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so I get a lot of questions about some of the specialist lights that I use in
my studio lights to create certain emotion certain effects because a lot of
people are familiar with softboxes and standard sort of honeycomb grids but
they're not necessarily familiar with those more specialist lamps that studio
photographers use so I thought I'd give you a run-through of some of the the
main kit I use and the slight differences between them so we have
three lamps here at the moment that we call fran Elle's okay that's the type of
glass modifier that you have in the front it's basically the same type of
fran L that you have in a lighthouse that creates a very strong beam narrow
beam and can cast it a long way a concentrated beam and it has a lovely
fall off at the edge of that beam so as you can see here these three free nails
are in different sizes we have a larger one a medium sized one and a small one
there but let me explain a little bit of difference about that because we're
going to go and move on to something very important afterwards and that's to
do with projection attachments this is a projection attachment on here and this
is also a projection attachment which actually is what we use mostly for this
particular light the pole so spot four which is what makes that light
particularly special we'll come back to that in a minute let's first of all talk
about four nails so as I said four nails are like a lighthouse beam the type of
glass that you have in a light lighthouse let's have a look what it
does if we look over there and I just turn this around and if you take a look
at the light on the wall you can see we have a lovely spot of light but a
beautiful gradient fall-off in the way that light tapers away really nicely but
you have the added advantage of being able to zoom the light so you can make
it tighter spot or you can make the light spread out more softly from less
of a spot so from flood to spot okay so that's the bran color
flutter and that simply works by putting a standard lamp head into the light so
this is just a normal lamp head and turn them on Ling light off a minute normal
lamp head and you see it's got a frosted dome and the frosted dome is because we
need to create a point light source for for nails to work better so we put the
frosted dome on the lamp head and then that pops into there and there you can
see with the modeling light the type of effect that we get with the large for an
elf looter that's my favorite for a nail light I use that a lot for creating
beautiful background glows for spotlighting key particular things
creating high contrast lighting or sort of sunlight look from time to time as
well now this is just a smaller version for nail this for now as a friend L is
not as good as the flute er but then this pole so spot for isn't really in my
opinion used as a foreigner light it comes in the form at and you have the
ability to also zoom flood and create a spot but as I said the main purpose of
this light is to actually use it in my opinion with the projection attachment
which we'll come to shortly this one is a Pico light and a Pico light is just a
normal small lamp head so it's still just a studio light but it's just a
compact one commonly used by product photographers because it's nice to small
you can fit it into small spaces so I use that a lot for product photography
this is also a Pico light it's exactly the same but it just has a different
attachment on the end so that lamp there is the same as that lamp you can see
it's got a frosted front face here and that's again simply to create more of a
point light source which works better for free nails and for projection
attachment so that's an a projection attachment that I'm just popping on the
front of that one and then this is a friend Elle attaque
which we're popping so you can see the fernell lens and there's the way we zoom
and focus it so let's take a quick look at that so I'll pop the for nelle
attachment back on there that clips on and you can see it's much weaker on this
one because the modeling lamps not quite so strong I'll shine it on this wall but
there you can see the flood and to spot flood and to spot so nice little usable
small Finnell on that one if you need it medium-sized for now but that flutter is
the best for a nil of all of them anyway that wasn't really going to be my main
discussion here I wanted to discuss projection attachments because this is
one of the things I get asked questions about most often so let's take a look at
this light shining on the floor I'm just going to turn the modeling lamp back on
and if I bring that light and you can see there's a circle of light but the
beauty with this is I can bring in the gobos within that's these basically
these aperture blades that I can control here and I can bring them in to create
any shape I like when I say any shape I like I'm limited obviously to using four
sides so I can kind of make a triangle if I want to or odd shaped rectangles
and things like that little squares but you can see how precise I can make tiny
tiny little patches of light and then what I can do is I can defo 'kiss that
light so I can create a an out-of-focus patch of light as well and I use this
very commonly for lighting products edges of products catch lights little
details and also for highlighting labels on products and then using the D
focusing option to create this beautiful soft but small control patch of light
and you may have seen that in in some of our previous videos now the limitations
of the pico light with the projection attachment are that it is a smaller lamp
head it's not as powerful and therefore it's
more difficult to use this type of projection attachment on a larger area
or larger set that's where the pole so for this pole so swat4 sorry
comes in really really useful so let's take a look at that one okay so let's
take a look at this beast I'm just going to turn the modeling lamp off a moment
now this is a little bit different to the others because the other ones I
showed you are lamp heads and then you put the
accessory on the lamp head or you put the lamp head in the accessory this unit
is the lamp head the accessory if you like is all inside so that the actual
flashlights and the the modeling light are all contained within the unit so
it's a lamp head in itself let's just lower this down to a more usable height
