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.

Studio lighting course - still life

Well last week's part of the course was a bit of a flop for me personally.  I was looking forward to having a go at shooting some flowers or candles with flash lighting but the session turned out to be a bit of a non-starter.

Up until now we had been working in groups - the same group every week - and this was working well for me.  I enjoyed working with the couple of girls I was partnered with - one was pretty knowledgeable when it came to lighting and the other like myself was a quick learner.  However, last week the tutor changed the groups round and it appears I drew the short straw.

It is difficult to work with someone who's not a team player.  I think that is the most diplomatic way of putting it.  And when you are left to do most of the setting up your self it takes a chunk of valuable shooting time away.

However I did learn a few things from a photographical perspective especially about light shapers.

• You should never put a metric thread into your camera.  Cameras take whitworth sized threads.  

• Super clamps are very useful for holding your camera on a table or a tripod leg.  They are also useful
•  for moving your light around.  

• Rostrums are useful if you do a lot of shooting down on things.  

• Snoots make the light smaller and more directional. Produces hard light.

• Honeycomb filters create a beam of light rather than spreading out the light.  The light is soft edged.  

• Black wrap can be used to make snoots.  You can buy Cinefoil from good camera and film shops. 

• Compact mirrors can be used to direct light onto your objects. 

However due to the group I was working with and the time constraints I didn't get round to experimenting too much with the above.  I used the black foil to make a snoot for the light.  I didn't get too many good shots either so I have none that I want to share here. 

We also got the opportunity to shoot tethered.  This was interesting.  I have Lightroom and I was under the impression that if you are a Nikon shooter you have to have some special Nikon software to shoot tethered but apparently Lightoom does the job.  

I saw shooting tethered as shooting where your pictures are automatically displayed in Lightroom.  However you can also use Lightroom to shoot the image.  

I'm not sure if I will get to make good use out of shooting tethered as my version of Lightroom is on my PC and not my laptop.  I suppose if I wanted to take pictures in my office it would be useful.  

My last session of the course is tomorrow and I will not be wasting another lesson working with someone that hinders my progress again.  

Studio lighting course - flash lighting

For the second part of my studio lighting course, we focused on flash lighting.  I thought this would be a lot more difficult given my past experiences of working with my speedlite but it was not as difficult to get my head around after all.  I think that a lot of what I had learnt in relation to my speedlite came in very useful for this part of the course.

Flash lighting was a breath of fresh air compared to the tungsten lighting.  I found it much easier to use than a speedlite and I feel that part of this was down to the modelling light.  This small light gives you an idea of where the light will fall which is very useful especially when applying light shapers to your shot.  

Where flash lighting differs is you need to use a light meter to get the correct exposure for your image as you can't rely on your camera's meter.  This is because your camera can't give you accurate results for the flash of light.  

There are two ways in which you can use the meter to read the light.  You can measure the light reflected off your subject or you can measure the light source the subject is exposed to.  I found the latter to be the easiest and most reliable to work with.  If you are measuring the light reflecting off your subject you can get varying results depending on the colour of their skin or the clothes they may be wearing.  

For studio flash you have to shoot with your camera on manual.  I am glad all my hard work getting to know how to use my camera manually came in useful!  The standard shutter speed used for studio flash is 1/125s as this gives the curtain enough time to stay open for the flash of light.  Any faster and you run the risk of having one half of your image in darkness and the other half lit.  When you use the light meter you input the shutter speed and ISO you are using and then take a test shot to get the flash to fire. This you do while holding down the reader button the meter.  The meter will then give you the aperture you should use to get a correct average exposure.  You may of course wish to vary this if you want to make your image lighter or darker.  

Here are some of the images I tool using studio flash.  

I think the light in these images is better than using tungsten.  I found it easier to remove the harsh shadows using the reflectors. 

Studio lighting course - tungsten lighting

Well I have attended the first session of my course and the focus was on tungsten lighting.  I have a little knowledge of using continuous lighting from The Art of Photography course where I experimented using a builders light.  However, what I really wanted was a play around with the real McCoy.

Tungsten lighting or continuous lighting and is constant and extremely bright.  The tungsten bulbs we used were 500watts which may not seem to much (especially when trying to get a good shutter speed) by they are very bright for the model.

For the practical session we worked in groups of three and I was first to act as model.  We used a red head with an 850 watt buld which was very bright in my eyes.  It was almost blinding and pretty uncomfortable too.  You started to feel quite hot very quickly under the light.

I found that shooting in this light was easy in relation to seeing where shadows were falling.  You could use your camera's own meter to get the exposure right.  However, I did find that the light was pretty harsh and introduced some strong shadows in my subject's face.  This might work well for a certain look you may be trying to achieve or for shooting men.  For women the general rule is that the light and shadows should be softer.

To soften the light we have to make it bigger and to do this we used a diffuser.  This made the light softer and the images less contrasty.  The joy of working with continuous lighting is you can see the changes in front of your eyes whereas with flash you can't.

To manipulate the light and direct light to open or reduce shadow areas you can use reflectors.  I am familiar with using these as I already to this for shooting in natural light.  This improves the results but I still couldn't help feeling that the light was still very harsh overall.

Generally tungsten lighting is not used for portraits as it is not the most comfortable for clients/models to sit under this light.  It tends work better for still life images where your subjects don't have eyes!

This session gave me some hands on experience of using tungsten lighting and I learnt the most suitable conditions for using this light. I have read about making the light source bigger but I have now experienced this first hand.  I do have a speedlite of my own but this is not an ideal tool for learning the basics of lighting.

I learnt that studio lights get extremely hot and that bulbs don't tend to last very long.

Here are some of my images.

In this image we can see the strong shadows on the subjects nose.  I find this distracting as the shadow is very close to the eye too. 

In this image the shadow is strong but it is less distracting.  

In this image the shadow is less harsh and the lighting is more evenly distributed across the model's face. 

Studio Lighting course

A couple of weeks ago I started a short studio lighting course at City Lit in London.  I wanted to explore the ways in which photographic lighting can used in portraiture and get some hands on experience of using the various lights.  

The course will cover: 
- Advantages and disadvantages of lighting
- Exposure
- Backgrounds
- Tungsten lighting
- Flash lighting
- Light shapers, contrast control and reflectors
- Portraits
- Still life objects

By the end of the course I should be able to:

- Use a hand held light meter

- Create a portrait lit by tungsten and flash lighting

- Photograph a still life object lit by tungsten and flash lighting

- Control the level of contrast desired by the use of reflectors and light shapers

- Begin to use some of the creative possibilities that control of light allows

I will post my learning outcomes on my blog and hopefully some good portraits.