In this video I'll turn day to night, and
make it appear as if my model has been
lit by a candle.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and
you're watching AdoramaTV
brought to you by Adorama.
The camera store that's got
everything for us photographers, and
today I'm gonna do a location portrait,
where I turn daytime into night-time, and
light my model with a candle or at least
that's the impression we'll get!
Now the first thing I need to do, is actually
take control of the lighting in this
lovely old room, and you might think
night-time... I'm going to close all the
curtains, get rid of the light, but that's
not true, in fact I'm going to open the
curtains and let the light flood in,
because we're going to use that as part
of our illumination on the model, but
we'll get to that in a little bit. So
let's get the curtains open, we'll get our
light set, let's get a model in, let's get
shooting. So to help me out today I've
got the amazing Jade. Jade's gonna be the
model, and as you can see,
she's dressed in a suitably Tuderish style, and
that's because the location we're at here
Rowfant house, dates from the 16th
Century. So it all kind of makes sense,
and ties in together. Now the first thing
I need to do is, to work out the exposure
of the candle. It's the brightest thing
in the shot, and by trial and error I've
come up with a setting of f/2.8,
1/100th of a second, ISO 400. Now I'm
gonna take a picture at those settings,
but without any flash, just to see how
the ambient records at those settings as
well. So let's have a little look, as you
can see I've got detail on Jade.
There's a little bit of detail in the background,
and there's a little bit of detail
around the fireplace, and that's what I want.
I want some detail, but not too much,
remember this is nighttime effectively,
even though we're actually recording
this in the middle of the day!
Thanks to the amazing people in Hollywood, we
always assume that night-time is blue in
color, even though it's not in reality,
but to simulate that, I'm going to change
my white balance, now I could go for
something like the tungsten white
balance, or on my camera I can set a
custom white balance, so that should make
everything really blue, let's have a
little look, and sure enough everything
is dark, but is now really blue, so we can
kind of think that maybe this is
nighttime. So now with the candle lit I
can see whether this candle will
actually put any light on Jade
whatsoever.
Let's see how it looks, and
not surprisingly the answer is no.. not at
all, but we can see the candle in the
shot, and we can see it's a different
color to everything else, because the
color of candle light is much warmer
than the color of natural daylight. So to
light Jade I'm not going to rely on
candle power alone, I need something with
a bit more punch, and the thing I'm going
to use is an eVOLV 200.
Now I've got it in a standard reflector with
a grid to really just try and target Jade, so the
light doesn't spill too much everywhere
on the scene around me, but the settings
now... I need a very low power, and this
goes down to 1/128th of its full power,
so that's where I'm going to start.
Let's see how this looks, and that looks about
right, if the flash is too bright, I could move
it further away, but if it's not bright
enough, I could just increase the power
but the obvious problem here is the
color, everything is still, really, really
blue, including the light from this flash.
If you remember earlier on, I turned the
white balance of the camera to a much
colder color, and the light in here is
actually just daylight. So daylight is
coming out blue, and my flash is more or
less daylight colored as well, or so of
course, I'm firing effectively blue light
onto Jade. So to make this look warmer as
if she's being lit by a candle. I'm gonna
put a warming gel on the light.
Now if I just put a standard orange gel on there,
that wouldn't be enough, that would just
take you to white, and candles have a
really warm white balance, so I've got
more basically every orange gel I own,
and shove them all together, this isn't
an exact science, this is going to be a
pop it on see how it goes, and then maybe
fine-tune in post-processing later, but
we'll get to that in a little bit.
Let's test this, here we go now. It's worth
remembering of course when you put the
gels on your camera, it will adjust the
brightness from the flash so you may
need to adjust it a little brighter to
compensate, and finally there's the
background of this shot, which is still
very dark. I'd like a bit more light back
there. I can't open any more curtains, I
can't make the light outside any
brighter. So instead, I'm gonna add a second flash.
