Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching Adorama TV brought to you by Adorama the
camera store that's got everything for us photographers and in this video I'm
going to look at a problem that occurs when you want to use
a wide angle lens and flash.
Now I'm shooting on location here the Gatwick aviation museum and the
problem is
well if I don't do anything about it my flash and my light stand are going to ruin the
shot that I want to take, but don't worry I've got some solutions to fix this.
So my job today is to take a great picture of Mike, now Mike he used to be a captain
of a Shackleton and these beautiful planes,
well they've got one here at the Gatwick aviation museum. Now to photograph him
I'm using my Olympus 7 -14mm wide angle lens ,now if that
sounds wide in 35mm full frame that would be a 14 to 28mm, so yeah
that really is wide and I will be at that wide-angle lens most of the time as far
as light goes, well, as well as the ever-changing sunlight that we've got
today I'm using my flashpoint streetlight 360 and that's firing
through a flashpoint glow softbox trouble is I want that close and that
close gives me problems let me take a picture and show you what problems i'm
having a Mike here we go
so as you can see it's a great environmental shot that's what
wide-angle lenses do they tell the story of the scene but the light stand in the
softbox kind of ruin things
so the first solution is really simple change the position that you're shooting
at you have to compromise somewhere in photography so my compromise is obvious
if I go closer I can get rid of the softbox let's do that
okay Mike I'm gonna come in a little bit closer towards you here we go
and if you can just look at the underside of the softbox that perfect
was that works really well and it does make a great shot of Mike the downside
well it's not the shot that I wanted and that's something you have to live with
sometimes compromises we don't always get what you want and also with a
wide-angle lens the closer I get to Mike the more distorted and weird his face
looks which isn't really the look I want at all
so if I want to get the shot what can I do well let's try something different so
my next solution sounds obvious when you say it if the light is in the way move
the light but like everything there's always going to be a payoff if you do
that well let's get the light because that's where it is at the moment but if
I move it around so it's more in line with my camera angle is not going to be
in the way of the shot.
Let's take a picture and see what the downside of that is. OK Mike here we go.
Now my first downside is I've lost a little bit of light. The, the flash is now
a little bit further away. The second downside is I've lost the direction of
light, now there was a reason that I had the light where it was. It was for
the, the moody lighting it was giving me and by getting the light more on camera
axis, I lose some of that mood and that might be a compromise your more than
happy to make to save yourself some trouble, in which case, this is a great solution.
So my next solution for getting the lighting and the stand out of the way
is to hide it.
Now this one's a bit more niche because it's not always going to be an opportunity
to hide your light and your light stand behind something, but even if you can
just hide the actual light source. That's a really good thing because it will stop
flare and that can often be the hardest thing to clone out sometimes in
photoshop you can clone out a light stand.
So what I've done this time is I've put my light, tucked it right up behind an
out-of-the-way and hopefully I shouldn't see all of it in the shot but that
depends on where I stand. If I stand here and take a picture of Mike, here we go
that's pretty good if I go wide the wider I go the more chance I'm going to
see it. So let's come in here and there we go.
So from that angle I can actually see the
lighting stand. Now I can remove it in photoshop. It is not the end of the world
but sometimes just moving yourself will save you a load of time in
post-production. So let's just come around a little bit further and very
careful not to bang my head and I need to look through the viewfinder as I find
my, my spot. Perfect and Mike can you look at the underside of the light for me?
That's terrific
and one more
as you can see in this shot,
well that light is totally out of the scene. No need for any post-production
just a case of careful positioning of the light.
So my last setup is one that
needs a bit of planning but ultimately gives you the best quality because what
I'm going to do is take two pictures. One with the flash when it's in the frame of
the shot and then the second one where I move the flash out the way and then we'll
do a bit of photoshop magic to bring the two together.
Now why have I got the flash so close? Well there are two reasons. Reason number one;
the closer you get the flash the softer and more flattering the light becomes
because it becomes bigger relative to the subject.
The second reason; is the closer you get your Flash the more powerful it becomes
and when you're shooting on location with the sun out the way is just at the
moment you need every ounce of power you can get so closer is better.
Ok Lets take a picture,
so the first shot is going to be the one with the flashing the scene.
Are you ready Mike?
I'm ready.
