"To really understand the concept of balancing light, many of you will have to expand your concept of a so-called proper exposure. After all, you are creating a scene that has precisely the tonal range that you want it to. You can use this ab ...

By now, most of you have read many times as I have walked through the process of balancing my flashes and ambient. I want to get past that. Today, I want to accomplish two things: 1. To set you up with a way of quickly understanding and ...

Explore the world of off-camera lighting thanks to Strobist Links to Strobist articles out of the Lighting 101 ( © Strobist ) : Two Things Your Flash Needs to Have Traveling Light Light Stands Super Clamps Ball Bungees Umb ...

The first thing you have to ask yourself before choosing the flash setting for your umbrella is, how big do you want your light source to be? But before we get to that, let's make sure we all know what we mean by "zoom setting." Re ...

A lot of people been asking me what are Color Temperature (CT) flash gels for and where they can find it. On the first part I will be showing a very simple way where you can get them, in Europe, very fast and with everything you need to co ...

The fourth time-based manipulation I frequently use is zooming through the exposure. And last month we pulled that technique out of our as.. bag of tricks during the "stone soup" shoot in NYC. As you can see, one came from back camer ...

First impression: It is much bigger than the SB-800. Didn't really seem any heavier, but definitely takes up more space. This is a consideration for a couple of reasons. One, cubic inches matter when on the road. Not so much on a single flash ...

I have seen a couple versions of video from Annie Leibovitz's Queen Elizabeth shoot. But this is the full segment, and has lots of interesting tidbits Annie scouts rooms, making notes with a camera. This is common practice with pros, n ...

Welcome to On Assignment, where you can build on your Lighting 101 skills by learning exactly how real-world assignments were lit. The object will be to explain the process of making the photos as clearly as possible. But if you have worked ...

"We discuss three lighting options with our portrait studio continuous lighting kit. The kit consists of 3 lights including the "key", "fill" and "back" or "hair" light. The "key" and "fill" lights use "bounce" umbrellas to soften the light a ...

Umbrellas are cheap, portable little light softeners. But there are enough choices available to make picking the right one a little confusing. Or worse yet, to end up with something that is completely a wrong fit. The first choice you' ...

* "Your camera is light and compact enough that you have it with you at all times. * You have about as good a lens as he does; like most first-time SLR owners, he hasn't bothered to upgrade from the cheap low-contrast zoom lens that was include ...

If you want to take ultra modern style portraits with the pure white backgrounds, but think you can't because you only have one studio light think again. Experts may tell you that you need five lights comprising main or key light, fill light, ...

Camera flashes produce intrusive bursts of light that disturb or dazzle. We present a prototype camera and flash that uses infra-red and ultra-violet light mostly outside the visible range to capture pictures in low-light conditions. This “da ...

"We live in a world of off-axis light. The sun does not stay right behind us. Our lighting fixtures at home illuminate us from above and other various angles. And we are constantly exposed to imagery - both still and moving - that makes use o ...