In this episode of 'The Breakdown', I'm going to show you how I use high-speed sync
to shoot studio portraits.
AdoramaTV presents 'The Breakdown' with Miguel Quiles.
Welcome back to 'The Breakdown'. My name is Miguel Quiles and today I am here in
the studio with Miss Vanessa Joy and let them know, so you've apparently got
this show on AdoramaTV as well. Let them know a little bit about your show.
I do. I'm here on AdoramaTV. My show is called 'Breathe Your Passion' and we talk about
work-life balance. I'm a wedding photographer, so we talk about all weddings, inside and out.
Pretty awesome, so make sure after you're done watching this episode, go check her out
at 'Breathe your Passion' here on AdoramaTV
and so now I have you here in my studio. I'm super excited. I'm going to show you guys
how I shoot my portraits in the studio using high-speed sync and it is going
to be really easy. It's just a simple one light set up and let me go ahead and
give you a little bit of an explanation of what you need to look out for when
you're shooting these types of portraits. Before we begin, let's talk first about
our settings and all of these shots. I'm going to be shooting them at F 1.8 using
the Zeiss Batis lens so when you're shooting wide open and you're shooting in
the studio. One of the things that I didn't realize in the beginning when I
first started shooting these types of images, that I want to share with you,
so hopefully save you some time, is you have to make sure that you check your ambient
light settings before you turn on your studio flashes. So first things
first, you're going to take a shot. I'm going to try it at F 1.8, I'm going to adjust the shutter speed up and
down. We'll figure out what the actual shutter speed's going to be in a moment at
ISO 100. I'm going to take a shot without the studio strobes being on so that I can
evaluate if
ambient light in the room is actually affecting the exposure
If it is, you're going to end up having to turn off the lights in the room or
close blinds or basically just darken the room as much as possible.
You want to make sure that before you turn on your flash, you have a completely
dark exposure. Then at that point, you can
go ahead and turn on your studio strobes and that is the only light that is going to
be impacting your exposure. You can move it around, make it brighter, darker
whatever the case may be, but first you have to get that baseline exposure
that's going to be that completely dark shot. Now I've already pre tested it and I
already know that I'm going to end up having to turn off the lights here in
this room but I want to give you that preamble so that you know this is why
I'm turning off the lights in the room.
Alright so let me go ahead and break down the lighting setup for you and just
general studio setup and what we're going to be using. First things first is
our backdrop. I have a collapsible backdrop as you've seen in many of my videos here
on Adorama. This one is made by Savage and so this is going to be our
background and part of the reason why I'm using this textured background is
when I'm shooting wide open at f 1.8 its going to be blur it so beautifully in the
background so that's our collapsible backdrop stand and it's just set up on a
regular light stand. Of course, Vanessa's going be modeling and she's going to be
approximately about two feet away from the backdrop, so that's going to stay pretty
much the same throughout the entire shoot. My one light setup is going to be
the Phottix Luna
collapsible softbox and I love this soft box for a number of reasons. The
biggest reason is that it actually opens up and closes like an umbrella so it
makes it very easy to stow away, easy to travel with so that's going to be my
light modifier. I'm using the Phottix Indra 500 and that's actually running
off of a battery pack. Now, for my camera, to keep things really simple, I'm
using the a7R II and I'm going to be triggering it using the
upcoming phottix Odin 2 for Sony so this is something to keep an eye out for on Adorama. It
should be out in the next few weeks, possibly the next month. We'll have a
exact date for you very soon.
And one of the accessories that I also love to use is this grip, this vertical
battery grip for the a7R II and this is pretty fantastic to be able to
one hand hold your portraits. I'm probably not going to use it today, maybe
I will, maybe I won't, but it does add a really nice little grip to the camera
and as I mentioned before the Zeiss 85 1.8 is what I'm going to be shooting with
today. So outside of that, the only other accessory that I'm really going to be
using for this, I have a small fan that is right off to the side of the camera
that I called Beyonce. Actually here you go, perfect. Thanks, Vanessa so this fan is
basically going to go ahead and beautify her hair. It's going to make her look all
epic and amazing so Beyonce, right hashtag Beyonce for anybody that likes
using fans. It's just a regular basic fan and so I have that sitting on a stool right off
camera so now that we understand what the setup is, the lighting the backdrops
let's go ahead and start shooting.
Alright so there you have it. A quick look at how I shoot my dramatic portraits here in the studio
using high speed sync and so before we let you go I want to
make sure, once again, that you check out Miss Vanessa Joy on her show here on AdoramaTV,
'Breathe Your Passion'. Also, make sure that you subscribe to AdoramaTV's Youtube channel,
They have tons of awesome videos and also check out the Adorama Learning Center,
where you can read tons and tons of different articles on photography, on gear, reviews, all that good stuff.
So, Vanessa, thank you so much for being an awesome model. I'll see you guys next time right here
on 'The Breakdown'.