In this video I'll show you how to set
up and light a magical mystery box image.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching
AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama the
camera store that has everything for us
photographers and today you join me in
my small home studio.
As you can see there's quite a lot of stuff in the
studio today but the thing of interest
is this box here because inside that box is
another box, yeah, now these boxes are
going to become magical mystery boxes
full of light and smoke and that's what
we're going to do in this video okay so,
let's get a model in.
Let's get some light set.
Let's get shooting.
So to help me out with this shoot
it's great to have Kerry back in the studio.
Now we're going to start with the small box
which is this one right here
and inside my little box is, well, a weird flashing light.
It's a speed light
and the speed light is
going to be the key light,
the light that actually lights Kerry's face.
I've also got this small piece of tracing paper
and this is going to do a couple of things.
It's going to help just to soften the light
out as it bounces around inside the box,
but it's also going to protect the speed light
and you'll see why in just a little bit.
Okay let's give this to Kerry,
here we go.
So Kerry's got the box.
Inside is the speed light,
so you can hold it in front of her face
but we need to know how much light is coming
out of that speed light, so I've got my
flash meter. I'm going to meter it right here,
so I'll pop this roughly in the
middle of Kerry's face
and I'm getting f/4.
Now I'm actually going to shoot at f/2.8
and the only reason I want to shoot
at f/2.8 is because well Kerry's looking
into a speedlight very close.
The lower I can get the power of that speed light
the less blinding and uncomfortable it's
going to be for our model here and well we
don't want to blind her.
That's not much fun at all,
so let's get this down a stop and I
could do that using
the Flash Point Zoom mini O
which I'm using as a trigger
and I'm getting it down to f/2.8.
There we go.
Okay so f/2.8 is set for the flash.
It's dialed into the camera. Let's take this
shot and see how it looks,
and as you can see Kerry's face is correctly exposed
but the box is basically black
and there's an obvious reason for that.
There's no light on it at all,
so to light the outside of the box I'm going
to use another speed light
and well it's just a bare speed light.
It’s going to go over here somewhere
because it needs to light this side of the box.
Now positioning is going to be absolutely
critical, so if I pop it too far around
to the side, where we can see what's
going to happen, here we go,
it's lighting the back of the box
but not the side that's facing the camera.
If I put it too square onto the camera,
now it's lighting the side of the box,
but it just looks wrong.
It’s also lighting Kerry's face a little bit,
so there's a fine line
between getting this in the right place
and in the wrong place.
Trial and error is the key.
Lets pop it around about there,
and that looks like a
nice happy balance between the two.
Now you'll notice I haven't talked about
metering this light although I wanted to
know how much light was on Kerry's face
from the box with this one, I am happy to
look at the result of the picture and
then decide whether it's bright enough
or dark enough. In this case it's on its
lowest possible power setting and I
think that's just the right amount of
light to give this picture a bit of feel,
a bit of atmosphere without it
overpowering the scene.
The last piece of
the puzzle is what's coming out of the
box, so far it's just been light which
looks great but we're going to add some of
this. This is smoke in a can
and it comes in various names
and brands but this is
going to really add something to the
picture, that little bit of mystery. What
we're going to do, what I'm going to do is,
I'm going to spray a little bit in the box.
We're going to close the box and then we're
going to take some pictures with the box
open and hopefully when Kerry opens the
box some of the smoke will come out. Okay
ready Kerry? Let's add some in. Here we go,
boom, right let's try that. Ready? A one
two, three, excellent, that's fantastic.
So the reason we're using the tracing paper
over the speed light is partly to
diffuse the light but also to protect
the speed light. When you're using an
aerosol can it will leave a bit of a
residue and I’d rather that was on the paper
than on the speed light. Okay let's take
some more pictures.
So those pictures look really good.
The lighting looks great,
the smoke and that dramatic feel to the picture
but what if you want to scale this up a little bit?
Well that's what we're going to do next.
Let's get this whole idea and make it
much bigger.
So now my small home studio
is in fact an attic or maybe a cellar.
It's the place where you keep all of
your junk and that's what we've got here
random assortment of collection of
things we found around the house.
Now we're going to get Kerry in in a minute
and she's going to be looking into the box
which is obviously now much larger
but the basic principles are still the same.
Inside the box is a flash
because it's a bigger box, it's a bigger flash.
It's the Flash Point eVOLV 200,
and over the top of that,
I've still got a sheet of tracing paper
to diffuse the light
and also protect the flash.
Again we'll get to some smoke later on.
So Kerry is in position.
She's going to be looking into this box but
because this is a bigger box,
then I'm going to be slightly less worried
about the the strength of the light.
I'm going to go with a aperture of f/5.6
for a bit more depth of field
but I need to meter this accordingly,
so let's just get our flash
meter and we'll see how much light is
coming off the eVOLV 200,
here we go and I'm getting f/8
so it's a little bit onthe bright side.
We could just knock that
back ever so slightly,
one stop
and I'm getting f/5.6
so the flash in the box is metering exactly what I want.
Let's just take this picture to see how it looks,
and just like before the light on Kerry
looks great but of course we can't
really see much else in the room.
It is just the light from the box,
so the next light I'm going to add in
just like before is going to be the lighting for
the side of the box
and just like before
I'm going to use a speed light.
Now this time because we are taking a wide shot,
I want the light to be quite pinpoint in
its lighting. I want it just to light
this area, so I've set the zoom to its
maximum 105mm and hopefully
if I pop it over to the side,
that should be about right.
Okay let's just take a shot like this,
see how it looks?
Here we go,
just like before,
I'm using a trial and error method of setting the
extra lights, if it looks right to my eye
then it is right.
Now we could stop there
with just the two lights
but because this is a big room set,
I want to have some room light
and if it was an attic or maybe a cellar
there would be maybe a
skylight of some sort
with light coming down
and flooding the room
and that's what this is going to do,
so I've got my Flash Point Explorer 600
and I've got it
in a small softbox
and that's going to simulate day light
coming through
and let's just take a shot like that
and see how that looks.
Here we go
and that looks great.
That has a lovely atmosphere to it,
but speaking of atmosphere,
well we're going to add some smoke
into it and once again
smoke is going to be that magic ingredient,
that's going to bring this to life.
So because we have a bigger area to fill with smoke
the little smoke in a can, isn't really
going to cut it, so it's time to get the
smoke machine warmed up.
If your smoke machine was small enough
I guess you could actually pop it inside,
well this one isn't, so we'll use exactly the
same technique as we used before.
We are going to put some smoke in the box
and then we'll close the lid.
Here we go, ready and close the lid.
Boom!
Okay let's take some shots,
with the lid open.
Kerry are you ready?
I'll count you down; one, two, three.
The only problem of using a smoke
machine in a small home studio is how
fast it fills the room up with smoke,
however it does bring that level of
uncertainty to your shoots
and I always like that.
I think it makes the pictures
work well and in this case they look fantastic.
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I'm Gavin Hoey,
thanks for watching.