Grids are incredibly powerful and in
this video I'm going to show you how
this simple tool can change your image
from this to this - quickly.
My name is Pye and I'm one of the
founders of Lin and Jersa Photography,
and SLRlounge.com
We're teaming up with Adorama to bring
you a new series of photography tutorials
called Master Your Craft right here on
Adorama TV.
So let's dive in - what's up?
Guys my name is Pye.
Welcome to another episode in this video,
well I want to show you guys just how
effective and how simple grids are when
it comes to completely transforming a
scene.
Before we jump in let me introduce you to
Gabrielle...
our lovely model she is dressed in a
wedding dress because we're doing a
little style shoot today, but you can use
this technique for anything.
Now grids essentially control light,
and one of my buddies Trevor Daley
actors said, a great way to kind of
understand how that works
is just put the grid right up to your
eye, and it kind of makes it so it limits
your field of view, right.
So it funnels the light forward, I like the analogy
that he used, so I'm copying it with
credit of course, but let's go ahead and
show you guys what this scene would look
like, first with just an ambient light
exposure, so what I'm gonna do is,
I am on the 5DIV, we're on the 24 Sigma Art,
and I'm not gonna fire off any flash,
or do anything yet, all I'm gonna do is just
take a little test shot here, and we're
gonna expose for skin tones which are
gonna be super, super pink.
Okay so Gabrielle, just go ahead and hold
that right there,
so at 1/200th of a second at 1.4 and ISO
800, we get this shot, you'll notice that I'm
framing Gabrielle right in front this little
star neon sign.
I think it looks cool, but with this exposure it doesn't
necessarily look that great, right.
It's too bright, so we lose a lot of kind of
the look and the ambience that we want -
I love that word ambience, do you like that
word? I like that word..
So what we're gonna do is,
cut down the ambient light, I'm
gonna go ahead and drop this to about
100 ISO, yep 1/200th of a second f/1.4
4 and 100 ISO, and Gabrielle go
ahead and just look up into the camera
right there, right there, perfect.
So for thinking about the camp framework,
I have my composition set up, I've dialled
in my ambient light, and now I clearly
need to modify,
right, because we don't have enough light
landing on a Gabrielle's face, so I have a
Profoto B10 and Carlo is gonna be so
kind, I would normally just leave the
stand up, but we're working on a
staircase, and there's nowhere to put the
stand, so what I want to do first is, just
to illustrate what happens without a
grid, Carlo go ahead and turn on the
modding light, and leave it at full power.
Is that full power, half, okay.
So I'm gonna take this shot right here without
the grid, and the exact same thing is
gonna happen whether using a the flash
or the internal modelling light, but what we
see is this light is spilling everywhere,
and if we compare it to the shot prior,
the ambient light is kind of killed, like
we've killed the natural look of the scene.
This is where grids are gonna come
into play, because they're gonna funnel
the light and make sure it doesn't hit
the walls and make sure it doesn't hit
any other areas of a scene that we want
to kind of have that natural ambience to.
So Carla we're gonna go ahead and
stick this grid on, let me just give them
a quick tell.
So grids are measured in degrees,
and this is a 20 degree grid.
Okay so you have tighter patterns which
are gonna beam the light in tighter, you
have wider patterns, this is kind of
somewhere in between, all right go ahead
and power that on now.
And now what you guys are gonna see is
that light is just funneled right to Gabrielle space...
So go ahead and lean the light in and
feather it just a tiny bit forward right there,
and now from here we're gonna take our
final image, well second to final image,
because I'm gonna show you guys another
little trick, now look at this shot
compared to the one prior, okay now all I
have to do is tell Carlo, let's get a
little bit more light on Gabrielle cuz
she's a tiny bit dark, and one of the
beauties you can do this with a flash,
you do this with any light that you want
but one of the beauties about the B10..
we're not using a lot of power right now,
in fact we're just using a modelling light,
and the nice thing is when we're working
indoors and in kind of darker scenes
like this, the modelling light is actually
quite powerful, and I can use that and
kind of get a
what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of
look - where I can just work with the
existing constant light, as opposed to
using flash, so I'm not gonna put the
remote on the camera, I'm just gonna use
the internal mocking light so let's go
ahead and bring that light in just a
little bit closer to our face, right,
there, perfect Gabrielle, right there I love
that, now look at the ambience in that
shot, we've retained that natural kind of
nice darkness to it.
Now I could leave this in with this
little rail that leads up and into
Gabrielle, and doesn't look bad, but this
is one of those scenes where I would
just much rather use my phone to catch a
nice little reflection and just bring
this right up to the lens, and all I'm
gonna do is kind of bend it so that we
can see the star-shaped pattern right
behind her, right about there,
I love that, look down to your left Gabrielle,
so that's it, I hope you guys enjoyed this
video and I hope you see the power of
grids and why you should always have
them in your lighting kit.
In the meanwhile be sure to
subscribe to the channel.
You guys can comment below,
you guys can follow Gabrielle -
we're gonna link her up and
I'll see you guys in the next video.