Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama.
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photographers like you and me.
This is Nadia, she's my
spectacular model today and we're here
on this really crazy set.
This reminds me of one of my favorite light
modifiers, it's this, the grid!
We're going to be doing three different
lighting setups using this big grid and
also, my new favorite toy!
This is an OCF ProFoto Grid Kit.
So I've got a 10, 20
and 30 degree grid that I can put on
my B2 Head.
I'm going to show you,
basically, what different degrees of
grids do to control light spread.
Once we have that under our belt
we're going to go on
to something that's a little bit
moodier and more interesting.
Then we're going to finish by going to one of
my favorite go-to lighting setups.
So.. let's get started right now.
Well in this first lighting setup
we're going to start
playing with these different grid sizes.
We've got a 30, 20 and a 10 but before
we even do that, I want to take a picture
with the bare head, so no grid at all.
What you'll see is that everything is
just illuminated, we have flat light.
The key to this lighting setup before we
do anything, is to make sure that the
head of your Flash is in line with the
model and low enough that we don't have
a big shadow underneath her chin and we
don't have any big shadows.
So when this is lined up exactly
in line with your
model the shadow is essentially going to
disappear because the model is hiding it.
Now to see that, what I'll do is
I'll put my camera out here. So this is
where the camera is going to be, right
underneath the flash.
So if it's off
position you're going to have really
nasty shadows.
So make sure everything is
lined up exactly.
So knowing that, we're
going to start with the bare head.
We'll show you that and then we're going to
start playing with these grids to show
you what they'll do.
Well now that we know what this looks
like without a grid, we're going to add a
30, a 20 and a 10 degree grid.
Here's a tip though,
if you're doing this in the
studio for the first time and you're
using a 10 degree grid, sometimes
your light meter is saying,
"Hey I don't see any light."
So if your metering
away, we'll take this guy and let's
say we're trying to get a meter reading
and all you're getting is nothing well
that grid is probably so small that your
meter can't see the light.
But have no fear,
there's an easy way to do this.
All you have to do is just take your
grid off of your Flash.
Meter your light.
Get your reading.
Put the grid back on
and you should be just fine.
So now that we know that,
we're going to start with
our 30 degree, go to our 20 and our 10
and we can see how that light
shrinks and we get some really distinct
looks.
Well that first lighting setup was pretty
fun, and it helped us understand the
different degrees of those grids and how
the light spill changed.
But we can admit it wasn't
the most exciting lighting
setup that we've ever done. So what
we're going to do now is, we have a 10
degree grid, we've closed these red
curtains, Nadia has changed her wardrobe
and so now we're going to get some
really evocative shots.
I've already metered it so
that's all set up and done, but what
we're going to do is,
we have this light that's right
up here.
It's focused right on Nadia's face.
What I'll be doing is, I will
be moving around like this.
That is going to change the
shadows on Nadia and
the background.
So instead of moving the light
around to change the shadows
I'll be moving the camera.
We're going to get some really awesome stuff.
So let's start right now.
Now we're going to do one of my favorite
two light setups.
It's very easy to set this up and
it looks great. The key to
this is this beauty dish right here.
It has a grid on it.
That's going to make
sure that the light falls on Nadia but
nowhere else.
It's going to control our light.
But if we only rely on this light
right here, because of the inverse-square
law, the light is going to fall off so
rapidly that the background here is just
going to be a dark gray, and I don't
really want that for this shot, because
Nadia has really dark hair. We need to
separate that from the background.
What I'm going to do here is add this
Profoto B2 head with a 20 degree grid
and that is going to cast light right in
the center of this background but not
everywhere. It's going to give us a nice
vignette. In fact, if I turn on the
modeling light here, you can see exactly
what's happening. We have light in the
center but not on the edges and that is
exactly what I want.
So we've already metered this.
It meters f9.
We're going to start shooting and
I'll show you what we get.
You can see that grids are tons of fun.
We were able to do three pretty cool
lighting setups today and a neat thing
about grids is you can get them for
speedlights, you can get them for studio
strobes, and get them for softboxes, beauty
dishes, you name it, you can get a grid
for it.
In fact, we've added a link in the
description of this video. So you can
click on that, go to Adorama and look at
some of the different grids and the
options that are available for you.
Thank you Nadia for being a fantastic
model today.
Thank you for joining us.
Don't forget to subscribe. Click on the
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check out the Adorama Learning Center,
there are tons of articles that can help
you with studio lighting in all kinds of
photography so check that out, it's
absolutely free.
Thanks again for joining us and
I will see you again next time.