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This living room shoot shows the importance of back light for making a scene real

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I love a good living room studio. Not everyone can afford a full fledged studio and for many, the photography room living room is the only option. Probably not to the delight of the significant other.

Manny Ortiz (previously) shows a clever way to make the living room look bigger using a portable seamless black and a Light Blaster.

What grabbed my attention right away is how three dimensional the photos look, so I asked Manny about it. Manny tells that the secret is using backlight. There are three lights in each shot: A key which shines on Diana (a Flashpoint360 with a 47″ octa); A Light Blaster with a slide and a Flashpoint Zoom; and the key ingredient – a gridded and gelled strobe as back light.

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How to balance flash with ambient light

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We’ve had a few tutorials showing how to balance strobes and ambient light. Usually we focus on a how the exposure work, adding a strobe, and then knocking 2 stops off the exposure.

In this video Manny Ortiz, does it all without dealing with calculating exposure. (Manny is also not using a light meter). Instead, Manny works his way through chimping the camera, which (at least for one light) may be a faster process.

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Full Frame Sony A7II vs. Crop Sony A6000, which is better for portraits?

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When you’re looking to pick up your first portrait camera, the whole full frame vs crop thing can be confusing. Technical explanations can be difficult for new users to wrap their head around.

In this video, Chicago based photographer Manny Ortiz shows us the differences side-by-side. Using the Sony A7II and A6000 side by side, we get a real world comparison of how the two compare.

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It takes less than 100$ to move your strobe off camera. Definitely worth it

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If you already own a hot shoe strobe you already have one of the most powerful tools for shaping light. Now, if you only took it off camera it would do a great deal to the final image. And you’d be surprised at how low of a cost it actually takes to move a hot shoe strobe off camera.

Photographer Manuel Ortiz  (previously) shows how with only $100 worth of gear you can take your strobe off camera and add another layer of light to your photography. (See what I did there?).

Now, Manuel uses a Flashpoint R2 speedlite, but the cost of a transmitter (godox X1T here), a generic brolli, swivel and a generic stand is just about $100 for many 3rd party brands.

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Video showing the power of High Speed Sync in a bright environment

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We have probably already established that just one soft light can make a huge difference in how a picture looks, but many times it is too bright to use a strobe. If you want to get a correct exposure with a wide aperture, you need very fast shutter speeds. Sadly, most systems don’t like to natively sync faster than 1/200 or 1/250 of a second and this is where HSS (or high speed sync) comes into play.

Chicago based photographer Manuel Ortiz demonstrates how using HSS even on a bright day cat get you to 1.4 aperture with a strobe and earn Bokeh

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This short video shows how one soft light can make a huge difference in final result

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There is a lot of power you can master once you go from available light to even using one strobe. Photographer Manuel Ortiz demonstrates it in this short video where he compares two shots right out of camera (of course the photos can be later enhanced, but for the sake of this experiment, it is better to show them SOOC)

All photos are taken with the Sony A7RII and a Sony G master 85mm 1.4 lens which really gives great color and a wonderful bokeh, so the starting point is very similar.  The first shoo in all the demos below is set to available light. Note how Diana (the model) is correctly exposed in all of those, but the background is very distracting and it really takes away from the photo.

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