In this video I will show you how to
modify your speedlights, to get better light.
Welcome back to The Breakdown,
my name is Miguel Quiles, and today I'm
joined in the studio by Miss Ashley, and
we're going to take some portraits here in
the studio. What I wanted to do was to
show you how you could take your speed
lights that you might already own, and
might already be using, and I kind of
want to show you what it looks like. If
you take your flash on-camera, and take
photos with it, but also how much better
your portraits could look, if you take
your flash off the camera, and kind of
run it through some kind of a light
modifier. So with that being said, let's
really briefly just talk about the gear
that we're going to be using, and then we
will get into our shoot. Alright so, let's
talk about the gear that we're going to be
using for this shoot really briefly. I'm
using the Sony a6000 to take these
photos, it's a crop sensor camera, and I'm
shooting with the Sony, and this, I guess
Sony Zeiss 55mm 1.8, this is
probably one of the sharpest smallest
lenses that I've really ever used, so I
love using this on the crop sensor body.
So if you ever ask, I get this question
all the time, what's your favorite lens
to shoot portraits? Always depends if I'm
shooting full-frame, or crop sensor in
this case. Really love using a 55mm on a
crop because it's approximately an 80mm
focal length, and that's
really, really, flattering for shooting
portraits. So that's the camera and the
lens, the flash that we're using, this is
the new Sony HVLF60RM, it's a
radio-controlled flash, that works with
the commander. So what I'm going to do for
these photos, is I'm actually going to
take some pictures in the traditional
way that people are using their flash.
Which is to have it on camera, we're
going to show a direct flash shot, we're
going to take a shot with the flash
pointing up at the ceiling, and basically
bouncing and creating a softer light.
This is the way that most people would
try to improve the flash output, but then
what we're going to do that's going to be
really cool, is we're going to take the
flash off the camera, put it into a
softbox, and show you basically how much
better it would look, if you take the
flash off camera.
So that's the gear, that's how we're
going to do it, let's get started with
taking our photos. Let's get started with
taking some photos, the first setup that
we're going to do, we're actually going to
take our flash, and this 60 RM flash
has the ability to basically tilt
sideways. Which is kind of handy, so we're
going to shoot our portraits this way, very
directional frontal flash. To kind of
show you what that looks like. if you've
ever used the flash, typically this is
the, the look, that you would get out of a
flash. If you're just splashing the model
directly. So we're going to take some photos
this way first. Let's see how that looks,
and for the settings by the way, we're at
F7.1, 1/116h of a
second, ISO 100. If you're wondering how,
or why, I came up with those settings. I
have a video talking about how to dial
in your light settings, without a light
meter. It's another video here on
adoramatv which we'll link in this video,
but essentially what I've done is negate
the light that's in the studio. So all
this light that you see that's lighting
me right now, is not actually lighting the
model, the only light is going to be
coming from this
flash with these settings. So let's take
some shots. Alright so, again all we're
doing is just direct light. This is the
way that a lot of people would take a
flash out of the box, and start taking
portraits. It doesn't look bad you know,
it still looks okay. It's got a certain
type of look to it. That just looks like
it was lit with a flash. But we're going to
make this better, so those are the photos,
and I'll put them up on the screen here
for you to look at. That's what it looks
like, if you have the flash actually
lighting them directly. Now people will
tell you, well if you want to get softer
light, you need to bounce it off of like
a wall, or off of a ceiling. Luckily, I
have a ceiling over me today, so we're
going to do that, we're going to bounce the
flash. So rather than have it facing
directly at the model, we're just going to
tilt it, have it bouncing straight up off
the ceiling. Now the light is basically
going to come down. It'll be bigger, softer,
but we're still going to make it look
better. I'm going to bring up, there's a
white card that comes with basically all
of your flashes, so that that way, she'll
have a little bit of a catch-light in
her eyes. So some of this will hit the
white card, when the flash goes off and
it will put like a little
highlight in her eye, which will look
pretty cool. So let's see what these look
like. Very nice.
Hold that, excellent, and they still look
pretty cool. They look good, but they can
look so much better. If we just take
these off camera, and just kind of modify
the light a little bit. So now let's make
this light awesome, let's take it off the
camera. We're going ti use our Sony Radio
Commander, and we're going to trigger this
off-camera. Alright so, we've talked about
how this looks, when you have your flash
on the camera, and now what does it look
like off-camera. This is how it looks,
we've taken our speed-light, the exact
same speed-light, we've taken it off
camera, and replaced it with this Sony
Radio Commander. So in the prior video
you saw how to pair these two up. So if
you're shooting with Sony, you want to
know how to do that, refer back to that
video, but we've had we have this radio
remote commander paired up with the same
flash that we've taken off, we put it
inside of a ProFoto speed ring holder,
and that is actually now being fed
through this 3ft octa from
Profoto. Cool thing with this is you
could actually take any modifier. You can
take a softbox, you can take beauty
dishes, umbrellas really, anything that
you want, and run the speed-light through
that light shaper. My favorite one to use
is an octa, because i feel like it just
gives this really beautiful quality of
light. So we're using the three-foot octa.
For some of these shots, anytime I want
to fill in some shadows underneath the
chin, I will bring in a silver reflector
for some of the shots, but sometimes it
looks fine without it. So you literally
can do this with just one light. In terms
of the placement, I have this maybe like
two and a half feet away from her, and
because it's a white wall, what's
happening is this light is going to hit
this white wall, and it's just going to go
everywhere, and it's going to look really,
really beautiful. So that's it, that's our
setup. Flash power right now is that a
quarter power, but a lot of times people
will ask me what is your Flash power?
What do you have your Flashes set to, I
don't want to necessarily tell you that,
because if you set it to the exact same
settings, your environment might be
different. So again refer back to that
video that I was telling you about before
because you're going to change your flash
power depending on your shooting
situation. This case I'm at a quarter
power, I can control that from the radio
commander, so let's go ahead, and let's
get started with shooting!
Alright everybody, so that's it! Just a really
easy way for you to take one speed light
and just make it look better. If you have
any questions make sure that you leave
it in the comments section below. Also
while you're here, make sure that you
follow Ashley on Instagram. We'll put her
information in the description for this
video. Also give me a follow, I've got
some great images on my Instagram as
well. So make sure you check that out.
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Thank you so much for watching, and I
will see you in the next video.