As I said, the sky was just downright ugly with no color in it at all, and worse, it only looked like it was going to get worse. My goal of teaching how to balance flash and bright sunlight was certainly not working out so I decided to show how to make a blue sky of of the drab sky we were looking at.

To start off, I switched the camera’s white balance from Auto to Tungsten. What this will do is to add a blue color cast to the clouds. Here is how the sky looked in both Auto and Tungsten White Balance.

Auto White Balance

Tungsten White Balance

Now that we have some color in the sky, its now time to shoot our model. If we just used a flash, the Tungsten white balance setting would make our subject look more like a Smurf than a human. In order to compensate for the much cooler color temperature we have to reverse that by making the light from the flash much warmer. To accomplish this, I used the ExpoImaging Rogue Gel Kit with the 1/2 CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel.

Using the gelled flash to light our subject, we get the natural looking lighting on the subject while retaining the blue in the sky.

You can use this same technique with different gels to create more dramatic skies by using the opposite of this effect with a nice sunset. Using a cool (blue) gel and setting the color temperature to a higher temperature will create extremely vivid colors. No lighting kit is complete without at least a few color correction gels.

We set up the first lightstand with an umbrella, and the wind almost blew my gear and girl away. Debra asked, “Bare flash?”. I replied, “Yes, I think that would be best.” So we set up 3 light stands, each with a bare BB560 flash and Blackbelt receiver. We moved the lights around as needed, sometimes lighting Brian in the car with 1 or 2 lights (plus the sun of course). In a few images we had 1 or 2 lights on Brian, while at the same time having 1 or 2 lights on the car, just to open up the details that would otherwise be black shadows from the low sun.

I shot these images on a Canon 5dmk2, mostly with a 70-200 lens, and a few wide angle shots were done with a 17-40 lens. Lighting conditions being constant, the shots were taken at ISO 50 or 100, from f5.6 to f8, at a 1/200 shutter speed (the maximum sync speed for the BB560). Flash output was set to 1/2 power and sometimes bumped up to full power as needed. I have been using the BB560′s for sometime now and this was one of those shoots where the reliability and power output was really put to the test. They worked flawlessly.

Photos were edited in Adobe Lightroom 4, the black and white images were done with Nik Silver Eex Pro 2, and Nik Color Efex Pro 3 Tonal Contrast preset was used on some of the color images.

If you would like to see more of this collection shot with Blackbelt Lighting Products, you can visit my blog post here.

Thank you Kerry for letting me share this collection with your Dojo friends.

I’ve talked about basic and advanced lighting techniques commonly used for virtually any studio photo shoot, but those lighting setups require more than a single light, and for a beginning photographer, especially one who has a limited amount of studio space and a small budget, retaining multiple lights can be a problem. There is a way to get around using multiple lights though, and that is low key lighting.

Low key lighting is a type of portrait lighting that creates a very dramatic light setup, as well as creates some intense classic looking photos. Low key lighting lends it’s self strongly to a darker side of glamor and artistic photography. This type of lighting can cast a strong exposure on the subject, creating harsh contrast between the light and shadows of your subject, and leaves a majority of the background darkened. There are a few ways to set up a low key lighting setup, but the common factor in almost all low key setups is that they are predominately lit by only a single light.

45 or 90 Degree Angle

Image by Andy Leddy

This setup is the simplest by far, but still creates powerful, elegant images. Place your key light at either a 45 or 90 degree angle from the subject, on either the left or right side of your camera. That’s the entire setup, one light, in one of four locations. While it is a simple setup, the effects of the setup can very greatly. At a 45 degree angle, exposing the front of your subject, you will create a beautiful front exposure, with harsh contrasted shadows. At a 90 degree angle, if you expose your subject from the front you can create an intense split light where the subjects back will virtually vanish into the background, but if you expose the subject from the back you will create the exact opposite effect.

45 or 90 Degree with a Reflector

Image by Cillian Storm

This setup is the exact same as the previous, with the inclusion of a new piece of equipment, a reflector. The reflector is placed on the opposite side of your subject, and directly in front of your light. The light that wraps around the subject, or misses them entirely, is diffused and reflected on the back of the subject, creating a softer exposure. In this way the reflector acts as a fill light. Images shot in this way will not be as dark and contrasted as the previous manner, but will still maintain a much darker contrast ratio.

From Behind

Image by spunkinator

This type of lighting is commonly used to create a much more brooding, or sinister look, by creating an intense silhouette of the subject, only exposing a small area outlining the subject. The best way to achieve this look is with the help of two strong lights, but it can be done with as little as one. Place both lights behind the subject at 45 degree angles on opposite sides. An addition trick to really enhance images shot like this is to actually include the lights in the image. This will create a lens flare look behind the subject, and really enhances the visage of a foreboding or sinister subject.

Kyle Miller has been a professional wedding and portrait photographer for several years. He shares his knowledge on his blog Photography Tips where you can also download his eBook 7 Essential Photography Tips for free.

Even though I have talked about this setup several times, recent events have prompted me to bring it up again and for good reason. As I am writing this, I am on a cruise ship sailing towards St. Maarten. One thing about cruise ships is that they make a good chunk of money selling photos. They take photos of you getting other ship, arriving at ports, at dinner, and they have multiple static setups with different backgrounds. When you are needing to pound out hundreds of portraits per day you can’t be spending a lot of time messing with your lighting. So what lighting setup do they use for quick, simple, and consistent lighting? The standard three light portrait setup of course.

Let’s dissect their secret recipe and see how they are using the three light setup so effectively.

