ULTIMATE BEGINNER SPEEDLIGHT COURSE

1. 0 Introduction to Speedlight Photography: Welcome to my speed life photography course. In this course, we're gonna be talking about using speed lights for your photography, whether it's on top of your camera or off camera flesh to take better photos, we'll be talking about using them and events, using them in Portrait's, using them in outside, indoors all the different locations. Where are we talking about all these light modifiers? Are you using which your life we're talking about, setting up triggers and receivers? You can make these lights go off wirelessly. We'll be talking about a lot of different things, settings in your camera and everything you need to know to really get started with speed like photography. If you're branded a photography or your veteran, there's something in this course for you to sign up for this course today and I'll see you in the class. 2. 1 What is a Speedlight: in this section. We're gonna talk about what Issa speed like, So this is a speed light right here. A lot of people call it a flash speed light is another term for it that you might be able to search more easily when like looking to purchase one. So basically, this isn't a device that will admit a burst of light when you're taking a picture to light up whatever you're aiming that it could be the background. It could be the subject. And it really helps when you have really bad lighting conditions or to create some really dramatic lighting that you just can't create with natural light. So in this course, we will talk more about peace. But this is just a little introduction of what a speed lightest so that when we get into the other sections, you already know what I'm talking about. So this is a speed light right here, and now we're gonna move on more into detail about different types of speed, lights and all the little functions around it. 3. 2 natural vs speedlight: in this section, we're gonna be talking about natural light versus using speed lights when it comes to natural light. To use something like your son, ask your Onley light source to light up the whole scene. When you're taking a picture. When we're talking about speed lights your mainly using speed lights, either as 100% of your light source or accompany the natural light sources available. So the difference mainly is that with natural light, you don't need to purchase any other accessories. The Sinus enough. Whatever's available is where you use, and that's it with speed, like you have to purchase all these extras things, but it could lead to a lot more control with let you have a lot more options when using speed lights versus just using natural light. So first I wanted to break down what I mean by natural light and what I mean by speed lights and in the next few sections, gonna break that more about the benefits and cons of using speed. Let's 4. 3 posives of using speedlights: in this section, we could be talking about the benefits of using speed. Let's so as we talked about earlier. One of the benefits is you have more control off your lighting. You could focus more on how breaker one you're subject to be versus a background, or you can use it to make a scene that's too dark light up. There's a lot of great benefits to using speed lights. One of the other benefits is that you could make all this core dramatic lighting to make it look more like a movie, or you can at color gels to it and change the color of the scene, create different moods with lights. So all of that is a lot of the benefits of using Speed likes a lot of the times I'm shooting with subjects, and the natural light is casting all these ugly shadows. Ah, speed, like fill in those shadows and make is I have more even light. When I'm shooting an event, a speed light could make it so that I don't have to use those higher I s O settings to have enough light in the scene, so I can I don't have to have grain in my image. There's been many events that I've shot worse, too dark, and I will have to boost my settings in my camera, which lowers the quality of my picture. But by adding the speed light, I can add enough light in the room for just a split second that I'm taking that picture in order to be able to have better settings that I want in my pictures. So all of that is some benefits for using speed lights, and now we're gonna move on to the negatives of using speed leads. 5. 4 Negatives of Speedlights: in this section, we re talking about the negatives of using speed. Let's One of the main negatives is that you have to purchase all these extra speed leads with the speed less. You have to purchase triggers to make them go off because they don't go off by themselves. You have to set up and need help with people holding lights or stands to hold your lights. You have to worry about extra batteries that you have to charge. And then the other thing, too, is that it's very complicated to use, which is why this course is very important, because when you just get he started, all these lights could really make pictures look really weird. So it takes a lot of practice to get these lights to do what you what you want them to do so with speed lights, you also have to add all this extra cost to your equipments, their speed lights of different price points. And if you get the better once that as to the costs, then your speed light system could be end up being more expensive than your camera system at times. Then you're also carrying Mawr equipment everywhere you go more things that can break more . Things have to worry about losing. So there's a lot of negatives using speed lights, which is why a lot of people waited and just stick to natural light. But like we talked about before, there's a lot of prose. So you really have to decide if you want to go that route. And if you do, you know, just make sure you really practice it. You know what you're doing. You take care of your equipment and maybe you buy some cheaper one so that if they do break or get lost or whatever, they'll be easy to replace. And we'll talk about more about that in the next few sections. So that's it with some negatives to using speed lights, and now we're gonna go to the next section. 6. 5 Manual vs Ettl: in this section, we're gonna be talking about a manual flash versus one that has e t t 0 40 teal and what that means. So the first thing you need to note is that these flashes can either control the power output. Basically, how much light comes out either manually or automatic E T T l or T tail means automatic amount of light. What that basically means is that the camera and the flash use a special system that can tell how much light needs to come out of it in order for it to be perfectly exposed. Now why you might want that is because it's a lot easier if you're shooting an event, you don't have to guess how much light needs to come out. You can just let the camera do its job, kind of like shooting automatic in your camera settings, and it will shoot what it thinks is the best, the correct exposure and the best amount of light output. Now the first positive. The first reason why you might go with a manual one versus one that could do E T. T l and the ones that could do E t. T. l can also do manual is that the ones that can only do manual are a lot more affordable than the ones that could do. E T T l. Once they could do, each detail are in a whole another price bracket that could be either to five times more expensive than the ones that can only do manual. And with that, you're really setting yourself up to, like have to spend a lot of money on these flashes. And that could be a problem, especially if you want to buy a bunch of them and set them off in different locations. Then you have to think about that bigger price point for each one. Now. The other reason why you will go with manual vs E T T. L is because if you're setting these lights up and you're using more than one, chances are you're gonna be shooting in manual. And the reason for that is because when you're setting up these lights in different locations, then there pointing at different things, and you want a different amount of lights for it to come out, and you want to control that manually. So basically, if you're using one for your subject and then one for the rim, like the light behind the subject and then one for the background. You don't want them all to come out the same amount of light. You want them to light up that part of the scene. How much like you want that part of the scene to have so once in the background, you want the exact amount of light. And if you want what you have one on the subject. We want a specific among the light that one in the background hitting behind the subject a specific of my intellect. So you'll go with a manual flash over one. That's E T t up the times that you would use the one that's E T. T l. This automatic setting is mainly the shooting events, because what events you going and moving around so much and you're only using one light on top of your camera and with that is better to use E t T l. Because you don't have time to keep changing all the settings when, like you're shooting a wedding and you need to get it just right. So this system is so smart that it's probably gonna shoot very accurate to what you want, so you can just rely on that system and get pictures shot faster. If you have time to set up a shot and using multiple lights and you just have a subject is not moving, then you could go to manual and set everything up exactly how you want. The other problem with detail is that it seems to sometimes shoot different amount of light outputs based on what you were aiming at at the time. If you aim a little bit to a darker spot than where you were aiming at before, it could bring more light and then all the light output won't be even every single time. If you use manual, you had a certain amount of light set on your flesh is always gonna come out the same amount of light, and then you can make sure that all your pictures look exactly the same versus E. T. T l. That might shoot different on a different occasion if you move a little horse or or the sun passes by and it just makes it like thinking it's less light and then issues less light so If you want more consistent light, you wish you'd in manual. So I when I got started in photography, I only had the flashes that shot in manual. I always have to go into the camera and change the settings manually. And then, um, just shoot and guess But I was able to afford the flash, but it was way more affordable, and I was able to afford multiple ones. And then I got really good at that. And then I bought the ones that were e T T l the ones that e t t l not just our have that system in place, but our have more sturdy the attempt to shoot more light than the ones that are Onley manual and has a bunch of extra features that you might benefit when using a flesh. So that's just some differences. What manual vs E. T. T. Ellis. And now we're gonna move on to the next section 7. 