Ok, now we can actually take a couple of pictures. Mike doesn't have to be in the
second shot he doesn't have to have the same pose. So Mike have a little look
at the bottom of the box there for me. That's fantastic, that's really good.
Do you want to pop your hands in your pockets as well? just to mix it up a little bit, I bet you
were told never to do that? Absolutely.
Yeah too right too, very good advice
OK and if you want to look down the lens for me OK what about
putting them behind your back?
Would that'd be more of a, more correct and again rather than looking at
me look at the the bottom of that for me, that's terrific.
That's great OK so that's the pictures taken with the flash in. Now here is the really
important bit. At this point touch nothing don't zoom the camera,
don't move it. That's why it's on a tripod. Yes you could do this handheld but
boy is it more difficult?
The only thing you're going to move is the light. I'm going to get the light out
and in fact just to prove the point we can even say to Mike, Mike do you want to step
out as well. He doesn't have to be in the picture although he could if he wants to
be and then I just take the same shot again. Now that is going to be an empty
frame and I'm going to bring that in with the other picture to photoshop to do
some editing and I'm going to do that right now.
Well it is the next day and I'm back in my studio. I've gone through the images and
Im going to put them together. Now to be honest the hardest bit
well that's already happened. This bit editing in photoshop,
very quick, very simple. Here's how it's done.
I've got the image here that I want to use as my main image this is the clean
one or a plate image and I want to combine it with this one here with Mike but I
want to lose that soft box and the boom arm on the right corner. So to do that
I'm going to come up to select and then all, edit and copy. Go over to the other
image, the empty one and choose edit and paste. That puts the two images on top of
each other as separate layers and you can see well there's a difference in the
clouds because there was a difference in the time when I took these two pictures,
but other than that everything else is the same
other than the softbox being missing.
However is it the same? Let's just have a a really close look and we'll just a
flick this on and off again,
yes there is a little bit of movement that's bouncing up and down
why is their movement between these two images? What happened? Well there's a
couple things that might have happened. It could be that pressing the shutter
button on the camera moved the camera ever so slightly that's quite probable.
It could be that the image stabilization was switched on except I'd switch that
off because I was using a tripod it could well be I just kicked the tripod
I've done that many, many times. In this case I don't think it particularly
matters it's not a big movement but sometimes it's critical.
Let's have a look at how it can be fixed. So I’m going to come back to my layers
I’m going to hold the shift key and click on the well the layer that's not
currently selected, which is the background for me and then I’m going to
go back to edit. This time in the middle
auto align layers. Now the projection I will leave on auto
that's the default setting
just click OK and let it do its thing and it'll look for the overlaps and
it'll just make sure that these two images lineup absolutely perfectly.
That's excellent OK so now I know there's no movement in the Shackleton I
can set about removing the softbox, I do that by clicking on the layer that I
want to remove the object from, the top layer and then I'm going to come down to
the new layer mask icon. Click on that and I get this white rectangle
now if I get a paintbrush and I make sure that my brush is black I paint
black over the thing I want to remove, in this case is rather big softbox it
magically disappears along with the boom arm. Now why is that happening well it's
over here the layer mask that black area acts like an eraser and it cuts away
anything that I don't want to see like the softbox and reveals the layer below
where it's not in the shot and I can go further because over here is a rather
dark,
well that's the this shadow of the softbox that wasn't in the second
picture because I removed it from the shot.
What about this line here? This line is actually not a crack in
the Shackleton. That is a bit of the flash bouncing off the shiny surface but again,
I can paint over that and cut these areas out so you don't get to see them
anymore. They're hidden away, you get to see the layer below which is the clean image.
You might be thinking why not just so clone this out, wouldn't it have been
quicker and easier. Well if you ever tried to clone sky you'll know how difficult it
is to get a perfect match on those blue skies.
with a bit more tidying up there
it is, my final picture completed.
Well we got some fantastic pictures here and the wide-angle lens really did play
it’s part but moreover Mike was an absolute star. Now Mike is actually a
volunteer here at the Gatwick Aviation Museum and if you get the chance to come
along, come and meet Mike. He will tell you all of the details of what it was
like to actually fly on one of these Shackleton aircraft from firsthand
experience and believe me it's well worth coming just for that.
Bring your camera long as well get some good pictures. Now if you want to see
more videos from myself and the other amazing presenters right here on
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You got to be clicking on that subscribe button.
I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.