To the camera right is a 32″ softbox as the key light. On the camera left is a 42″ umbrella as a fill light, and then high right off the background stands is a third light with a honeycomb grid as a hair light. Why does this setup work so well that they use it exclusively at every one of their stations? The answer is simple, its because it works. The softbox provides some nice directional lighting while the umbrella softens the shadows. The high gridded light adds a splash of hairlight which looks natural for both indoor and outdoor scenes.

While the cruise ship is using 500 watt second monolights, a Westcott Apollo, and a Westcott umbrella, you can put together the same setup for much less. Let’s break down all of the pieces and see what it would cost to replicate this tried and true lighting setup.

(3) Blackbelt Lighting BB560 speedlites @ $95 each
(1) Blackbelt Lighting. Stealth 32″ Softbox @ $79
(1) Blackbelt Lighting 10′ x 12′ backdrop stand @ $85
(1) Blackbelt Lighting Ninja Speedlite Triggers @ $65
(1) Blackbelt Lighting swivel mount @ $15
(1) Shoot through umbrella @ $10
(1) Blackbelt Lighting Samurai Light stand kit @ $65
(1) Bogen Superclamp
(1) Expoimaging Rouge Grid
Printed backgrounds from Backdrop Outlet

All in you are going to be between $700 – $900 depending on the background you get. While this may sound like a lot of money, you would easily spend over $2,500 for big name products. The beauty of a setup like this is that it is a very versatile lighting kit that makes for a great starting point for building upon as your skill increases.

One of my favorite features of speedlites is High Speed Sync. This feature allows you to work with speedlites way past your camera’s normal sync speed (1/160 – 1/250 depending on camera). By shooting at very fast shutter speeds you can dramatically cut ambient light and can shoot what looks like night-time shots at high noon. Sounds incredible huh? Guess what, using it is as simple as pressing a single button.

1. Light travels in constant directions

Have you even shot pool? If so, you have had an extremely practical lesson in how lighting works. If you aim a light straight, it goes straight, if you aim it into a wall, it bounces off in the opposite direction at the same angle. Before the comments fill up talking about diffusion, refraction, etc, the goal of this is to make the concept easy to understand here.

By understanding this basic concept you can control the angle that light is hitting your subject. This can be used to create soft or harder lighting, change the mood of an image, and create different lighting styles. Again, there is more to this with sub-topics on light spread and reflectivity but the number of variables involved are almost infinite. For the sake of keeping it understandable, you need to keep the concept simple. Light does not follow general guidelines, nor does it follow suggestions, it absolutely follows the laws of physics. Getting a handle of how light functions will give you many, many more options.

2. The Inverse Square Law

“The inverse-square law is a law stating that a specified physical quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.” – Wikipedia

Pretty heady stuff huh? Let’s break this down so it is as simple as possible to understand, if you double the distance between the light source and the subject, you need four times the amount of light. Ok, simple if you are always doubling the distance, but what if you want to do it fairly quickly? If we need to calculate the light falloff we can take the distance, multiply it by itself, and take the inverse of that number. So if we take a distance of 2 feet, multiply it by itself, we get 4, and take the inverse which would be 1/4.

Putting it Together

Keep in mind that these two things work together in that when you bounce light off something you are adding to the distance between the light source and the subject, therefore you need more light. If the angle causes you to double the distance, you need four times as much light. Often the easiest way to increase or decrease the power of the light source is simply to move it towards or away from the subject.

If you are trying to learn how to shoot with manual flash, understanding these core principles will put you well on your way.

The two most common issues are not being able to get the background color bright enough or the background color gets too washed out. Let’s get right into it and see how we can improve our technique and use colored gels for our backgrounds more effectively.

The Setup

The setup is very important to make sure everything goes smooth. First off, I prefer using a black seamless paper for the background. Black paper will result in more vibrant colors where a white background will make the colors look duller.

Secondly, you need to make sure that your lights that are lighting your subject are not hitting the background which will cause the colors to wash out as well. The two ways to do this is to use more side-lighting and to increase the distance between the subject and the background. The other advantage of increasing the distance between the subject and the background is that you will be less likely to get color spill on your subject from the background light.

Getting The Exposure

Probably the biggest mistake people make when learning to use gels is to get the lighting for the subject all setup and then try to dial in the background. If you do this in the opposite direction you will get where you want much faster. The following are the three images I took in order to get my light dialed in.

Initial Background Shot

In the initial background shot you can see that I had no light turned on the subject. The background wasn’t quite bright enough so I needed to power up the background flash another stop.

Subject Lighting Test

in the first lighting test with the subject light, the background is nice and bright from turning the power up, but the subject is still underexposed by about a stop so the main flash needed to be powered up more.

Final Shot

In the final shot we have enough light on the subject which is coming from about a 45 degree angle to camera-right and using a Large Rouge Flashbender to flag the light from hitting the background giving me exactly what I needed to get the shot.

The final settings are as follows:

Main Flash: 1/8 Power
Background Flash: 1/8 Power
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/250th

Be sure and experiment with gels and see what you can come up with and be sure and share your images with us.

To really understand the difference, we need to look at how the light comes out from both types of devices so we can decided when best to use which modifier.

Side by Side Comparison

It shouldn’t take too much effort to understand how an umbrella should throw light out. The spherical shape sends light in all directions. This is great for providing a large soft light source that is easy to control and manage and provides a lot of latitude in how it is positioned.

A softbox controls light a lot more keeping it from spreading out so much. Because the beam of light is a lot narrower, the light fall off is much faster so positioning is more important.

Test Setup

For our test setup we used Supermodel Venus Garrison as our model and setup an umbrella and softbox in the same positions. Below are shots of the actual setups.

