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 ...

This lesson shows a very effective method for shooting a full-length fashion shot in the studio using strobe lights and large soft boxes. This shot was lit with a 5-foot OctoDome3 and strobe as the main light, a large LiteDome and strob ...

The main problem with using an on-camera flash is the same as using the built-in flash, the light goes straight at the subject and flattens features and can cause red-eye. With an on-camera flash you almost always want to use a diffuser if sh ...

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 ...

Camera Raw 4.6 and the DNG Converter 4.6 has been posted to Adobe.com for Mac and Windows. This will be the last Camera Raw update for CS3 customers and it includes support for raw formats from the following 15 camera models: Canon 1000D ...

Hi and welcome to this edition of Workshop at the Ranch. When I get excited about a piece of equipment that allows me to make better pictures I want to tell everyone all about it and how to use it. This long and detailed Workshop at the Ranch ...

Metering systems are calibrated to a certain light value in order to gurantee constant exposure settings: 18% gray is commonly accepted because a typical scene seems reflect the same amount of light as this gray value. As a framework for c ...

"This is a DIY project I have had in mind for a while now. When I purchased my studio flash heads, they came with a couple of small softboxes. Although I prefer to use translucent umbrellas whenever I can (small, light, easy to transport), th ...

Outdoor portraits can offer a sense a drama or romance that can be hard to achieve in a studio setting. The early morning or evening sky can serve as a stunning backdrop for a portrait. The trick is in lighting your subject properly. T ...

In brief, it is a full-frame (FX) camera using the same 12 MP sensor and image processing electronics as in the Nikon D3, except in a body closer in size and weight to the Nikon D300. Remarkably, the D700 has as much as 95% of the goodn ...

If you are a photographer and using flash (either for studio pictures or for outdoor shooting), you are probably aware of the problems that a hot-shoe flash introduces: the shadows of an object are crisp-sharp, creating an artificial look to ...

One of the least expensive ways to get started with off-camera flash photography is by using the Cactus Wireless Triggers. The Cactus is also referred to as the Ebay trigger since this is where it first caught the attention of photographers a ...

"It's almost a magician's art: giving form to an object that's essentially invisible. Lighting and photographing clear glass objects and giving them real visual appeal is one of the hardest tasks you'll ever face in a studio." "How's i ...

A lot of news photographers don't think that they are allowed enough time to light pictures, so they rely on their hot shoe mounted flash or on moving their subject into the daylight. If your kit is lightweight and well planned, if it's reliabl ...

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 ...