Studio lighting course - speedlights

Friday was the last part of the course and it focused on a variety of types of lighting and touched on the use of flash/speedlights.  

This part of the course introduced us to cold lighting - use of fluorescent bulbs - and gave us the opportunity to take some shots using a variety of different lighting.  We used cold and hot lights and studio flash and we also looked at speedlights.  I was interested to learn more about the use of camera flash as this is the only artificial lighting set up I have.  However, I didn't learn anything new really only that you can get cheap Vivitar flashes that would work great for second or third lights.  They would also make good primary lights if you purchase a trigger to firm them.  A lot of the TTL technology in the Nikon and Canon range is all very well but you don't have to have it. 

My learning outcomes from today were mainly on the use of cold lights.  This was something I was unaware of.  Like the hot lights these are not very bright and you can't use a very fast shutter speed like you can do with flash.  However I could see the benefits of using them.  

In addition I felt it was beneficial to see what was covered in relation to speedlights.  Even if I didn't particularly learn anything new it was good to be able to reinforce that what I did know was right.  This is very useful for me because I am self taught and you never really know if you have truly understood or got things right.  

This image was taken using speedlights.  I feel that that the light is not to harsh as it was shot using an umbrella.  I have always tended to get harsh light from my flash and this is probably because I wasn't making the light bigger.  

I have an umbrella now and I am going to experiment more in the coming weeks and I might also look at buying a light meter.  I feel that this would be useful to me and my own personal workflow. 

Overall I felt that the course was pretty good.  It was only an introduction but I feel that I have a much greater knowledge of working in a studio set up and more importantly about light in general.

There is a second part to this course that starts in April and I will give it some though over the next couple of weeks as to whether this would be useful to attend.