Hey this is Daniel Norton.
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Pauline...
and we're gonna take some
pictures today, we were kind of
messing around, we did a head shot,
which is you know kind of fun,
but we had this cool outfit kind of orange
and blue, and I had this baby blue
background, so we thought we'd play around,
and I thought this would be a good
opportunity to kind of showcase why we
use kind of big light sources...
kind of you know like I have a ft octagon
here, and why photographers love these... if
you guys don't use, you know, big light
sources, you'll get to see why.
Kind of the concept here is that it's soft
because it's big... right?
We talk about that a lot,
but because it's so large you
can move it in and out,
and move it around it still stays soft.. right?
Because I can make, you know, a softbox
this big soft, by keeping it in close,
but having a big box
I have lots of room to move
around... lots of options.
So we're gonna start with kind of a,
you know the box is
5/6 feet away from her, and we're
gonna create a full-length shot,
and we'll see how nice and soft,
and how it lights the wall.
We're kind of doing this
modern style with a little shadow,
and stuff, it'll be really, really,
kind of interesting.
So let's take a few, it looks
like so I am using my data lights here,
so we're using a constant light source.
It's LED's this is the Panora or LED
raptor system.
So I'm just gonna use my
light meter, and get a reading here.
If you could use the meter in your camera
of course, so I'm at f/4, 125..
I'm shooting at 400 ISO,
so we'll do a test shot as always,
and I kind of go look at
the recorder I think here.
This is the nikon z6,
what's kind of nice about using a
mirrorless camera when you're shooting
with constant lights is you can actually
see your exposure really cleanly.
So you guys can see here that lots of
detail, lots of even you know light across
her face, even in the shadow side, right?
See you get detail over there, and there's a
shadow on the wall, but I think it's kind
of nice, and add's some flavor to it.
We decided to leave the paper kind of
rolled up on the ground, and she's barefoot.
We're gonna kind of do some
full light, that's kind of fun.
So let's shoot a couple like that, it's
easy, playful, and while she can move
away, if you know, from the lights ,
you can also look towards the light.
She has a lot of options you know,
so basically I'm gonna come here,
just I got my 24-70mm on
here, and I was kind of moving
I'm getting a few different angles, and
shots, kind of fun stuff... yeah,
just like that, so I'm kind of having a
using the shorter roll of paper here.
I want to like to leave the set in the
shot kind of a fun little
behind-the-scenes kind of fashion shot.
So it's kind of a cool way to do it, and
this light is great for that, cuz I'm not
throwing all these weird shadows
everywhere right?
I've got a nice clean light all over.
Do you like what we did when we were..
you're kind of standing,
kind of small.. I like that yeah,
yeah exactly, where you kind of in...
yeah I'm gonna come in, and I'm just zooming in..
I just zoom in so that has
some space to kind of come in,
and just kind of play, and I'm leaving enough
space around her...
See I'm gonna come in,
I'm changing my focus spot here, that's perfect.
Can we do one where your looking
towards the light.
Good, good, good, yeah.
There we go, pretty,
just like that, reaching down a smidge.
Because I'm below her,
I don't want to aim too him..
huh, good, good, good, and again
when you shoot in full length, you want
to be like halfway on somebody.
You don't want to be shooting up at them
too much, but you don't want to be
shooting down either.
So, okay sorry I was too slow there, let's
try that again.
Good, okay I have my filter spot right
here, kind of cute,
I'm a little low on you for that.
Let me actually try, let me
come up with tiny bit for that,
as we say that, do something like that again.
I'm gonna get it all framed up first,
when someone's gonna do an action like
that, and go ahead, there we go.
Yeah there we go..
a little better, see see the different
angle, there not a lot of room for moving
around in this.
So I feel like I probably would not do that
kind of shot there.
That's from earlier that shot, alright
so... yeah...
Kind of fun right? Fun, even light
across her, looks great no matter where
she goes, no matter where she turns,
it's always gonna look good.
Now another fun thing we can do with
this though, is make the light, a little bit
more moody, a little more contrasty,
by adding a grid.
So you guys have seen me add grid
to lights before, oftentimes it's small lights,
but in this case, we have this giant grid
that we're gonna put on our five-foot
light, so that's not only gonna kind of
change the spread of light.
