did that happen? Well, many of these flashes have a zoom mode. Apparently, there's a small reflective inside them that moves back and forth, which is used to provide a narrow or wider beam of light. I had, the Flash said, zoomed into its maximum. Now on the flash here, it's 105 millimeters, very from flash to flash. Some of my authors are new. Zoom to 85 mil like this one. The 105 mil setting gave me a narrow beam of light so it didn't quite feel the umbrella. So instead of having a 43 inch other umbrella, I might as well be using, say, a 30 or 35 inch one. But, you know, I've paid good money for a 43 inch one. That's what I paid for, and that's what I want. So I'll zoom the flash it out to its wide setting and take another shot. Yeah, that's a bit better, isn't it? It's still not quite filling the on bread alone, but I do now have a slightly softer light because the light sources larger and all I did was zoom out the flash head easy, and I feel the umbrella more now Here's a little trick to improve it even further. Many speed lights like this one have a small diffuser bill in that you can flip out these air used when taking a wide angle picture so that the light doesn't fall off on the edges. You'll have to check your own flash to see if there is one. But on this one, when I flip out when I flip it out, Hey, presto! The focal length changes to 14 mill much wider on some flashes. It makes no difference to the zoom value. So again you'll have to check. Check your own flesh anyway. So now I'll bring out the diffuser on this flash, which has now changed the setting to 17 mil on this particular flash. And it did that automatically without me changing any sense any other settings on. Now take another shop. Now that's made a big difference. The amber has been completely filled with the light from the flash. Now, in this experiment, I did deliberately reduced the flash power so that you could see the effect better. The flash was on our 32nd power. Now higher flash settings. The effect isn't quite as pronounced, so I wouldn't get too hung up about it. But generally speaking, always set your flash head zoom to its wider setting. Bye for now. 8. Using a light meter - Do you need one?: no lectures on lighting with flash would really be complete without a discussion of light meters, the way they work with off camera flashes that you set the shutter speed on the meter to whatever your camera set to usually the maximum sync speed. Then you said the ire. So on the meter to whatever the camera set to on then you fire the flash on the flash meter tells you what the correct apertures. I'll just give it a try. Offset the speed to 2 50 for the second on Die. So 200 on the flash mater. Let's see what they're aperture that gives May. So that's given me a fight. The flash power was on the 16th So if I change the flash pound now to say, that's a 32 30 tooth power five it again. That's now given May F 5.6. So one stop difference. That's exactly what you'd expect. So these are nice and easy to use, but should you use one or no? Well, there are some people who say should always use them and that without them you're doomed to fight you. They're the purest people who say it should be illegal to use a flash without a flash mater on that. Under no circumstances should you leave home without one. But there's also the people who say, Well, we're in the digital age now. We've got the back of the screens. Just take a shot on. Check the exposure. Look at the history, Graham. This is kind of an antiquated system. This should be consigned to history. I'm kind of on the fence on this one, but I guess I tend to lean towards the second school of thought. I started off using light meters, mainly at weddings, but I found them a bit consumed her time consuming and cumbersome. And to be honest, I haven't used one for some time. But I do keep this one. Just in case of a really difficult lighting scenario, I won't be using one in any of these lectures. Why? Well, for a start, good. A good quality one will cost somewhere between 150 on £450. They're expensive, and you can easily get by without them using a little trial and error on by just checking exposure on the back of the camera Off camera flash using film was another story. A flash meter would have been pretty much essential. But in this day, an age now that £200 could be spent better spend on modifiers for all I'm paying towards your mortgage, etcetera. Remember, though, this is just my opinion. And as I said before, some people do swear by them, but I'll be showing you other ways of getting accurate exposures Bye for now. 9. Apertures: sorry to say, but this is kind of the boring part of these videos. Where I talk about exposures, the trouble is, is important. So you need to bear with me. You don't want to be one of those mediocre photographers who wing it, hope for the best and think they can fix it all later in photo shop. Learn this stuff. It's not difficult on. After you have done a few shoots, it will become second nature, and you can really start to concentrate on the creativity. Now. There were five aspects of exposure control. When using flash on, they are aperture shot of spades. Hi, eso flushed a subject distance on flash power, and those five parts of exposure all kind of fit together like puzzle pieces. I'll be going through each one of them in the next few lectures. Plus, I'll be repeating them during the shoot because sometimes it's only when you start seeing these individual aspects of exposures being applied that it all starts coming together and making sense. I'm going to start with apertures, and as I'm sure you know, apertures a part of the lens on it opens and closes a little like the pupil of our eyes. The wider the aperture, the more light is let in on the smaller the temperature, the less light is letting aperture controls the flash exposure. Very important to remember that aperture controls the flash exposure. So how does aperture control the flash exposure? Well, applicant, sure. Aperture controls the amount of light that is the quantity of light, while shutter speed controls the duration of the light. Okay, don't be alarmed. This is just a small lighting set up to demonstrate how the aperture affects the light on. This is my gorgeous model. She's very lifelike, isn't she? Okay, where do I start with the settings? Well, the flash is on manual power because I want the light to be the same in every shop. I'm not very just because ivory flamed or because of some other factor. And by putting the flash Emanuel I know the light will be the same every time. Mark switching on a 40 watt lamp. It will put out 40 watts of light every time. But what power should I choose? Well, you have to start somewhere on for the time being. It doesn't really matter. So I've set it to 1/16 power. That's pretty arbitrary. I don't want to get ahead of myself. So won't explain any more about that. As it Scarlett covered in another lecture off set my shutter speed to the maximum sink speech, which on this camera is to 50th of a second. Yours maybe 2/100 of a second or 16 1/60. Again, more info on that coming up where it's explained in detail. This lecture is all about aperture offset the I so to 200 but on again more about that in a forthcoming lecture. But what appetite should I choose? Well, I tend to shoot fairly wide open for most of my portrait, so let's start off 2.8. So here's my settings. Flash on a 16 power aperture F 2.8 I s 0 200 1 2/50 of a second shutter speed. I'm going to take a serious of photos, and the only thing I'm going to adjust is the aperture. All the other settings are locked in. I won't mess with them or moved a flash or sort of subject. So let's take the first short of 2.8. I have 2.8. My beautiful model is wildly over exposed. The next one's therefore also overexposed. Then another shot at 5.6, again, just slightly over. Exposed. But we're getting there. And now finally F eight. We've got a pretty good exposure. If I carry on to F 11 it's now under exposed and she's too dark. F 16. She's way under exposed. So what exactly happened there? Well, when I started it off 2.8, the lens lead into much light from the flash. The amount or quantity of light was just too much. So as you saw, I closed down the Apertura by one stop each time to reduce the amount of light coming in until I reached the correct aperture of F eight. But hey, you might say to yourself, Well, that's no good to may. I want to shoot, therefore, maybe to blow the background. Well, then you have to make an adjustment elsewhere. Typically the flash power, but more on that later. That's it on lens apertures. Why, for now 10. FlashPower: Yeah, yeah. Here she is again, my little chickadee Through other photo sessions. In this course, I'm going to be using the flash in its manual mode. And that means I'll have complete control over how much power the flash will put out. You can almost think of it like a dimmer switch that you might have at home. Except that instead of the light output changing smoothly like it does with a dimmer, the light output jumps are poor down by whatever power setting you've chosen. You might start our start off half power. Then you might switch the quarter power into it eight than to 1/16 right down to 128th power. Every time you double or half the power you are increasing or decreasing the lie are poor by the equivalent of one aperture f stop. I've talked about aperture controlling the flash exposure. Therefore, aperture and flash power are inextricably inextricably linked. They worked hand in hand together. As you change one, you need to change the other to keep to the same exposure or if you have in mind to use one particular aperture, say therefore, then you can simply increase or decrease of flash power to give you the correct exposure at four. In the experiment in the apertures lecture, the aperture ended up FAA. But I may not want to shoot at f eight. I'm on want to shoot a F to in order to blow the background. So let's see how I can do that. I removed the great background so you can see how the brickwork gets less sharp as the appetite changes. Also, I move the flash slightly further way until I get a good exposure. F A I s 0 100 the flashes on quarter power. So here's the first shot. 1/4 power. Here's the first exposure shot. F eight. Remember, I want to get down to F to a much wider aperture. You can see from this chart the steps I need to take to get to F two. So now I'll open up the amplitude by one stop to a 5.6, but deliberately won't change of flash power as you'd expect. The photos now overexposed, so I'll reduce a flash power to an eighth. Here's that shot and you can see it's the same exposure as in the original Now I'll open up the aptitude by one stopped to F four on Medusa. Flash Power to 16th again. I've got a good exposure. I'll jump now to F two, and to get the correct exposure, I'll need to dial down the flash power to a 64th. Here's the shop. So what's the difference in the photos will take a closer look at the big work. It's a lot sharper f A f to, in fact, that that was the whole reason for this little experiment to get the background out of focus. So you can see now how the flash power works in conjunction with the aperture and also the I. So, But I deliberately kept that constant 100 just to keep things simple. So I just use this chart to some of us. All of these settings are equivalent in terms of exposure. So even if I would have started off using different settings, say F 5.6 a quarter power, that would provide the same exposure as therefore on eight power, that's all for the time being on flash exposure, the subject will obviously come up again during the actual photo sessions, but by for now, 11. InverseSquareLaw: this video is about flashed a subject distance on the inverse square law. It's the last of the five exposure variables. After this, I promise. Then we can get almost with some shooting. I'm hoping you're still with me and having yet lost the will to live. I know some of this stuff can be a bit tedious, but so you do have to know it now. The inverse square law. I haven't a clue where that equation really means. All I know is how it affects my photography. Here's a question for you. Let's say we have a flash firing through an umbrella on a young lady is standing, say, one foot away from the light. If she were to move twice, the distance from the light should now be two feet away. So obviously the light on her has been reduced. But by how much? Well, you would be sensible and thinking that it would be half assed much like but you'd be wrong . Light follows the inverse square law, and