Focus On Lighting Photos Focus on the Fundamentals.pdf

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Many photographers use these “samples” as working filters on small lights, never buying the larger gels at all! Roscoe has wised up to the fact that they were giving away free usable merchandise and started selling the Strobist sample pack. It only contains a few colors, including translucent white, but it includes the colors most photographers are likely to use. Is this an improvement, to be able to buy something we used to get for free? Absolutely! Now everyone, not just the big spenders, can have a sample pack for a very affordable price. By the time you read this, we hope other makers beside Roscoe see the wisdom of selling their gels this way. Unlike standard sample packs, the Strobist pack (and presumably some future non-Roscoe products) also includes multiple copies of each of the colors photographers are most likely to use, so that we can put the same gel on multiple flashes or replace a dirty one on a single flash. The only trouble is that these fit only small flashes; still, they allow us to see how each gel works and we can always buy bigger sheets and often big rolls of the single colors we find most useful. Roscolux colored gels. Handy for changing or intensifying the color of backgrounds or subjects in a photo. Tools: Now We Have Light, but How Do We Get It under Control? 43
For this book, the translucent white filter is the one we’ll probably discuss the most, but having some neutral density filters on hand is also a good idea. They come in a variety of densities. They are useful when one of your lights is too strong and you either can’t or don’t want to move it farther away. The joy of these filters is that their impact on the color is minimal. For many of the images in this book, the popup flash was too strong, so we put a neutral density filter in front of it. If we’ve only got the weakest density of this filter, we can always fold it up as many times as our piece will allow and still cover the flash, until we get the amount of light we want. So now we have some sort of diffusion material. How do we put it in front of the light? Obviously we can just tape it to the light, but that’s often not good enough: we still have just a small flash and the whole point is to get a bigger light. We need to get the diffusion a significant distance out in front of the flash so that the bigger diffusion material becomes the effective light source. If we have a big enough piece of diffusion material, we can 44 <strong>Focus</strong> <strong>On</strong> <strong>Lighting</strong> <strong>Photos</strong> Become a stroBist Speaking of Strobist, that’s David Hobby’s brand name for his philosophy of lighting, and anyone reading this book should look up Strobist online. Using a combination of a free website, personal seminars for a fee, and a video series for people who cannot attend the seminars, David may be the most influential lighting teacher in the world. Some people learn better from books, some online, and some in classrooms, but most people learn better with all of these. David has promised not to write a book, so he doesn’t compete with us, and we are happy to recommend him! tape it to a doorway and put the light outside the room. We can also tape it to a window and let the sun be our main light. Both of these are good ideas, and if you are a hobbyist, you should certainly try them; they may be all you ever need. So how do we hold the diffusion material a few inches or a few feet away from the light? That depends on whether we have more friends or more money. We can simply ask a friend to hold there’s tape and then there’s gaffer tape Duct tape, available from hardware stores, is strong and will hold a diffuser in place for years. However, we want to take that diffuser down after a shoot, and duct tape often damages the surface. Masking tape, with a weaker hold, is much less likely to damage. Gaffer tape offers good hold with much less possibility of damage and is available from good photographic suppliers. Gaffer tapes differ. If you don’t like the first one you buy, try another brand. We have attached things to historically important walls while curators gasped in horror and then removed the tape without damage. Gaffer tape is more expensive than other tapes, so keep duct tape and masking tape in your kit, and use those when it’s safe to do so. the diffusion material a distance from the light, or we can buy other equipment to hold the diffuser. (All too often, people with more money also have more friends, but that’s a social issue we’ll avoid in a technical book!)
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Focus On</
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Focus On</
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Dedication To Polly Frye, who tirel
Page 9 and 10: Contents 127 The wrinkle 128 Eyegla
Page 11 and 12: oating publications including Chesa
Page 13 and 14: Robin Reid: Trained as a classical
Page 15 and 16: learn to work with simple, dumb lig
Page 18 and 19: Chapter 1: There’s More Than <str
Page 20 and 21: Built-in flash Shot with built-in f
Page 22 and 23: Modifier 1: A mirror Having the fla
Page 24 and 25: Modifier 2: A big white reflector I
Page 26 and 27: Other modifiers: Fill light, hair l
Page 28 and 29: Same principle: We can control the
Page 30 and 31: how many pictures shouLd i shoot? G
Page 32 and 33: Later, turn on all the automation y
Page 34 and 35: can also get anything in between: a
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Page 39 and 40: 24 Focus O
Page 41 and 42: We all want the most intelligent ca
Page 43 and 44: 28 the sake of rapid, accurate move
Page 45 and 46: 30 can be to buy one expensive trig
Page 47 and 48: The size of the light The size of t
Page 49 and 50: We need to know about this defect t
Page 53 and 54: needs to consider buying one of wha
Page 55 and 56: Softbox Softboxes are boxes with di
Page 57: Diffusion The other way to make a l
Page 61 and 62: gobo to block some of that light. (
Page 65 and 66: A commercially produced wooden cook
Page 67 and 68: any glue—all of which we already
Page 69 and 70: 54 We can use the grid for many pur
Page 71 and 72: 56 A grid solves the problem: We ha
Page 73 and 74: Lens filters Most lens filters chan
Page 76 and 77: in Our daily lives, we go through v
Page 78 and 79: The colors of sunrise and sunset ca
Page 80 and 81: Early evening. The sun is lower in
Page 82 and 83: space. The sunlit side will be both
Page 84 and 85: What happens when we go in the oppo
Page 86 and 87: setting in this open shade lighting
Page 88 and 89: Using gels for dramatic color In th
Page 90 and 91: The photo above was done by placing
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Page 95 and 96: Small lights make hard shadows. Fur
Page 97 and 98: Compare the gourd on page 81 with t
Page 99 and 100: We could solve the exposure problem
Page 101 and 102: Why does the same light look so dif
Page 103 and 104: We had to shoot the cover shot of t
Page 106 and 107: sunlight is great, and not just bec
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looks like a painting. We were too
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convert the image to black and whit
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Amending or mixing light So what do
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penetrate.) But what if we don’t
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The sky was gray. In this case, the
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Distance and haze Haze happens for
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The photo above was taken in early
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Regardless of which lighting style
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postproduction work to deepen the s
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Broad lighting Broad lighting is pr
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like to place it so that it lights
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Rim lighting/kicker Rim lighting is
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Butterfly/Beauty lighting Butterfly
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Low key versus high key lighting Bo
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We blocked the popup flash so none
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124 Focus
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126 Light meters Do we need light m
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Eyeglasses and lighting: Can they g
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In the photo on page 128, we’ve g
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132 Focus
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When photographing large groups, wh
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way they can get an image of the da
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est-behaved pets rarely sit as stil
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140 Focus
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Direct reflection means that the li
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Flat metal The image below was lit
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we went ahead and put back the refl
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148 Focus
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glass is generally considered hard
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Position the camera so the viewfind
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we could have hung them with string
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A glass half full Interesting thing
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Bottle lit with off-camera flash th
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it reflected in the bottle. In this
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166 Focus
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A homemade flash trigger. We make o
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These photos are of a pianist known
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This picture uses two external flas
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the principles Of light remain the
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it is silly to spend hours to perfe
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all likelihood do some selective re
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Glossary this is an introductory bo
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photographer’s perspective from b
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Dodge: To lighten a portion of an i
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Had we had camera histogram display
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mirror reflector, often attached to
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minds, return to the original file,
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Index Page numbers followed by f in
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Lens hood, 99 Light amending or mix
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Sun light, (Continued) sunrise and
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