today i'm going to show you how to make
creative in-camera motion blur
using constant light studio strobes and
shutter drag
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hey everybody lindsay adler here and i
love
creative lighting in fact there's this
one technique
that i find particularly interesting
it's where the subject is frozen in
place
but parts of the frame blur and streak
and this is caused by using studio
strobes
constant light and a longer shutter
speed so that is exactly what i want to
show you how to do today because there
are a couple tricks
that you have to know in order to make
it work now by the way before i dive
into this i wanted to let you know that
i have a class
as well as a lighting guide dedicated to
creative studio lighting
that's the name of it and i show this
technique exactly how to do it the
camera settings the lighting position
all of that diagram and much more so you
definitely want to check that out you
can see it in the description below
and there are many dozens of different
setups
now i want to break down this setup and
in the end i'll be using
three strobes and one constant light but
you can achieve this effect by using
just a single strobe or a speed light
paired with any sort of constant light
and this could be a work light a light
bulb
an led light source you name it but i'm
going to build this in
one by one because you actually have a
lot of different considerations
considering your modifier and where the
light spreads and the
shutter speed and all of that so let's
start at the beginning with our main
light
now the main light that i have here is a
profoto strobe and on it is a white
beauty dish
think of your strobe the light that's
actually flashing as being what freezes
your subject in place
anything that that strobe hits is going
to be in focus and frozen
alright now in this case the beauty dish
you can see that it's lighting her head
to toe
i'm going to take a shot to show you
where we're beginning and then we're
going to continue to modify this setup
the beauty dish is lighting her head to
toe it's lighting the background and
overall i'd say that the lighting is
pretty bland and uninteresting
but i do know that whatever is lit by
that beauty dish is going to be frozen
in place
because of our flash duration it's very
quick and that's what freezes her
now how you introduce the motion blur
is that you are going to add some sort
of constant light now typically what i
would consider
is whatever you have lying around that
could be an
led light source it could be a lamp
and something i do very often is i take
another one of my strobes
i turn the strobe the flashing power off
and i just leave the modeling light on
because that's what i have around
now in this case what we're going to be
using is a nand light tube it's called a
pavo it's small
and what's great about it is you can
drastically vary the power output
and you can also change the hue to be
anything on the rgb spectrum so i can
get it to be exactly
exactly where i want it to be so i'm
going to turn that light on
and i know that any place that this
constant light hits
that's what's going to eventually have
the blur effect so i'm going to take the
same exact shot again
this time with our constant light on
okay so what difference do you see when
you compare these two shots
the one thing that you'll kind of notice
is there's a little bit of a blue
reflection on the right hand side
of her outfit but overall you
kind of don't see much else and so
why is that okay well when you are
working with constant lights
the way you control their brightness or
darkness
is by your shutter speed right now i'm
shooting at my camera's sync speed i'm
shooting
at 1 200th of a second and so that
constant light is actually showing up
quite dim
how i get it to show up is by using a
slower shutter speed
now when i talk about slower i'm talking
about much slower
i'm talking about one
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twentieth of a second a tenth of a
second an eighth of a second
so like one over eight really really
slow and that long
shutter speed is what allows the
constant light to show up
now you may be thinking wait wouldn't
the face be blurry then
because it's a long shutter speed we're
going to get to that
however the studio strobe it flashes so
that actually freezes her face in place
so let's try this again but i'm going to
go to an eighth of a second
taking a look at this next shot you
might think
that wait this isn't working
you can't really see the effect and i
just told you that that long shutter
speed is actually what makes the
constant light show
up problem is is we have a few constant
lights going around in this room
we have the constant light that's on me
that's recording and overpowering
this led light also that beauty dish
the beauty dish has a modeling light
that's what helps us see where we're
directing our strobe
well that is a constant light source and
so that's overpowering it and so what
you need to do is you need to eliminate
ambient light
so when we began this setup i made sure
that i put curtains over the windows we
turned off the overhead lights
but that's not enough so if you are
doing this effect you cannot shoot it in
a room
with big windows or overhead lights it
needs to be as dark as possible
because when you go with that long
shutter speed any constant light
is going to show up so there are a
couple things i am going to do
to improve this there's one other thing
the beauty dish
as i said anything it touches is going
to freeze in place