6 Transmitters and Receivers: and this. Actually, we'll be talking about transmitters and receivers, so you purchase your first flash or you purchase several flashes, and now you want to be able to shoot your flash from outside off the hot shoot on your camera. The hot shooting. Your camera is a little metal, part of top of your camera, where you attached your flesh, and now you wanna have your flash shoot from somewhere completely different. The reason why one likes to shoot from outside off the top of your camera is to get better angles with lights, and you'll learn more about that as we shoot later on. But when it comes to shooting from outside of your camera, you're gonna need transmitters and receivers. So what transmitters and receivers are are the adapters that you need to connect to your flashes so that your camera can tell your flash from all the way over there to take a picture at the same time that you're taking a picture so the flash will go off at the same time. So a transmitter goes on top of your camera, and it tells the receivers have the flashes on top of them to go off. The transmitter goes on top of your camera in the hot shoot, and the receivers hold the flashes and they usually put the receivers on a light stand or have a sub have an assistant hold the flash with the receiver. Now that's a little introduction to transmitters and receivers. So when you're out getting your transmitters and receivers, some of the things you need to look for IHS is your transmitter receiver compatible. Which your flesh? How many receivers can you use with the transmitters? Do you have enough receivers for all the flashes that you have? The other thing you need to note is that range. How far can the flash B in order for the transmitter to be able to still tell the receiver to take the picture? The other thing is, how reliable are they to interference? Some of these transmitters and receivers could have interference from a lot of technology out there. So if you're in a big city and you're right in the downtown area, there's a lot of radio signals they can interfere, and then your life will go off. The more expensive transmitters and receivers will go off a lot better So that's just a little introduction to transmitters and receivers. I would test out some of the most affordable ones and then work your way up to the more expensive ones. Just make sure that you have enough receivers for all your flashes and some extra in case the break so that you can always have enough for all your flashes. So that's it when it comes to transmitters and receivers, and now we're gonna move on to the next section. 8. 7 Radio System Speedlight: in this section wouldn't be talking about radio speed lights in the radio system that some of these more expensive speed light systems hat. So the radio system is a system that allows you to control the output off the flash and other settings in the flash from your main transmitter so your transmitter would be on top of your camera, and we'll have all these buttons that can control all the settings from your flesh. If you're not using a radio system and a flash the house radio built in, then you're not gonna be able to control any setting on your flesh from your camera. So in your camera with this on top of it, you can control everything that you want this flash to do because this is a more expensive flash that has the radio built it. So look into that system on and figure out if the speed light that you're getting pass radio built in, how much is it the ones that have radio built in and try out the system? I really love the system, and that's what I use with all my speed lights. So when I got started, I didn't have the radio system, so I would have to run back and forth between all my lights and change the output every time I took a picture and it was really taking a lot of my time. When I got to the radio system, I was able to control how much light each light had. I was able to turn off a light, turn on a light and just be able to really see what I'm doing from my camera without having to run back and forth. So this is something I really recommend for those that have been playing with speed lights for a while to move up. And this is a system that's really work getting so that's when it comes to the radio system with speed, like now we're gonna want to the next section. 9. 8 Batteries and Recycle Times: in this section. We're gonna be talking about batteries and recycle type when you first get your speed like you might get excited. You put in your double A batteries in there and then you just start taking pictures like crazy and they all look beautiful because of the flash. And you just start taking a lot of pictures the same way that you used to when you were shooting. When natural light. When you shoot with natural light, photographers tend to shoot like 100 pictures of minutes. Just go trigger happy. Just take a lot of pictures when you're shooting with a speed like you can't do that because what the flash will do is they'll burn out, and then it will take a long time for each flash to go off and then you'll take a picture and the flash will not go off. Basically, the flash got too hot and said, I need to slow down. So what you need to do to really take care of these flashes is take your time between each picture. You would take a picture count in Mississippi or two and then take another picture. You could not take that many pictures really quickly with the flash or it will burn out. So that's one of the main things you really need to focus on. The second reason your flash won't go off is because the batteries are low. If the batteries are a load of flesh, my still go off, but it will take a while. It's the same effect as if the flashes burned out from you, taking too many pictures really quickly. But this time it's because the batteries are low. If you buy really cheap batteries, you think I'm gonna go to the dollar store and buy 20 double A batteries for a dollar. If you buy those flashes those batteries, chances are your flash is not going to go off, or it's gonna go off once and take like 10 seconds for it to go off again. You need really good batteries. There is quality off double A batteries that you can put in your flashes, and you need really good once in order for it to go off. My personal recommendation is to get those rechargeable batteries that you see an Amazon with a charger by enough of those so that you have some for all your flashes and some extra ones. And just make sure that after you're done using those batteries, you go in charge those you charge every other battery with your camera. So you should be able to do that to what? Your flashes rather than keep buying brand new double A batteries every time you do two or three photo shoots. So my recommendation is rechargeable batteries recharge them every time. So their full power and to slow down with taking pictures. So that's it when it comes to batteries and recycled time, and now we're gonna move on to the next section. 10. 9 White Balance: and this, Actually, we're gonna be talking about white balance. Now, when it comes to white balance is all these different settings that you can do. And when you shooting with natural light, you end up messing with all of these different white balance settings because the natural light shoots all these different color temperatures. And to make the light look more natural, you have to change all these different settings to get the light to reflect what you want. When it comes to speed lights, it's a lot easier because the speed lights all shoot at they like ballots, lights. So what that means is that you can set your white balance to daylight balance, and you're gonna get the perfect color temperature. Abe, you're using your speed lights as your main light source Now, sometimes you might want to set the mood. You want my I want to make a little bit warmer, a little bit cooler, and then you can go into something like shade or change the color temperature. But most likely gonna change that in post production. The safe bet is to just shoot at day light ballots setting in your camera. Do not do not shoot at auto white balance when you're using speed, Let's so if you shoot with auto white balance and you're using speed lights was gonna happen is that the camera is going to see this surrounding settings without the speed lights into effect. And guess what the best white balance is. And then it's gonna change the color temperature either too warm or too cool. And then when the speed lights hit it, it's gonna is gonna look all off. The speed lights are so much stronger than the Ambien light a lot of the times that you just want to set it today like balance, because that's what the light that's gonna come out from your speed lights ISS to get the best color temperature. So my recommendation white balance is just stick to daylight balance of using speed lights . The only time you're not gonna use that IHS. If you have speed lights as just something that is like fill light. If you're using the sun, then you can use auto, white balance or whatever the appropriate white balance setting you feel matches that scene and then the speed light will be affected by it. But if you mainly using the speed lights to light up the scene. They just said it to daylight balance. So that's it when it comes to white balance. And now we're gonna move on to the next section. 