In this video,
I'll show you how to use egg crate grids
and soft boxes to create an amazing
background in your small home studio.
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 show you how to create
an amazing studio background
in the smallest of small home studios
because the background for this shoot
it's actually going to be one or two
of these soft boxes combined
with one or two of these egg crate grids,
so let's get the light set,
let's get a model in,
let's get shooting.
So to help me out today I've got the
amazing Meg.
Meg is going to be the model
for this shoot, and I've already got a
softbox set with the grid in place
behind it is an Explorer 400 light.
I'm going to rotate it around, so I've got it in
landscape format, and then to pop it in
behind Meg something like that.
Now what I'm going to ask Meg to do is
just turn, and put her shoulder against the far
edge of the grid.
Now, first thing I need
to do is work out the exposure.
So I could do that by trial and error, or I
could get my flash meter.
I'm aiming for an aperture of a
roundabout f/8 middle
of the road,
that should do great, let's see what we
get, I'm always going to point the little
white dome of my flash meter, at the
light source, and at the moment I'm on f/9,
so I'm pretty close, and bring it down
one third of a stop, and get to f/8 okay?
So that's correctly set, let's see how
this looks with just one of these soft
boxes. So the first thing I could do is
come around the front, and if I take a
picture from the front, well, it sort of
works, and sort of doesn't.
Now photographing from directly in front
gives a look that's okay, but not quite.
what I'm after. I can see too much of the
white of the softbox and the light isn't
quite right on Meg's face, so my solution
for this is really simple. I'm just going
to walk myself around, and take a much
more angled approach to this.
It should mean that the grid is less white
from my point of view, and from Meg's point of
view. I should get much better light on
her face, let's try that.
Get your head right up against it,
so now I've added in the second softbox
and grid, and I've put them both together,
so there's no real gap between the two,
and this is going to make the background
for this shot.
Now at the moment they're
fairly flat, there was a bit of an angle
between them, but there's not a lot of
angle, not much v-shape with the soft
boxes.
I've already metered this out for f/8 for
the other softbox.
Let's take a picture like this and see how it looks.
Now when I do that, there is a slight
problem here, the softbox is although the
correct exposure just don't look right.
There's way too much white coming through, and
Meg is almost a silhouette as a result.
Now the solution might be exactly what I
did with a single softbox.
It might well be come here, and shoot
down the side this way.
This can work quite nicely.
So that works better but
that background... I can still see just a
little bit too much of the softbox for
my personal taste, and it's all down to
angles. Is the angle of these two soft
boxes, so what I'm going to do is tighten
up the angle, and see how that affects
the shot. So with the softbox's pushed
closer together, the angle is different,
but is that going to affect the amount
of light that reaches Meg.
Let's just take a flash meter reading here.
No... f/8 that's still the same. On the back
that's slightly brighter, I'm just going
to take that down in one third of a stop.
Okay so, I got back to f/8 on both sides.
Now I could just photograph from this
same position here. Let's see how that
looks. Here we go, and when I do that the
end result is well pretty much exactly
the same as it was before. Which makes
sense because the background is still
facing directly to me. So why did I push
them closer together. Well it's for one
reason only... is so I can come and stand
in the center. Now when I stand here and
I look at Meg, I can just about see a
little bit of the white of the softbox,
but for me standing here it's mostly grid
I can see, and that's what I want.
So these look really good, I love the way
that background is looking now, but there
are a couple of things we can do to make
this even more interesting. One of them
is props, and we'll get to that in a
little bit. The other one is white
balance. Now I'm shooting with flash
white balance at the moment, but if I
dive into my menu.
I can choose a custom
white balance of say 4000 K. If you don't
have that facility, use the incandescent
or tungsten setting, and that should give
everything quite a bluish tone, which I think
with Meg's look, and this setup, should
work really well. Let's have a little
look, and that looks really good, and adds
the finishing touch to this setup.
So all we need to do now, is t
ake some great photographs.
So Meg here's a pair of
sunglasses for you, let's take some shots,
so there you go.
The results I got from these three foot by
two foot rectangular soft boxes was
excellent, but of course
you don't have to use these, I could have
used bigger soft boxes that might have
been useful.
I could use smaller ones,
octa boxes... whatever you've got, could be
used to create similar results.
The key is to try and see what you can do
Now if you are in the market for a new soft box,
always make sure that there is the
option of a grid, because they are super
useful things.
Now if you've enjoyed this video, don't
forget to leave me a comment below.
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I'm Gavin Hoey.
Thanks for watching.