Umbrella Setup

Softbox Setup

The umbrella is a standard 32″ shoot-thru umbrella while the softbox is a 24″ x 24″ Ez Softbox from Blackbelt Lighting (my own lighting products company). In both cases, a YN560 speedlite was used on 1/32 power. The camera settings were ISO 200, 1/160th second shutter, and f/5.6.

The Results

Looking at the results you should be able to easily see the difference. With the larger apparent size of the umbrella, the light wraps around the face more and creates a softer transition between the highlights and shadows. The softbox provides much more directional light with a faster fall-off. Also notice that the background is darker with the softbox because much less light is hitting it from the softbox.

Umbrella

Softbox

Choosing the right modifier

Umbrellas are great for beginners since they are easier to use because of their forgiving nature. As you progress and want to create more dramatic images, being able to have more control over your light will become more and more important. Moving up into softboxes will help you to be able to create the look you want.

While the difference in these two images may seem subtle at first, the differences actually fairly dramatic. The umbrella image has some light on the shadow side while the softbox image goes almost completely dark at some points. Softer, light such as the umbrella shot usually make women look better while men are often shot in harsher, more dramatic light. If you are just getting started, I usually recommend starting with umbrellas and moving to softboxes as you want to create more dramatic and edgy images.

Before I just jump in and explain what he was doing wrong, let’s break down the situation and explain why this shouldn’t have been a problem.

The room wasn’t very bright and you needed to shoot at around f/5.6 to keep multiple people in focus. Using this aperture and a reasonable shutter speed of 1/60th required an ISO setting (without flash) of 6,400. A Canon 580 ex II zoomed to 105mm at full power easily has a working distance of 150 feet so I was able to get good exposure at a much lower ISO at only 1/4 power. I didn’t even bother to use manual flash settings as eTTL was doing just fine.

Given the ability of the equipment, why was it that the other guy was having problems even though he actually had a better camera? Well, the other guy had something I didn’t, he had a Sto-fen diffuser on his flash. But wait, isn’t a Sto-fen supposed to improve your flash? Why was this killing the shot?

Let’s break this down. At full power he should have had 150 feet of flash range. Just having the Sto-fen on the flash will cut the total light output by two stops (Understanding Light Stops), add to that the diffusion that is throwing the light in every possible direction and you are probably losing 60-70% of your forward facing light. If we start with a practical 150’ working range and cut our light by two stops, we cut our working distance down to 37.5’ which would still be in range of having a good exposure. Now let’s be really conservative here since I don’t have a Sto-fen here to test and say that its really only wasting 30% of the light and 70% is still going forward, 70% of 37.5’ is 26..25’ which is too short of a working distance to light a subject 40 feet away. All he had to do was remove the Sto-fen diffuser from his flash and he would have got instant great results.

I am not telling this story to mock him for using a Sto-fen, but you have to understand what different modifiers will do to your light and how it will affect your working distance. The following day I saw people at the final graduation event sitting in bleachers close to 350’ away from the subjects and having their flash turned on. Not on the best of days with the wind behind you and finding a four leaf clover will your flash give you an exposure at 350 feet…this is physics, it just aint gonna happen.

This is why you need to learn how your equipment works, try your different modifiers, figure out what the longest working distance you have is and even write it on the device. If you decide a Sto-fen device is best used at 20 feet or less, write a “20-“ on it so there is no second guessing when you really need something to work.

Again, I am not knocking the Sto-fen diffuser here, I am simply saying that there is a time and a place for almost any modifier and knowing that some devices will give you a shorter working distance is absolutely critical to making sure you are setup properly.

Any time you get a new light modifier you need to really practice with it and figure out its strengths and weaknesses, and they ALL have weaknesses. Some are better for individuals, some are better for groups, some are better for soft lighting, some are better for dramatic lighting. The point is, they are all different and don’t assume that you can take one specific modifier, put it on your flash, and never have to worry about it again..

The Image

The shot is an evening shot taken after sunset so there is no visible sun and almost no ambient light. The subject is a girl so she needed to be lit properly which meant artificial light. I also wanted the water to be sharp and not have any motion blur in it.

Making The Image

The light from the sun was almost non-existent so any normal exposure that would freeze the water in mid-air would have resulted in a pitch black background. In order to get any color at all out of the background the shutter speed needed to be 1/15th of a second, now that is one slow shutter! But with that slow of a shutter, why isn’t the water all blurry (not to mention the subject since I shot it hand-held, not with a tripod)? Since there was almost no ambient light, what freezes the subject and the water is not the shutter but the flash. The speed of the flash is about 1/20,000th of a second so it is this short burst of light that, in effect, acts like a fast shutter speed. The flash was a Canon 580 EX II with a 14″ Lumodi Beauty Dish mounted on it about 3′ away from the subject.

The aperture was set at f/8 to provide a wide field of view for all the water as well as the subject and the ISO was at 200 so keep digital noise to a minimum. The flash was fired using a PocketWizard MiniTT1 Transmitter with AC3 ZoneController mounted on a Canon 50D and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 Transceiver on the flash. This combination allowed me to take a few shots and adjust the flash power right from the camera while an assistant held the flash into position.

ISO 200 - f/8 - 1/15th - Handheld

While you may not think you can get a sharp image with a long shutter speed, if flash is the only light source then you can use a very long shutter speed and the light from the flash will be so brief that it will effectively freeze the objects in the frame. This is the same technique for freezing bullets in mid-air and other fast moving objects.

What you will need

To start off with, you should get a set of gels. The set I recommend is the Strobist Gell Collection since it contains a large number of gels of different colors that are pre-cut to fit most speedlites. Second, you will need some way to attach the gels to your speedlite. I generally use the Lumiquest Gel Holder or just some basic gaffers tape.