and in this case it's hitting head to
toe
and so i'm not giving enough area for
that constant light to
show up it's kind of overpowering the
entire scene so what i'm going to do is
i'm first going to put on
a grid on that beauty dish and see what
difference it makes
and then what we're going to do is try
to get rid of some of that that ambient
constant light
you can actually see with your naked eye
before you've even taken the picture
that beauty dish light is a lot more
concentrated now before it was hitting
head to toe and hitting the background
but now
it goes from the top of her head about
to the middle of her chest
and so i already know that i've
restricted the light that's going to be
freezing her
which gives a lot more room for that
constant light to show up so
let's take a picture again
all right so you do see a little bit of
a difference
but as i said the constant lights in
this room like that's the problem so
what i'm going to do is i'm going to
turn the light off on me as well as
turning the light off
on the modeling light of the beauty dish
so the beauty dish will still be
flashing
and then the only constant light is
going to be the nan light over here on
the right hand side
this is going to be a massive difference
and so this is how important it is to
control the ambient light in your space
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so what i'm going to be doing is i'm
going to be turning the light on me on
and off so as
i address camera you can see me but when
i'm shooting it's absolutely like it has
to be off
so now look at what we've done once i've
turned off the modeling light on the
beauty dish and turned off any of the
ambient light in the room
now you start to see that nan light that
blue light the constant light
showing up in the right hand side of the
frame
and one of the things that's really
helpful for this is when you're styling
your subject
you need something that reflects light
so you can see that it's reflecting
all over this beautiful suit something
with sequins
or silk or gems that's what you're
looking for but if you go with anything
that's like cotton or black or absorbent
this effect hardly shows up at all so
it'll be most dramatic if there's
anything that reflects light
so i love what it's looking like so far
and again to summarize what we have
going on
beautiful the grid the nan light on the
right hand side
so you can already see the effect if you
only have one strobe in one constant
light
but what helps make this even more
dramatic
is some sort of movement so i'm shooting
at 1
8 of a second and so i can during that
long shutter speed
maybe have my subject move or
i can move or i can zoom my camera
or i can zoom my camera and move and so
every one of these combinations
leads to a different result so let's try
this and i'm going to take a shot
where i take a picture and i zoom a
little bit and then right after i'm
going to take a picture
where as i do i move my camera left to
right
or in these shots now you see that
effect and you can see the light that's
reflecting off of her jacket and in her
suit and it's just making these
beautiful streaks of light
that's how you mix studio strobe
and constant light and shutter drag and
camera motion to make a really
interesting
in-camera motion blur i want to get a
cool shot i want to get a stylistic shot
for myself and so i'm going to make this
a little bit more complicated obviously
you can do it with one strobe and one
constant light but i'm going to add
two more profoto strobes into the mix
and each one has a 1 by 4 foot strip
soft box on them
with a grid and i'm going to add a teal
gel now what this will do is it'll
create beautiful rim lights on either
side of my subject
but when i turn them on you're not going
to be able to see that they're on
because i'm going to turn them on and
i'm going to turn the modeling lights
off because remember anytime there's a
constant light like a modeling light
that would show up and create motion
blur so i'm going to turn on both of
those strobes but then turn their
modeling lights off
so one final little piece of the
equation
is i'm messing with cool colors here
i've got the teals and i've got the blue
and so i'm going to push it even further
i'm going to purposely set my white
balance to tungsten so
everything goes really blue and the
point is is i'm pushing this
all into an analogous color scheme so
everything is cool blues and teals and
greens
by the way if you want to know more
about using gels and color theory
i have a class called the magic of gels
that goes into this all in depth helps
you decide what gels to choose
so i'm going to turn off my constant
light
switch over to a tungsten white balance
and now it is time to get
our shots
[Music]
change
these images have so much impact but in
order to achieve this
you need to understand how studio lights
and constant light and motion blur and
shutter drag how all of those things
work together and if you are interested
in these creative setups
well you'll definitely want to check out
my creative studio lighting guide and
videos
because i have many more setups just
like this with this sort of in-camera
creativity
uh broken down step by step now if you
want to see the gear used in the making
of this image in this video
be sure to check out the links in the
description below and visit adorama.com
and of course
if you like this content and you want to
learn more about techniques just like
this
be sure to like and subscribe because i
have so many more videos like this
coming your way
see you next time