Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
Adorama TV.
I am Mark Wallace, and I'm joined by a
wonderful model.
This is Juana Espínolaa and she is going
to help me show you how we
can create some really nice soft
beautiful light with speedlights, and so
what we're using is we're just gonna use
three speedlights, these are godox
Tt685 R's which means that we could use
TTL metering so the camera could figure
out the exposure, but we're gonna use
manual mode the R means that these are
radio triggered, so that is really
awesome, because we can shoot through
walls and all kinds of stuff.
So now what we want to do in this
situation, the challenge here is to create a
lighting setup that will work just about anywhere.
So this studio is very small,
it's very white, light's gonna be bouncing all over
the place, that might be your basement,
your garage, or wherever you're shooting,
and that's okay, you can still shape
light, and you can still shape light
using speed lights, and that's what we're
going to do. ok, listo.
Okay so, so I am just going to zip back,
so the first thing I'm gonna do is set up a
key light.
We're gonna do a key light, a kicker and
a hair light.
So our key light is going
to be this first speed light, I'm gonna
throw that on my my little umbrella
adapter, and then I'm going to use a nice
white shoot through umbrella.
Now if you've never used shoot through
umbrellas before, make sure you watch
Gavin Hoey video on using shoot through
umbrellas. It's very, very, awesome, the
reason I love these is because you can
get really nice soft light, and you can
get the modifier very close to your
subject, and sort of surround them with
light that's going to be very, very, soft
and very forgiving, and in a small space
like this you don't have to worry about
having extra space for a normal umbrella.
So now we're going to zip back here,
and I need to make sure I set the key light
so just gonna put this guy on here,
now most umbrella adapters like this have an
angle and so they'll be either be up or
down, and so you need to pay attention to
that so that you're not mounting the
umbrella the wrong way.
So I already figured out which angle this is,
so when this goes in, you'll notice that this
shaft and this light meet, so you'll know
if it's wrong, if the angle is off where
the light is shooting at the wrong part
of the umbrella.
So I want to put this in about right here,
the thing that I did with my flash is, I set
the zoom manually so the manual zoom
I've set it to 28mm, that means
that this light is going to really go
out wide to eliminate all of this,
because I want a really nice soft light.
So then I'm just going to sort of
position this to the side, so our video
cameras going to go where our normal
camera will be, and so I'll show you sort
of the position we want this to be, off
to the side about like this, so it's
going to be 45 degrees-ish like that, the
height is going to be just a little bit
above eye level, but it doesn't really
matter because this is such a big soft light.
Light is just spilling everywhere,
but that doesn't mean we can't shape the
light, we've got a bunch of tools that
we're going to show you how we can sort
of restrict and add and subtract light
in creative ways.
The first thing we need to do is meter our
light so I'm going to grab my light meter,
here and then we're gonna make sure we
meter this, so I'm going to turn this on,
then I'm going to use my transmitter here,
and I'll meter this to that light,
just to get a nice reading,
and when I trigger that, that meters right at
f/3.2, so I need to take a
test shot so I'm going to go here grab
my camera, and let's take a shot, so this
is set to f/3.2, I'll set my camera to f/3.2,
there we go, ojos aqui. Perfecto.
Okay we look at this and
well it's nice soft light, but it's, it's
really not exciting, this is something
that we need to fix, we need to be able
to shape our light, and add and subtract
some things to make sure that we have
beautiful light not just blah, soft light.
So let's start doing that right now,
our key light is all set up, but you can
agree with me that it is drab.
We need to add some light shaping and
we're gonna do that with this attachment right here.
This is a Bowens attachment for a speed
light, it allows us to use all the Bowens
reflectors and grids and things on a
speed light, it's a really groovy tool.
So the first thing we need is a reflector,
and so I happen to have one right here.
This is gonna reflect all of the light
forward, it's gonna make it a little bit
punchier, and so that just snaps right
onto the front just like that, but
there's too much light flying everywhere.
We need a grid, and so this grid is going
to help us restrict the light.
You can see that that shows,
or hides light based on an angle, so this is
going to make sure we have light going
forward but not bouncing everywhere into
the studio.
So that just sort of pops right onto the
front of that, now the other thing that
we have here is, a place to attach a
speed light.
If you look really closely, you can see that
this is vertical instead of horizontal.
Now why is that, well now that I have my
speed light here, you can see that this
horizontal light throws light horizontally,
but we don't want that,
we want light to illuminate Juana's cheek,
that is vertical so we need
to mount this vertically.
Now I did a total video on horizontal and vertical
and light shaping with speed lights.
I put a link in the description of this
video about that.
It's really, it's sort of an important concept
to understand when you're working with
speed lights.
If you need to mount them vertically or
horizontally, and where you zoom them
based on what you're putting around them.
