fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

Create magical portraits using just one umbrella with these 5 different set ups

by Leave a Comment

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with options when you first get started on artificial lighting. There seem to be so many tutorials out there for four or five light setups. But many of us begin shooting with natural light, and often from a single light source (ie. a window). It stands to reason then, that the easiest way to learn to shoot strobes is to begin with just one light.

In this video, photographer Emily Teague shows us five different setups using just one umbrella light. There’s no shame in only using one light if you know what you’re doing to manipulate it. Often the results are incredibly beautiful, and if you’re on location there’s something to be said for bringing less gear with you!

[Read More…]

Lighting setup: Indoor swimwear shoot

by Leave a Comment

Shooting swimwear outside in natural light is nearly always the best solution, after all, the bright, crisp sunshine is an easy-win when it comes to making swimwear look good. But what if an outdoor shoot simply isn’t practical or even possible due to location and of course weather?

In this article I’ll discuss a simple indoor setup that can be created in almost any sized space and with standard kit. This setup isn’t trying to synthesise daylight indoors like I’ve done before, but it is about recreating that feeling of an outdoor shoot and I’ll share a couple of tricks I employ to do just that.

[Read More…]

Nanlite launches its new PavoBulb 10C high CRI RGBWW LED light for practical light replacement on set

by 1 Comment

Nanlite has released their new PavoBulb 10C. It’s an RGBWW colour-mixing LED light designed to replace practical bulbs on-set when you need to get a little more control over how they look to camera. With the plethora of dodgy cheap consumer CCFL and LED bulbs on the market these days that people often use in their homes and businesses, these will be a welcome tool in the arsenal of filmmakers.

It is essentially Nanlite’s answer to the Aputure Accent B7C, released in September 2020, but for the Nanlite ecosystem, offering remote control through the NanLink app and a variety of other methods. It offers a CRI of 95, a TLCI of 97, over 36,000 colours with 15 customisable preset modes and a slew of other features.

[Read More…]

Watch: Comparing small vs large softboxes to help you decide which you should buy

by Leave a Comment

There’s a moment that comes to everybody who eventually starts breaking away from using solely natural light and moving towards artificial lights to give you a bit more control and consistency. Whether you’re a photographer, filmmaker or YouTuber, you’re going to one day have to decide on what to buy to be your first, or perhaps only softbox.

In this video, Sam Holland walks us through the differences between a hard bare light, a small softbox and a large softbox to let us see the kind of light it produces as well as the benefits of each type of hard, slightly soft and very soft light. In the context of Sam’s video, it’s largely based on the YouTube or presenter style lighting with just a single modifier, but which deserves your money?

[Read More…]

Why filmmakers love lamps – should you use one in your next video?

by Leave a Comment

This is a rather interesting observation that I’ve never picked up on before but I’ll sure be on the lookout for in the future. Have you ever noticed how many lamps appear in movies? Sometimes even in particularly awkward or unusual places? Filmmaker and YouTuber Patrick Tomasso certainly noticed after recently rewatching Eyes Wide Shut. He then studied other movies and noticed they were everywhere.

They’ve been around in cinema for years and it doesn’t look like they’re going away any time soon. But why? Sure, lamps exist in the real world, but not usually to the extent that they appear in certain films and certainly not in all of the places that they pop up in movies, either, as Patrick illustrates.

[Read More…]

Lighting Technique: How to photograph people with top-down sci-fi lighting

by Leave a Comment

I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that it’ll be a short and sweet one this week ;) Nothing mind-bending or buried in lighting theory, just a simple 2 light setup with some colour! – (famous last words).  The idea behind this look for me was to create a sci-fi style of light coming directly from above. Couple that with some contrasting colour from below and a little separation behind and I’m done.

In my mind I wanted it to be smokey or hazey like those spooky 80s sci-fi movies. So either a misty night or even smoke from spaceship exhaust – think, ‘Close encounters of the third kind’. This isn’t strictly super-relevant, but early ideas like this can help you immensely when it comes to lighting a subject if you know what you’re trying to achieve first.

[Read More…]

How to create 30 different interview and portrait lighting setups in less than 15 minutes

While understanding how light actually works is a much more reliable way to figure out how you’re going to light your subject, when you’re just starting out, it helps to rely on some tried and trusted lighting setups and techniques to get you up and running. The more different setups you try, the more you learn to understand how they work, the better you’ll understand light as a whole.

In this video, commercial filmmaker Austen Paul shows thirty different interview lighting setups in under 15 minutes that will give you plenty of options to get you started. And don’t let the “interview” description fool you, these lighting setups are ideal for photographers shooting portraits, too.

[Read More…]

How to set up your lights and balance colour tones to get that orange and teal look in-camera

by Leave a Comment

The blue and orange look (also often referred to as “Orange and Teal”) has been popular in cinema for a long time, but massively so in the last few years as easy video editing and colour grading features have come into easy reach of anybody with a camera. With free editing software like DaVinci Resolve out there, it’s easy for anybody to do in post now. Shift the shadows one way, the highlights another and you’re good right?

Well, sort of, but not really. If you want to do it well, you also need to light your scene for it. In this video, cinematographers Valentina Vee and Alissa Rooney walk us through the lighting setup to shoot these colours together. They walk us through a full lighting breakdown, explaining how to balance the colour tones together to make them feel seamless throughout.

[Read More…]

How to inexpensively take your lighting for social media to the next level

Lighting isn’t something that many of us take into consideration for our social media. Sure, if we’re posting photographs of our clients to social media, they’re already lit anyway, but if we’re shooting images or videos that are just for social media, it’s usually ignored. Because, well, it’s just social media, right?

Well, there’s a lot you can do in terms of lighting for social media that’s fairly simple to achieve. You can do it with some relatively inexpensive gear and it’s pretty easy to set up, too. In this video, Mark Wallace walks us through a number of different types of lights and lighting setups to show how we can get the most out of our setups for social media.

[Read More…]

This photographer thinks Godox isn’t a brand for professional photographers

by 18 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-I5gpWhE2s

All the photographic groups and forums have been vaguely on fire in the last 24 hours due to an inflammatory video posted on YouTube by a pro photographer giving his opinion about Godox (and other similar level) lights.

As you can imagine, opinion was quickly divided with the Godox supporters getting their knickers in a twist and those that can afford the more expensive brands feeling delightfully smug. I watched the full 23 minutes and 57-second video so you don’t have to. You’re welcome!

[Read More…]

Recent Posts