So I've got an Xplor 400 here, and
this is going to go on its lowest
possible power. It might even be that I
just need to use the modeling light only,
that could be just the right amount of
light. Again this is a fairly daylight
balanced light source, so it should throw
some blue light back in the background,
so this looks really good. Everything's
come together really nicely.
I'll take a few pictures here, and then we'll move
Jade around and do a shoot, ok Jade you
ready? Okay? Let's do it.
Here we go.
So the whole idea here is to balance the
exposure with the candle-light, because
you don't want to lose any detail in
that candle if you can avoid it.
Now that might mean actually closing
curtains, if the daylight is really bright.
It could mean that you have to open
curtains and add a little bit of fill flash, like I've
done, or if you find yourself in a really
dark room like this. We'll forget about
the ambient light, just put a flash
somewhere at the back hidden away, and
that's what's lighting my background.
That really worked, it does look like
Jade is there at night-time and being lit
by a candle. Okay there's a fair amount
of artistic license used, and definitely
some need for photo shop.
So let's have a look at the post-processing.
So with this picture, the first thing I
can see is the right-hand side, which is
much warmer than I would like, and that's
because the light that was on Jade, has
just spilt and caught the back edge of
that bookcase. So to make that a colder
blue color. I'm gonna use layers so in
Photoshop.. is layer, new, layer, click OK,
and then I need a blue color to match, so
my foreground color currently black
click on that, and then choose from a
highlight. I think that bit looks pretty,
good, a nice blue cold color.
I need the brush tool, and I need a big
brush using the right square bracket to
increase my size, and have a lovely soft feathered
edge, and there you go, I've painted it
blue, but it looks absolutely terrible,
and that's why I've done this on layers,
because now I can change the layer
blending mode to color.
I can also drop the opacity down just to
blend that in so it feels a little bit more realistic,
that's pretty good, but there's other
areas that need a blue touch as well.
So let's make another new layer, I'll click
on the new layer icon this time for
speed, and I'm gonna go underneath the
candle, because this area probably
wouldn't be lit by that either, and then
I'll change the blending mode to color,
and just drop the opacity down again, so
it it looks about right. Okay something
like that I think looks pretty good.
Finally there is just the back of Jade's
head, so let's make another new layer
there, and I reckon again that would be a
little bit cooler in color. Change the
blending mode to the color blending mode,
and drop the opacity down to whatever
looks about right. It's worth saying if
you do that on the main picture, and
there's a reflection, remember you need
to do the reflection as well.
So let's just put a little bit of blue onto the
reflection, and again we'll change the
blending mode to color, and we'll take
the opacity down until it looks
about right. So that looks pretty good,
but just like the night-time is blue, we
assume that candles glow, and they don't..
but they should do, if we believe
Hollywood. So let's add that glow inside
a Photoshop as well. So this is another
job for a new layer, and this time I need
to paint a different color, not the blue,
but a much warmer color from the candle
I'm actually gonna sample from Jade's
neck, because the sort of color that
works well, is more of a a pinky red than
a yellow, and all I need to do then is
just click... maybe with a bigger brush
round about there, that looks pretty good,
and this time I'm gonna change the
blending mode to lighten. To bring the
flame of the candle back through. Now
this wants to be an effect that is
barely noticeable, so bring the opacity
way way down, it needs to be there, but
not exactly obvious, and if I do that to
the candle that she's holding, I need to
do it to the one in the reflection. Once
again put this on its own separate layer,
make a smaller brush. Paint that in, but
the same technique, change it to lighten
blending mode, and drop the opacity way
way down. So there is just there the hint
of a bit of a glow, and a few other
tweaks and adjustments.
There it is, there's my final picture
completed, and there you go our day to
night shoot is done.
Jada's done a fantastic job as our
tutor character, and the photos look
absolutely brilliant now.
if you've enjoyed this video, don't forget to leave
me a comment below.
Click on the subscribe button, and click
on the bell icon to get regular
notifications of all
the new videos right here on AdoramaTV.
I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.