It also adds a bit of contrast, and just
because I'm adding the grid on here.
I'm also gonna move the light in, for two
reasons....
Number one - it actually does eat some
light, so just you know efficiency wise.
If I move it in closer, it's gonna help
me, but also you know if put my grid light
really far away...
then I'm kind of defeating the purpose
on a lot of levels right?
Cuz you kind of want your your grid,
to limit the spread of light and backing
the light up is actually going to increase
the spread of light.
So we're gonna kind of double down
on this, if you will, and do a grid end
with the light closer up.
I hope you see, can you come in for me...
You can come in, and I'm just gonna roll
this guy, I have it on a
roller stand, when using such a big light
source, it's a great idea to use roller stands.
Makes your life a lot easier.
So here we're looking at shadow pattern.
We need the light in nice and close..
you know..
here I'm not gonna necessarily shoot a
full-length shot, and if I do it's gonna
fall off, but you can clearly see that
it's falling off it, at her legs.
So grab my light meter, you can move in
towards the light.
Okay five, six, I'm gonna
actually I'll leave the light where it is...
You can dim this of course, but I'm just
gonna bring my shoulder strap up a
little bit, cause I have a feeling I'm gonna want
to kind of watch my exposure.
So I'm actually going to a 200th of a
second, that's at f/4.
Yeah there we go... as
you can see it lights closer, so more
dramatic fall-off, and also the grid adds
contrast and mood.
So let's see what this looks like.
Wish you like this..
Cool cool good.
Think I'm going to crop on her..
you know maybe like a little bit
above the knee....
getting some mood, good, like that.
Definitely darker shadows, more mood, on this.
You know?
Changes the vibe of it completely,
and one thing I can say is right?
look how soft the light is because it's
so large, and look at how close it is to her.
So I do have, even though I have fall
off because of the grid.
I'm still lighting her all the ways from the
top of the head down to the knees, you know
getting nice kind of even coverage.
I think I'm gonna open up a smidge,
and come in for a tighter shot of just like
her head... let's just see, I'm gonna go
actually 125 - I'm going to over expose,
if you guys watch any of my video,
you know that I like them a
little bit hot. So yeah, that's about
where I want to be.
So here we go, beautiful, like that,
What's kind of cool about this too is...
you don't need to wait for the light to
recycle, cause it is a constant light
source, and I'm literally seeing exactly
what I'm getting as I go to be able to
catch all the tiny little movements.
Yeah that looks really
great, and of course you know nice and
sharp 125 is plenty of shutter speed for
me to capture this.
If you, if you needed
to be a little faster, you know, you can
put it on a tripod, if you were really
concerned, but that should be nice like
that.For one so you guys can see, nice
and sharp, yeah, like that actually, look
right towards the light, I'm gonna do one
final kind of closer shot of her face.
That's pretty like that, I might do a
horizontal, but just to get that nice,
really really pretty, soft light, you can
actually see that for you guys....
a nice shallow depth of field there
if you go like that, and then do one
were you looking right at me,
to see the difference... good,
good, good, here we go.
Last one... good, yeah, and then we can
see, you know by turning the contrast,
that we have here, and I guess just so
you guys can have an exact copy, you can
see there, I'm just gonna come in here
and do the exact same thing without the grid.
Okay good, you can see how much more
wraps without the grid,
so we can see what that grid does.
You know this one's a
smidge hot, but I'll just come in here to
show you guys,
instead of making that a new exposure we
can see there the difference right?
So it really depends on the vibe you're going for,
so let's get back, so yeah, we can see
it, right that was pretty cool,
So you can see why we like big light
sources right?
It gives us a lot of options, it's kind of
actually really easy to play with.
It's gonna be super gentle on the model,
and you can with the addition of a grid ..
you can still get that contrast that you
want, but it still has a nice shadow
because it's soft, right?
So it's graduating into the shadows,
you don't have that hard crisp shadow
that you have with a hard light.
Hard lights have a totally
different vibe, totally different feel,
and they're good for other things.
So hopefully that clears that up a little
bit, I will put Pauline's information
in the description,
so you guys can follow her.
Be sure to follow me @DanielNortonPhotographer
Be sure to subscribe to AdoramaTV,
and I'll see you next time OnSet.