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 ...

There is so much talk on some forums about the ’softness’ of shoot-thru umbrellas and how much it works to provide a soft light. And there is certainly some truth to that statement… especially with umbrellas at a distance. But finessed lig ...

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 swivel (or umbrella holder) is designed in a way that the umbrella does not go exactly 90 degrees into the shaft. It is tilted upwards a bit - this is done since the flash mounted on the swivel is not 100% aligned with the center of the u ...

1) Setup your single light source (It can be a continuous source, a low power strobe or a 100 watt flash). 2) Make sure you use a very large light modifier for your source, such as this homemade light panel, a very large shoot through umbr ...

I got a 001B Manfrotto Light Stand - This is one of the lightest light stands around and it folds really small - perfect for travel. It is also tall enough to do well in most indoor situations. For outdoors, however this is not my initial cho ...

In this lesson, we will look at how the efficiency of a light reflector works. To illustrate this, we will employ the line up of umbrellas from Photoflex: the RUD, a white translucent umbrella, the RUT, a white translucent umbrella with a rem ...

"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 ...

"Typical indoor ambient light, for instance, might be about 1/60th at 4/f at ISO 400. So If I shoot you in that light, available only, you are going to be properly exposed. You'll still probably look pretty bad -- we nailed the quantity, but ...

I'm using the speedlites with softbox combination more and more ... Here's the same set-up taking an other shot, the slave 580ex speedlite is trigerred by the 550ex master one: Other photo with the speedlite flashed through the softbox ...

"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 ...

Photos taken with the mobile and wireless speedlite flashes set, bounced into silver umbrella. Click here for lighting set-ups with speedlites bounced into silver umbrella.

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 ...

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 ...

Click here for speedlite flashes in softbox and umbrella set-ups with sample photos.