In this video I'm gonna show you all two
easy ways to light your reception
ballrooms for detail shots.
My name is Pye,
and I'm one of the founders of
Lin and Jirsa Photography and SLR Lounge.com
We're teaming up with Adorama to
bring you a new series of photography
tutorials called Mastering Your Craft right
here on Adorama TV.
So let's dive in.
What's up guys my name is Bye
welcome to AdoramaTV.
We're here to show you guys
just how to light a reception, so first
thing we might come into a barn like
this, and it's already pretty well lit,
and we might think we're just gonna
shoot it with kind of natural ambient
light right, but the deal is if we kind
of shoot with this natural ambient light,
I'm gonna go to 1/200th se f/1.4 and ISO
800 and I'm on a 50 mm Sigma Art lens,
on the Canon 5d for now.
If I go ahead and grab this
kind of basic shot right here,
I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of angle so the
centerpiece is right in the middle.
Well I end up with a shot where
everything looks okay, the only issue is
is that nothing is really that bright,
right?
The colors kind of seem a little
bit muddy, also when we look at the
centerpiece, there's not any light really
landing on the centerpiece, so what ends
up happening is these bright blinking
areas of our frame end up being the
brightest spots of the frame, and the
centerpiece and details that we have,
kind of fall more into the background.
So I need to add light, now the first thing
that we might think is, let's put on a
bounce flash, and I'm not gonna say this
is necessarily wrong, but I'm gonna say
that there's other ways that might be a
little more ideal, if you don't have any
other options you can go ahead and do this.
So all I'm doing is grabbing an
on-camera flash, here we're using the
Profoto A1, and I'm gonna bounce this off
of kind of the ceiling and the wall up
and towards the left okay, and we're
gonna just get a little test power, we're
gonna go to seven power, and just get a
little test shot all right, so we're
gonna go ahead and dial this down to six
power, we're gonna take, actually we're
good in this 5.5, we'll take that shot
again, now this looks okay, and we kind of
lift the the flowers out of the shot a
little bit, but that lighting is not that
interesting, because when we're bouncing
we're kind of bouncing off of objects
that are nearby right, so instead the
first lighting setup I'm going to show
you is just to grab an off-camera flash
and place it sort of on the opposite
side of the room, so we're gonna walk to
that side, I'm actually gonna put a B10
in onto a stand, I'm also going to go
ahead and put on a CTO gel as we can
kind of match the color balance of the
room, and what we're gonna aim to do is
just kind of pop this off in the corner,
and fill this entire corner of the room,
so what ends up happening back is, we
get a nice balance that comes across the
entire room, and it's gonna be
directional, so we're placing it over
there, and then walking back to this side
to actually shoot our images.
Now I don't need my on-camera flash at
this point so just for the sake of simplicity,
I'm gonna go ahead and take the flash off
and just put the remote on, so we don't
have anybody asking if we were using the
on-camera flash.
Okay so I'm still at 1/200th of a second
f/1.4, and ISO 800,
I'm gonna go ahead and take the exact
same shot and let's see where our power
settings at with the Profoto.
All right so we're just a little bit powerful,
I think it's at full power right now, so let's go
ahead and back this down by two stops,
all right so when we compare this shot
to the one that we had previously, we
actually have a very nice directional
light that's landing right on kind of
the entire room, and I would say this - use
this technique because it is gonna wash
out kind of everything in the room right
so I would use this technique when
you're working in rooms like this, where
everything in the room is kind of bright,
it's kind of amber toned, it has that
kind of peaches and, and tan kind of vibe.
We're shooting it bright, is gonna look
nice and natural,
we still shot it in a way we can see the
up lights, but whenever you're using a
bounce technique, you are gonna fill the
room with wash okay, so make sure that
you're doing it in kind of a setup like
this, let's dive now to technique number
two, which is basically pin lighting
where you're gonna control the light
exactly where we want it.
So let's do that now.
All right so this go around,
let's grab our B10, I'm going to take
this top off, and what we're gonna do is
pop a grid on the inside, so I need to
make sure that I'm that light, spill right
now I'm gonna leave the CTO Gel on, and
then we're gonna bring this back,
now we're gonna go ahead,
and bring this over and actually
light our centerpiece and table,
so usually I like to light in an angle,
and I would kind of pick the angle where
natural light is kind of already falling
here, it's pretty even on both sides,
so I'm just gonna start from this side.
The nice thing about reception rooms too
if you have a light that has a built-in
modeling light, oftentimes it's dim
enough inside of these rooms to actually
just use the modern light as your
primary sort of light source for the scene.
Okay and what we're gonna do is
just adjust the temperature to kind of
land where this scene is, I'm gonna bring
this in just a little bit, so if that
modeling light is bright enough,
I can just shoot along with it and again
with the exact same settings,
now I'm going to take this first shot,
and you're gonna see that with the
mounting light at this
ISO, we're just a little bit dark right?
So all I'm gonna do is pop the remote on,
we're actually gonna use the flash and
let's turn the power way down, let's put
it to like 2, if that, I'm actually
gonna bring the ISO down a little
because we're gonna shoot with a little
bit more mood in this image,
and what we end up getting with this
technique is sort of a spot lit effect, right
on that table where we can kind of leave the
room ambience just a little bit more
dark, so what I would say is, when you're
working in more dramatic kind of lit
environments that are set up to be very
sort of dark and dim, and you want to
keep the drama, I would go to the pin
lighting approach, when you're working in
scenes like this, that are kind of
already naturally bright.
I would lean on the umbrella or the wall
approach,
so if you don't have a wall to bounce off
of use an umbrella, place it in the corner,
of the room for any other sides to have
a nice directional light, and you're good
to go.
Hopefully this helps you guys out,
if you guys enjoyed this video be sure to
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comments below on what you guys would
like to see next and well I'll see you
guys in the next video.
Bye.