Hey this is Daniel Norton, I'm here in my
studio in New York City with Marissa, and
it is not the same day that we just shot
the last video. You can see I have a
different shirt on!
So today we are going
to talk about using window light, but
actually not. So I have these beautiful
windows in the studio. I get asked a lot,
all the time, and sure you can just shoot
with the light in here. It's kind of nice,
whatever, but when you want actually use
the windows in the shot. Unless you're
there exactly at the right time of day.
The lights never where you want to be. So
what I often do is, I fake it! So you can see,
out here a Profoto B1X and what I've
done is, I've set it up at an angle,
similar to the angle of the Sun, and it's
kind of like going across the outside of
the building. This is going to give me
even consistent light, so I can then
shoot and every exposure is gonna be the
same. It's gonna give me what I want also,
because it's flash. I'm gonna be able to
shoot with the faster shutter speed and
all that. So let me show you, all right, so
I've got my Hasselblad here X1D,
90 mm lens. I've got the like I said
the Profoto light outside, but before I
use this light I'm going to shoot with
the available light in the space. So I'll
have you turn towards me Marisa
And we'll make a little shot, let's see what
it looks like. So this is at, just using the meter in the
camera. You could do that.. if you had to.
Perfect all right so there's Marissa being
all mystery and
I'm at 16th of a second, at f/4. She's
smelling her armpits. There we go
perfect, and that looks pretty good, right.
not bad. Nice even light, the windows a
little bit blown out behind her, but that
looks pretty good. Right that's not bad,
look at me more, and less armpit sniffing.
Yeah so I am totally cutting her arm off in a
a really funny way. But doesn't matter anyway as
we are going to add the flash. So you can
see. Windows are a little bit blown out,
she's evenly lit, it's not terrible but
it's okay right?
But when I add the flash, so I'm turning
this on. I've got it already set to f/4
using my light meter, but I'll take it
with me over here just in case it
doesn't look right,
and I'm gonna crank my shutter speed up
a bit, and the reason why I'm gonna do
this is, because I don't really want to
handhold at a 1/60th, and also the
windows are blown out. So I'm gonna go
to 1/250 at f/4, and we'll see what the
difference is. There now, we can see, we
have nice dramatic controlled light
across her face even. This front windows
a bit lower from the flash, but behind
her the windows now have detail, and I
can control the brightness of the
windows simply by adjusting my shutter
speed up and down, depending on how the
lights changing outside. I'll go like a, I'll go a
1/125 to show you guys the
difference, and the other thing I'm gonna
do is, we're gonna move. Yeah don't go
right against the wall, perfect, nice, cool.
Now we see again even light across her
face, the backgrounds got a little bit
brighter, everything looks really nice.
Quickly checked my exposure on her, and
if she ends up being too bright or too
dark, again I can adjust my flash. That's
where I like it. I'd like it to be a
little bit punchy. It's not all even and
flat like the natural light is, but again
if I want to adjust that part. I can
bring my exposure of my flash, I'll come
down. Let me lower the flash exposure by
a little bit, what's a half a stop. Just
see what the difference is, and see the beauty
of this is, once you get to this point
like let's say we like this. That's not
terrible right? That's not terrible, good,
always be positive with models. Not
terrible, not terrible, not the worst shot I've
ever made of Marissa. Close but not the
worst one. No but it's okay. Now we're here,
doesn't matter what happens outside.
There could be thunderstorms, it could
it could become night, whatever. We're
gonna be lit because all this is my
flash. Right so now we can shoot some
good pictures, consistently, she's not
pretend like there's something
interesting out there. What is that she's
on the the front of the Titanic or
whatever! Now the only thing is that will
be a giveaway to people if they're
watching this, and if they were to notice
is, that because it's actually bright
outside her, or her pupils, are you know
very small, and she's got a lot of blue
in her eyes. If this was actually
nighttime, that wouldn't be the case so
make sure you got a bright light out
here, some kind of light to brighten up.
Like use the modelling light, or whatever
but otherwise you could do this any time of day
or night. In fact sometimes I come here in
the middle of the night, and nobody ever
knows right. Got to shoot when you can
shoot, so nice and simple control,
consistency, everything was good. Yeah
beautiful, and the beauty of this is
because I really am using a window.. right..
if you look, if people start peeping at
the shots and try to figure out how I
did it, they'll see this is simply window
light. So right it's actually not a
softbox trying to look like a window it
is the windows. It's just the light
coming through it, if you can put your
light outside put a radio on it could be
a speed light. Could be a ProFoto. It
could be whatever you got right? You want
to basically use whatever flash you have,
set your exposure so that with the
shutter speed being faster. It's a little
bit over the ambient light. So you have
some control there, and shoot away and
you're good to go. So thanks for watching
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OnSet.