11. 10 Iso: in this section we were talking about I s o I saw one of the three settings You look just to adjust your exposure for your pictures. Now with speed lights, things change things up when it comes to I s so that you might be not used to when you were shooting with natural light when natural light your eyes so was going all over the place. You were raising it up because the seed was too dark to take a picture, but with speed likes what's great is you can have those really nice low I S O settings and just raise the power of your speed light to match the picture better. So my recommendation when using with shooting what I eso is that have your eyes so setting as close to 100 without your flash shooting at full power. So what I mean is this. Usually a lot of flashes can shoot somewhere about half power or less, and you can have on Aiso off 100 be good. But if for some reason the scene it's too dark or the flash is too far away or the flashes doesn't give enough light and your eyes, so 100 you need to be at full power and it's still not bright enough. Then raise your eyes to 200 maybe even 400. If you're flashes at full power at 200 or 400 you might want to raise your eyes. Oh, just a little bit to give more light in the picture and be able to lower the flash power to less than full power. You want to avoid shooting at full power, which your flesh as we talked about before. There's this thing called recycled time, where your flash will burn out. It will burn out faster if you shoot with full power. If you shoot out of lower setting, which your flash, it will be able to take more pictures without it burning out, and you could take these pictures faster and it's not killing the battery. So to avoid killing the battery and the flash burning out, you want to avoid shooting at full power so you raise your eyes so a little bit you only shoot a full power when you really need to. Now, when it comes to I s O at 100 year, usually at the darkest setting, but you have the clearest picture as you raise your eyes, so number. You add more grain and the picture, and then the quality looks really bad. You want to avoid going past 400 and and if you can, try to avoid 1600 so between 416 100 is like this medium area that sometimes you can get away with it. Sometimes you can notice it. Anything between 104 100. Usually your safe zone between 400 on 1600 is a medium area where most of time you can't help. But sometimes you can tell, especially if you're at the 1600 and then passed 1600. You can almost always tell green you want avoid at all cost the only time I shoot past 16 hundreds. If I'm shooting at an event and I'm only using one flash and the flash's bouncing off the ceiling, and by the time and boss's office feeling that comes down, a lot of the power has been wasted, and then I need to raise my I S O. So those are some things to think about what I did. So just try to keep it at 100 maybe 204 100 and use half power or less, which are flesh so it doesn't burn up. Remember, you can raise a power your flash so you don't need to raise your eyes. Oh, so that's it when it comes to I s O and using speed lights and now we're gonna move on to the next section. 12. 11 Shutter Speed: in this section, we will be talking about shutter speed when it comes to shutter speed. When you're shooting with natural light, you can adjust your shutter speed toe whatever you want. If the pictures too bright because you're shooting with a wider aperture, you just raise your shutter speed as high as possible and you're fine. The picture gets darker, so if you're new to using shutter speed, shutter speed is how fast the picture is taken. It ISS usually calculated in the fractions of how fast per second the flash is shooting and basically the slower or the shutter, the more chances you are to introduce blur. But you have more time for like to come in and it passes off brighter. Picture a safe zone, and shutter speed is anywhere past 160 It. Some people will say 100 is enough. A lot of factors come into play. Is the subject movie? Do you have a long focal length in your camera, you know are moving too much. Little things like that will determine if you need to raise it, or you can lower it now when it comes to using speed lights, there's this thing called sync speed was sync speed. ISS is the shutter speed that is at the highest, meaning the fastest shutter speed that your camera can take a picture and the flash can go off at the same time on the flash. Hit the subject completely. Every camera has a different sing speed. It can range sometime from like 1 80 it to like 250. It all you have to do is look up your camera model and type and sing speed, and you'll see what the six speed is for your camera. Now that number matters because you want the sharpest image and using flesh. You want to be at the fastest shutter speed possible, and that is that six speed number. So, for example, my camera, my canon 60 that number is one 1 80 It won 88 of a second is the highest shutter speed I can shoot with my flesh, and my flash will be recognized completely If I was able to shoot at a higher shutter speed . What will happen is that the flash might not show up in the picture at all. Let's say I'm completely dark in the picture because of my sex and my flash is supposed to light me up. If I'm at my sing speed, the light hits me completely. If I shoot at a higher shutter speed meaning faster, it will close in a way in which the light one hit and reflect into the picture. So that's what the six speed it's for. You stay with the net, your at that sing speed or slower, and you will get all the light to hit the picture. There is this thing called high speed sink, which we'll talk about later unless you use faster shutter speeds. But chances are that the flags that you have that you're using doesn't have high speed sink and you're gonna be using. You're gonna be restricted to that sync speed. So learn what your six speed is and just shoot within that. Now, when it comes to shutter speed, what I do is I just leave my shudder at that six speed at all times, and then I just my aperture and my eyes so accordingly and the amount of flash that comes out from them on a power that comes out from my flesh, it's a lot easier if you just deal with that So you have your eyes so very low and you have your shutter speed at the sink speed to get a sharp image. The only time I ever lower my shutter speed to shoot a slower picture is if I want introduce some of the ami in light. So basically, if I want to get some other light from the environment to show up in the picture and it's too dark with all my other settings, then I slow it down. If I slowed down too much, I shoot with a tripod. So I don't introduce any shake in the image and I get a sharp image. So that's it when it comes to shutter speed and now we're gonna move on to the next section . 13. 12 Aperture and Speedlights: and this action will be talking about aperture while using speed links. When it comes to aperture, everybody wants to have a wider appetite to shoot at 1.81 point 41.2 and have the shallow depth of field and have the background be all blurry. But this is a problem when it comes to shooting with speed legs when you shoot outside. It is so bright outside that usually to shoot with this wider aperture, you need to have a really high shutter speed I'm talking about in the thousands. But when you're sing, speed is capped at 2 50 it max, and you can go lower than 100 I s O. Then it's too bright to be shooting at 1.81 point 41.2. So that's a problem with aperture and Speed likes. Now there's ways to solve this. You can find the darkest spot and shoot. There. You can have Andy Filters, which is a filter that you put on your lens to make the picture just go darker, or you could use high speed sink, which allow you to raise your shutter speed. For the most part, I just accept the fact that I can't get a shallow up to field if I'm shooting outside and I'm fine with that. I shoot at F seven F 9 11 when I'm outside in the sun's there because I'm capt on my sink speed of my shutter speed. I would be a 11 80 it because as a six speed in my camera, I would be at 100 eyes. So and then the pictures too bright. I have to be at F seven F nine F 11 and that is fine with me. I don't get the blurry background, but I get to use my speed lights, which to me, matters more more than getting the blurry background. That is a debate that you have to do all the time. Am I going to use natural light and be ableto have the nice aperture that I want and get a blurry background? Or am I going to use the speed lights to create better looking light? And I'm not gonna have a blurry background. So those are the things that you need to think about when using with setting up your aperture for using speed legs. And now we're gonna move on to the next section 14. 13 High Speed Sync: So one of the things you can do to overcome this issue with aperture is this thing called high speed sick. So the section I'm going to give you a little introduction to high speed sick so you could research it more by the appropriate flash and play with it to see if that's something that you want to do. What? Your photography. So the main reason people use high speed sink is to solve this issue with aperture, in which they can shoot with a white aperture and get a blurry background in a shallow depth of field. Because it's too bright outside, they wanna have a really high shutter speed too dark in the image to get it perfectly exposed, use their speed lights and get a blurry background. So that's where high speed Cine comes in. High speed sink means that it's gonna sink the light with the shutter than you set this really high up there. Certain flashes can do that, so the first thing is, by the appropriate flesh, learn how to set it up with your camera and then no other restrictions that you have with it. One of the first thing that you're gonna notice we using high speed sink is that not of this much light is coming out of the flesh, as when you were not using high speed sick. When you use high speed sink, less flash comes out. And the reason is because what's happening is is not doing one burst of light is doing a continuous burst of light so that it catches the flash. What a opens and closes. So because of flat, the shutter opens the closest so quickly as to keep the like going longer and because of that is bringing out less light than if it was just a quick burst of light. So that's what high speed sink. Thus, the other thing is, it burnished your batteries and your recycled time, so it'll burn out your flesh. Uh, and it's just very complicated to settle. But if you can overcome all of that and you still want to do it to get a blurry background , you speed lights and shoot outside, then get into high speed six. Figure out the configuration for your flash in your camera and play with it on, see how comes up. So that's a little introduction to high speed sink, and now we're gonna move on to the next section 15. 