so the amount of light falling on her would actually be 1/4 not 1/2 the inverse square laws and is an equation that relates the intensity of a light source to the illumination it produces at a given distance. I don't try and understand any of the mass behind it. All I know is that as the distance from flash to subject doubles, the light falls off toe 1/4 of what was there before. So, to put it another way, when the distance doubles, you lose 75% of the light. I'll try and explain in practical terms how it affects us as photographers Now. Earlier on, I set up an experiment using a flashlight on a great panel. Andi, I took some photos of the panel over several distances so that you can see the effect. I put a tape measure down and measure that the various distances one feet, two for eight and 16 feet. So I was doubling up each time. But one foot away, you can really see a dramatic and pronounced difference in the light on each side of the panel. I then took another shot at two feet away and again, the difference in the light is very pronounced. But what happens when I move the panel further away this time? Four free and you can still see the difference but is less pronounced eight feet. It's just discernible on 16 is pretty amazing, really. You can hardly tell the difference between the two sides. Think of distances doubling when we were one for away from the flash and doubled it. We were two feet. Then we double that to four feet and then eight feet and so on to 16 feet. So the final doubling was from 8 to 16 feet. But initially when we doubled, we only went from 1 to 2 feet. So what does that tell us? Looking at the photos in a row, you can see that when the panel was closer, light in one foot of space, the light jobbed off by to F stops. When the light was further away. It also dropped off by to F stops, but that was between eight and 16 feet, so it dropped off far more gradually. That's the inverse square law working away as photographers. You don't need to get your slide balls or your tape measures or calculators out, but you should remember that when your flash is close to your subject, the light will fall off drastically when it's further away. the light will fall off gradually. So what practical uses this knowledge? If you're taking a photo of a group of three people and your flash is quite close to the person at one end, the person at the other end is going to be under exposed because of the light. Fall off as you see an example. There were two stops difference between the people on the ends. But if you place the light further away, the light will fall off far more gradually, similar to what we just saw in the photos of the panels. And that's because there's only 1/3 toe have stopped difference between the people on the ends. Now let's say you're shooting oblige. Imagine me is a gorgeous blyde, partly resplendent in my beautiful wedding dress, and you put your flash right here next on my head. Well, my head might be perfectly, perfectly exposed to say F 22 but you know I'm wearing Jimmy two shoes and they will be 5.6 three stops less than my head, so there'll be much too dark. The light has fallen off drastically as it made its way down towards my feet. Not you as a photographer might say all I like that I like the effect of that. It looks great. Or on the other hand, you might think No, I want the light fall off to be more gradual as it goes down the bride. I want to be able to show her dress and shoes, so what you would do is take your light and put it up higher and further away. However, when this photography knowledge becomes even more useful, especially in terms of these lectures is away that the light fall off can affect your background and you're your see that working to good effect in the forthcoming videos. OK, now it's time to get shooting. So you in the next field, bye for now. 12. ISO: when we increase the ire. So we increase our camera sensitivity to light for both the ambient light on the flashlight together so the sensitivity is increased for a light. Now there's a few considerations when changing your so the higher the eyesight of the more noise is introduced into the image. So, generally speaking, you probably want to keep the ice so fairly low. But having said that, today's canvas air just fantastic, aren't they on the image quality is improving all of the time. You can now get perfect, perfectly respectable results. I so 1632 100 or even high ourselves, especially when it comes to printing the photos. But that apart, there are other considerations. For example, flash power flash recycle times, battery consumption. So let's take a scenario. We're not four flash power. I s 0 100 aperture F eight. You get a great exposure, and for one reason or another, you want to stay F eight. I can't remember what the settings were for this particular shot, but it's a nice picture, so use it as an example. So let's say you've just taken this photo on The flash was at full power. Annoyingly, it took anywhere from, say, 3 to 10 seconds to be cycle before you could take another shot. Plus, I would have been a considerable drying on your flash batters. What can you do? Well, you could increase the I. So from 100 to 200 that's one stop. And to compensate for the increased sensitivity, you can reduce the flash power by one stop. So now it's on half power right now. Only takes half a long as it did before to recycle, but still too long. So you sent the I so to 400 that yields 1/4 flash power. Still, FAA, that's much better. Flash recycle is much quicker now. If you want, you can go further, maybe toe I. So I understood then that yields of flash power of an eight hour. So instead of taking a shot, I'm waiting, waiting, waiting Before you can take another shop, you can now go click, click, click, much more likely to get the photos you want. Plus, you're not draining your batteries anywhere new as much. Also, some flashes now automatically turn off when they get too hot, and that's made worse when shooting at full power. So that's an example of using I S O. But you can't really take it in isolation because it fits in like puzzle pieces with all of the other aspects of exposure. For example, just now, instead of increasing I so to get my flash power down, I could just as easily open up the aptitude by stop. I know it seems a confusing, and it is, admittedly a bit boring. I can almost see your eyes glazing over as you watch this, but it's worth learning and remembering this stuff. It does get easier once you start shooting and making mistakes and realizing what you've done, that you've done something wrong and trying again and so on and so on. Once I do some actual shooting, which I promise won't be too long now you'll see that it's really not that difficult. And quite often you can set the I so and then just leave it alone, which, as you'll see, is pretty much what I do in these particular types of photo sessions. Bye for now, 13. ManualMode: thing. Throughout this whole series of lectures, both camera and the flash or flashes are going to be in manual moat, so no aperture or shutter speed priority on the camera. You may never have use manual mode before on either your camera or your flash, so please do not be put off by it. It's really quite simple. What this means is that you are in control. If you take five or six shots in succession, you want the light to be exactly the same in each one teacher was great. I use it often, but not for this type of work. For example, you may have the light up here with a subject to the little to black, so you don't down the TT A L to say, minus 2/3 of a stop. It looks fine, but then you might re frame or move the light around, And it'll even though it's the same distance when your subject you're over exposed again, so you're just a flash setting again. It's lots of bad with one light, but start using multiple flashes. It starts getting messy when you have to dial up or down the TT Oh, teach your power. Well, that's an indication that you're running into one of the limitations of detail, that it's not providing an accurate exposure, and you're having to fix it. T T o is terrific forgetting you close say, 90% of the time, Perfect for when you have to work quickly in manual mode. When you move to power or down, you might go from a call to power to an eighth or to 1/16. It might sound a little more cumbersome at first until you get used to it, but then you take 100 shots. Every single one of them would have the same exposure. One great side effect of usually manual is that you learn more. You have a better understanding of what you're trying to do, plus his future proof. You'll have it under your belt for you to use forever. No matter what fancy was. Bang. Technology comes out in the future, maybe requiring requiring you to buy more, more expensive gear. You'll be able to carry on getting perfect perfect exposures by sticking with manual, obviously, the mechanics for switching to manual, different for each type of flash on my nick on SB 800. You can see it's currently in I t T L mode. All I need to do is press the mode button until I get to the desired mode. In this case, the manual mode. My young no flash doesn't have a teacher your mode, but it still has several manual modes. So I have to choose the correct one in this case is the M mode for use with the radio wireless trigger receiver system. The S one and S two modes are used. If you want to fire the flash from so your cameras pop up, flash the power on the young. No could be stepped up or down in whole stops using the up and down buttons. Or it could be stepped, stepped up or down by third stops using the left and right toggle. That's an important feature for fine tuning the exposure. So that's why we're using the manual mode on. When you watch the actual shoots, you'll see how easy it is. Bye for now, 14. ShutterSpeeds: the overall exposure is controlled by the aperture, the shutter speed. The I so flushed a subject distance on flash power. And as you just saw in the previous lecture, the aperture control is a flash exposure. I s O does that as well, but I'll come to that in another video. So what does the shutter speed do? Well, this your shutter speed controls the exposure for the ambient light. That is the exposure of whatever the constant lighters it could be blue sky or shop light in the background, a table lamp, whatever is constantly on like the lights I'm using toe like this video. So if those lights are going to be on for a long time, like the sky which is on for quite a long time, the way you control the exposure is by using time, remember, we control the flash with with amount, with the quantity of light we're letting through. That's our aperture. The ambient light in the scene or in our studio is controlled by time and time is controlled by shutter speed. Now, on most come cameras we use nowadays, there's a maximum shutter speed that we concert when using our flash, you have to check in your manual just what the maximum speeders is usually somewhere between 1 1/60 of a second on 1 2/50 of a second. Now, if you exceed that speed, that is, if you set your shutter speed to, say, 5/100 of a second. What you'll see is a dark portion of the photo, typically rectangular rectangular area across the whole bottom of the image. So, in a nutshell, your bring the photo. This happens because of the way the shutter moves in relation to the flash at faster speeds . I'm not going into any more detail about this here, as I made a complete video about maximum flash sync speed with a terrific animation. Even if I do say so myself and that's in my better be become a better photographer calls Part two I've included that video Here was a kind of supplementary lecture. So if you're interested in knowing more than please watch that So what happens when you use use a shutter speed to slower than I'm accident saying speed. Well, the slow of the shutter, the more ambient light that you let into the photo, remember that the flash fires are incredibly far, far speeds like 25/100 of a second or three thousands of a second. So it doesn't matter what shutter speed you use. The brightness of the light from the flash won't change. That's important to remember. The shutter speed does not affect the exposure of the flashlight. So if you take a photo using flash on the light from the flash is say, too bright or too dark, there's absolutely no point in adjusting your shutter speed. I did a simple experiment. The side of my house is cream colored on. I set up a flash on the stand and took a series of images firing the flash of the wall and also made sure that included some of