So make sure you check out that video
again, it's in the description of this video.
So we're gonna put this vertically,
just sort of pops in there,
screws right in.
To really understand that in this lighting
setup, we're gonna walk back here.
So I'm gonna put this where it's gonna go,
so I'm gonna put this about right here.
Something like this, and then this light,
it's vertical, we wanted to illuminate
vertically on her cheek and her shoulder,
and a little bit of her hair.
We don't want this to go horizontally,
because then we miss out on a lot of stuff.
So a vertical light that's very restricted.
Okay now, we're ready to move on to our
next light modifier.
We have our key light all set up,
we have our nice kicker light,
but we need to really separate
Juana's hair from the background.
So I'm going to do that using this, this is a
snoot - you can see that that is taking all the
light from our little speed light right
here, and it is restricting it, so it just
comes out of this little small circle in
the front, but to even restrict the light
more, I have a grid on there, you can see
sort of this grid right here.
So that's really really being restrictive, so the
way to do that is, I'm going to get this
boom right here, I'm going to mount this
on the boom, and then we're gonna go
right back here, so we're going to zip on
back here, and you can see that all I
need to do here is - to put this light or
to put this, yeah, put this light just
above, because we don't want it in the shot.
Know I am going to have to make sure I position
it, so that this is just projecting light,
right here on her head.
Nowhere else, not the shoulders,
not the face, just right here.
That's why we've restricted everything
using the snoot and the grid.
So I'm gonna fine-tune this, and then
we'll show you exactly how it looks.
All of our lights are set up, but we still
have a little bit of a problem here.
Let me show you exactly what it is, so it's
gonna take a really fast test shot.
This looks great, just like that, well
it's a good shot, but we have way too
much light bouncing around.
We need to fix that some way, we can do
that using reflectors and subtraction panels.
So a subtraction panel, so what we have
right here, so Fabian just bring that out
really fast, it's just a big panel that
has the black painted on it, that's gonna
keep light from spilling everywhere, and
to add some fill on this side, we're
gonna bring this in, so we want to make
sure those are set exactly where we want
them to, and then I'll walk you through
the entire setup.
So you can see exactly how this works,
let me just say a quick thing about how I'm
triggering the lights.
I am using this Godox remote control,
it's very basic, I have three groups.
So I can control the key light,
the kicker light's all independent of
each other, so I'm using groups A, B and C
on my remote control here, and I'm using
radio triggering, so I don't have any issues
with things blocking our lights.
Well now that you know that,
I'm going to put this on my camera,
and then let's just walk
through this lighting setup, and so I can
show you each light individually,
so you understand exactly what's going on.
Let's begin by talking about this light right
here - it's got one very special thing to
do, and that is our kicker light, we want
to add some light to Juana's cheek - to do
that I've added this grid, it's about a
twenty degree grid, and that really
restricts the light.
So it's not flying everywhere,
and so that's just gonna add
some highlights on Juana's cheek, and her
shoulder, and nothing else, it's exactly
what we want.
The other thing we want to
do is, we want to add some light to her
hair, we're going to do that with this snoot.
This snoots gonna restrict the
light, but even more we have a grid on
the end of that, and that makes sure that
the light is going to be right here on
her hair, and it's just gonna highlight that.
So we have nice soft light on her
cheek, and just a little bit of light on
her hair, that's gonna highlight her
because it's opposite our key light, so
let's talk about this key light here.
The key light is just a big soft umbrella,
you can see it's right here, we're using
a shoot through umbrella because
you want to bring this really close to
get really nice soft light, and we want
to have this fill in on the same side as
our highlight.
So that is going to work really, really nice,
but we have a problem with this big light,
and that is that, this studio is really white,
it's got white walls, white floors, white ceiling,
so light is flying everywhere, we need to
control that, so that's what this is
right here.
This is a subtraction panel,
it's painted black, and so what it'll do
is - this light is going to hit that, it's
going to keep it from falling on the
background.
This panel is also doing double duty
because we have this light back here, our
kicker, bringing light in,
we don't want that light to fall on our
camera, taking the picture, and it causing
lens flare.
So this is going to block that, from hitting
our camera, the other thing we need to do
is - because we have so much light
coming on this side, this side of Juana's
face is going to fall into shadow,
unless we have some light bouncing back in.
That's why we have this panel right here.
Well now that we know all about our
lighting setup, let's get to it and start
shooting, we're gonna do that right now.
That's all there is to it, a very simple
three light setup that you can do in any
small studio with speedlights.
The key is adding grids and controlling all of
that light.
Well thanks so much Juana for being here.
You can follow Juana on Instagram, I
have linked to her Instagram account in
the description of this video.
So make sure you check that out.
Make sure you follow me on Instagram.
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Thanks so much and I'll see you again next time.