now if we take the front for an L off so if we take the front for an L off
there's the Fornell glass as you can see let's pop that down carefully let's take
a look at what we've got inside I'll bring the lamp forwards
now this one's very interesting because here you can see we have a different
type of flash tube as a matter of fact I'm going to try and take that out I'm
just going to turn the unit off before I do there now if we take a look at that
that's a very unusual shaped flash tube and the reason that braun color have
done that is to create a flash tube that is more of a point light source because
remember as i said before with four nails and projection attachments for
them to work more efficiently and effectively it's better if the light
comes from a point light source rather than a circular doughnut shape light
source which is often the case with standard lamp heads which is why a
frosted dome goes over the lamp head in the flutter but in the case of the pulse
so for because one of its main purposes as a projection light source they use
this specialist flash tube that you can see here that's kind of like a spiral to
condense the flash tube part to a smaller light source then inside here we
can also still see the standard oops let me turn that back on we can also still
see the standard modeling lamp there you've got very bright and then you can
see a concave mirror at the back which is used to reflect that light back again
I'm just going to turn that off again for safety while I pop this flash tube
back in there we go that's the flash tube back in now let's take a look at
this other important accessory so here we have a lens mechanism and another
lens which is basically a projection attachment allows us to project light
and create sharp focus light let's take this apart and have a look inside and
undo this right so there we go you can see the outer part which has got the
focusable lens element there and then the inner part here and the important
thing to point out is this part here these parts here are to hold various
gobos that you want to insert inside the projection attachment for different
effects and you've basically got choices of different styles and different types
of gobos that you can insert to create different patterns so if you wanted to
create a sort of venetian blind pattern in your shot then you could insert this
gobo into the accessory in here and then you would be able to project that attach
that pattern onto the wall so let's take a look at how that works and see what
we've got there so option one is I've inserted a few of the
Gobbo blades in position and let's shine this down floor modeling right on full
power now if I focus the lens you'll see that we've created a sharp line and you
can see I've also got the same ability as I had with the projection attachment
on the Pico light to create small patches of light either sharp or in
focus here in this shot I used the aperture blades on the projection
attachment to create the shape of light coming through a door or a window and
Eydie focused it slightly to soften the edges on this shot I used a simple
opening of the aperture blades to create the look of sunlight coming through the
gap in curtains here in this shot by ORS wrecker from braun color
he used the entire circle of the projection attachment on the pole so
spot for to create this dramatic falling shot here is another example from braun
colors ORS wrecker of the gobos being used to create patterns of light and
another shot by ORS wrecker in the same context in these shots on braun colors
blog Michael Phillip Bader has used the pole so spot for to create a conical
beam of light in colored gels with fog but the other great one is to actually
use predetermined gobos that have cutout masks if you like in them and one that I
use is this one to create a sort of dappled sunlight look so we'll take a
look at this one next in the pole so for
now as well as the ability to include these gobo masks of different shapes and
different effects you can also insert smaller
cause if you want to create just tiny smaller circle patches of light as well
right let's take a look at this one
and let's pop the modeling light back on and there you can see on the floor very
clearly the shape of the gobo mask that was in sight now that may look a little
bit unusable in its current form but this is one that I actually use quite a
bit and the reason is is that I can create that look of dappled sunlight
coming through trees or just patches of sunlight and I do that by simply D
focusing the gobo so changing the focus on the projection attachment at the end
allows me to create that sort of look of light falling through trees which can be
great for lighting models for lighting various product sets and we recently
actually used this on a food photography shoot to create patches of light and
then obviously that is going to be replicated when the flash is fired and
in fact it will be replicated even better with the flash than it is
currently because at the moment we're seeing the modeling lamp and the
modeling lamp is tucked behind the flash tube let's take a look at a different
gobo to give you another example
and turn the modeling lamp on and there you can see we have a sharp image of
what could be venetian blinds or stripes of light coming through a window and if
you want to rotate the gobo you don't need to rotate the gobo inside just
simply loosen off the front screws on the pole so and then you can rotate the
whole front projection attachment to suit and then as I mentioned before you
can also be focus the lens so that you can create a softer out-of-focus version
of the projection that you're trying to depict now the beauty as well with these
is that you can go down to your local metal shop and you can ask them to
create templates specifically cut for you sign companies or another good
example ones that use laser cutters and you can give them a sketch and say for
instance you want to project the impression of a french window or a
doorway or a particular style of window with certain window shapes and certain
lines or any particular silhouette or sorry cut out shape that you'd like to
create you can sketch that out take that down to your local metal workshop or a
laser cutting shop such as a sign company and ask them to make specific
gobos for you to create your own customized shapes
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