Once you have the gel attached to your flash, you are ready to get going.

The Lighting Setup

This is where people often get hung up because a poor setup can cause light to spill on to the subject or the main lights can wash out the color effect. Ideally you want 3 feet or more between the background and the subject to prevent spill and you want the main lights to be angled enough to not spill onto the background to wash it out. Later on we will look at some actual setups to show how they are done.

In the first image, we saw just a plain black background which was done with black seamless paper and the lighting was coming from an side angle to prevent hitting the background. In this image we have a single speedlite one 1/2 power with a purple gel shooting up from behind the subject. This is a very simple yet effective setup since it used a single light source. To help the light spread out, the flash zoom was set to 24mm to make it as wide as possible (without a modifier).

If the flash isn’t set high enough you won’t get much of an effect. If it is set too high, the color will wash out and you will get white.

If you want to take it a step further add a second light with the same or a different color. In this case I changed the purple to a red and added a second flash with a blue gel. Take notice that where the colors overlap they actually mix and become purple. If you are trying to use two different colors, you will need to keep this mixing effect in mind and might have to take steps to flag the two flashes to keep the colors from mixing.

Another thing to try is to use multiple gels on a single flash by covering half of the flash with one color and the other half with a different color. For a recent benefit shoot I tried this with pretty decent results.

Again you can see the distinct blue and red colors but a purple where the colors mixed. I am going to continue to play with this technique and see what I can get with possibly using a vertical card in between the two gels to try to keep the colors separated more.

Even though the colors mixed more than I would have liked, the overall effect was very nice although I later wished I had used a white or black background as the gray seamless was a little too drab where the color wasn’t hitting it.

The following is an image from the shoot showing how the images turned out.

What I really wanted to achieve was a red, white, and blue effect so back in the studio I start experimenting to see what I could come up with. What I finally came up with was a three light setup with bare flashes with the gels on the bottom and an non-gelled flash higher up to provide a white splash. If I used just a bare flash for the white, the spot was too big and washed out the other colors so I added a Rouge 3-In-1 Grid to keep the light contained.

The first test was alright but the white spot was too small.

To solve this, I took the small grid out of the Rouge Grid so I would get a little larger of a spot and got the resulting image.

There I had it, a red, white, and blue background effect. The next image is a shot of the actual lighting setup so you can see how it was all put together.

Hopefully this will inspire you to get creative with using gels for different background effects. It just takes a little patience and practice to get it all dialed in right, but once you do, the possibilities are endless.

At a recent event I only had a few minutes to get whatever I was going to do setup and tested and I didn’t have anyone available to stand in for the speaker to test the lighting. While I would usually throw up a couple of YN560’s and some wireless flash triggers, the problem was I didn’t have either the time or a subject to help dial in the lighting. Sure I could have used a light meter but I also didn’t really know how things might change as the spotlights came on and I wanted to make sure things were going to work right.

For me, this would normally be a simple case of using the PocketWizard ControlTL system with the Zone Controller so I could change my lighting on the fly from wherever in the room I ended up. The reason I didn’t go with my regular Blackbelt Lighting triggers was simply a convenience factor so I could change the flash output remotely.

The second concern I had was where to put the lights to get good lighting on the speakers without blocking the view from the tables. While I had a good position and angle, using an umbrella would get in the way of some people’s view while also flashing the audience at the same time.

The solution had to have the following qualities:

• Small enough not to block the view from the side
• Big enough to provide a good light source
• Can’t be obnoxious to the audience
• Had to be able to adjust the power output remotely

While this isn’t a huge list of requirements, it does represent a unique challenge. How to you get something big enough to give a good light source but not be really visible from the audience? My solution was actually quite simple and required very little in additional equipment over two Canon 580 flashes.

The Lighting Setup

Let’s start with the actual lighting setup. The main light is a Canon 580 EX speedlite on a lightstand to camera right. The fill light is a Canon 580 EX II mounted on-camera. The 580 EX main light was switched to Slave mode on wireless group B with the body of the flash aimed back towards the audience.

The 580 EX II on the camera was in Master mode on Group A. With this setup, especially because the remote flash was in front of the Master light and aimed back to the on-camera flash’s position, this setup should work quite well without the need for a radio transmitter system.

While I would normally use the PocketWizard ControlTL system for this setup, except that the battery in the MiniTTL transmitter was dead, and since it is not a common battery, I had no means to replace it before the shoot. (The battery sells for about $12 at Radio Shack or $3.99 at Batteries Plus).

The Modifier

The choice of modifier here is what really pulled everything together. I used a Rogue Large FlashBender. The large size provides a nice size light source so the shadows wouldn’t be too harsh. The FlashBender also allowed me to fold down one side so that when the flash went off the audience didn’t really see it, so the flash going off wasn’t annoying to the audience.

Since the FlashBender is much smaller than an umbrella, it was basically hid behind the existing balloons so it wasn’t blocking the view from the audience on that side of the room.

The Results

Using only the eTTL Wireless System built into the Canon 580 EX/580 EX II flashes I had the ability to adjust lighting ratios between the main light and the fill light.

The FlashBender rounded out the solution by being “big enough†without being too big that it would block the view. The ability to fold the one side down to flag the flash from the audience kept the flash from bothering the audience.

In the end, we ended up with what looked like nice window light even though there were no windows in the room at all.

The flash ratio was generally 1:4 (B group 4x brighter than fill) and with the A being a bare flash firing right at the subject and the B light firing up through a modifier, this create a fairly nice directional light.

If I had to do anything differently, I would have brought in a larger lightstand so I could have got the flash higher to add a little down-angle to the shadows.