the sky. Here's the first shot taken up to 50th of a second. You can clearly see the light from the flash on the wall in the sky is quite dark. So then I slowed the shutter speed 125th of a second and took another shot. You can see that the sky is now a little brighter now, another 1/60 of a second. The sky's getting brighter, but look, the light on the wall from the flash isn't changing. Sure, the part of the water isn't lit, but flashes getting a liver brighter. But that's because it's lit by the ambient light now to 1/30 of a second 15th of a second. The sky is getting quite right now, but the flashlight still hasn't changed. On eighth of a second on the light on the wall between the Flasher and ambient light is almost balancing out. And then finally, at 1/4 of a second, the flash and the ambient light balance out. So how does all of that help when we start shooting well in the indoor photo sessions? The only ambient light is going to be those from my video lights, plus maybe some overhead line and possibly a small amount of light coming in from a small side window in all of the indoor shoots I'm going to be doing in here. I don't want any of those lights to interfere with my exposures. So with that in mind, I'm going to keep the shutter speed of my maximum sync speed on on the camera. Be using that's 250th of a second. Check your manual to see what yours is. Once I set the shutter speed, I won't be changing it all. Join the indoor sessions, so that's nice and simple. But for the output sessions, we need to think carefully about a shutter speed, because that's going to affect how much of the ambient light we get to see in the images, just like in the wall and sky Example, I just showed I'll be covering that in more detail when we come to do the outdoor photo sessions. So that's it on shutter speeds by for now. 15. Shoot1 SimpleFirstSetup: I'm here with Tash were in the garage next to my house, which I've tied it up and turned into a makeshift studio. It's about three meters wide by about six meters long, so quite a small space you don't really need have been quite as long as this. You can do much of what I'm about to show you in a three or four meet along them, but the extra length of this guy large is useful for the were not got. Studio, of course, is useful to make room for the video lights. It's also a bit clattered. I've got our barbecue in here, my bicycle cabinets and so on. I haven't cleared them out to demonstrate what you can achieve in a small space. Okay, Plus, I'm a bit lazy. I'm using a gray pop up background. This one is probably a tad dark of the mid grey. I like grey because I can make you go lighter or darker as required. But many backgrounds would be fine, especially if you've got a bit of space, which will allow you to make it go darker. I'll talk more about that in the next lecture. This one is made by a company called Last Ally, and I put a link to several backgrounds in the shopping list. Supplementary material. My modify, I'm going to start off using Whoa is this one. It's a 3 43 inch Westcott, but they also do a 60 inch one thinks is quite big on this one's better in the confined split space. Plus, it's easier to manage. Remember the larger light source. Softer light on this one's pretty big, especially when port in close. In later elections, I'll be going outside, but an indoor shoot is a great place to start. It's a little blighter they're not like in here because I've got the video lights on. But the ambient light should be easy enough to manage. I wanted to start off with an indoor session because when you go outside during the day, you have far more ambient light to deal with on. So you're kind of living on the technical edge. I want to keep things simple to start with. So what are my camera settings? Uh, off set my shutter speed to 250th of a second. That's the maximum sync speed on his camera. Your camera swing speed. Maybe a 60 year, 1/60 or 2/100 of a second. You'll have to check your manual setting. The shutter speed to the maximum sync speed ensures that you reduce the ambient light as much as possible. This is just boring fluorescent light in here. I don't want any of that getting into the picture fall of the indoor shoot and probably for most of the art door photos, the shutter speed is going to stay at 2 50 of a second. I won't ever be changing it except by accident. I'm using a 50 mil f 1.4 lens, but it's a crop sensor camera, so it's a 35 mil equivalent of about 75 millimeters. Now, normally are set the aptitude. Therefore, that would allow the flash to do less work and would blow the background. If I had one that was worth blowing. But this one isn't but because it's quite bright in here. I'm going to use F 5.6. It's probably just as well anyway, because I know many people watching. This will be using a kit lens. Yeah, the one that came with the camera kit. Lenses are nearly all variable aperture you can. You can tell that because the markings on the lens barrel will say something like that 3.5 to 5.6. As you zoom the lens is, the attitude will change when you're from when you're wide open. So F 5.6 is in my safe one to use that one change. But if you're using a fast prime lens like this one or have a more professional zoom lens, I'd recommend starting off for F four I. So 200 or 400 on my normal working I so's. The quality is great before the images start to get a little noisy, and it also means my flash doesn't have to work so hard. He also gives me a couple of extra stops or two of life over and above 100. You may prefer love I, so to reduce the noise, especially if you're using an older DSLR or compact average camera because of the video lights. As I said before, it's quite bright in here, and I don't want to bring in too much ambient light so used to s 0 200 so my settings are to 50th of a second F 5.6 higher. So 200 my usual settings indoors are 2/50 F four I s 0 400 They're the ones I recommend you start with. I don't even think too much about it anymore. Those settings always work. Also start off, at least with the light, the same kind of distance to the subject, more or less maybe four or five feet. So off the five aspects of exposure shutter speed, aperture higher. So flashed a subject distance on flash power. The only real variable is the flesh power. So are just a just a flash power based on the initial shots, By the way, many flashes ELISA zoom the head, which then throws out a narrow beam of light. I wish that the zoom to his wider setting on this flashes 24 mil that will fill the umbrella. But if you're shooting through a 42 umbrella on your flash zoom setting is on, say, 85 mil. You might as well be shooting through a 24 inch umbrella. Some flashes some flashes of these wide diffuses. I don't use them for this type of work. Not really necessary, and it just loses you a little bit of power. What else is well, I'm shooting in the ball mode on my white balance is set to flush when you're triggering the off camera flash. The camera doesn't know that you're using flash, so if you have the camera set to the auto white balance, you can get small variations in the color as you re flame or your subject changes clothes. So said it's a flash. That's the enlightening bowl preset if you don't have one, Although one of those use the sunny preset, it's quite similar to flash in terms of color. Well, in terms of color temperature, I should say once you change the light to subject distance, you have to change the aperture or change your ire so or change the flash power. Remember, shutter speed makes no difference to the flash exposure. I like to get to a routine and keep it nice and simple. So I nearly always just changed the flash power. I don't have to worry if I get stuck. Do I do this or do I do that? I only ever change the aperture or I. So if I run out of flash options. For example, if I want flash power and the image was still under exposed. But that never really happens in small indoor photo sessions before we start to shoot proper. I just want to make sure that none of this ambient light is going to be in the shop. So I've turned off the flash for a second on. We'll just take a shot just to make sure everything goes dark. Yet that's pretty much pitch black. Just about see in tatters. Facer. That's perfect. Before I put the umbrella up, I think I just take a couple of shots as well, which we can compare using the just the bare flash without the umbrella on it so we can compare them later on. Let's give that a try. Just looking may welcome all Okay, that's great. We look at our site on and compare them, so let's put it on, Okay, that just goes through there, tarting it up. I don't normally push the shaft all the way through. Otherwise you can't. I kind of get a hot the hot spot, so I normally leave were put about four inches of the shaft, so we'll set with our aperture shutter speed. I s O and so on. But what do we set the flash power too? Well, who knows? It is going to be a guess, isn't it, you know, to start off with, but we have to start somewhere. So I think what we'll do that's, um, tell you what. Let's do it randomly. So touch you tell. May you tell me when to stop. Okay? I'm just gonna change your bandage. Really? Just say Well, okay, I have had a quick sneak to see what the the flash power is, but let's say pretend I don't know. So let's give this a try or the settings of the same. But we don't know about the flash power. We're kind of in the ballpark, but taxes looking to dark. Isn't she on looking again? Just to confirm the flash power was 30 tooth. So it's probably about two stops overexposed, but let's go down to 16. Power, first of all, see what happened. Okay? Said it's a 16 power a little bit. Blatter. They're still under exposed. Now we go to the eighth power. What? Let's give this a try. Yeah, that's pretty good. now, another way of checking exposure without using a flash meter is to make sure you d focused Festival go right up to the subject, filled the frame of the face, taking on the shot on. Then look at the history. Graham. You can see that thesis. Enter line is Miss Gray, and the pixels to the right of that are tatted face on their about one stopover. So that looks about that White was obviously taxes. Place isn't midway. It's brighter than that. So that looks about right, so we've got a good exposure. Now let's take a few shots just looking at these images afterwards on my computer. I'm happy with them. They look pretty good. You can see the soft shadow under Tasha's chin and wrapping around the right side of her cheek, compared to one of the earlier photos. Second, with a bare flash, you can see that a skin looks softer unless shiny. Also, just look at that harsh shadow under her chin on the bare flash image. But although the amber light was softer, it wasn't really that soft, And that's because it was five or six feet away from Tasha, so it wasn't a particularly large light source. I'll be dealing with that in the next lecture, so we've got some good basic shots to start off with. So what can we do next? Well, let's try moving the light around to see what difference it makes to the light on tacit face. Not normally, I would like to be able to keep the light the same distance so that I don't have to mess around with a flash power apertures and so on. But we haven't got much width, so we might have to adjust the flash power as if the light comes a little bit closer. But let's say move. Try the light over here. Let's see what happens. You're laughing with me and no, at May be a right flashes a lot closer now, so I'll double down the power of the flesh. Yeah, so tonight, let's make it say six things. So we've got some split lighted on one side of their faces lit. The other side is in shadow. No, this sort of like I would use normally, but it's a look on. Do you know? If you like it, keep using it. So, man, let's try, bring in the light down to the fun, keeping it on the camera access. It should give them more flattering light. Let's give this a try. That's probably a little bit under exposed because the lion has been moved further away. So that's being that down. This is where if you've got a trigger that you can change the power on the on the from the from the common position, it really helps. There's my that now a night power. Jinxy Meyer. I'm not changing any settings on the camera. Yeah, this type of life is quite flattering, although admittedly has gone a little dark under her chin. I'm really just trying to demonstrate the different looks you can get by simply moving the light and adjusting the flash power accordingly. I'm going to try for a much more moody