14 Flash Compatibility : in this section and we were talking about cameras and compatibility is when it comes to these flashes. When it comes to these flashes, let's say you're using Canon or Nikon. You're gonna see the Canon and Nikon owned their own flashes. And then there's other generic brands that half flashes the look almost identical to the ones that Canon Nikon half. Now, here's some of the things you need a note. When it comes to compatibility, Canon flashes on Lee work with Cannon. Nikon flashes only work with Nikon, and some of these generic brands work with both of them. And that could be big of your own cameras of different makes or you're sharing flashes with other people. That could be one of the reasons why you buy generic brand because it's compatible with both France. The other thing to note is, when it comes to these cameras and these flashes is that almost every flash that cannon makes or Nikon or whatever will fit almost every camera that canon and Nikon makes or some of these other mix, if it has a hot shoe on top is gonna fit is gonna work. You don't have to see is my flash compatible with this model off my camera? I have if I have. If I have a canon camera, no matter if it's the cheapest rebel Siris of the most expensive one, my flash is gonna complete the same no matter which camera I have. And that is good to note. So you don't have to worry about over by a better camera flashes. They're gonna perform better. That is not the case. The other thing to note is that when you're shooting with different cameras, when you have a great lady, the quality of the picture looks amazing. You can almost make a $500 camera picture look as soon as 1 $5000 if you have a good lighting. So is very important to make sure you get the lighting just right. If you have enough light in the picture, this picture is gonna look amazing. So these flashes are very important, sometimes even more important than the camera that you have. So that's it when it comes to cameras and speed lights. And now we move on to the next section 16. 15 Buying Speedlights: in this section, we're gonna be talking about different types of flashes that you're probably gonna experience that you brand new flashes. When I got started, the first flash I bought was a very generic one from Amazon that cost me probably 40 books . It was a manual flash didn't have e t t l it waas generic one that will fit a canon or Nikon brand camera. And I use it on my candid camera. And I bought the transmitters and receivers, then about multiple once. And then I set them up in different spots and shot with multiple lights Later on. The next one up was the cannon, one that had 80 teal. There's America once, just like that one have t o as well, and that gave more light output. So I think the equivalent off to four of the cheaper ones and it costs me like $250. So it was drastically more expensive, but it had e t t l had the ability to zoom in the light so the light would either be zoomed in or wide open. And so, with the flash power in the TL, it gave me more than that cheaper one. I still needed transmitters and receivers, and but it felt more sturdy and it was in a work bag. The next one off from that one is this other one that gives more light output. But does the exact same thing that that 2nd 1 did. It was also by Canon and generic brands also have similar once, and it just has more light output. You really have to research these flashes to see which one has, how much light output versus other ones. Usually more expensive ones have more light output. You can also tell by the body of the flash how much light is it gonna be? Basically, the size could almost be an indicator. How much life is gonna come out regardless, have more light output? The next one up it was even more expensive and it had radio built it, so the one would radio build. It gave me a lot more control. The flashes can control each other, and one single transmitter can control all of them. How much light output and everything, as we talked about in the radio system section that is a different type of flashes like the highest and flash available, and it gave the most light output out of all of them. So basically, when you really need to think about is does it have e t t l don't need e t t l How much light is gonna come out and doesn't have radio and do I want radio? And then you're gonna see different price points anywhere from Oslo s dirty and $40 to like , close to $600 for a flesh. So I wanted to give you a brief over real, like price points with these flashes. And what makes a big difference is between them, so that when you're buying a flash, you know which one do you want to get based on your budget and your needs for your photography? So that's it when it comes to different types of speed lights. And now we're gonna move on to the next section 17. 16 How many speedlights: and this section we're gonna be talking about. How many speed lights do you need? Every photographer is different, and it really depends on the type of photography that you specialize in. If you're doing if your event photographer your mainly gonna have the flash of pop of your camera just bouncing off the ceiling, that one really good speed light is enough for you. You just basically pointed up point at the ceiling and you're fine and you could just get by with that. A lot of events I just use once be like the whole day and I'm fine. If you're gonna be doing portrait and you're gonna be doing external light sources. So the lights not coming from the top of your cameras coming from another angle, you might want at least two one for the subject and one for either the back of the subject , a rim light or the background. You can get by with two lights for almost every type of scenario you can think of. Now, if you're really going into some amazing photography for like people's portfolios, you're shooting models or you're doing some really creative photography. You mind me? Three 25 lights, and I know it seems like a lot, but you really there's a lot of different things that you can use these lights for. So, for example, you can have one. Be the main light with a big soft bucks. One. Be a fill light with another light modifier, one be the rim late and one hit the background that could be a four lights set up. I had this multiple lights set up when I'm doing beauty photography, beauty photography is that close up photography, or you shoot like you. You have the makeup done, and they do it for a magazine for makeup. So for beauty photography, what they usually do is they have one on a beauty dish. They have one be feel like they have one B one room lights, sometimes a second room, like so hitting from behind the subject, that angle hitting the back of the subject and one being the background or to being in the background so it could be five or six light setups. So that's just some ideas. When it comes to how many lights do you need? I think I could do everything if I have three lights with me. So from my experience, you can figure out if three lights enough for you to light or one. So that's what How many lights do you need? And now we're gonna move on to the next section. 18. 17 Shooting in a Studio: in this section, we were talking about shooting in the studio. Whether it's your own photography studio, you read to the studio or you have your own little home studio. One of the things that you might want to use the speed light for is all the lighting for your studio for your photography. A lot of people use tropes, but you could use speed lights and be just as effective as using strokes when it comes to using speed lights. Some of the things that you need to note when shooting in your own studio is the first thing is you're not gonna be able to see the light inside. If you shoot it inside, your camera is probably not gonna be able to struggle focusing. That is a problem that I have when I shoot at home. I set up a nice background, and I had my speed lights of my main light. Usually the room. It's so dark for my camera that it struggles to focus on the face. So then I turned on other lights in the room, so I have enough light from my camera to focus. Now, don't worry about those lights affecting the picture because you set the settings right when you take the picture, none of those lights that you turn on in the room will be shown in the picture on Lee. The late from your flash. That's what you want when you're doing studio photography. When you're doing studio photography, 100% of the light has to come from your flashes. You can't let that lamp in the corner appear in the picture, and that's where the settings come in. And we'll talk about that in the second. So you turn on the lights just enough for your camera to focus because it is too dark is in a struggle to focus. You're not gonna have sharp images, so you turn on the lights to get enough light to focus, and then you use your speed lights to light up everything you need to have enough speed. Later, we're gonna be doing student photography to light up not just the subject, but your background. Your backgrounds usually a backdrop, and you need lights for that as well. So you need multiple speed lights for the studio set up, so you