With all of the gear I have, this shoot really boiled down to the camera, two 580 EX/EX II flashes, a light stand, a swivel mount, and a simple light modifier. The end results look quite nice, certainly much nicer than just using an on-camera flash and blasting flat light on everyone.

My good friend Chris Diset comes over yesterday and tells me that his significant other Debra has come up with a solution.

Fortunately we all had some of the small Think Tank Photo Pixel Pocket Rockets (for 6 CF cards) laying around that Think Tank Photo had given away in a recent promotion.  The trick here was to cut the separator out of each pocket, this way the gels would be able to fit into the pocket perfectly. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do, you need to be careful as the material in the back of the pockets will tear easily.

Since I use a Large Pixel Pocket Rocket for my CF cards, and its a different color than the small one, this wouldn’t be confusing during the heat of a shoot.

The result is better than I expected as the gels fit absolutely perfect into the pockets. The next decision was how to organize them, and while you may do it differently I figured I would explain how I decided to do it.

The top pocket holds my main color correction gels, this includes the CTO’s (Color Temperature Orange) or the green’s for correcting in fluorescent lighting. This middle pocket holds the color effects gels which is all of the rest of the colored gels. The bottom pocket holds all of the Neutral Density gels. This layout makes it very simple to find the gel you are looking for, and if you happen to drop it in the wind, the gels are not going to go flying everywhere.  This is such a perfect solution for storing gels that I am actually going to encourage Think Tank Photo to offer a version of this pouch like this.

So thanks to Chris and Debra for this awesome quick tip. If you have your own quick tip that you would like to share, please post in the comments section.

With even just a single light you can create really nice portraits. All of the examples here were created with just a single light with the only change being the position of the subject’s face in relation to the light.

For some people, the shadows may be too harsh in which case adding a reflector to bounce some light back into the shadows will help brighten up the shadow side of the face.

With the light shooting through an umbrella and the umbrella positioned just above the subject’s head and angled down to point right at her eye, we get some nice directional lighting which is quite flattering.

In the second we turned the subject’s body away from the light and had her look almost directly into the light.  This gave us a little more light wrapping around her face while still giving a little directional light.

Because of the size of the light source and the closeness of it to the subject we still get plenty of light on her body while the directional light brings out the detail in the dress.

Because the light is higher than the subject’s head, we also get the advantage of lighting up the hair nicely.

In the next example, we look at the same scene with and without the use of a reflector.

Without Reflector

Gold Reflector to Camera Left

As you can see, even if you are on a budget and can’t afford a multiple light setup yet, you can still create great images with just a single flash and a adding a reflector greatly increases your versatility.

Start off with a simple setup and learn to use it to it’s full advantage before trying to complicate things with multiple light sources. You also don’t need a big studio either, all of these shots were shot in the exact same location which was no more than ten feet wide and deep.

To wrap this up, here are a couple more shots that were also done with just a single light.

There were five speedlites used on this setup with a mix of 580 EX, 580 EX II, and YN560′s all fired with Pocketwizard FlexTT5′s. To get the signs on the top light with minimal spill, they left and center one were fitted with Harbor Digital Quick Spots and the one on the right was fitted with a large Rouge Flashbender if a half roll to act as part snoot but also to spill some light on the side of the building. Two more speedlights were on the ground pointed inwards to light the area under roof area.

Lighting Setup

While we tried to use a longer exposure to try to pull in the stars, the problem was that too much shutter and we were getting light contamination from nearby street lights. All of the flashes were set to 1/4 power and the three pointing at the signs were also zoomed to 105mm while the ground lights were zoomed to 24mm.

24mm - ISO 400 â€

For more information about this image and to see the rest of the Photo Project 24 images, please visit http://photoproject24.com

This is one of those times when things just didn’t work right immediately. We tried to get some star trails…didn’t look good. We tried to light paint the hill behind us, didn’t work. We tried to get headlight trails from the road, but it was so dark you couldn’t see the road. So…time to light the bushes around us. We tried front lighting, side lighting, gels, and nothing was coming together. We then came up with the idea to backlight it and see what we would get.

We mounted a speedlite on a lightstand about 30 feet away with a PocketWizard TT5 and set it on about 1/4 power.   The shutter was at 1/40th but since it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, the shutter speed was meaning less. The backlighting came through the shrubs nicely and reflected off the snow which then light the underside and even the front of the bushes somewhat. We both looked at the image and thought it was finally a pretty cool shot and off we went to the next location.

24mm - ISO 400 â€

Lighting Setup

To read more about this and other images from the Photo Project 24 adventure, please visit http://photoproject24.com

The Lighting Setup

With almost no ambient light left and just a little rim of light in the background, we would need a long shutter speed to bring some light back to the sky. We also wanted to try to lose focus on the trees behind the wagon so we set on an aperture of f/4 and at ISO 500 we would need a 1 second exposure.  We could have used a lower ISO and longer shutter but there were still enough cars whizzing by that any longer than a second and we would likely end up with headlights streaking by.

With the camera setup for the sky, we now needed to light the wagon. This was done with two speedlites fired with PocketWizard FlexTT5′s and the Mini TT1 on the camera. We put both lights in manual mode at 1/4 power with no modifiers on them.

Lighting Diagram

32mm - ISO 500 - 1 sec - f/4

Fairly simple setup, a few practice shots, and we got the image we were looking for and headed down the road to the next location.

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The Accidental Ghost Town - 1/250th - f/5.6 - ISO 50 - 24mm

During this article we will start with an on-camera flash and build up to a three-light setup.

