Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If you want to get soft flattering light, you would need to diffuse it. This video by Todd Blankenship, covers three ways to diffuse your point light source.
Of course, the first thing that Todd does is showing you how not to diffuse your light. As you may have guessed, simply throwing some baking paper on a light source will not diffuse it. If you clip the backing paper directly to the diffuser it just does not make your light source bigger.
Most large modifiers come with two diffusers. A big one for the outer rim and a smaller one that fits between the source of light and the big diffuser, right in the middle of the modifier. Of course, this begs the question how may diffusion layers do you actually need.
Photographer Francisco Joel Hernandez shares a short, yet informative video on how diffusion of strobes effects portraits (or any other type of shoot).
At 2010 NAB show in Las Vegas, Zylight presented Active Diffusion – a flexible and lightweight panel which allows you to control the amount of diffusion on demand. It was a long time ago, but it seems that it was worth the wait – in 2017 they are finally launching it for sale.
Focusable parabolic reflectors may not be your first lighting modifier as they are big and require a lot (A LOT) of power, but once you start using them it is pretty hard to go back. To top that, they are also pretty expensive. The medium branded ones are around $800 while a top brand like Broncolor will set you back about $2,400.
If you still want to drive test one of those and at the stage where you have more time than money, Dennis Christian put a tutorial together on building one from scratch (or almost scratch….).
Defining the problem: While shooting a portrait outdoors, I usually add a fill flash to eliminate any “racoon eyes” and dark shadows on the face. The fill flash is set set at 1.7 stops under exposed for a light touch. My setup is a Nikon D600 with Nikon SB700 flash (mounted on the camera’s hotshoe) using TTL metering at -1.7 EV. In the example the lighting on the face is good (soft & directional) but you can see a hard shadow on the right side of the subject.
We have options…
There are a few options available, and in this test case I wanted to compare them
When it comes to portrait lighting, Joel Grimes abides by some basic principles to achieve just the look he is going for. But, while those principles are basic, they may not necessarily be obvious. Fortunately, Grimes is a great educator and has made this quick video tutorial to share some of his pro advice and deliver us with a very simple way to get several different lighting looks using just one strobe, a reflector, and an octobox.[Read More…]
Diffusion blades (or panels) are incredibly useful things to have laying around a photography studio. Why pay over $100 each for a blade when you can build them yourself quickly and easily for a 1/3 of the price? In this video tutorial, Tony Roslund shows us how he makes his own blades using easily resourced materials.[Read More…]
Multi flash mounts are cool. I have discussed them before when we did a DIY on a dual flash mount. Just a quick recap: Using multiple flashed allows you to either drive more light or to remain on the same light level, while recycling faster. You can read it all here.
Using some objects that my wife will call junk elements smartly scattered around the house, photographer Brent Pennington made a three-way flash mount. Ha! Three is better than two. It will drive a stop and a half more.
As a bonus, Brent’s device relives you of the need to use a stud on your swivel. That’s a major bonus if you are like me and keep losing them. Kudos.
Of course, you could always sin and get the one made by Lastolite, but then where would all the fun (and your 70 greens) would be?
Read the entire tutorial and deep thoughts on Brent’s Blog.[Read More…]
Photographer Peter Karlsson has it all worked out when it comes to travel light. Peter is a Strobist at heart and as such he is using small flashes quite a bit. The coolness comes in when you see how he places his flashes in space.
Instead of your orthodox light stand solution Peter uses a home brewed light stand made of tent poles. Those are great for travel for several reasons: There are super light-weight, they fold small and they will definitely make your subject go WOW! Luckily for photographers wold wide there are two vids available that shows how those light stands were made. [Read More…]
Today @AM time I discussed a light tent made from virtually nothing but coroplast and binders. (Not the previous supermarket-box-light-tent took more products to make).
Then I saw a variation on that theme by Nathan Moroney that used nothing but paper binders to create a very similar light same tent.
Now, if you think that coroplast tent was frugal, this one is on the fringe of being made from pure nothing. (Link and musing after the jump).
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