have your studio set up your background light in the room for you to focus your speed lights set up for your subject in the background. And now we're now we're gonna set up your settings in your camera. The first thing I do is I set up my eyes so as lowest possible excited to 100 sometimes 200 or 400 if I feel like my flashes aren't that good, and they have to go full power yet cheaper flashes. You can set your soda 400 just to make sure that your flashes and shooting at full power. Now it comes to the shutter speed. You said your shutter speed at your sink speech shutter speed and you're fine. Next is your aperture. And here's the great thing. When you're shooting indoors now, you can set those really nice, shallow depth of field shutter speeds so you can shoot at the 1.81 point 41.2. Now here's the thing. The reason you shoot with shallow that the feels to have a blurry background. If you're shooting in studio, chances are your background isn't distracting, and it doesn't matter if it's blurrier that you're shooting with a white background, you can blur white. You can blur black, even a single color background camp blur. Sometimes I have backgrounds that are like texture, and I have, like a little design. Sometimes I blurred those backgrounds for the most part, if the picture is too close. If you're doing a close up of a face, you don't want to even shoot lower than 2.8 because you can have part of the face be blurry . If you shoot out 1.21 point four and it's a close up, you can have the front of the face being focused and then the back near the ear be blurry. That's how thin it is with Dr Field. It aperture with these prime lenses, so you shoot somewhere between 2.0, in 2.8, and you're fine. If you want to shoot that low, you shoot out 5.6 and just have everything. Be a focus. Those are things to think about with the settings in your camera shooting in studio, just note that it's dark enough to be able to shoot with wider apertures if you want. If it makes the picture look better, every shooting in a studio setting. So that's it when it comes to shooting in a studio setting with speed lights, and now we're gonna move on to the next section. 19. 18 Strobes vs Speedlight: in this section, we will be talking about strobes versus speed. Let's now You probably heard the word stroll before when a stroke. ISS is something similar to a speed like, but it has continues like a top off flash. The continuous light is usually a tungsten light. It's called a modeling lamp. Basically, this light is set up to show you where the light is gonna be at when the flash goes off is not to use to take. The picture is just used to show you where the light's gonna be at. Keystrokes are a lot more expensive than speed lights, and they usually have to be plugged in to the wall output at all times in order to work. You could set up on extra battery pack and take them on the goat, but they're very big and expensive. That is just a hassle to take which you That's why we use speed, life more portable and they're easier to use now. The difference is one stroke more expensive. The stroke have a modern lamp. The speed lights don't go with speed lights. You have to guess where the lightest take a picture, etc. And then move it if it's in the wrong spot. The strobes have a lot more light output that speed lights. Strokes don't use batteries like Double A's like the speed lights, so the strokes could take ah lot of pictures at the same time without having to burn out, unlike the speed lights, which we have to slow down. So those are some of the differences between strokes and speed lights, strobes, air usually used for studio photography, people to shoot mainly in studios, half strokes. People that shoot on location and go out of stuff you speed. Let's some people own boat users strokes at the studio and take the speed lights on the go . Once you master using speed lights and you want to move up to a more reliable light source that you can shoot more with, the stronger you can move on to Strop's and you're gonna see a better result. So that's it when it comes to strokes versus speed lights, and now we're gonna move on to the next section 20. 19 On Camera Flash: Okay, So for this set of right here, I'm using once be light on top of the camera, shooting with her against a white background. Normally, this is done in a wall of white wall, but I don't have white wall, so we're using this white background. It will look better for you guys on a white wall than this, because this is a little wrinkly, but it's just to show you guys what it looks like when you're shooting on a white background. What you want to do is have the subject that's close to the wall if you're using the wreck flash, because direct flash causes really heart shadows and the shadows are kind of hidden by the model being right up against the wall. Also, by being direct flash. What you want the model to do is to look straight at you because if they look to the side, the shadows from the nose would be really hard or the chin on the site on the rest of the body. So when they stand straight on on the light, hits it in a way that there's less shadows, so you're kind of limited with that as well now I'm having her look straight on and it looks really nice on a white background. So I'm shooting this straight on and what I'm doing when my flash is I'm shooting on e t t l. What e t t l does is it figures out the exposure it needs based on my settings and shoes. A light Now when a shoot on a white background on the u T t l what I like to do it said my exposure to plus one on the exposure setting on my flesh, which means issues a little bit brighter than the perfect amount of exposure. Because I want the white to be really white when that when he shoots the exposure, it thinks that want I want the white wall becomes a little great. I wanted to be really white, which makes her look a little bright, but it still looks really good. So I'm shooting plus one of my exposure settings. If you're shooting in manual, you just shoot until the white the wall looks white. If it looks a little great, then shoot a little bit brighter. The other thing you want to do is to get the light to spread out all around your subject. What I like to do is I like to zoom in to like, 70 millimeters, which is on my lens the most I can zoom in. And then on my zoom on my flash, I zoom out to 20 millimeters. So what that does is it spreads out the light more and by me being zoom in, it actually hits all around the subject. Evil in light. Then, if it was the lightweight zoom into 7 to 70 millimeters, what will happen? Is that a B right in the middle and dark in the corners, and I don't want it to be dark in the corners. I wanted to be light all around, so I'm zooming out on my light, my flesh and I'm zooming in on my let's. If your flash shoots doesn't have zoom, function is easily solved by just stepping back. When you step back, it's going to spread the light better, so that's it. The settings that I have in my camera is 5.6 because I want the flash to shoot harder. So by making the image darker, it's gonna shoot harder and there's gonna fell in the light. Better around the background. I s 0 101 80th Shutter speed. So here we go and you'll see what it looks like. Just look straight at me. Says, you see, in this picture, you barely see any of the shadows. Looks really great. And things like red lipstick or a color outfits really pop when you shoot on something like this. So that's everyone shooting with just one flash up against the wall. But now we're gonna move on to the next section. 21. 20 Over Powering the Sun: Okay, so in this shot right here, we're doing a dramatic setting shot. We have the nice sky in the background, but what happens when I shoot her to expose for the clouds is that she goes really dark. So I'm gonna take a picture right now. We're exposing for the sky and exposing for her, and you can see the difference. This one's without any flash. Just direct lighting from the camera. Okay, so this one's exposing for the sky as you see in the picture of the sky. Looks great, but she looks really dark. So now I'm gonna expose for her. You're gonna see what's gonna happen to the sky. So, um, I have here a picture I have here a picture exposing for her, and we have this kind of hard sun hitting her. So the lighting on here is not even that great. And, ah, skies blown out. Some people might use this and then darken it in post production, but I wanted to have her stand out and the sky straight from camera. So to do that, I'm gonna add one light. The light modifier I chose was this really big Octa box. I'm gonna shoot with this and direct flash so you can see the difference. The bigger the life source of better is gonna be Instance, Where you doing? Full body. I'm gonna be shooting her with the biggest light modifier have, which is this big, um, Octa box. And with this, I'm also gonna be shooting it in full power. And then I going to be switching my settings. What I've been using with this to 50 it's shutter speed 100 i s O and F four to expose for her. And after 7.1 to get the sky exposed correctly, we're gonna be shooting the flash at full power and want to see how this looks. Okay, so there we have a really nice sky and her standing out from the background, and it looks amazing. What you can do to this set up is at a second light, hitting her from behind to give her more separation. But for now, we just leave it at one light set up just so you can see how to make a dramatic scene with the nice guy like that. Really, Pop. Now I'm gonna take the light modifier off and do direct flash that you can see the difference. Okay. Okay. Can you, um, hold this here and then I'm a pull this out and then just take it away. Yeah, just leave it over there, okay? I have one light hitting her. Whenever I use one life set up and I'm shooting full body. I have the light be at, ah, face level so that the main, the brightest part is her face. And then it falls off to the rest of the body. If you pointed to low, you have a brighter in the center and darker by the face. And have you pointed to high is gonna be too dark in the legs. It's the same thing, but but so here you can see how it looks like you almost get a similar look with, uh with direct flesh compared to the big soft box. You see that it's softer with a big light modifier. But those are the difference is you can do this with one light to lights and really make the subject stand out. So that's it for that. And now we're gonna move on to the next section 22. 