Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography, right here on Adorama TV,
I'm Mark Wallace hanging out
with Alejandra, you probably remember her
from our gobo video that we shot a
couple weeks ago in the studio.
Well we're outside today and I'm going
to show you a very easy way to balance
our ambient light with a studio strobe.
When you have a flash on your camera
you have two exposures,
one exposure is the ambient light,
that's the light that you
can't control, that's everything in the
sky the Sun and the clouds, and all of
that stuff, we can't control that light,
we have to make sure we set our camera
to make that properly exposed.
The second exposure we have at the
same time is our studio flash.
So I have a little flash right here behind
me, we can't control that light,
so what you need to do is
first set our exposure for the ambient
light, and then match that with our
studio strobe and everything will be all good.
So the first thing I'm going to do
is shoot a photo with no flash at all,
and so what I want to do is, we've got
all these these features, these clouds
and stuff in the sky, I want to make sure
I expose that, maybe a tiny bit
underexposed, so what I'm doing here is I
have my camera set to manual mode, now
this will work with any camera Sony,
Nikon, Canon, Fuji film, it doesn't matter,
this will work so set your camera in
manual mode.
I have my ISO as low as it
will go, ISO 100, and then I have my
camera set to my camera sync speed,
that's one 1/160th of a second for
my Leica M 10.
If you're not sure what sync speed is,
don't worry,
Gavin Hoey just made a really fantastic
video about sync speed.
I put a link to that video in the description of this
video, so you can check that out.
So ISO 100 sync speed now I need to figure out
my aperture value, to do that I'm just
going to look through my camera, use the
built-in meter, and then figure out what
it tells me the proper exposure is.
So I'm doing that right now,
making some adjustments,
and it is telling me I have
a proper exposure of f/4, so I'm going to
take a photo really fast, look right at
me Alejandra, perfect and well as
expected we have a lot of light coming
from behind, and so Alejandra is under
opposed, we expected that, so we need to
fill in that.
The underexposed parts with
a flash, that's what fill flash is called,
so I have a studio strobe right here
behind me, this is a Profoto B2, and what
I need to do now is meter this light so
that it matches the exposure that I
already have, which is f/4, so I happen to
have a light meter right here I'll turn
this on.
Luckily for us Alejandra is a
photographer as well, so she knows how to
use this meter, so I'm gonna give this to
you, and now I'll grab my little trigger
really fast, I'm gonna put that on my
camera, and I'll do that, it's metering at f/4.5.
I'll take the power down just a
hair, just like that, just a little bit
more, I want it to be about 4, ok now
we're at 4, we're metered at f/4 which is perfect.
Now if you'll notice, I have no
light modifier on my flash at all.
We're gonna start there, so you can hand me
that, now let's take a shot, and see how
this compares to the original shot that
we took, so again look right at my lens
here, beautiful, gorgeous,
just like that, turn it this way with your
eyes just toward me, there you go,
I love that,
awesome and now we can see that
Alejandra is popped off of the
background simply
by adding this flash.
Step 1 - Meter for the ambient light with
your camera.
Set all the settings correctly for that.
Step 2 - Meter the flash to match that setting
and then start shooting.
So now we're gonna take a few pictures
what I'm also going to do here is,
I'm gonna let the sun go down a little bit,
we're gonna add a softbox to this,
so we can soften up the light,
but the principles are always
the same.
Meter for the ambient light,
then meter your studio strobes so that
it matches, and take some photos,
one of the things that I noticed when I
was shooting is that, I had a very hard
light, and so we're getting some specular
highlights on Alejandra's face which
made her look shiny, even though she's
not, she's got great skin, her makeup is perfect.
So what I did is I changed and
added a Profoto, 2-foot octa box, that's
just gonna soften up the light, and makes
things less specular, and so that'll make
you not so shiny.
That's one of the tricks for any flash,
make the flash larger,
and you'll get less shy and less
specular highlights.
The other thing I did is,
I ditched my tripod because I
want to be able to move around and get
this entire scene,
and specifically I want to do that,
because I'm shooting
with a 35 mm lens, which it's not
usually a portrait lens, but I want to
get the background, and the scene,
and all of Alejandra, and it's just looks sort of cool.
So the first thing we need to do
because we switched our light modifier.
Is to meter, remember, I'm shooting still
at f/4 ISO 100, 160th of a second,
so let's meter this really fast Alejandra.
So we're looking at that, it
is metering at f/3.6,
so I'm just going to add a tiny bit of light
here, I've got a remote control on my
camera, this is a Profoto Air Remote,
and so I don't have to actually touch the
flash at all, we're now metering it f/4,
everything is set, and now I can sit back
here, make sure I'm all focused up and
what I want to do is, perfect,
I want to take one photo without,
and one photo with, so that pose right
there is the perfect pose.
So we're gonna do that without a flash, so this is
without a flash, beautiful, and then
here's one with a flash.
Same exact thing,
you can compare these two,
and you can see clearly that adding that
flash adds the punch that we need.
It's just perfect, easy, alright now, I'm going to do
something that's sort of counterintuitive,
I was shooting with a 35 mm lens,
I really like that, but I'm gonna go even
wider, so I just switched to a 28 mm lens,
which is something you would never use
with a portrait, we're gonna see how it
looks alright, let's just see what happens,
This is not something I would normally do,
totally counter intuitive, but it I think
it looks better, so let's keep shooting,
some of that.
In fact I'm gonna get close.
Well I think these photos look really
wonderful Alejandra, and it's very, very simple.
You have to just meet her for the
ambient light, and then adjust your flash
so that it matches, and then take shots.
The other thing that we have to remember
to do is, take some chances, so we took a
chance on a 35 mm lens, which is
a little bit wider than a normal
standard 50mm or 70mm or something like that,
but then we went the opposite direction
and used a 28 mm lens, and that
even worked, and so I really like how
this is set up, and how it works.
Try this at home, you can do this with a
speed-light, you can do this with a studio
strobe, you can do this with just about
any kind of camera that you have.
It just works, it's really simple,
and really fun.
Hey thanks for joining us.
Don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV.
It's free and also turn on the bell so you
get notifications, and please follow me on
instagram, I'm posting behind the scenes
photos and videos of all the photo
shoots and stuff that I'm doing.
Alejandra you can also follow her on
instagram - she is a photographer, and a
model, and so I've put links to both of
those Instagram accounts in the
description of this video..
so you can check out her stuff, she's a really,
really good photographer.
So make sure you check out her work, alright?
Thanks again for joining us,
and I will see you again next time!