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Objective & Subjective Lighting – What it is and how to do it

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Like many things in life, there’s no right or wrong way to learn photographic lighting… but I do believe there are easy ways and hard ways to not only understand it, but more importantly get better at it.

I think every creative discipline evolves, but photography sees more significant jumps in its evolution due to it being so uniquely tied to technology. Every frame we capture is taken with a camera and that camera technology is evolving on a daily basis. Every frame we then have to develop is primarily produced through software and that too evolves on a daily basis. The tools that we use to create our work are constantly changing but I feel that the way we learn some of the techniques associated with these tools do not.

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Here are three sub $20 way to create good diffusion for filming

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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.

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Rosco’s new MIX LED panels eliminate casts and can be any colour you want

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Last year, lighting gel company, Rosco acquired LED lighting specialists DMG Lumière. Although only founded in 2014, DMG Lumière was quickly recognised for its innovative products for film, television and broadcast. We all knew at the time that this would be an interesting mix of companies and talent that would probably go on to produce something quite special. Now, it seems, they have.

The Rosco MIX, is a new colour changing LED panel based on DMG Lumière’s previous form factors. What makes these special though, is that unlike traditional bicolour, RGB or RGBW LED panels, these contain six differently coloured LEDs to produce a wide array of colours. Famous for their high-quality lighting gels, Rosco’s new light won’t even need them.

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This easy trick will turn any lamp into versatile, dimmable LED light

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If you need a lamp in your shot, the regular bulbs have their downsides. They get hot, you can’t dim them, and LED bulbs have bad CRI. Caleb Pike has a handy trick for you that will help you turn any lamp into a versatile, dimmable LED light in a couple of minutes. It’s easy and cheap, and you can use it in plenty of ways in your videos and images.

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How colour contamination may be ruining your photographs and how to fix it

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Whether you’re aware of the correct terminology or not, you have likely experienced this colour contamination happening in your photographs already.

Put simply, colour contamination is when one colour is affected by the presence of another colour in close proximity. So for example, if you’re photographing two friends side by side, one of them is wearing a white t-shirt and the other one is wearing a red t-shirt, the white t-shirt will likely take on a pinkish tone due to the fact that it’s receiving bounced light from the red t-shirt close by.

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Four DIY lighting setups to help lighting a scene for under $150

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Along with buying camera gear, investing in lighting can cost you a lot of money. If you’re just starting out, it can all be a bit too much for your budget to handle. Jay P. Morgan has some budget DIY solutions for creating 3-point lighting setups. He suggests four setups that you can construct yourself on the cheap. Nothing should cost you more than $150.

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The beginner’s guide to using grids with softboxes

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Every day I see people posting in Facebook groups asking about softboxes and whether or not they should buy one with a grid. Personally, I always advise going for one that comes with a grid. Even if you don’t know why you might need it yet, if you get one without and then find out that you need one, it can often be impossible to source just the right size and shape.

But what exactly do grids do? And do you really need one? That’s what photographer David Bergman looks at in this two-minute video. He goes over what grids are for and when you might choose to use one. I have grids for all of my softboxes and octaboxes. I don’t always use them, but when I do need them, they’re absolutely invaluable.

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Use lighting gels to get a pastel light wrap around your subject

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Good news! This is actually a relatively easy JHP lighting setup to play with and it produces some pretty great looking results too. It’s easy to set up as you only need a couple of softboxes and this can be put together and shot in a very small space indeed; no studio required. Plus it produces some great looking results because it uses coloured light. Now I know I may sound biased on that but hear me out as we go through the setup and it should start to make more sense as to why this looks extra cool with coloured gels compared to without.

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