21 Telephoto Lens: Hey, either. Good. Um, okay, so right here have my model and I have this fountain funding Have this fountain over there , and I want to show you guys a one light set up to make it look really good. And I'm also gonna play with different lenses. So this is my 24 to 17. 24 to 70 and my 75 300. I want to show you guys a difference in the distance off the fountain to her in the image. So what happens is when you're zoomed in, zoomed out to, like, 24 millimeter wide angle, the fountains gonna look like it's really far away, but by zooming in all the way to 300 millimeter is gonna push everything together, and it's gonna make the font and look like it's almost right next to her. So that's why I'm gonna show you guys The difference between the two and the one light is to fill in the shadows. That's not being casted by the sun that's coming from the right side. So they put one light on the left side with a flash bender. So it's a little bit softer. So the first thing is, I'm gonna set up my 24 millimeter lens, so I have my 24 to 70. I'm going to shoot this at 24 millimeters really close to her so you can see how the fountain looks like next to her. So this is how the picture looks like, Uh, the fountain looks like it's a mile away. It's really dark on the left side, and I'm gonna turn on my flash and, um, see how that looks like now. Yes. So there we go. We have the one light it exposed really well on her. Looks really nice, but still, the fountain looks really far away. Looks really ugly. Now I'm going to switch to my 75 to 300 I'm a move us far back and get the same shot at 300 millimeters. So now I have my 75 300 I have to move really far back so you can follow me. Okay. So show now you can show her so you can kind of see that how far I am from her, then back to me. So there I am from all the way over here shooting. I am going to be doing 2 300 millimeter is really zoom. Then same speed lights set up, and I'm gonna be shooting as you see in the picture here. Um, now you have this beautiful funding, this right next year. She's lived perfectly and the picture looks amazing. So that's when you end up favoring using one of these lenses and occasions like this where the fountain is right next to the model. But it's kind of far off to push that closer to you. You could do that with found tens, buildings, anything in the background that looks really small and far away. You can push it closer to you by using a long lens. So that's it with using this long lens. And now we're gonna move on to the next section. 23. 22 Light Modifiers Part 1 (Small Source): So we're shooting this in my white angle lens to get the whole room. I'm gonna be shooting right now in this section A lot of different light setups, one light, different modifiers to see what one light looks like on a model up against the wall. So my mom is gonna be up against the wall and I'm gonna just be using one flesh. I'm gonna go from bare flash to the biggest light modifier I have and everything in between . So you can see how hard the light looks like when you're using a small life source versus a really big one. Now I'm gonna be adjusting my light output based on the light modifier, so it looks exactly the same. One of light power and the only difference is gonna be the shadows of the image. There's gonna be more shadows when the light source is very small, which is a bare flesh and less shadows. When the life source is really big, which is gonna be my big, like modifier. I'm also gonna be bouncing it off the ceiling so you can see what that looks like, making the whole ceiling light modifier so you can see all these different examples in the next 15 or 20 minutes as they keep shooting with different lights So we can see with Sean look the best when shooting up against the wall. And that's it. So we're gonna start with the 1st 1 The first was gonna be a bare flash hitting her straight down at an angle. I rarely ever hit the flash straight on. I like shooting straight down because it looks more natural than light coming straight on. So we're gonna have this pointing straight down and in all images, we're gonna be shooting from about her knees and up. So we only have the wall when I showing the floor or her shoes or anything. So first, I'm going to shoot a picture without, um, any of my flashes on. My goal is to get my settings to the point where the picture almost goes completely dark. I have some continuous lights for the video, so I don't want any of the lights to have any effect in the image. So I got to make the image kind of dark, so I'm gonna start at eso 101 60 a shutter speed because that's a sink speed that my camera can shoot. That's the highest shutter speed would flash, and then I'm gonna start a F 7.1 to see if it's dark enough is completely dark. And when Lord my aperture down a little, try four point home, it's almost completely dark. I'm a go to 5.6, and I'm happy there is dark. But the reason I don't want my aperture very high is because the higher I don't want my temperature very low. I mean, meaning the number being 5.67 point 18 or anything like that is because the darker making the image higher have to have my flesh. Which means I could be like killing the battery more and I to preserve batteries. I'm Once I got it dark enough, I set my settings there. There's no reason to go toe after 9 10 11 13 So 5.6 is enough, So I'm going to start their My white balance is gonna be set to daylight the whole time. And now we're gonna start with one leg. So gonna be setting my lights to e t t l. If you have a light that can do E t t l e t T l does is it shoots the appropriate light to get the right exposure. That way. Um, Assam changing light modifiers It's always gonna have the right exposure is always gonna be the same. So it's gonna get more light output when I have something blocking the light and last one is bare is gonna read the light and get the right exposure every time. If I do it, Emmanuel, some pictures might be brighter than others. As changing the light modifiers are moving the light around. If you only have manual flashes, then just look at your image and make sure it looks the same if you're doing an experiment like this, um, so having to e t t l and let's see what this looks like. Okay, I got my first image. As you see here, it might look like you're having many shadows, but, um, did you have this very heart shadow when you zoom in underneath Turchin, you also have a really hatch hard shadow by her arm up against the wall. Besides that, it looks like a very nice light along the her body. So it's It's kind of it makes her pop a little. So it looks really nice if you're stuck with one light and you don't have any light modifiers doing something like this works really well from here. I'm just gonna take two more pictures. Her changing her face a little so you can see how the shadows looked like when she moves around a little. So we're gonna go from looking straight at me to look into the site. OK, so first look street. Hey, you go and then David doesn't like that one and then turn over just your face, but keep your body So you see there like my lifting the chin up, like turning it over. You get rid of some of the shadows because the next exposed rather than the chin hiding the neck. Now we're gonna move onto the next one where I put the light pointing straight up. Okay, Now let's see what this looks like, okay? And then over to the side. So as you see here, the lights a little soft, you see almost no shadows. Very little like the shadow on their needs. Her chin is very soft behind her back there's almost like no shadows is lighting up, wrapping around very nicely. The only problem we're having is that it gets kind of dark in her face. Um, and it's it she doesn't pop out as much as in the other picture. The other pictures very hard. You could tell from the light. It looks very bright on her, and the other one looks very soft on her. And, uh, it almost makes her face, um, gradually get darker from the top to the bottom. So the bottom half of her face looks darker than the top half, and that's because the lights coming from straight up. I use this light mainly, and events we bounced off the ceiling because it's the easiest light to get, like soft light and would rather have that then very hard light. So we're gonna move on to the next month so you can see what that looks like. What I'm gonna be doing is, um, I'm just gonna be adding a large flash bender. This is kind of like having a small soft box, so a small soft box will do the same effect. This goes on your flash and makes the light a little bit bigger than bare flesh. I'm gonna put this on. So now you're gonna see what this rogue flash bender dust. I think it's gonna come out really nice because it's a little bit softer than bare flash. Airy. Go and then turn over a little that There you go. That won't look really cool. It looks really nice on her face. Like the shadow is almost like bare flash. You can see the shadow behind her, but it is not a heart. It's still not a soft as I wanted to be, but it looks pretty cool. The shadows looked really nice. I might do this 80 or 90% of the time versus, like, setting up a big soft box or anything. 24. 