a type of look. So I put the light behind Tash pointing towards May. Now on duh, I've pull down the Amber alert a little bit as well. I had to reduce the exposure by probably a couple of a couple of stops. So I think we're ever 32 power. That's, er this looks I'm gonna cover up the lens but I think I might get a bit of fair otherwise from the from the flash. Yeah, that's giving us a nice movie look. So you can see just by moving the light around, we can get completely different type of effects on day. I haven't changed. Any settings on the camera have only adjusted the flash power, so we got some pretty good basic shots there for the first video. And in future lectures, I'll be refining the techniques to try and get even more dramatic type of photos on but more flattering light as well. One thing I forgot to mention was the height of the Amber Alert. It's quite important if it's too low, then you're going to expose all of this area around the chin on DSO on which you don't really want to. Do you really want to cast a shadow around that kind of area? Also, you want it above eye level to brighten up the eyes, get the color in the eyes and you can usually tell if you got it right. But the catch lights in the eyes should be around the 10 2 on a 10 past position. That's a good indication you've got the umbrella or the light about right? You saw there how the light changes as we move around the umbrella giving you a different light. Some of that you might like some of that you might not like. Just use the ones you do like get rid of the ones. If you're not happy, if you're not happy with that type of light. So you were the next film. 16. Shoot2 ControllingBackground: in this video, I'm going to continue the theme from the previous one and try to refine the photo. I was a bit more, especially in terms of the softness of the light on of the background. Now we've got the lovely Hannah here with us today as our model. But before I start, I'm just going to take a couple of shots of Hannah using the same kind of light and set up on the same camera and flash settings as I used in the previous video. So let's do that. So I'm just trying to get the exposure sorted out. I set the camera again to 2/50 of a second F 5.6 I s 0 200 but first of all, take a shot with the flash turned off just to make sure it is not too much ambient light. Getting in the shop just trying out first didn't go off. It's not completely black, but it is dark enough. There's hardly any light getting onto getting onto Hanada, so let's try that again with the flashlight on now, and it's set to flash. Power is set to an eighth power, and that's a little bit under exposed, isn't it? So all I have to do is up the power. The flash it's set to eighth in a moment are said it's 1/4 power going again. Yeah, these look a lot better now. That exposure seems about what? Here's the first shot without the flash. Just to show that there's hardly any ambient light in the image, it's the room. If the room your shooting is brighter than this one and you're seeing too much ambient light, then try loving the I so or closing down the Apertura little, although that will mean your flash is going to work harder. So the set is. I'm using our pretty much our optimum for this amount of ambient light, allowing the flash power to be kept quite low. Anyway, back to the main thing with this video. Although the light on Hannah's face is a whole lot softer than it would be without the am Berna, you know it still isn't quite a soft as it could be. We can do better than this, but I'll come back to that in a minute to start off with. I want to make the background a little more interested. Maybe a little moved here, and in order to do that, I have to take control of the background. But what do I mean by that? Well, in the shots I just took the background is a kind of medium grey, maybe a bit darker. But when you think about it because, as you just saw were not allowing in any of the ambient light, then without the flash, the background goes very dark, and it wouldn't have mattered. Even if it was a white background, it was still have gone very dark if I hadn't used Flash. What that tells us is that some of the light from the flash hit the background. Or, to put it another way, it contaminated the background. Now I want to try. Try to avoid the light from it in the background, and that will allow me to do other things with it. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. One thing at a time, to take control to the background I have to protect prevent it from being contaminated by the light from the flash. And if I can do that, the background should go darker. That's the kind of starting point. It may not go completely black, but it will be darker. But how can I do that after I can't just love the flesh power or close down the aperture? Sure, that would make the background darker. But Hannah would go darker, too. Should be under exposed. I can't adjust the shutter speed that makes no difference to the flash export exposure. Here's what I can do. First of all, I can bring Hannah away from the background a few feet. Let's try that, Ana. So let's move it to about here about fine. Yet that's pretty obvious, really, isn't it? The further away she is from the background, the darker is going to get due to the light. Fall off, but not so obvious is bringing bringing the light in closer. Okay, just bring it really close. I know that seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? But remember the inverse school inverse square law. When the light is closer, it falls off quicker. And look how close it is now. Before, it was about five or six feet away. Now it's only a couple of feet away, so the light is going to fall off to practically nothing before it is the background. Obviously, the light has become more powerful because flash the subject distance has been reduced. So I have to reduce the flash power accordingly, probably by stop and 1/2. Maybe a couple of stops has come around here. Yeah, the Y. But not only that, moving the lighting closer has another great advantage. It's bigger. Well, it's not really bigger. But in relation to a Hannah, it's bigger, which means that the light is going to get softer. In the first shots I took, the light was several feet away. It was only a moderately soft light, but now that is closer. It looks a lot bigger. Does this look big to you? What, This looks really big. There doesn't. That's a great thing about this. You, the chutes are. But as you get really close, with no danger of the shaft, taking out the subjects eyeball, which they might know, appreciate having said all of that. If you're shooting in a small of them and there's no space to get the subject away from the background, that might be time to use a reflective umbrella because there's less spill of the light onto the background, and if that if that still produces too much light onto the background, then try soft box. The light is far more directional, so even less light is going to fall on the background. But for simplicity and because I've got the space, I'll continue with the shoot through umbrellas. So let's get the exposure salted up on. We'll get going. So now we've got the umbrella in really close. I've had to reduce the power of the flash, so it's now on 1/16 power. It was on 1/4 power before, wasn't it? I've kept the camera set in exactly the same. So let's see how this looks. I'm just looking at these images. As I added a video. I'm really pleased with them. Bearing in mind, it's just one light. Yeah, the background has gone darker, and that means we can now start to do things with it. Also, this demonstrate that you can work in a smallish area without the light, contaminating your background. But see how soft that light looks now with a beautiful transition to the shadow area. Compare it with the shots when the light was further away. You can really see the difference. I'm a big fan of getting the light in close close. Is your friend more control of the background? Beautiful soft lie and easy on your flashes and batteries. You can't say fairer than that. In the next lecture, I'll show you how to take advantage of this control that we have over the background in order to improve the look of the look of the images. Bye for now. 17. Shoot3 LightingBackground: what in this session, My aim is to get a better looking background while trying some lions onto it. Make sure you have watched the previous lecture to see how to start taking control of the background. Now I've moved Abby on the light away from the background. So now now I've got a complete second area that I could like why can fit another light in between her in the background. And even though the background haven't gone completely black before, it will now, as long as I keep the umbrella close into the Teoh Abby, so the light doesn't contaminate the background. So I'm going to place another lie in front of the background, probably about three or four feet from the background on both. The stand on the flash will be hit, been but hidden by Abby. So that's another great reason to use small lights. Now place the diffuser over the flash head to spread the light. Atmore. It's like a piece of Tupperware on, although you see quite a lot of people using them, I don't really think they do the things that people give them credit for. Indoors, it's more like a bear, bold with the light going in every direction. So it bounces off the walls and the ceiling. And in that respect, in that respect, it fills in some of the shadows. But in terms of softer light now it doesn't really do that. It's the room that's doing it. So when people put them on their flashes outside, what's that going to do? Well, the net effect is just to lose him. Two stops of flash power. There's nothing to bounce off. Not unless you've got very low clouds that day know the size of the direct line is the same . It's no bigger, so it won't provide softer light. He will spread the light out more so I guess if you're using a wide angle lens outside, you'll get more coverage as the light spreads out. And that's why I put one on now just to cover more of the background. If the fact is too close, is going to create a hot spot in the middle there before the light actually spreads up. So I'll move it back to about three feet, I think. What about the flash power? Well, let's guess 64th power could always change it later. So let's get started. First of all, take some shots without the light so we can see how the background looks. So the only what like we've got going now is the key light. Is that going off? And it didn't go off. Let's try that yet. Let's try again. You can see how dark now the background is because we've moved further away from the from the background. But now I'm going to switch to this background light on. It's set to 64 Power say, are we get on without Oh, I think the background might be the back one. Light might be a little bit too, too bright, so I'm gonna turn it down to 128 power. So again, that was good. Just facing the like, tiny bit more. Just move the hair out their eyes a little bit and face a lot again. Yeah, these look great now, don't know just a hint of light on the back just to separate a hair from the background. It's probably not quite so important. Abby's got blonde hair, but if you have ah subject with dark hair, it really helped the background like really helps to separate the hair and shoulders from the background. Gives that nice. It's separation has an exercise. What if I wanted to light in the background? Sure. I could just go to that back for, like, that back liar and turned up the power that would do it. But what if we were shooting somewhere where the light wasn't quite so accessible? Possibly a wedding or maybe an event. You know where the flash was? High up on the stand. What do you think? How could I light it without changing of changing the flash power? Can you work it out? Well, here's the answer. I can open up my aperture by one stop. That would light in the background to trouble is, it would also lighter might put more light on my subject. So we have to do is dull down the power of the key light flash by one stop. That's easy. I'm gonna try using a different modify on the background now to try a different effect. Let's give this honeycomb grid a shop. Now I describe this in the first lecture. Someone go through it again, but it should throw a more restrictive kind of light onto the background. All right, well, I put the honeycomb grid on the flash on That raises the power just a little bit by a couple of thirds of a stop. Let's see how this looks. You