On-Camera Flash

This first shot here is what I would expect from a simple on-camera lighting setup. We get a nice even lighting, plenty of detail, but the floor and background are easily visible. These example images are not cropped or adjusted and yes, with some fair amount of Photoshop work, this could be turned into a decent image. The goal though is to minimize post-production and get the effect that we want in-camera. This shot was taken with a Large Rouge Flashbender on top of the flash to provide a larger, diffused lighting source.

In this second image the only change was that the Rouge Flashbender was removed and the light was bounced off the white ceiling. This did a great job at killing the floor and background lighting while maintaining some specular highlights. Because of the overhead lighting we lost the tail rotor completely, detail in the fuselage, and detail in the lower part of the canopy. The flash was set at 1/8th power.

On the plus side we also lost some harsh specular highlights in in the canopy that we didn’t want. At this point I thought we had a good baseline to start adding in some additional lights.

Light Number 2

The second light to be added was for the rear of the helicopter. This was another YN560 fitted with a Harbor Digital Designs 1/8†Quickspot to keep the light from spreading onto the table or background. This really kicked up the light on the back of the helicopter and added some nice detail lighting to the tail boom and rear assembly.  The flash was set to 1/32 power, any more and it would have overpowered the subject .

At this point I felt we were really getting close but I didn’t like the lack of detail on the bottom of the canopy and you couldn’t really read the text on the canopy either.

Light Number 3

The third light was added just left of the camera and fitted with a Harbor Digital Designs 1/4†Quickspot so I could get just a little more spread without much light contamination. The flash was also a YN560 and was set to 1/128th power. This provided a nice little kicker light on the front of the canopy and light the bottom section of the canopy nicely to really make the letters pop.

This is the part where I start to get all OCD about the lighting and although I was actually right were I wanted I get compelled to keep tweaking and tweaking but I fought the urge this time because the point isn’t always about getting the shot perfect in-camera, it really should be about minimizing your work overall.

The Final Image

As I said, I actually stopped with the last image because while I could have spent another 20 minutes tweaking the lights to get exactly what I wanted, I also could spend 2 minutes in Lightroom and get the same result. Taking the last image into Lightroom 3.3, some Clarity was added, a little Vibrance, a post-crop Vignette, and then the Local Adjust Brush set to -30 Exposure was quickly drawn to minimize the line you could see between the table and the background.

Setup

All of the images shown in the article were shot with the following settings:

• ISO 800
• 1/60th Shutter Speed
• F/8 Aperture

Summary

Lighting is not magic and it really isn’t that hard either once you start practicing different techniques and lighting setups. If it seems frustrating at first just remember to stick to the basics. Build up from one light source at a time in order to see the effects of each light as you go to make sure you know what light is doing what.

While I do try to get as close as possible to the final image in-camera there is also a point of diminishing returns when it comes to how perfect you can get something. If this wasn’t true we would have no use for tools like Lightroom or Photoshop. Sometimes it is best to spend a few moments in post-production versus spending many more in studio.

Equipment Used

The only lighting used was a Blackbelt Stage 1 Lighting kit which contains a YN560 Speedlite, a set of wireless flash triggers, a lightstand, swivel mount, umbrella, and a reflector.

What you will see in the video is the effect of just using the one light, then we bring in a reflector to cut down on the contrast and make the shadows softer for a better final image.

Equipment Used

Blackbelt Phase 1 Lighting Kit
Canon 50D

Check out the video for more information about the setup.

Equipment Used

Westcott Magic Slipper Kit
Blackbelt Phase 1 Lighting Kit
Blackbelt YN560 Flash

Why Manual?

One question that a lot of people have at this point is why would you want to use manual flash when you have eTTL mode available and the camera will try and determine the lighting? There are actually a number of reasons why that isn’t always the right answer:

• Using studio strobes
• Using wireless flash triggers that don’t support eTTL
• Using manual speedlites that don’t support eTTL
• Conditions when eTTL is not giving you what you want

Usually eTTL will try to give you a pretty balanced lighting so it does not always give you what you are trying to achieve. By understanding how to use manual flash you can create dynamic lighting that may otherwise not be possible.

Fear Not The Flash

So why are people intimidated by manual flash? Mostly because they think its complicated and they don’t know where to start. So let’s break it down into some basics. First off, If we look at the range of a flash there is really only eight stops between full power and the lowest setting of 1/128th power. While better strobes like the Canon, Nike, and YN560 also have incremental settings in between each stop, let’s just look at the primary settings to get started.  So long as the flash has enough light output, the proper setting is going to fall somewhere along this scale.

Keeping this in mind if you start with a mid-range setting such as 1/16 or 1/8 power the worst you can be is already halfway to the best setting. Take a test shot and then adjust the power up or down accordingly. With just a small amount of practice you should be able to get your lighting dialed in within a two to three shots.

Keeping it SAAF

SAAF is a little acronym that you should learn as well, this stands for Shutter/Ambient – Aperture/Flash. What this helps you to remember is that shutter speed will control the ambient light and aperture will control light from the flash. If you need more ambient light, slow down the shutter speed. If you need more light from your flash, use a larger aperture (smaller f-stop number). Being able to use your aperture to control the light from the flash also allows you the ability to fine-tune the light to get exactly what you want.

Putting It Together

Hopefully this has helped demystify manual flash lighting. If you have a Canon or Nikon speedlite, I highly encourage you to put it in manual mode to learn how to use manually rather than relying on the automatic modes. I have put together a little video to help go over the concepts I have talked about here.