23 Light Modifiers Part 2: Now what we're gonna be doing is a beauty dish. So, um, what's great about beauty dishes is the shape of the light and the size and the way that the light bounces into the center console and around makes it for really flattering light on the face, the great for beauty shots which are very close. But in this case, we're gonna be doing 3/4 shop just so you can see if you have a beauty dish. If this is a right like modifier for you when doing something like this, So now we're gonna be shooting without at the Feezer. Without a great Joseph, you can see what this looks like on her. So, as you see in this picture, it looks a little dark on her face. And the problem that I'm happy is that is brighter and heard chest, and it's darker in her face. And that's because these are very directional. So you want to make sure that even though the lights breads, there is a bit of a hot spot in the center, so it is brighter. And wherever you're aiming this straight on at, so what you want to do to fix This is just raising up and make sure that the faces right pointing at the centre at the beauty dish and it's gonna come out better. So that's gonna fix the problem having from this image. Now we know. So, as you see from using the beauty dish, it is bright in the top and it gets darker on the bottom. It doesn't spread out as much all across. I'm gonna pull it back to see what it will look like if I was shooting from further. Okay, So, as you see from the light from the beauty dish, it looks very nice. I have nice lighting That looks very soft. Some was equivalent to what you might expect from a soft box. The shadows behind her arm look nice. And this is one of my favorite like modifiers to use. You can do this close up or 3/4 like we're doing here. So now we're gonna take a few more just to get some examples. Put your hand. Great. So now we're gonna, as you see from here, very beautiful, like the shadow behind her. It's a little heart, but not that much. It's great light. We're gonna see what this looks like compared to something a little bit bigger. Now, we're using this big soft box here. This soft clocks is almost the size of her. Uh, it gets, like, almost to the whole part of the body that we're trying to shoot. Um, okay, so now we have the soft box set up analyses. Have this look. Okay, So, as you see here, from these shadows, you have this. The lights, the shadows almost blurred. So it's almost disappearing into the to the wall. Looks really nice. The light on her face looks really nice. You could almost not tell any of the shadows. So you think so? It looks really nice with the soft box. Um, but as you see as a progressive once you go from a bare flash to almost any light modifier , the difference is very small. So you don't really need that big of a light modifier to get images and look really nice as we progress from the from the flash bender to something like this. But after this, I'm gonna show you the biggest one I have, just so you could see the difference. So that's one more. Oh, you see in these pictures, do this light looks really next one of my favorite. Now we're gonna move on to bigger lie slurs. Okay, so now I have this Giants Octa bank round soft box. It is few inches smaller than her full body. So, um, they should come out to a really nice off light. Let's see how this looks. I can even the hardest thing left it. Oh, okay. The only thing I want to talk about when shooting with these is you're not treating that as a soft box, meaning that you're hiding behind this and shooting through it. What you're actually doing is so big that it wraps around you. So when you shoot with something this big, you're actually shooting in front of this. So let me show you places like this pointing at the motto and then you just crush them a little, get a good angle, okay? And you've achieved the softest life you can ever get. I can't find almost a single shadow. Everything is This is that soft as it gets Almost all she had other gun that little bit under the leg. It's so soft. That is a softness it gets your almost covering everything when shooting up against the wall. You're expecting hard shadows with, like, this big. They're almost all gone. So that's it with the set up all these different lights. So as you see the bigger than life source, the softer delight is almost all the shadows are gone. And this is different between the bare flash all the way to the big one and then in the middle of the soft box. So you can kind of see in between off the difference between all of them. So now we're gonna move on to the next section. 25. 24 Color Gels: everybody in this section right here. I'm gonna show you how to just gels to change the color of some of your speed lights to make the picture look more interesting right here in my living room. I have nothing really of interest in the background to make the picture look interesting. But by adding to speed lights with color gels on them, I can make the picture look more dramatic and interesting than if I were to just use regular lights. So what I've done here in this image is I've added to color jails of different colors to two lights. They're gonna be hitting me from behind from both sides. And basically, what it's gonna do is create a line off light that comes from the edge of my face all the way across from one side and then one from the other side of two different colors. The colors that I chose were red and blue because red and blue look good in pictures when you use them together as two different color gels. So I have one on one side with red and one in the other side would blue. So to position these lights, what I do is I make sure that they're behind me and diagonally facing me and hitting me straight in the back of the head. Now, in your images, you might see some of the light hit the front of your face. And if that is the case, what you want to do is push them closer together and like behind you but also away from where the cameras being the pictures being taken. You don't want the flashes to appear in the images because it creates a big glare that looks very distracting in the edges of your image. So you want them away and aiming behind you. But to be in an angle in which the light doesn't hit the front of your face and then for the main light, I don't have a color gel on it. I have this flash bender, which acts kind of like a soft box. It is right in front of the camera, and it is a nice size to Onley really focus on my face and not spread out as much at kind of light up the whole room. I also didn't want direct flash because the cast really hurt hard shadows so this being a little bit bigger than a direct flash will cause it to be softer in my face and then to take these pictures because I'm doing this by myself. I am using the WiFi on the camera would a self timer of 10 seconds. So I first sync it up to my phone, the WiFi. Then I open the app and then from the app, I can see that, um where Matt in the image. And then I take the picture. It will start to beat for 10 seconds and the search to be faster towards the end to tell me that the picture is about to be taken and then it's gonna take the picture and all the flashes will go off. And then I have ah, final image where I can see how the picture looked like with the three lights. The other thing to note is, when you're setting your settings for your camera, you're setting this in manual settings. You don't want to be setting this an automatic because you have all these lights on manual settings and the way that I set up my settings and my camera waas that I had my 2.8 aperture because I'm using a zoom lense and I want a somewhat blurry background. If I was using a prime lens, I would have shot this at the lowest at the highest aperture. But right now the 2.8 is as high as that can go, and then to make the background blurry. Also, what I did was I had my shutter speed at 2 50 and I picked the highest so that the whole room looks really dark. And then I put my eyes so at 100 because I also wanted it to be really dark. So my eyes so that 100 which is the darkest setting, my shutter speeds up to 50 which is the highest shutter speed I can use with these flashes without doing high speed sink. And right now, I'm not in position to do high speed sick because this is just an introductory speed like course. And then I am using the Lotus lowest shutter aperture, highest temperature so that I have shallow up the field, which makes the image brighter. But it's not bright enough because this room is pretty dark. Tacitus. So I'm going to show you. Ah, picture without any of the flashes that I'm gonna show you a picture with just the main light. And then I'm gonna show you a picture with just the two ones in the background. And then I'm gonna show you a new image with all of them. And then I'm gonna show you a new image with some fill light, and I'm gonna tell you that about that in the end. So right now I'm connecting to my phone. When you connect to the phone, you have to find the WiFi signal that you've set up in your camera for this camera. My WiFi signals call six d. So I connected a wife I call six D, and then it's sink to that. Then I opened the cannon app. Now, um, it sets. So now I'm gonna stand right here. I'm right underneath this flash bender, So this is gonna hit me right in the face, and these two are gonna him behind. But before I used the speed lights, I'm gonna take a picture without any of these. So to do that, I'm just gonna turn off my receiver for my speed light system and then I'm just gonna take a picture of myself. So right now, counting down with the beeps for 10 seconds so you can see how dark the image looks. So it took the picture, and this is what the picture looks like. As you see in the picture, it is almost completely dark. You only see a little bit of light from the outside windows. But besides that, the image is very dark. And that's how I want it. Because I want most of the light for it to just come from the flashes. So now I'm gonna use this top left, so I'm going to turn on my lights and I turn these two anyone off and turning the other. So the setting that used for my flash was 18 power. I tested it out early earlier, and it was a right amount of power that I wanted for this set up. So I want eight of a power with this'll Flash bender as my light modifier is what I'm gonna be using. I'm gonna show you what that looks like. Okay, Says cutting down now. So there's one light set up and you can see right here it looks pretty good. I have nice lighting on my face, but you see shadows on the side of my face and underneath, and it looks kind of boring If I just take this picture in the living room, it looks pretty