If you’re new to studio flash photography, you may be a little confused about how everything works. The types, sizes, and shapes of light modifiers, the light’s placement and distance from the subject… There’s a lot to learn, and in this article, we’ll focus on the distance of the flash from your subject. Does it really matter how far you place the light? Spoiler alert: it does. And in this great video from Adorama, Gavin Hoey will give you plenty of examples of how and why the flash distance affects your studio images.
This is the one simple thing you need to know about working with bounce flash
Sometimes, as much as we might hate it, we’re forced to stick a flash on the hotshoe. Perhaps it’s something not too important and we just want a bit more light on things. But maybe it’s something very important and you really need to not screw it up. Whatever the reason, getting great light out of an on-camera flash isn’t that difficult. There’s just one thing you need to think about.
In this video, photographer Neil van Niekerk explains that one important thing and how it affects your photos in very simple and easy to understand terms. Yes, I’m going to spoil it now, but that one thing is the inverse square law. But don’t worry, there’s no maths or charts here. Just a simple practical demonstration that’ll make it easy for you to get decent shots when using on-camera flash.
Check out this math-free visual explanation of light falloff
Light has many properties that we need to learn if we want to control it and improve our photography. One of them is light falloff: the property of light to become less and less bright the further it travels from its source. Most of us know this feature as the Inverse Square Law, and it involves quite a lot of math. Well, at least too much for my taste.
If like me you also don’t really like math, you’ll love this video from Adorama. Photographer Gavin Hoey will show you what light fall off looks like in the real world, and his demonstration is visual rather than mathematical.
One way or another, this video will help you understand the Inverse Square Law
The Inverse Square Law pops up in photography often, particularly for users of flash or continuous LED lights. It’s a topic that still confuses a lot of people, although the mathematics of it can be translated into easy-to-understand practical terms. In this video, from ZY Productions, we get to see both explanations to satisfy both the maths geeks as well as those who just want to know what it means in the real world.
A visual approach to the Inverse Square Law and how it affects photographers
The inverse square law (ISL) is one of those principles of photography that drives people crazy. It’s a fairly simply concept that’s broken down into a rather confusing sentence. It states that the intensity of an effect such as illumination or gravitational force changes in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from the source. That, to most people means absolutely nothing.
So, in this video, photographer Joe Edelman is here to explain it in straightforward terms. In his usual way, Joe has lots of diagrams and practical examples to illustrate what it’s all about. The ISL can be a difficult one to wrap your head around at first. Once you understand it, though, it all makes complete sense. You’ll wonder how you ever got on without knowing it.
Lighting Design the Easy Way – Secrets of the Inverse-Square Law of Light
In this blog post, I would like to share some insights with you regarding the connection of aperture and inverse-square law of light as well as their effects on light fall-off. I’m going to be using Set.a.Light 3D to demo some of the things, but light behaves exactly the same in the real world. Let me ease you into this topic by explaining the aperture first.
These Two Photos Will Make You Instantly Understand How The Inverse Square Law Works
When I started to use artificial lighting, The Inverse Square Law was my nemesis. Not only it is not intuitive, but it is also not linear, and visualizing how a strobe distance from a subject will impact the photo is not trivial to say the least.
Photographer Derrick Bias shared a few priceless photos that show the exact impact that moving a strobe away fro ma subject has.
One trivial effect, of course it the fact that less light hits the model, but light fall off, background to model illumination ratio and overall contrast also play a part in this game. While I encourage everyone to take the time to learn The Inverse Square Law, and its impact on your photos these photos will provide an instant reference point if you are just starting out.
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