Stop the Madness
So…what is a stop exactly? Simply put, if you take a given amount of light and double it, you are moving up one stop, if you cut the amount of light in half then you have gone down a stop. So a stop isn’t a specific amount of light, instead it is a measure of difference between the amount of light. To be completely technical about it, the term “one f-stop” refers to a factor of √2 (approx. 1.41) change in f-number, which in turn corresponds to a factor of 2 change in light intensity. So how can we visualize this easily? If we have a single light bulb as a base light source, then two light bulbs would increase the light by 1 stop. Going to 4 light bulbs doubles the output again giving us 2 stops, to get to 3 stops we then need 8 light bulbs, etc.

So let’s take the sentence in the introduction, if we wanted to expose one side of the face 1 stop under the other side of the face, what we are saying is we want half the amount of light on the shadow side that we have on the lit side. Pretty simple concept huh?

For the most part, we are actually going to be doing a lot of guesswork unless we have good light meters and can measure each piece of the scene. Using our DSLRs we can zoom into each area of the scene and look at the exposure meter in the camera for a pretty good meter reading as well.

How aperture and shutter affect light
Ok, so now we have a basic understand of what a stop is, now we need to see how to control this using the two basic controls, shutter speed and aperture. To illustrate the effect of aperture, we have created this chart that shows the amount of light that is gathered at typical aperture settings. While each camera/lens may have slightly different available aperture numbers, they are typically in multiples of 1.4 (as described in the previous section). As you increase the f-stop number to the next 1.4 increment, you halve the amount of light.

The effect of shutter speed is the same concept. Every time you double the shutter speed, you decrease the amount of light in half. If you cut the shutter speed in half, you double the amount of light.

Again, you can see this represented by a similar chart.

Where this gets interesting in combining aperture and shutter speed, you can get the same exposure with different combinations of aperture and shutter speed. For example, a shot taken at 1/500 at f/2.8 and a shot taken at 1/60 at f/8 will have the same equivalent amount of brightness, what will change is the depth of field.

Let’s take a look at one of our favorite studio lights, the Westscott TD5 Spidelite. The light head has 5 bulds in it, you can control the center bulb, and two sets of two bulbs. To show how this affects stops we can use the different combinations to control how many stops of light we have:

If we only turn on the center bulb and use that as our base reference point, we can then use the different variations to come up with the following amounts of light changes:

How can we use this information?

If you have a light meter than putting this information to use is just a matter of measure-adjust-repeat until you get the desired light readings you want. With a modern DSLR, we can do this with the camera’s light meter with fairly good results.

Let’s say we want to use a two-light setup to light a subject’s face and we want one side 1 stop darker than the lit side. To begin with we zoom into the lit side of the face (or use the Photovision Digital Calibration target aimed at the light source , the small size works best for this) and adjust the lights until you get a good exposure reading. This is the time to make the camera adjustments to center the exposure in your camera’s meter.

Good Exposure Reading

The next step is to meter the shadow side of the face, using the same technique of zooming into the subject or a target to get a meter reading. This time however we want to underexpose by one stop.

-1 Stop Under Exposed

At this point we now have the camera setup for the right exposure on the lit side of the face and we checked to make sure the shadow side was one stop underexposed, we are now good to take our shots and be confident that the lighting will turn out good.

Summary
Hopefully this has helped to explain the concept of stops as it pertains to the relative amount of light and how we can use the tools we have available to make sure we have good lighting and exposures. To discuss this with others, please join us in our Camera Dojo Flickr Users Group.

In order first sample shot we have a couple standing against a wall with light coming in from the right of the camera creating a fairly simple broad lighting effect. The problem here was that the shot was taken at 4:30pm in May so we still had a good two hours before the sun would go down and give us ideal lighting. Secondly, the two walls we had available faced either due west directly into the sun or faced east and was completely in the shade. I ruled out the first option and went for the easier shot by placing the couple in the shade. With no additional light coming in we just didn’t have an interesting shot and because we were under a bridge, there wasn’t a good angle to use a reflector to bounce any light into the area.

In order to create the directional lighting, a Canon 580 EX II speedlite was fitted with a Lumodi 14†beauty dish and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter. My assistant positioned the light at about a 45 degree angle to the couple’s left and about two feet above their heads. This provided a nice directional quality to the light by simulating a late afternoon sun position but with the ability to completely control the light output. The beauty dish provided for a softer transition from the highlights to the shadows versus the sun would have been much harsher shadows due to is smaller apparent size.

The following diagram illustrates this lighting setup.

ISO 200 Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM @ 63mm f/5.6 1/200 sec Flash: eTTL

In our second example we wanted to create more of a rim or Rembrandt style lighting on the subject. In this case the shot was taken at 7:15pm and the sun was far too low on the horizon to provide and real light other than a little bit of ambient. Using basically the same exact setup as before, a Canon 580 EX II speedlite was fitted with a Lumodi 14†beauty dish and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter, this time the setup was stationary on a lightstand and positioned just to the left and above the subject and is just barely out of the frame in this shot.

ISO 400 Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM @ 70mm f/5.6 1/160 sec Flash: eTTL

Had this shot been taken about 30 minutes earlier the sun would have created basically this identical light pattern although we might have had to use a touch of fill light to keep the shadows from being too harsh. Shooting later in the evening, we can create the effect that we wanted the sun to have created had it not been too late in the day.

As we continue to look at more lighting setups we will add additional light sources, reflectors,  different diffusers, and other tricks to get the light to look as natural as possible but still trying to maintain as much control over the light as possible.

Equipment Used:

How does eTTL Work?

In order to really understand how to make our speedlites do what we want, we first need to understand what our speedlites are actually doing, then we can use that knowledge to use their automatic modes to our advantage.