can see that kind of directional kind of light on the back. You can play around with a great sport, make it higher, lower change, change directions, use it from the other side. Use a bit of trial and error. See how it looks. But I'm pleased with that. Looks pretty good. So that's about it. For this video, just a sum of isan. We've moved the subject away from the background to give us a bit more control. We've still got the light very close in so that we don't contaminate the background of them . Put another light at the back, pointing towards a background with a stove anomaly bounce type of diffuser on the on the flash, and that's really about it. You need to you need to keep that light fairly low power. So that is, it's not too bright, but experiment with the power. You don't have to change any settings on the camera. So that's it for this lecture. See you in the next field 18. Shoot4 GelBackground: in this film, I'm going to take a look at changing the color of the background. You can do this fairly easily by using gels, sometimes called colored filters. These air simply small pieces of transparent material that placed over the flash head. They have other uses as well, one of which is color correction. But that's just took the topic for another day on the background. Color could make quite a difference to the look and feel of an image, so these gels always handy to keep around. They don't cost much, usually around £10 for a whole set of them. See the shopping list supplementary material system links. There's various methods of attaching them to the flash heads. You can purchase special holders, but I tend to just use Velcro, which I stick to the edges of the gels. As you see here, let's give some a try. I'll start off with orange. The official name for this color is color temperature, color, temperature, orange or C T O for short. In any set of gels, you normally get 1/2 CTO and 1/4 CDO in case you don't want the color too strong for you. can come combine them like I've done here to make stronger colors. By the way, the flashes do lose a little relying when firing through these jewels. So I might need to increase the flash power or keep all the camera settings and the key light flash power the same as I used in the previous video. So let's take a shot. See how it looks. Just come over this way. Time because the flashes behind you. So we have to hide them. Flash behind. That's great. Yeah, the color looks pretty good here, which is one of the reasons I like to use a grey background. If I were to use a white background, the color wouldn't be quite so strong. It would be more a pastel shade now are change over to a blue gel. Let's see how this looks, OK, I've now got the blue gel on. Let's give it a try. Just lean back this way. Actually, I tell you what we do and let's move the chair over this way. One of the problems is you have to hide the flash if you see a little bit of the flash people up from the behind the hair, whatever. Doesn't look quite as good. That's it. And as the Abas leaning forward, that's gonna be profit. Yeah, that looks beautiful, doesn't it? A lovely soft light on her face. Onda. A lovely strong color at the background. Let's try now. A Reggio looks Think I'll raise the power of the of this flat at the back just slightly. Okay, good. Sometimes when you increase the power on the on the flash when you're using gels, you get slightly more pastel shades. You think it would be work the other way around. So quite often, if you want a stronger color, you can reduce the power of the flash and just move the flash in a little bit closer. Quite striking difference in those images isn't there? I would say the blue one for May works best in this case that Joe was a fun to use and worth experimenting with. So give it a go bye for now. See you in the next film 19. Shoot5 FillLight: Hi, I'm here with my good friend Dave to show you how to use a second light for slightly more flattering look now, So far, I've only been using one flash toe like the subject on because the light was very close. It gave us a beautiful rapper on type of light, with light on one side forming off gradually to shadow on the other side. And although it's a beautiful type of life, it has to be said that because it's quite dramatic, it's not always the most flattering type of light. That's because the light and shadow tend to show up being calls, blemishes, lions and sometimes the shadows, you know, around or under the subject tires, so it's not suitable for everyone. Now most youngsters, like our previous models and myself, obviously have lovely complexions. So So no problem there as you as you're seeing. They look great in this type of light. Also, because there's quite a dramatic light. It suits most men as well as it gives a strong, powerful type of look. It can be especially great for Alderman to giving the two of it kind of old, grizzled look, but at the risk of sounding a bit politically incorrect from only mature women of a certain age. Well, you have to be careful using this type of light and set up. After all, you wouldn't want to make a feature of any wrinkles or lines on their faces To make a more flattering type of life, we need to lighten up or, as photographer say, open up the shadows on the unlit side of the face, and to do that, we use a second life. The first light we used is often referred to as the key light. The one we're going to use to light in the shadows is referred to as a fill light. I feel like and greatly improved portrait lighting. It reduces the depth of shadows and softens the appearance of facial features at a push. You can use your pop up flash as a fill light, but generally speaking, you want a softer light, so I'm going to use to shoot through umbrella. Bear in mind if you're not careful. Second light source can harm a portrait, so you do have to be careful. Tooken, shoulder, location and intensity of the fill light in order produce to produce the desired effect. I usually place the feel like along the camera access. Now some people prefer to have them opposing 45 degrees to the key light. But you have to be careful there not to create another set of shadows, so I keep it simple and just place a feel like close to the camera position. You generally want to set the exposure toe one or two stops lower than the key light. Depending on how much you want to open, open up the shadows, use less power or move the feel like further away too deep in the shadows. Or use more power or bring in closer toe light in the shadows. Professional photographers talk in terms of ratios between the key light in the field light depending on the difference. In contrast between the shadow and highlights, the feel like should be less powerful within the key light. A difference in aperture of one stop between the main and the Phil will give a 2 to 1 ratio , but that starts to get complicated when you consider that a fill light is likely to be further away than the key light. So rather than get the tape measure and calculator are, I find it's easier just to use trial and error and plow around with the flash power until I get the desired result. Like I said, usually just one or 1.5 stops. Difference between the lights works well, but that's assuming the two lights are similar distances to your subject. So let's give that a try of reduced the risotto 100 to ensure a minimum amount of ambient light that will mean only the next to stop of power. For my flashes, the key light flashes on an eight power. So I start off by using 1/16 on the field like that. That might change very mind that it's also it's it's further away, so it won't be as powerful. I'll begin by taking a shot with no flash, and then I'll compare that to a shot with just a fill flash. I like to start in kind of reverse order, just to see what the feel like is doing on its own. So let's give that a go. Okay, well set to go. The flash power is not quite what I expected it to be. A This one's on eighth power on. That's all the feel like is also one on eighth power. But the light is further away. I'm gonna just shoot day straight from the front is gonna look is going to look straight to water camera without changing the pose. And I'm gonna shoot quite close up just so that we can judge the shadows on his face. I'll start off by taking a shot without the without any lights on it all. And then I'll try one with just a feel, like working in the reverse order. So let's give this a try. First of all, just to make sure we're not letting into any ambient light, Uh, this should be completely dark. Yes. So that's Ah, almost black, isn't it? So let's just now try it. So I put in the fuel light on Let's turn this one off. So we've just got the feel like on now just to see what effect it's having having on the shop. You can smile a little bit if you want to do another one. Okay, so you cannot say it's open up the shadows just just a little bit. I wonder if we need a bit more than that. Let's leave it like that for the moment. Now we'll try one with just the key line just so that we can compare them just right on. Okay, so we've got tequila on on a power. So you see, it's quite a deep shadow on the right hand side off Dave's face. Now we'll put the fuel line on. So this is not which we hope will be. In a short Yeah, that looks pretty good. Now we've got the shadow on the side of days face, but it's not too is not too deep, sort of feel like it's done. It's job Now. We can try adjusting the feel like to get you a deeper shadow or less shadow. So let's try reducing the power on the field light. It's on a night power. Let's make it 1/16 try to show again. Thank yes, you can see now the shadows have got a little bit deeper on the right hand side of days face. So let's go the other way. Now. Andi set the fill light to 1/4 power, so the key light is on eighth. The fuel light is on 1/4 but because it's further away. I would say that they're both that the equivalent type of power. So let's take another short. Her smile gave lovely. So we've now got to the point in these shots where the fuel light is balancing out the light from the key light. It looks OK and find for a passport or straight snapshot. But this type of light is quite flat and uninterested. Okay, let's be honest. It's mediocre. So if you're striving to become more creative, you're generally be far happier when there's a good combination of light and shadow on your subject's face. So a fill light is great, but do experiment with the flash power or flashed a subject distance to get the desired result as regards stronger or lighter shadows. I should also mention that you're generally want to use a fill light when photographing larger groups to avoid shadows from the key light falling on neighbouring faces and bodies . In the next video, I'm going to create a completely shad, Earless, very flattering type of light often used in glamour and fashion photography on L. A type head shots. But for that I'll probably use someone a bit more glamorous. No offense to see it for now. See you in the next field. Bye for now, 20. Shoot6 ClamShellLighting: in this video, I'm going to demonstrate a kind of view beauty type of light in quite off the news for in fashion, glamour lighting, Hollywood headshots. That's another thing. And all over beautiful light. It's a three light set up. I'll go through them one by one. The first light is the key light, and that's high up. We've got three flashes all being triggered by the young. No, I have 60 threes. By the way, the first light is our key light, and that is on an eighth power. We've still got the same basic camera settings to 50 of a second here, 5.6 I s 0 200 This light here is our feel. Like this is the lightest kind of reflect up, shoot up into the face, give us a lovely, lovely light and get rid of any of any shadows under under the eyes. The power of this of this one is normally want this about a one stop less than the key light. So this one is on the 16th power. This is a special. I think I call it a background stand useful for putting behind the subject. But I think is made by month month Lotto on our leave A link to it in the supplementary short shopping list. I'm gonna be shooting food a middle here. Summary points in a camera right through the middle. By the way, I keep the lens hood on the on this lens. Teoh prevent any flare coming back from the from the lights. The light in the back is the one we saw earlier towards the background. On it. It's got a strobe anomaly, anomaly. Bounce. So phenomenal. Bounce on the light to disperse a light. Make it go a little bit wider. That's on a 64th power, which I've just checked