Today I’m out here with Chanda AM, and Chanda will help me illustrate how to balance ambient light with strobes. I love shooting in this situation with ambient light and strobe light. I want to be able to combine the ambient light here in this beautiful area with strobes. So the way I generally do this is:
This is when copying other photographers’ work is a good idea
by 4 Comments
No matter if you’re a total newbie or you’ve been shooting for a while, the last thing you wanna be is a copycat. Nobody likes copycats, right? But bear with me. In this video from Westcott, photographer Glyn Dewis shares some situations when copying others’ work will be good for your own photography without harming the original authors. So let’s hear what he has to say.
We’re not saying the Westcott FJ400 and Jinbei HD-400 are the same strobe, but they sure look similar
by 13 Comments
I’ve seen a few posts recently about Westcott’s new FJ400 strobe, with a couple of sites labeling it the “best value strobe” on the market. We even covered the announcement here on DIYP and it looks fairly impressive, holding up to competitors like the Godox AD400Pro quite well in many respects.
But is it really Westcott’s new strobe? Or is it Jinbei’s HD400, released over a year ago, just with “Westcott” stamped on it? WE are not saying that it is, but we are saying that there are some striking similarities.
Westcott announces FJ400, portable but powerful strobe and FJ-X2m, universal wireless trigger
by 2 Comments
Westcott has just announced a new strobe and an accompanying wireless trigger. The Westcott FJ400 is a portable 400Ws AC/DC strobe with less than 1 s recycle time at full power. It’s launched along with the FJ-X2m is a universal trigger which pairs with virtually any camera brand, so you don’t need a brand-specific trigger.
Westcott’s new Flex Cine lights add full RGB colour to their flexible LED lighting range
by 2 Comments
Westcott has today announced a new Flex Cine lighting system. Carrying on from the popular Flex system launched in 2014, the new Flex Cine line gets full RGBW capability. Westcott says they haven’t just added RGB LEDs to their old lights, though. They’ve redesigned them from the ground up. There’s also a wireless DMX Dimmer.
Johnsons Photopia – UK distributor for Sekonic, Blackrapid, PocketWizard, Peli and more enters administration
by Leave a Comment
Johnsons Photopia have announced through their website and Twitter that they have now gone into administration. There isn’t a lot of information yet about how this came about, or how this may affect staff and future customer support for the brands they represent.
Westcott’s new portable LED makes using modifiers easy
by Leave a Comment
The development of LED lights over the last couple of years has been quite interesting to follow. 10 years ago, LEDs were the last type of light I’d use for any kind of serious video work, but since then they’ve come a very long way. They’ve become more consistent and colour accurate with high CRI & TLCI, more powerful, and more versatile.
Westcott’s new Solix LED light, though, has a particularly unique feature. An integrated speedring for connecting directly into softboxes. It’s an interesting design that allows the light to keep a small form factor while still offering the use of modifiers.
Introducing Omega Reflector 360 – the world’s first 15-in-1 reflector
by 3 Comments
If you are searching for one reflector to rule them all, this may be the one. Westcott has introduced the new Omega Reflector 360, which can be used in a number of situations. You can use it as a traditional or a shoot-through reflector, with natural or strobe light, and with four different covers and a diffuser. When you only have a single light source, this reflector can really come in handy.
This deep 24″ collapsible beauty dish folds down to just 6″
by 9 Comments
Designed by portrait photographer Joel Grimes, the new 24″ Rapid Box Beauty Dish from Westcott seems to tick all of the boxes when it comes to location photography. It’s small, lightweight, and can also double up as a regular 24″ round softbox by adding the diffuser panel on the front.
Having lightweight and portable kit is important when you’re working on location, especially if you don’t have assistants or other crew with you to help you lug it around. In this video from Joel & Westcott, we’re going to see how this one works and how it can be used on location.
The Westcott Eyelighter Will Give Wonderful Eyes. In Camera
by 13 Comments
One of the holy grails of beauty retouching is perfect eyes. Actually, getting good lighting on the eyes would probably be one of the first things you would lean in a beauty retouching workshop, maybe after perfecting skin. One of the “secrets” to getting good light on the eyes is getting a slight moon-shaped highlight on the bottom of the eye. Dave Piper covered that a while back on his eye’s retouching tutorial, but what if you wanted to get this in camera?
I just stumbled upon this great lighting modifier over at Neil van Niekerk’s Tangents blog. It is called the The Eyelighter and only does one thing, but it does it well: It provides a light that gives an arched reflection in the eye.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!