Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan with The Slanted Lens. We live in Los Angeles. We love Los
Angeles so because of the movie business and the access we have to everything in Hollywood,
kind of a support system that we have here that strengthens our work and gives us options
that we couldn't get anywhere else in the world. So welcome to The Slanted Lens.
Combining a single Dynalight strobe head with a Photoflex Silver P22 reflector and a $15
mirror from Home Depot, we can make a single strobe head look like several heads on set.
Today we're going to take a look at advanced lighting with a single head.
For our first setup, we've got a medium soft box. We're going to bring this into a nice
butterfly on Cynthia's face. It's going to light our background completely, so it'll
be a white background with a nice highlight on her face. It will fall fairly dark to the
left side. Basic one light setup. But from here, we're going to move into a nice rim
light that we're going to add with a silver reflector.
Here's our first shot. This is a single head with a medium softbox. The head is pointed
straight at the talent. This is going to be our starting point as we begin to modify this
setup and make it a little more complicated.
We turned our box slightly away from the background to create a darker background. We'll add a
silver reflector from camera right to open up the side of her face and to separate her
from the background.
Here's our image with the silver reflector. This is a very open look, but our background
stays very dark. A silver reflector needs very little light to be useful. You can modify
a silver reflector just like any light. You can cover it with cloth to make the reflection
a little smaller. You can put diffusion in front of it to make it a little softer. So
reflectors are just another light source you can modify and work with.
As we turn the light box away from the talent, it reduces the light on her face and increases
the light on the reflector. If I open up a half a stop, I will open up the shadows and
reduce the light ratio. The shadows become brighter, which makes the light ratio closer.
One of my favorite tools on set is a mirror. It's not a super duper lighting tool that
you buy from some camera store. It's just a $15 mirror from Home Depot. A mirror needs
less light than a silver reflector, but it creates a very sharp pattern.
Here we have a soft box on her face and the mirror reflecting a shape onto the background.
We can cut paper to change that shape, to modify it in any way we want, but it makes
a very sharp, hard light.
We now open up our shadows with a silver reflector on camera right, and we now have an interesting
portrait. Our single light lights her face, the mirror gives us a shape on the background,
and our silver reflector opens up her face. This is a strong two light portrait with a
silver reflector fill.
It's important to meter the shadow side of the face and decide how close you want to
have the fill light. Having the fill light one stop darker than the key side of the face
is a nice, open look. I sometimes prefer to have the shadow side of the face two stops
darker. It adds just a little more mood.
We're now going to move our soft box behind the talent to create a rim light. This rims
her body very nicely. We've moved the soft box from the key light position to a rim light
position. We're now going to move our mirror into place as the key light. The mirror reflects
the rim light back into her face and creates a two light portrait.
If we now tilt the mirror up, it creates more mood in the image and takes some of the light
off from her body. This becomes a variation on our two light setup.
From here we're going to build a four light setup. We have our rim, and our mirror is
a key that we've tilted up, taking some of the light off from her body. We're now going
to move forward to add two more light sources.
By adding a mirror on the camera right side to give us a nice rim on her arm, we create
a nice three light setup. This rim separates her arm from the background and opens up her
left shoulder.
If I now tilt the soft box up, it will cut the unwanted light off from her white dress.
This keeps the emphasis on her face and not on the white dress.
We will now add our silver reflector on the background. This now completes our four light
setup as we add that silver reflector on the background.
Here's our lighting buildup using first the Dynalight strobe head, then adding a mirror
for a y light, then a mirror as a second rim, then a silver reflector to light the background.
We're now going to move our soft box overhead from behind as a double rim or as an overhead
back light. The first light rims all of her hair and shoulders and does not favor one
side. We now add the mirror as the key light. This becomes a simple two light setup. We
won't take the time to add the rim for the camera right on her arm or the silver on the
background, but this could easily be done and build this into a four light setup.
Let's move on to another single light setup. We'll move the soft box above the camera,
directed right at the talent, creating a very nice butterfly light on her face.
Here's the first image. It's pretty bright. It could be a really nice single light image
itself, but we're looking to do something just a little different. We're going to cover
this entire light with a piece of foam core. This allows the light to bounce around the
foam core and create an open fill but a darker background. Here's that open shadow from the
foam core.
Now on the camera left side, we're going to add a silver reflector to rim her from behind.
The foam core does not block the light that hits the silver reflector. The light is going
around the foam core, hitting the reflector, and giving us a nice rim on her body.
We're now going to add a silver reflector from the camera right side as well, to rim
her on that right side. This gives us a double rim, but there's kind of a dark area on her
face.
We're now going to cut a small area in the foam core, and just allow a little bit of
light to come through that will touch her eyes and open up her face. This foam core
created that overall fill on the set, but also by cutting a small opening, becomes a
key light on her face.
Here's our final image. This is a great multiple light setup, using only one light.
Here's our final setup. We blocked the light off her face with the foam core. We add a
silver reflector on left for a rim. We add a silver reflector on her right for a rim.
We cut a hole in the foam core to give us a little bit of light on her face. A four
light setup.
I hope you've found this advanced look at a single light setup helpful. It's important
to remember that hard light from mirrors and silver reflectors become almost as powerful
as a main light source and can create multiple light sources from a single light. A $15 mirror
from Home Depot is a great investment. You remember, you can re-modify them, you can
put diffusion in front of them to soften them, you can put paper over them to cut down the
size. There's a lot of things you can do with mirrors and reflectors to take your one light
and turn it into several lights on set.
I hope you found this interesting. Keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.
Our gear giveaway this month is a great package. We have Spider Holster Rigs that you can win
by going to TheSlantedLens.com and signing up. There's several different ways to sign
up. These are great for sports photography. You can have your camera right at your hip.
They have a great pouch that goes on this. You can put that 200mm lens in there with
the shade on, so it can come on and off with it. So go to The Slanted Lens where you can
sign up for your Spider Pro Single Camera system. Great setup.
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today's Slanted Lens review, we're going to look at the Kessler
KC-Lite crane. I just got back from a trip where we had to throw this on an airplane,
flew it into Utah for several days of shooting and back. I was really impressed with this
crane for several reasons. One, it is very lightweight. It broke down into a small case
we could throw on the airplane. It's a piece of equipment that just gives you a lot of
production value. As we're shooting our shots, we're able to crane up into these vistas,
crane down into kind of close-ups on people's faces. I just love the fact of using a crane,
a simple crane like this we can travel with and get into a location and work quickly with.
The nice thing about this entire setup is it's under $500. For a crane that works as
well as this does for that kind of price is absolutely amazing. One of the things we did
to the KC-Lite crane here is we put a cheese plate on top of it. That cheese plate gave
us a place to put our monitor, which helped us as we're doing our crane shots, to be able
to see as we tilted up and down. It just worked out really nicely.
Right now I've got the brake on, and it's nice because I can set this up, lock the brake
off, and it gives me a steady shot. I don't necessarily have to pull my camera off, stick
it on a tripod. I can get a nice steady shot with the brake on.
So as I release this brake, it gives me the ability to crane. I can use this from the
back as a crane shot so I can get extremely low shots into extremely high shots. But it
also gives me the option, if I want to, to get on the front. I can come up front here,
and I can work this a jib arm, and be able to work it, and it really makes for a nice
piece of equipment.
So it's the Kessler KC-Lite, and it really works out for a quick, low cost, easy to travel
with piece of equipment.
Ah, thank you. Subscribe to Slanted Lens, lots of exciting things like this to come.