on it and that is a correct exposure. So we've got an eighth power 16th power, 64th power. So let's give this a try. Hopefully go Just looking down. Yeah, I concede the light is beautiful. Where? Try something portrait orientation. I think this clamshell Starlight and is really providing a great all over shudder This type of life great color in touch his eyes to on with nice partly catch lights. Also because the lights is so close is hardly any reflection. Hot spots on her skin he should look great in black and white, so that's a great way of getting some beautiful lie on your subject. If you can't stretch to three flashes, you can replace this one quite often with a reflector being it up close. Put it maybe on a table. Just tilt it toward the face on. That will give you a very similar type of type of light. But I like to work with the flash. It's a little bit more flexible. Aiken Raise or lower the power of the flash. Don't forget are still have the same basic camera settings. So it was only the flash power that was that was being varied throughout those shots. See you in the next film. 21. Shoot7 HardLight: this video is a slight departure of of the ones before I'm going to experiment using ah harder light source Now load soft light is beautiful and had definitely has his place. It represents only one string to the photographers Bow in. This meant many fashion. Shoot with Matt, I'm going to show you how using Ah harder light source cannot dramatic impact to your photographs. Now the more observant amongst you will notice that Matt is not a woman. Far from it on Although hard lighting is not just limited to men, bear in mind that it can be a little bit unforgiving when it comes to being calls and blemishes. So you will have to be very careful with your light positioning when you're using a hard light to photograph women, especially more with mature women hope that's not too politically incorrect, really, though hard and soft light, both have their uses. You can't really say that one is better than the other, only that one is better for the type of subject and style that you're trying to achieve. There's no doubt that soft light is more flattering for pore trait, but hard like can be great for reading, drama, impact and contrast. So I'm going to use a to light set up on on the key light. I'm going to place one of these small soft boxes. It's a very simple set up. It just folds over on Vell. Vell crows to the flash ed. Right away, I keep the soft side of Velcro permanent fixed toe my flash heads. A link to this soft box is in the accompanying shopping list. It's not huge, so this will shock from the light just a little bit to avoid too many shiny bits and reflections on that's face and soften the hard edge shadows just a little. It's easy enough to change the heart or softness of the light, but bring it in close or moving it away. We'll place it about maybe four feet away to start off with. That has dark hair and because of background will go a bit dark. I'll put another flash high up, put it high up to work as a hairline. He only needs to kind of skin the skin, the hair, and it needs to be positioned so it doesn't like any part of the face. So with that in mind. All place a honeycomb grid over the flash ed to avoid any unnecessary lights. Bill. Now we come to the exposure. For the time being, I'll stick with what we've been using. Shudders be to 50th of a second aperture. 5.6 higher. So 200. I'm going to change the setting for the second set up, but more of that in a minute. Now, I don't know about the flash power. Yeah, I'll probably take a guess at a 64th for the hairline and see how that looks. Okay. I've got the hair, like set up now, and I set the power to 64th on draft. Turned off the other light so we can just see how the light is going to affect match here. Let's give it a go. I think that looks a little bit too black too. May. So what I'm gonna do is reduce the power to a 64th power. Give it another try now. So yeah, the hair, like looks about right now, I don't want it to you, don't it too bright? Just enough to kind of put a little sheen on it and to separate it from the background is not meant to be like a huge rim like effect. So what about the kid in the main key? Light will upset that to an eight power, and I use that little trick. Are described in an earlier session to zoom in on Matt's face and look, look at the history. Graham. Let's give that a go. I said it out of focus. Let's check the history, Graham for that. Yeah, I think that looks about my exposure. COBOL set ready to go. This light is on eighth power of the moment as you turn your feet a little bit toward the light, man. And I said, Now look back up. Maybe more really. If arms folded again, Yeah, these are great. Don't know. They've got a real moody, edgy type of looked at him even though Matt is usually a very smiley person. Normally, I didn't want him to smile in these shots, as I didn't think that it would go with the dramatic look that I was going for So far in these sessions, I've been using mostly the gray on on one or two occasions, the white background. Now I'm going to bring in a new urban gritty pop up background. Again, this is a last a like product I put into it in the shopping list. Now it has a kind of different urban look on on each side. I think I'll use the book one that's open this up very quickly. It make Yeah, this is This is one side of it on. This is the brick work. I can't open it up just yet because there's just not enough space. But in the actual photos you'll see it looks very realistic. But I don't want this background to be too sharp. I want to blur the background for a better effect. So I'm going to change my temperature from F 5.62 F 2.8 in order to create to create a shallow, depth fulfilled. Remember that the larger the aperture eyes, the smaller the number, the shallow at a depth of field. The problem is, F 2.8 is going to let in two more stops of light than the 5.6. So if I don't change any other settings, the photos will be overexposed. Okay, I replace a great background with this last ally in urban brick pattern Andi think it should look pretty good. The other side to this is a kind of a rusty metal, but I prefer the brick side I'm going to use in an exposure of F 2.8 or an aperture of F two point. I should say, in order to get the background a little bit more blurry. And I wanted to look too sharp on because I've opened up the amplitude by a couple of stops . I've also reduce the power of the main flash by a couple of stops. That's now on the 32 power. Let's see how it looks now looking so down towards the light. Been approach alarms, right? Well, we've got some great shots here with a kind of gritty feel To them, this urban background looks pretty good too, doesn't it? On a terrific light on the small soft box and just a hint of light on that hair. So I've just put together a couple of ideas here, but hopefully this has inspired you to think of creative ways to use an experiment with hard lighting in your photographs by for now, 22. Shoot8 LightingPatterns: I don't think this course would be complete without a quick discussion portrayed lighting patterns. So, strictly speaking, this is not another photo shoot. But this is good stuff to know on definitely helps in lighting Paul traits. Now, when taking portrait, you can move the light around or change the angle of the subject's face to get different lighting patterns on their faces. Some of the patterns are more flattering than others. You can kind of think of the light in patterns as how the light and shadow plays across the face to create different shapes. The most popular ones are split lighting, Rembrandt lighting, butterfly lighting and lube lighting. Also, there's something called broad and short lighten, which can also be used in conjunction with. Some of the other patterns are just mentioned. I'll be going to each one of these one by one, using the lovely mannequin here on this, more video, like so split lighting, is the 1st 1 and as the name implies, it splits the face exactly into equal half, with one side being in the light on the other side. In shadow, you often see it used for magicians and artists, and in magazines. Split light intends to be a more masculine pattern, and so it's usually more appropriate or applicable for men rather than women. But obviously there's no hard and fast rules. You won't have the split lighting police knocking on your door if you use it on a woman to achieve split lighting, you simply put the light source 90 degrees to the left or right of the subject on the same level. I maybe just slightly behind the head. I like to try and get a catch light on the very edge of the iris. Next, we have lube lighting where you place the light about 30 or 40 degrees from the camera on just above eye level. Lube lighting is made by creating a small shadow of the subjects nose on their cheeks to create lub lub. Light in the light source must be slightly higher than I level in about 30 45 degrees from the camera. You can see from the image whether you have it right on the left side. You can see a small shadow of the nose in lieu, blighting the shadow of the nose and that the cheek don't touch. It's probably the most common or popular lighting pattern as it's easy to create on flatters most people. Next we have Rembrandt lighting. Can you guess it might have been named after? That's a tough one, isn't it? Yeah. Rendering often use this pattern of light in these paintings, As you can see in this self portrait here, Rembrandt Lighting identity is identified by the triangle of light on the cheek. Well, as in Lieu, blighting the nose and cheeks. Shadows don't touch in Rembrandt lighting. They do may, which creates that little trap triangle of light on the cheek. You have to make sure the eye on the shadow side of the face has a light on it and has a nice catch light in it. Otherwise, the I will be dead and not have a nice sparkle. This type of lighting is a little more dramatic, so, like split lighting, it create a bit more of a mood. The next type of light in pattern I want to talk about is called Butterfly Light. In so called because of the butterfly shaped shadow that appears under the nose, the key lies placed above the subject on the same axis as the camera a new shoot from underneath it butterfly light and is often used for glamour style shots and to create shadows under the cheeks and chin. It's also flattering for older people, as emphasizes, wrinkles less than sidelight in, although someone with around wide face would probably look better with Luke or Rembrandt lighting to help slim them down. You could also use a reflector to emphasize the glamour look similar to the clamshell lighting that you've already seen before. Now you may have spotted that in many of the videos have taken so far, I've asked the model to point her face in the light slut on the light slightly rather than looking straight on. This is called short lighting. It's not really a light pattern, as it could be used in conjunction with Loop or Rembrandt lighted with short light in the side of the face. Nearest the camera is the side in shadow. You can see how most of the light is on the far side of the face. The opposite is true when you use board lighted Notice how that decided to face near. The nearest camera has most of the light. If we compare the short onboard lighting, you can really see the difference. I much prefer short lighting and use it a lot. I think it's more flattering on a bit moody, especially for people with round faces. So there's some info on lighting patterns. Remember, they're only guidelines, and sometimes you just go with what you think that's good and disregard them altogether for creative effect. But it's useful stuff to stuff to know about. See you in the next video bye for now. 23. Shoot9 HouseholdObjects: way we've seen how the background could be made a bit more interesting by lighting parts of it on by changing the color of it using jails in this video with the lovely Tamsin, I'm going to take one that one step further and improve the background even more. I'm going to use household objects that I found lying around my home, and I'm going to fire a flash freedom to create patterns and shapes on the background. Here's a few I'm going to try. We've got a kitchen cutlery back which has just been lying around the house. He is a few, well, not even sure what? These are kind of candle. What's? There's a few kind of ah, candleholder that we bought for Christmas to put candles in make nice shadows on the on the walls. My wife loves this sort of thing. Gonna try