The Pre-Flash

You may not even notice it, but when you press the shutter, your speedlite will actually flash twice. The first flash is at 1/32 power and the second flash is at the setting the camera determines the flash should be at. You can see this by setting your camera to a very slow shutter speed and having the flash set to second curtain sync (more on this in just a moment). What is happening here is that the speedlite is throwing out a low power flash that the camera is evaluating to determine the exposure. Based on the reflected light from the pre-flash, the camera sets the power output of the speedlite to an appropriate level and then fires the main light burst. The speedlite itself is not using any intelligence here, it is simply firing a low power burst and being told by the camera what to do next.

Explanation of Second Curtain
Your shutter actually operates by sliding one panel (curtain) up to expose the sensor and the a second curtain slides up to cover the sensor and stop the exposure. If your flash is set to second curtain then the flash will go off just before the second curtain closes. With a long exposure, you will see the pre-flash, the first shutter will open, then at the end of the shutter time the main flash will go off before the second curtain closes.

The Problems with eTTL

The two main issues with eTTL is that it relies on the camera being able to see the reflection of the pre-flash to set the exposure and that the system does not compensate for ambient light. Since the pre-flash is used to set an exposure, this requires that the pre-flash is hitting the subject in a way that the camera can evaluate (the e in eTTL) the scene and change the flash output. What happens if you are trying to backlight a subject? Or if you are really feathering the light across the subject, these are two very simple situations that will completely bork up eTTL since the light isn’t completely hitting the subject in a way that the camera can see it. These will usually result in the camera telling the flash to fire a full power burst since it didn’t get enough light off the pre-flash.

The second problem is that eTTL is only metering for the light on the subject and is not dealing with any ambient lighting. If you are in a fairly dark room and are not using manual or shutter priority modes, you can often end up with just the subject lit and the room being pitch black. Again, this is the flash/camera trying to guess that you simply want to light the subject and will ignore the ambient light in the room.

eTTL Not Taking Ambient Light Into Account
ISO 200 – f/7.1 – 1/50th

Telling eTTL What We Want It To Do

The good news is that we actually do have some control over what we want our speedlite to do when in eTTL mode. When we are in eTTL mode, we have one control over the flash power and one control for the ambient light, this will actually change when we learn about using speedlites in manual mode.

If we want to be able to adjust for ambient light, the only control we have is the shutter speed. Since the camera and speedlite will always be trying to make a good exposure, our aperture setting will have no effect since if we close down the aperture to let in less light, the camera will simply tell the speedlite to fire at a higher power. To adjust for ambient light, we either need to use a slower shutter speed to let in more ambient light, or speed it up to let in less.

The following images demonstrate this concept:

ISO 200 f/5.0 1/400th	ISO 200 f/5.0 1/50th
ISO 200 f/5.0 1/13th	ISO 200 f/5.0 1/6th

As you can see from these examples, the main exposure on the can is always the same, only the ambient light is different. In the very slow shutter images the ambient begins to burn into the subject since the speed is slow enough to alter the main subject exposure.

Let’s look at two real world examples of this.

Dark Room Situation

In the following image, the room was quite dark (as seen in the image earlier. However, the ceiling was quite beautiful. To the human eye, the room was most certainly not as bright as it appears in this image, to get this effect, a slow 1/4 second shutter speed was used to let the ambient room light burn onto the sensor. I wasn’t too concerned about the slow speed with the model since the flash would have the effect of freezing the model in place. The eTTL metering provided a good exposure on the model, while the slow shutter speed allowed me to capture the room light.

Slow shutter speed to capture ambient light
ISO 200 – f/5.6 – 1/4th

Bright Daylight Situation

In a bright daylight situation you can run into the opposite problem. If you are trying to capture a subject against a bright blue sky, one of two things tends to happen, either the subject is exposed well and the sky is completely blown out (white) or the sky is a nice blue but the subject is too dark. The simple solution here is to meter for the sky and set your shutter speed fast enough to pick up the color of the sky and then let the eTTL system meter the subject for a good exposure. The easiest way to do this is to point your camera at the sky behind the subject and adjust your shutter speed so your exposure meter is centered, then when you shoot your subject, the eTTL system will properly expose the subject.

Shutter Speed to Capture Blue Sky
ISO 100 – f/5.6 – 1/1250th

When eTTL Isn’t Giving You The Power You Want

Usually I find that eTTL mode will do a pretty good job with the subject exposure, the images so far have been shot completely in eTTL mode with no fine tuning other than adjusting the shutter to adjust for ambient light, but I have not had to adjust the flash output at all.

As mentioned earlier, there are simply times that eTTL’s best guess simply isn’t working. It can be because of light placement, distance of light to subject, or the reflective nature of the subject, these things can play havoc with eTTL and cause undesired results, this is when we need to tell the eTTL system we want it to do something different.

Flash Exposure Compensation (FEV)

Fortunately we have a very simple tool we can use called Flash Exposure Compensation, this simply let’s us dial the flash output up or down to make it put out more or less light. The eTTL system will still be doing the metering, but we can tell it to use that metering and factor in our guidance to achieve the exposure WE are looking for and not what the camera thinks it should be.

When your speedlite is mounted on your camera, you should have very easy access to the FEV setting right on the top of your camera. On Canon cameras you press the button under the icon shown here spinning the large wheel up or down to adjust the flash output. When you need to override what the eTTL metering is doing, simply adjust the FEV as needed. In the following images, all of the camera settings were the same for all three images, only the Flash Exposure Value was changed.

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV 0

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV -1

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV -2

Summary

These few tips are not going to make you a Flash Master all by themselves but it should help you understand what your flash is doing in the eTTL mode and help you to fine tune it to get the results you are trying to achieve. For more information than you could ever possibly want, there are a couple of books available.

• Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites by Syl Arena (pre-order)
• Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography by NK Guy

Equipment Used