Photography Blog DigitalPixels.net

Photographing cars with one speedlight flash and softbox

Photographing people wearing glasses - dealing with reflections

What lighting setups should I use?

A guide through several lighting set-ups for studio work.

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.

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SpeedlightProKit is making its first foray into the UK with the launch of its ProKit flash accessory pack.

The kit consists of a reflector hood that fastens to the flash light with a non slip Velcro strap, a diffuser panel and a large honeycomb panel, both of which fit into the reflector and two smaller honeycombs each with their own hood.

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Walk into most professional photographer’s studios and you’ll be confronted with truckloads of lighting equipment. To the average hobby photographer it’s enough to make your mind boggle - and for your stomach to turn as you think about the cost of it all.

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Here is a great lighting simulator to plan and test your portrait lighting with one light source + fill light if wished

How to create the high key image outdoors

1. Set up a white diffuser or diffusion panel behind your subject like a backdrop. (Make sure the sun is behind diffuser but not necessarily low in the sky)

2. Set up a second diffuser above your subject.

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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 shooting straight on. There are a wide range of diffusers such as my favorite, the Gary Fong Lightsphere. What you really want to achieve is a larger light source to help prevent harsh shadows. Without a diffuser, your best bet is to aim the flash at something you can bounce the light off of such as a wall, ceiling, foam board, reflector, or even a white shirt.

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The first thing we need to do is to connect the lights to your camera, for this we are going to need what is called a PC Sync port. On most Canon DSLR’s the PC Sync port is on the left side of the camera under a rubber flap. In the image here you can see the PC Sync port and the end of a PC Sync cable. In my typical setup I will have the main light plugged into the PC Sync port to fire it and the other lights will automatically fire at the same time because they have a built-in optical slave that will fire the flash when another flash is detected. Since this happens far faster then the mechanical shutter, the effect is that all of the lights fire at exactly the same. There is a limit of how fast the lights will sync to the camera but we will address that in a moment.

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The most popular studio lighting accessory? Hands down, the square softbox. Whether mini 12x12-inchers or 50x50-inch monsters, these boxy lighting tools are often the first thing to greet you when entering any portrait studio.

But does the square (or almost square) softbox deserve its popularity? For me, the answer is "no."

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Pocket wizard strobist - The Strobist Jet Pack

First thing was to place a black Bristol board on the table and then place a clear nylon sheet on top of it. (Actually, the first step was to convert my leaving living room table into a portable studio, but the wife was asleep so we were fine with it).

Then I placed the doll on the table and adjusted my Nikon SB 26 with a gelled gridspot and a radio slave. I set the flash to tightest zoom so the flash and gridspot will work together. (No point in having the flash on wide if I am trying to restrict light).

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Quantity

Among all the aspects of light, quantity is the easiest to control and manipulate. In fact, most of the controls found on your camera is designed for this function. The quantity or amount of light is controlled by your camera's ISO, shutter speed and aperture. If there's too much light then you get overexposure and too little will leave you with underexposure.

The photo below illustrates deliberate overexposure or what is called high-key. It shows how a photo would look if large amounts of light is allowed to hit the camera sensor.

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