firing the flash roots and tumblers as well with patterns on them. See if we can get some great effects. Most are gonna try shooting through a Venetian blind for a completely different type of look. But we'll come back to that light to, um so I placed a flash on this little white Cabinet, and I'll put the household objects in front of it. I'll start with the kitchen. Rakoff. Think Andi just put it in front of the flash. Now the pattern more varias I move it nearer or further away from the flash gun. Like in previous videos where I've done something with the background. You kind of have to think of the lighting set up as two different exposures, one for the background on one for the main subject. So I start off by getting the correct background exposure. It's really just a matter of setting the flash power for the camera settings I know that I'm going to be using. I want to make sure the background goes a little blurry. So I set my aperture to F four s I 100 that will give me the same exposure as a settings we use previously, which were F 5.6 I s 0 200 Shutter speed remains a to 50th of a second. Let's see how this background looks. Okay, that's all set up. I've got the kitchen Mac in front of the flash gun. I just have to check the exposure on the background. The power of the flashes sets to 16. But, you know, I might have to vary their I'll see how I get on. Just take a quick shot of the background. I put it in manual focus because it's gonna have trouble focusing on that gray background. Otherwise, you can speak straight away. That was pretty good. I'm not sure what that small bit of light is down the bottom, but I'm really cared. It's just a bit of fun on duh. I think I'll leave it at that exposure. Okay, Now, let's try taking some shorts like times, and you never sit down there. Okay? So straight away, You see, we've got quite a nice please in shot there with a good pattern background. I think now I'll try changing. I think I put a gel over the flash gun to change the color. Maybe a blue Jill, you got all made up. Okay, I've got the blue gel on the background now. And when you put a colored gel on, you tend to lose a little bit of power. So I've increased the of increased. The power of the flash by one stop was now on an eight power. I forgot to say this light is on 1/16 power, which is typical of what we were using before. I just give it a try. It was small. Yeah, I like that one. I think the pattern works. World with the blue. Jill. Nice effect. Okay, now I'm going. Going to try it with one of these little candleholders. See how we get on. I've got I've got two of them. So I've set one of the map of ready. I'll just take a quick couple of pictures of the background, see how it looks. Okay, That's not bad. Give that a try. Just lean towards Ovitz. Hasn fight. Yeah, that background was quite subtle. It may have benefited from slightly more flash power. I like it, though. I just remembered I forgot this. It's a kind of Ah, big candleholder. My wife loves this. You put the candle inside, makes a nice, warm sort shapes on the wall on. I'm gonna put a avenge CTO Jill on the flash head as well and increase the power again. I forgot to mention that I'm put in this kind of flag gobo thing on the side of the flash come just with Velcro to prevent any light spill coming back and hitting Tamsin. So let's give this a go. First of all, just take a quick shot of the background like I did before, just to see what a pattern. What kind of pattern it gives. May set the lens into manual mode. Save the lens hunting. And that doesn't know bad. I think maybe I could increase the power a little bit up to about 1/4. Try it again. Yeah, I think that looks better. So let's give it a try. It's worked well, but not sure I like that. One. Looks a little old fashioned to my eyes. It's objective, though you might like it. I think we'll give these tumblers ago. Now again. I think I'll probably go back to the blue gel on golf. Stack these up. So you know we get an overall pattern. Okay, I've got those glasses stacked up. You have to be careful. In fact, I'm just broken one well, while I was stacking them. But you can play around with the stacking and the shapes and to see what kind of pattern you get on the background. Let's see how it looks. I put a blue gel on there as well, and I think it's about quarter of a power. Oh, that's very good. So let's try to get a shot just a very things a little bit. I think I'll just try different pose. We've moved the chair away so times, and if you turn towards me now, that's it. Come around. Still got the glasses stacked up. That's it on. Just tilt your head Looks waste slightly. Not quite as much as that. That's great. Tell your face towards me just a tiny bit. Yeah, I love this one. That pattern looks terrific. Doesn't on the background, especially with that blue gel on it. I think this is probably my favourite of this series. Okay, Now, for something completely different, I'm going to use a Venetian blind. But instead of trying to create a pattern on the background, it's going to be a patent for the main subject. The actual lines, the shadows are going to fall on times in space. So before we start, I need to just check the background to see how it looks. Times If you move away a second, just take a quick shot of the background. Make sure the session to commit. Yeah, that looks pretty good. So come back here. The flashes on 1/4 power and I put a small soft box over about 10 inch soft box. Just so it's not too hard, You know, the light is not too hard on one of the problems we've got is we don't want the shadows falling over times their eyes. You want to make sure that the light strip is over her eyes. So if I If I don't get that right, I might have to raise or lower the camera angle slightly slightly. You will see how we get on so time. If you face May like we did like you were talking about before. Just rest on one leg at it, and you're gonna be looking towards towards a light that's quite important to be looking toward delight. Otherwise, you're just gonna have a whole side of the face covered with this shit with the shadow and the light from the flash. Oh, that looks great. I like this one. I've hidden the out of light and edge of the shadow by placing Tamsin on 1/3 over to the right after we finished filming, I've been moved. A soft box problem with this first shot is that the shadow covers eyes. So I changed the angle and took another one. This is much better. We've got quite a strong dramatic effect here. So that's about it. On using household objects. This is your chance to be creative. So just look around for any kind of items that you can use and have a play around with them . You don't really need as many as I use just now. Try one or two on. Remember, you can put them further away or nearer to the flash head to try and get different shapes. Also, try using a gel as well to call it color background. So thanks very much. Turn to you in the next field. Bye for now. 24. Shoot10 HoneyCombGrid: hi. In this video, I'm just going to be photographing times in with the honeycomb grid that most flashes have zoom heads, allowing you to create a narrower or wider beam of night. You generally press buttons on the back to zoom in or zoom out. But even when you use the maximum zoom to give you the narrowest light, it still doesn't provide that type beam of light that you get from a grid support O R. Snoot. Now I'm going to use this honeycomb grid that I used in the previous video as a hair light . It's a small light source, so it will create a hard light. But hey, that's OK. Hard light can be called to create creative and dramatic effects, and that's what I'm going to aim for now. Unlike a large umbrella, the light is going to be very directional. It's only going toe like a really small area of Thompson's face, so my subject is going to have to remain quite still no point in there jumping about as the light isn't going to hit the parts of that I wanted to, so I just want to aim the light so it just kind of scrapes the front of her face. Now, studio strobes have what's called modeling lights. There constant like to stay on so you can see exactly where the light is going. But these small flashes don't have them. Not really a problem. I'm just going to stand behind the light and I am it now. This particular grid system, which I've listed before in a supplementary material, comes with three removable grids 10 2040 degrees degree angle angles. I'm using the smallest one, which has holes of about 16th of an inch. The background is why, but we're not going to light it, so it should go very dark. I've just raised a light. I didn't film it, but I stood behind the light and just positioned it. So just scrape the front of times and face. I could just pop the light again just to make sure I got it about right. Yet that seems about right kind of look, look down. But here Yeah, that's giving us a real dramatic effect. Close your eyes. Now look down slightly. Head down. Just looking at this image again afterwards is, of course, our hard. Like I think it looks pretty cool. Not the little triangle of light on time zones, right cheek. Remember enlarging pattern? Remember that the shadow on her left cheek running from her I, down to her mouth was caused by some stray hair. I should really have zoomed in on the image at the time to check it out and maybe asked her to pull her hair back a bit. So that was a little mistake on my part. What a way! Noticed the white background has gone very dark. That's because it wasn't lit on the settings I was using didn't allow in any. Hardly any ambient light. So we've moved back against a white background. Now it won't go white because of the narrowness of the beam of light, but you know should go a little a little bit lighter. Move the light quite high up, and it's on a night power. A set into 2/50 of a second F 5.6 I so 200 science times before, for most of the shots stand is going to be looking either the light or over this way just to get a better light on her face. So let's give it a try. You hold about money? Sure. That's a great like that. Lovely. Okay, Yeah, that's good. Hold the show out. Yeah, uh, again looking at these on my computer afterwards. That maniac all after there is a bit embarrassing, isn't it? Do get a bit carried away sometimes, but these shots turned out great. Didn't I notice that Tamsin is looking towards the light which I felt suited this type of shot better on? Because I knew there'd be quite contrast. E. I always had it in mind to make them black on white. So that was something a little bit different. You can get great effects with these honey Congress. It is just a matter of playing around trying and trying different things. A bit of trial and error. Really. But you can have fun with it and get some great creative effects. So I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks very much. 10. See you in the next film. Bye. For now. 25. Shoot11 WhiteBackgrounds: a plain white background is kind of a classic look, isn't it? It's obviously not a new look, but you know, people still love them and they're still quite popular. The problem is, even if you're using a white background, it won't go completely white with some of the light and set up. So I've been using so far. It will go quite dark, possibly even completely black if you main light so far enough away. But even if you have the key and fuel lights really close to the background, it still won't be completely white. A white background would just go a light or mid grey, so the only way to make a white background go dazzlingly white is to actually liked it separately. For an individual portrait, you can sometimes get away with a single light, especially if you're shooting in a poultry orientation. But it also depends on the modify you use, but generally speaking, and definitely for photos of more than one person you need just you need one light either side of the background to ensure that the light is even for today, though I've just set up one light with a sto fen type Omni bounce on the flash head to spread out, spread out the light, and it's set currently to an eighth power. But first of all, I'll switch it off just to see how the background looks without without the lights on it. So let's give it a try. This lot is set to 16 power. Same sentences before on the camera, not shutting down toddy. That's nice. Long. Yeah, and that looks really nice, doesn't it? On the shadow and light on Tan's face looks really nice, so I may even leave the field like off Just for the moment. The background is definitely not. Why is it it's called