In this video I'll show you how a small
slot of light can create amazing
eye catching portraits.
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 so I
wanted to do a shoot which was
a portrait, with a very thin slot of light.
Now to make that light happen,
I thought the best way about it
was to get the eVOLV 200
and the barn doors.
Take the barn doors down to a very thin slot
of light and use that.
So I did a test and the end result was
well not quite what I was hoping for
and it's down to a few things
including the gap between the light source
and the aperture, its less than two inches
with the barn doors so if
the gap was a problem,
I thought if I extend the gap
and the easiest way I could
think to do that was to get the snoot
for the eVOLV 200
that's about four and a half inches away
from the light source,
but it is a round aperture and I wanted
a slot of light, so my solution
is to get a couple of bits of duct tape,
stick two together for double thickness
and we'll stick the duct tape
or gaffers tape onto the snoot to make a little slot.
Now when I tested this,
this was much better, a much cleaner slot
but it was still a bit rectangular
so I needed a bigger gap
and this is where this comes in.
It's just a packing tube
that I've sawn into pieces
I quite like this one because it has a white interior
the shorter length increases my snoot to around
about nine inches
and once again I can use the duct tape
as a set of barn doors
and reduce the circle down
into a slot now testing
the shorter length gave me a pretty good shape
that I could really work with,
however if I switched out to the longer
length which is about 14 inches, the end
result was even thinner, even cleaner,
even more slot like so I've got
different ways of reducing my light
source down to a slot of light and what
I'm going to do in this video is show
you different ways that you can use that
in your small home studio,
so let's get the light set,
let's get a model in,
let's get shooting.
So today I've been joined by Jack who's
going to be the model for this shoot.
Now the first look would
to go for is a very thin slot of light
that just lights up Jack's face in order
to achieve it, I'm going to use
the longer of the tubes
which should give me
the tighter beam of light
that I'm looking for
however this is going to be
the most accurate of the beams as well,
so we need to get this exactly in the
right place, hence jack is sat down,
so let's see what we've got.
So I've got the tube roughly
in place I'm going to press the test button
on the back of a flash
to see where the light goes
so I can see when I press it
it's just getting Jack on the nose
rather than the eyes so I need to get
this light ever so slightly higher up,
so let's just raise this up a tiny little bit
and try that again
and there we go
with a little tiny adjustment I can get
that absolutely across his eyes,
right let's take a picture like this
see how it looks
but what I can't do really is take a meter reading
because when it's a tiny slot of light
if I get the meter even a little bit up and down
it's going to throw my meter reading out
so I'll use trial and error,
so the flash is set to a
quarter power, let's try this, see how it looks.
Okay Jack.
At a 1/4 power,
it looks alright but it is perhaps just a little
bit too bright,
so I'm going to bring it down by a stop
to 1/8th power.
Lets try that
and that looks pretty good,
so I'm happy with the exposure but am I
happy with the direction of the,
the slot of light?
Well we can actually change
that of course because I've got just
these bits stuck on the front of the
tube that's channeling the light,
so if I want to rotate them,
I just take them off
and stick them back on again.
So let's go for a vertical slot of light
rather than the horizontal slot of light
that should look different
but if I've moved it,
I need to check where the lights going to go,
so I'm going to come back to the
eVOLV 200 here and try and get it just
so that vertical slot is more or less on
Jack's eye.
Right let's try that, here we go
and in the vertical format,
that looks really good
but as photographers,
we often like diagonals
so what I'm going to settle on I think
is having these
in a diagonal setting
just to give a different look again.
Okay again I need
just need to check where that light goes
every time you move it is going to be
slightly different
perfect here we go.
So these look great
except the background is really, really
black which might be exactly what you
want but maybe I want to put
just a little bit of light back there?
So to add a bit more light,
I've got a second eVOLV 200,
I've got the barn doors on it
as well but let's just start by taking
a shot with the barn doors open
just so I get a wash of light
across the background
have a look at this,
here we go.
Now when I do that it kind of loses
a bit of the atmosphere
because it's much
brighter in the background
even though the eVOLV 200
is on its lowest possible power setting,
so here's what I'm going to do,
I'm going to get the eVOLV 200
and close down the barn doors
so we have just a small slot of light
from those as well so that should give
a little bit different light back there
with a little bit more control
over its spread,
here we go,
okay so this works really well,
we're going to take a few shots like this
and see what results we get
okay Jack are you ready?
Okay let's give you sunglasses,
something mean and moody.
So for the second setup
we've changed things around slightly,
Jack is now sat
on the floor
and I've changed to the shorter tube
which should give a slightly wider beam
now that's important because this time
we're going to try and
stretch out the length of the beam
by shining it down
and raking it across the wall
that should stretch the little thin stretch of light
out into a long stretch of light
however it needs very careful
accurate aiming which is why Sam's here
to help. Sam's going to be behind
the eVOLV 200, adjusting it and moving it
and getting it absolutely perfect
every single time.
Well maybe but we'll see,
okay so settings wise,
I'm going to do trial and error once again
so let's take a shot like this
and see how it looks with the
same settings that I had last time
I was shooting.
Right here we go Jack,
I need to come down to Jack's level
and we do a test shot
and as you can see,
we've set it up
and it looks pretty good
straight out of camera.
We have a nice
little thin beam of light
that's striking Jack straight in the face
so that looks really good,
so it's a really simple setup,
let's take some pictures
see how this looks.
For the last set up I'm going to use
just the snoot,
I'm still going to have a little
bits of tape to restrict the light down
but because it's the smallest and
closest to the light source,
it's going to give me the broadest light
with the softest edge,
now in this case what we're going to do
is use the smooth paper
background and just shine the light
across and onto Jack,
let's see how this looks.
So Jack you're going to go back
against the paper for me perfect
and look towards the light
but not at it
and that looks really good,
the paper,
although it's smooth,
when you shine a diagonal line across it
still brings up some texture.
Now what I'd like to do is add a bit of color
into this shot,
so the color,
I'm going to get from the second eVOLV 200
which I've got a blue gel on
now the blue gel,
I'm just going to bounce off the ceiling
and so it doesn't
actually hit Jack directly,
I'm going to use the barn doors
just to stop it coming
straight onto Jack
and casting a nasty shadow.
Now the idea with this is it
should just give a wash of blue light
which looks great
but what happens when
I turn on the snoot?
Well what should happen is I get a beam of light
that's brighter and it's almost like a knife
cutting through the blue
have a look at this,
here we go,
so that looks really good,
I like the color,
in fact I like the color so much I'm going to add
some more color to the shot
and in this case what I'm going to do,
is add in a red filter onto the snoot.
Now that should mean that
we have blue light in the background
and then a red beam coming through.
Now I've got to attach it using a bit of duct tape
and we'll just stick it on to the
front just like that but whenever you
had a gel to a light, you have to think
about the gel being like a pair of sunglasses,
it's going to reduce the
output of light a little bit,
so once again, I'll take a test picture
review and then adjust accordingly.
Here we go
and when I've adjusted the light,
the end result is really colourful
and very dramatic,
okay let's take a few shots
like this and see what results we get.
Jack are you ready?
Well I'm really pleased about how these
pictures came out but of course if this
is something you're going to do
regularly you need a more professional
result with a more predictable outcome
there's some great tools out there to
make that possible but considering this
was an old cardboard tube that I've
recycled, I think it worked well
in my small home studio.
Now if you've enjoyed
this video don't forget to leave me
a comment below and if you want to see
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.