boring, but I'm gonna be using the other to speed lights with gels of different colors to make this Inishmore interesting. So now I'm gonna turn off this top light and just use the other two so you can see what it's doing to the picture. So the setting that I've chosen for those two lights were 1/16 power, which is half the power off the main light. Now, the main light has, uh, light modifier, which kind of lowers the amount of power because it's not direct flesh and the other tour direct flesh. And I tested it out in a Came on nice. You can play with the power settings to see what's better raising it up and lowering it. But at 1 16 it was perfect, and I make sure that both of them were the same setting. So now I'm gonna take a picture with just those two light so you can see what it does. So as you see in the picture, you do. You have these two lights of red and blue behind me. The front of my face goes completely dark, and you can kind of see where the flashes coming from from behind, because they're really close to the edges of the picture. But it looks really cool in this setting. And you could try it out like this where you have Ah, just the edge of the flash in the corner so that you can see that blue and the red glare in the image, which looks really cool. And now I'm gonna put all three together so you could see what it looks like. I kicked it. Okay. Okay. All three together. And here goes there. This This is what that looks like. As you see in the picture. It looks awesome. You have this red and blue. You have the light on me. It looks really, really cool. Now to take this another level, Um, sometimes I would add a fort light for fill light because as you see under my chin, the shadows really, really hard. So it's really dark under my chin and a little bit under my nose because, um, it's directional pointing straight down and no lights getting underneath my chip so I could add another light underneath hitting up with something soft, so soft light at the very lowest setting or I can add a reflector. A reflector will bounce that main like down and up into the shadow area. So when I'm gonna be using for a reflector, is this top been? This is a top of ah contain have been that I have and is white and white reflects really well, So I'm just gonna be holding this like this, and it's gonna bounce off with this and come straight up. This is a kind of standard reflector underneath when you're doing beauty photography, because you get all these shadows and to fill in the shadows instead of adding another light. Some people you just use a reflector, something like this or an actual reflector, Um, and we'll see what it looks like. So here goes. I'm gonna take the picture, Then I'm gonna hold us up. So now it's counting down for 10 seconds and then I'm gonna hold this up is away from the camera. There we go. and that's my final image. As you see there, I have ah, before and after right here so you can see how the shadow area is gone. So that's kind of what I would do. And then I will go into editing and, like, at some more contrast, fix some of the blemishes. Little things like that. But that's how you do this. Three lights set up. What a reflector. Optional. You don't need to do the reflector. You could do something as simple asked lower the main like down and make it more like it's hitting straight. Now here's the thing. If you put it down and hit a straight someone, the lace gonna hit more of the background and the background. One look as a dark, but you could stand further away from the background and do stuff like that. So that's that when it comes to this, like set up with gels. Hopefully you guys learn from it, and now we're gonna move on to the next section. 26. 25 Studio Gels 3D: So now I'm gonna be showing you the A studio three D diagram off the lights set up in case you want to do it in a studio setting and to get a better view of what I just showed you in the last section. So this software here allows me, Teoh place lights and diagrams to replicate everything I did in a shoot. So in the shoot before I was using a 24 to 70 millimeter lens with a 2.8 aperture. So I have that here. I s so 100 shutter speed to 50. I had to speed lights behind, as you can see here, both of them pointing at the back of the head and away from the picture right here on the right side. You can see that the lights aren't shown in the image. So I'm assumed in at around 54. Focal linked to my focal length was have 54 millimeters. That's where I was zoomed in in the images from the last section. That picture I took, I had two gels. One was, ah, red one and one was the blue one. And then I was using a flash Bender, which is equivalent to this little soft box here and again, The purpose of this little soft box or a flash bender that I use eso is a little bit of softer light. I never like to hit a face with direct flash. I don't mind the back being direct flash. Um, but I don't like the main light to be direct flash because they cast really hard and ugly shadows. Um, so I use either flash bender a soft box of beauty dish knocked the box. There's so many different light modifies you can use precise, direct flash that will make the light a little bit softer. Basically, what makes a life softer is the shape of it and the size so being that it is bigger than direct flash. So this size here is bigger than this little size here, the front of the flash. Um, the light hitting the face is a little bit softer. And then I had my camera on a tripod and the last piece to make it all complete is this reflector. So this is a foam board in this example. You can use any reflector and it will bounce the light straight up, or you can use another flash, um, with, like, a soft box at low settings down here pointing straight up or on the side. Um, it could be like on this left side here. So, for example, um, this light could have been here, and that could have been the fill light hitting her from there. Um, anyway, this is just a little light diagram so that you can see. Um, you could do this in a studio setting with a black background, a gray background. It's not really gonna work that well with a white background. And the reason is because you're not really hitting light into the white background, So the white backgrounds gonna look really ugly. The what makes a white background look good is if you hit it with a lot of light. Um, and then if you hit it with a lot of light, what ends up happening is that these two gel lights won't show the color that well in the subject. In order for these two color jails to pop, the background has to be dark. So in the example, before I make sure that the a picture I took without any lights was completely dark. And then when I added, the flash is, um you could barely see the background. It was it was kind of dark, and all the light came from my flashes. So, um ah, great background. Ah, black background or a wall or anything that's dark will work. Um, for this set up right here. So another thing I want to show you guys is, um and a set up that I use with these two lights that I've done in another image. Um, so basically, the set up looked like this. So this is a set up by hat. It was two lights pointing straight at the model with the same amount of power hitting them in red and blue. Now, the way to get this right and it looking better is for the light not to spill to the background. So, you see, in the background, you get some of the blue and some other red on the opposite sites. What I ended up doing, which looked a lot better, was I added a grid. What a grid thus is it makes it go the light go straight and not spread out. Um, so for this software in order to get that replica, I am going to use this accent, too, so we're gonna go back here. Okay, so this is a set of right here it is. Two lights that have basically agreed on them in this case is a snoot. What its new does that makes the light go straight and not spread out and hit the background. Um, so that's a set up that I had, um, and that I like to you do and that. So I have two lights on Lee hitting the subject. They don't hit the background, and then it basically looks like this. It is rat and blue. Um, so that looks really cool, too. If you want to do an image full body, I'm gonna give you some samples. And now what that looks like. So that's Ah, two different setups you can do with red and blue gels, Um, in a studio setting. Um, so, basically, for gels, you want to have the gel be kind of like rim light, light hitting in the back of the model, um, like, in the back of the head. And then usually your main light. Um, your main life being so usually one in the back like this and your main light not having the gel. That's usually how people use speed lights in a studio setting. The other way is that, like I said, you hit them on Lee with the gels, and then you put grids on them so it doesn't blend with the other lights. And and then if you want to play what it's, the more you can do some three light color set up like this with one color in the front, one in the back, Um, another one also in the back hitting her. And then you have green, blue and pink. Um, basically, there's so much you can do in the studio with color gels. Um, this is how that looks like. So, um, the only advice is I make sure that you don't hit the background with, like, two colored lights because you could end up would like some weird looking, um, backgrounds and mix the colors, and it didn't mix really well. Um, the other thing is, um, try out using grids so that the light doesn't spread out and mix in with the other lights, so that the lights, hitting directly at the model and play with different colors. You never know what colors look good together. Um, so, you know, try different colors to see what looks good. So this is a light last light set up. I wanted to show you guys, hopefully, you guys to learn a lot about using color gels, make sure that you are using a dark background when using color gels. And it's not too bright because if it's too bright, you don't really see the colors that well. So that's it. When it comes to using color gels. Now we're gonna move on to the next section.