a kind of a mid grey, but we'll switch the back light on now on. We'll see what difference that can make. Well, that's Ah to an eighth power. It's not a Nathan a bit eight and 2/3. I've also got this flag on the flash just to prevent the light spilling back onto times face. So that's all there is to getting a nice, clean white background. Just point a couple of lights or maybe one light. If you're shooting a single subject on, put a diffuse on the flash head. What possibly use a reflective ambarella, which will spread the light out even more. Just a couple of other points. You really want the subject? At least I would say four feet from the background to prevent a light coming back and spilling your own, creating kind of a halo effect. Also, you want the back onto almost blow out, and you can check that by using your hissed a gram, or just by checking the blinking highlights to get a nice, clean blown our area. And also, if you using the flash head without any kind of reflect on it, just the diffuser like I was here. Then it's better just to flag off the flash head so you don't get any light spill coming back. What was that? Velcro. It is that you don't get any light spilling back anyway. That's all there is to create in a white background. Thanks very much time. See you and 26. Shoot12 Triflector: hi you saw in a previous video how I created a really beautiful type of shadows light. That type of life is often called beauty or glamour lighting on. It's really flattering, so you obviously see it quite a lot in magazines, model portfolios, fashion and so long. My previous previously used a clamshell set up to create the glamour light. But that required to flash is not in this video with the gorgeously beautiful Tamsin. I'm going to show another, arguably better way of getting the same effect, using only one flash this time. This is called a last alike Trife Lecter. It consists of three reflective panels on a flame. You don't have to put that onto your own lighting stand. The three reflector panels have individually adjustable Robert Hinges that enable you to focus the light exactly where you need it on, then fold it away. We're not in use, so it's pretty neat, easy to use, but it's obviously more expensive than using two umbrellas. I think they cost about £120 in the UK To use it, you place your light very close and pointing downwards towards the re towards the reflectors on the light just bounces around the other two. The camera position is empty, is in below the light. We'll know in the past I've used it with a shooter umbrella. I prefer to use a smaller soft box like like this one, because that gives me a little more room in which to shoot. So I've set up the soft box that I showed in the modifier video. It's designed specifically to work with speed lights, and it's very close to Tamsin, so the background will go very dark. Because of that, I placed another light on the background. But before we start, I just go over some my settings. So, just as in the previous films of What A Shutter Speed set to 2/50 of a second aperture F 5.6 on I'm on I so 200 the flash power of the main flash, The key light flash is at a 32nd power or 32 power, and the light on the background is that on eighth power. Now I put a non binge jail. In fact, I put two on gels, one on top of each other over the flash ed to make the background, a different color. So that's one of the reasons why I've had to increase the power a little bit on that on that flash. Instead of using radio triggers for this, I've set the flashes into the slave mode on firing them, using a very cheap, basic infrared trigger. Now, I didn't mention this in the film on triggering, so I put a link to it in the shopping less material on the on this on this page for this video, what else could not think of these are adjustable the the reflective panels, and I think I've got them. I think I've got them about what the back of these panels is. Also reflective material is actually gold, which I never. I never really use that side of it. So I've covered them up with a black material. Andi will try using those in a moment to get a slightly different effect. So I think we're just about ready to go. Let's give it a try. Obviously, you have to be careful what understand isn't in the way. So I've just moved it over to one side. A smile has that lot. Let's just check the exposure. Your last brilliant, Beautiful. I'm looking at the photos now while I'm editing the video. And although this is quite a nice shot, hold my hands up. I made a mistake. Can you see it? Well, I forgot to attach my little black gobo to decide in the flash, and you can clearly see that the side of times in jacket is orange, as is her face and neck. Plus, there's a distinct shadow on her chest. Oops, never mind. Just change it to black and white and called our I've just adjusted things have slightly now. Put times in higher up on a stall, raised the light a little bit and adjusted one of the reflectors. So let's give it a try. I switched to a red jail for this great light on the background. Looks good, too. Right away. I have done some light photo shopping on these for contrast and also added a slight vignette making darker corners, which focuses your eyes more on the subject. Before taking this show, I switch the side reflectors around so that a black velvet material was in the most. You can see the sides of a face or a little darker giving a slightly more chiseled effect. So that's it. With the Trife Lecter, you could get beautiful results. A lovely light on your subject's face. Very easy to use s so we'll see you in the next field. Why, Purnell? 27. DIYProductBox: in this video, I'm going to share with you a very neat and simple way of taking terrific product shots without hardly spending any money. That's assuming, of course, that you already have the camera and flashes you probably do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be watching this. This is very much a D. I. Y product. What I'm about to show you can be made really easily and quickly. I'm going to start off by photographing this aging Olympus OM 10 film SLR. It's actually quite a complex product to photograph, because we've got some dark leather bits to soak up the lens. Andi chrome and glass bits, which are highly reflective. I'm going to use this box. It's made out of special photographic carpooled. I'm not really I've just been city. It's a plain old cardboard box that you find find lying around the house or you can pick up from a supermarket. It's about 12 inches by 18 inches around on. I've cut two large windows in it on either on either side, using a standing life, leaving about an inch all round. Now I've left the flaps on as well because they're going to act as a kind of go bows toe, hide the flash and prevent any flare getting back into the lens. Now I've covered up the two windows with tracing paper. This is going to defuse the flashes and act as a kind of soft box. You can use a plane lightweight copy paper, all that stop nylon. The flushes will be very close, so they're going to be on low power. So it doesn't matter if you use plain white paper and you have to realize a flash power little. But I've used normal tracing paper. It's not special photographic tracing paper. As far as I know, such a thing doesn't exist. Just don't use any type of colored paper or material. So this is my studio. Inside the box. I'm going to place a piece of white card that I bought from a craft shop. It came in a large a one. She and I just cut it to fill the space. It's going to become a seamless background so you won't see the horizon. Large studios called that an infinity background where you don't see corners, horizons or edges, so I'll just place the white card inside the box like so offs l'etape the top on the bottom of her just so that it stays in place. Depending on how tight fit it it is and how stiff the card is, you might have to sell it. Take the card edges to keep it in position like I just did, and now I'll just place the camera inside the box, off said at an angle for the light. I'm going to be using my Nam Young No. 5 60 andan SB 600. I'm using the manual mode so you can mix and match. Flash comes. They don't have to be the same model or even the same from the same manufacturer. I'll put put one either side, about 12 inches away, so they're pointing into the box. I've got one set to 30 to power. The other one said to 16 power. You don't really need a lot of light for this because they're so close and I'm aiming to get an aperture of around F 11 or F 16 offset the flash room so they're wide us to make sure the light covers the whole window. Also, I'm going to be shooting him very close, so I want to have a wider depth of field to make sure everything is in focus. This is going to give us a my smooth line because these cut out windows, although they're small in relation to the subject, there are large light source, so we should get nice transitions between the highlight and shadow areas. This is really easy to do. You can't really go wrong, and you can even make a larger box out of a refrigerator or washing machine box so you can photograph larger objects. I'm going to be using a nick on 28 to 135 manual Focus. A Iceland's. It's the only macro lens I own. It means I'll be focusing manually. But once I start, I probably turn the Olympus camera at different angles or change the angle or position of the flashes to get the light. Just why wants it? There's not really any exact angles here. It's just a matter of shooting and seeing, if you like it, maybe move things around until you're happy. So a bit of trial and error involved. So let's give it a try. Okay, Got it set up. The camera settings are 2/50 of a second f 11 i s O 200 which is the minimum on this d 300 camera. So let's give it a try, Okay? That's not about star. I think that might be a little bit too tube right on the left of the camera. So I think I'll move the flash away from the box. So the left hand side, actually, if I move it this way, I don't know what I've done is move the box over to the right. Also quite a bit. It's a bit too much in shadow, isn't it? On the right hand side there. So I think I'll just move the flash around, maybe bring it around, pointing it more that way. I think I'd like to get a bit more light in the lens as well. So maybe move that there. I see how this looks now. I'm moving back with the forward because rather than focusing, I'm just It's a manual focus letters. I'm just moving backwards and forwards until this in focus. That's pretty nice. We've also got a little bit of reflection in the lens as well. Also picked up some of this cheap white, glossy purse perspex and I'm gonna put that underneath the camera to try and get some reflection. Give that a try. Yeah, conceded reflections. It was kind of looking nice looking at this image again. While editing the video, I'm quite pleasantly surprised how what it turned out on how good the reflection looks, especially as the Perspex was the last minute. Thought I'd never actually used it before. It was an a three piece of white glossy perspex. It's a shame I went in a little too tight and chopped off. The top of the reflection at the bottom of the image are, Well, no one's perfect. I'm not going to photograph these three colored vases that my wife has kept lying around the house. And I like the look of the Perspex just now with the Olympus camera so much that I'm going to keep it for this for this shot. Also, we've switched the wipe card inside to a black black card because I just think it suits this type of ah object a little bit better. The CIA, this looks I want to, like, try and like one flash from the back of one flash from the front to get a kind of cross light in and to get some kind of room lighting on the glass. It's just a matter of trial and error, Really. Let's see how this looks. Probably shoot in portrait orientation because it's a tour object. That's good. These are great. These photos don't know, considering it's just a cheap deal. I wire what you put it together yourself, type pot out, especially with the Olympus om 10. The way we got a smooth light and shadow across across the camera body, there was really pleased with that. Be careful when cutting out the holes, by the way, for the windows with a Stanley knife you can cut. Your fingers were really easily. It is very easy to make and set up, so give it a go and have a practice with it, as I said before is very much trial and error, with the position of the flashes on the light out port the power up the flashes, but give it a try, See how you get on. Well, for now,