Hey this is Daniel Norton..
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Justin, and today I want to talk
a little bit about soft boxes,
which I've done some videos
on before, but the idea is the soft box
has the word soft in the title right?
But it doesn't necessarily mean the soft
box is soft right?
Because soft in lighting is... is
based on the size relative to your
subject. So a very small soft box like
this one, could in fact produce hard
light right? On a subject...
because if I'm shooting let's say
a 3/4 shot on Justin,
we can see that it's smaller
than that, and the more I back it up the
smaller it will be relative to him as well.
So this size box here a 1 x 1.3
might be soft, if I put it really close and just
photograph his head, because it's
roughly the same size, but not that I
measured your head, but yeah kind of, but
it's definitely smaller than his body.
So why would you even bother to use a
softbox, and if you want hard light well
there's more to a softbox than that right?
There's diffusion on the front the
way it spreads the light, the way it controls
light. So there's other reasons to use it
than just making a soft light so.. today I
thought we'd make hard light, with a
softbox right? So let's do it.
I'm just gonna make it to a single light
portrait, something really kind of casual
kind of indie musician right...
this is.. this is... if you are
indie musicians this is what you
want to do. This is the shot.
So I'm just gonna throw it on my
Prophoto here - I've got the gray
background, I have it
relatively close to it.
The reason for that is...
I want possibly some light
depending on my angle to hit the
background, or for it to go dark, we'll
kind of play around with it a little bit.
If I definitely wanted the background
go super dark every time, I'd give myself
more space, but like I said I want to mix
it up a little bit.
So again that's pretty good, I think,
to start with... might angle it down a
smidge, there we go.
Okay so, I've got my Canon here again
like we always do.
I'm going to turn the flash off,
and I'm gonna set a base exposure.
We're gonna go f/8, 250 100 ISO
I'm shooting with a relatively wide lens
I think you'll be able to see that
hopefully because, yep no light in the
shot so...
I'm going to give you my best Indie
Musician Pose... nice... perfect.
Here we go so let me turn
the light on, cuz this is the best post
coming out right.
Now I'm throwing TTL on..
I'm gonna turn off my C and my B heads..
which are active right now, anyways and
we're just gonna see it again.. alright.
So I'm going a little bit wide yeah, here we go,
alright, that felt very indie so all
right. So I got my sandbag in the
background which sometimes I don't care
about, but I feel like today that's not a
good thing, so I'll get rid of it.
I wasn't planning on showing the ground...
but I kind of like the...
when you're shooting
indie you always want to like have
the roll of paper on the ground and stuff.
you've know like part of it...
so like I said... it's very shadowy,
it's very punchy it's
a little overexposed which I'm not
surprised, so I'm going to switch to
manual now, and I'm gonna drop down half
a stop.
You could just mess around TTL
on exposure compensation, but since I'm
going to switch to manual eventually
anyways, I figure I'll just do it.
Here we go, yeah there we go,
now we've got this kind of moody light
now when you're working with this,
it's always a good idea to talk to
your subject and show them,
so he knows right?
If you turn it much further,
you're gonna go completely in shadow,
so he can mess around...
you can look towards the light for like
the inspirational songs.. yeah!
We can definitely play around with it, right?
Then get some different looks, you know
that's very, your hair is gigantic...
the hair is just like yeah...
I do not have that problem at least..
not where you do.
So yeah... it's like we can play around
with this get the different vibe going
on, you know, and again with,
and even with any kind of hard light
source right?
If we wanted our shadows to fill in a bit
you could use a fill card or something
on the shadows yeah..?
I'm just gonna bring this around a
little bit more yeah... he's working yeah?
and I could turn the modeling light on too
which helps, there we go..
We'll see what that looks like...
yeah there we go, that's I love how big and
distorted it looks, it's crazy.
I swear at one point my hair looked like
that, good, nice, couple more...
good, good, yeah, nice and simple creating
a kind of a hard-ish light.
We can see the shadows under his nose,
and under his lips especially,
you can see it's showing the detail.
Quick fall off... the hair is great though,
and you know honestly, close
to this wall like this, we don't need
another light source.
It actually works pretty well,
you could use the speed-light for this.
There's so many different
ways to do this kind of thing, but let's
do some of those.
I'm gonna back it up a bit...
backing up gonna make it even harder.
Yeah exactly, and I'm gonna make it even
punchier, come up like that. I... remember,
I switched it off a TTL..
so I'll put it back on.
Let's just see what we get here,
right that should give us... yeah.
Now the background is gray.
Good you know.. so work
towards a little bit like you're on
stage like you're like oh... I know...
towards the light. Yeah, yeah!
Like you're looking at, like yeah there we go...
Good, good, good...
do one shot like that...see what
that looks like.
See now we've got hardcore....
you know all how hard that light
is... in the end it's from a softbox, so you
can definitely produce that vibe if you
want. It feels very... it's kind of cool,
that was a good look, look, good like
yeah it's kind of grungy.
Yeah they make albums anymore?
Actually record still there..
makes them not... no.. yes do they still make
vinyl? Yeah exactly.
Exactly I'm looking somewhere else to
get inspiration for my, for my music.
So let's do...
we'll do one final thing,
because we made it really hard there.
Let me move in as close as I possibly can.
Let's make this thing...
Yeah cross your arms... it's definitely
a warning... crossing your arms just cuts
you off and looks so awkward. Well that's film...
hey you know..
well no it's true, unless you want to be
closed off right?
I mean maybe you want
to be closed off.
It actually creates tension and
makes you uncomfortable.
No... you want to
alleviate tension... all right, so the
lights above.
let's see what this looks like.
I think you ought to bring your
chin a smidge.. yeah.
Oh yeah, it's kind of like bad...
but good light, you know?
Yeah exactly, that's the vibe.
Like over here it's kind of artsy...
that's my mom.. that's what my mom says!
Yeah ... that's the shot... you
need a guitar, where's your guitar, you're
ok straight up with the chin...
yeah yeah, straight out...
just like your inspiration.
Yeah we'll see how that shapes you, and
he's got the inspiration, yeah exactly
and we can see here the lights a bit
softer, you know, but still kind of punchy
at heart, so I think hopefully we've
Illustrated right? We hope to illustrate,
hopefully we illustrate something when we
do these things.
It's hard to really say, but yeah...
I mean the point here is that
just because the word soft is in there.
It doesn't mean it's soft.. right?
Where the softbox gives you is
diffusion. Soft box give you the ability
to shape the light, and you know, some
accessories like grids and stuff.
But the size of the light relative to your
subject is what makes it hard or soft.
So you can get hard light with the softbox,
you can get soft light with the softbox.
You cannot get a soft light with a hard
box though that's a different video...
yeah
Because that thing is tiny...
yeah most people don't know where the
hard box is ....good idea...
we'll put a link to the hard box
and in the description
although I'll probably never use one in the
video but yeah hard box....
anyways I will put in the
description though a link to Justin so
you guys who follow.. yep guys be sure to
follow me @DanielNortonphotographer,
be sure to subscribe to AdoramaTV so you
see all these videos,
and I'll see you next time OnSet.