Flashes, Strobes & Lighting

Using Red Gel to Boost Greens in the Background

I did a quick proof of concept test with my gels and SB600 today – it was pretty cool.

The thought behind this is: If we use a orange gel over a flash or strobe to add orange to a light on the subject to balance out the orange sun light on the background what we are also doing is using orange on our subject to add blue (orange’s compliment) to the background.

If that is the case – flip your thinking around and don’t use a gel to match your subject’s white balance to the background – bring out a color in the background by casting it’s compliment onto your subject! I wanted to bring out the spring green in the trees by using a red (green’s compliment) color cast on my subject. Read on to see how it went. Here’s a hint – it worked 😉

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Lighting the Egg Photograph

by Learn More Photo

I remember one day in college I was sitting next to a kid in a free computer lab working on some stuff before class and he opened up a photograph of an egg that he shot for his “Advanced Commercial Photography” class. He told me that “this is the ultimate test for a photographer, perfectly lighting a white egg against a white background.” This was about a year before I bought my D70s and I thought it was a cool idea and a cool photograph.

Come to find out the kid was:

a tool
arrogant spoiled rich kid
wrong

Lighting an egg is not the ultimate test, but a good exercise in lighting. When photographing an egg you want to eliminate as much shadow as possible but give the egg definition so it doesn’t get washed out in the white.

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Rosco Gel Samples Just Arrived

by Learn More Photo 4 Comments

I, along with every other photog-blogger in the blogosphere, has read about using the Rosco Roscolux Swatchbook available free from Rosco (beware I’ve heard there’s a major wait through Rosco) and for ~~$0.01~~ now $1.95 from B&H to color a background using a flash unit.

Well it’s hard to get a hold of the Roscolux Swatchbook. I’ve seen it sell out on the B&H website in as little as 24 minutes before. Though B&H also has the Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook for the same price, and it was in stock, so I ordered it and got yesterday.

The first thing I did was remove the straight pin holding the samples together and replaced it with a clip I had previously used for embroidery floss. This allows me to remove gels easily while not making a mess of the whole situation.

Accompanying Photographs

You can pick up a loop like that at any craft store like Joann’s near the embroidery or notions storage section.

I haven’t had a chance to play with any lighting with the gels yet. You know…work…sleep. But I’m excited to give it a try tonight or tomorrow.

I learned about these gel sample packs by reading a post on the Photography on the.net forums, using gels to create colored backgrounds. I was immediately inspired, especially by the photos posted to that thread by curtis N, agent.media and flg8r.

That was when the Internet twisted my own arm into buying the background and stand I did the video about last week.

While waiting for my delivery I looked and found some other good posts on forums about using gel samples. This post started as a question regarding the effectiveness of a colored background and saturation of the color by the gel, and includes a sample photo. Another post about using gels shows sample photographs using models and still life and also shows demonstrations where you can fill the background with the color, or hot spot the color, even a demo that appears to snoot with a color.

I also stumbled across another post where the demo was using the gel against a white wall. Though one response pointed out that using the gel on white has a tendency to reflect back onto the subject which can cause highlights in the hair to become the color of the gel. Not always a desired effect. I’m quite glad I went with the dark grey background now!

I’ll probably be working on a holder tonight, I’ve been exploding a few options:

Plastic Sleeve and Velcro – photo 2 – Not a big fan of the idea of putting Velcro on my flash
Plastic name tag – Similar to the above plastic sleeve and Velcro, seems promising
Mat Board and Clip – I’d probably use a magnet instead of a clip, and I’d use black mat board
Plastic as Clips – Appears to work well but I would rather separate the gel from the top of the flash in fear of heat transfer and melting
Mat Board and Snaps for Swivel Action – Is a swivel necessary? Not for me. Glad to see magnets work well though
Plastic Strips and Velcro – Again I’m not sure about the gel flush against the flash

As you can tell I’m kind-of being a big wussie about not melting my gel to my flash but even if is unlikely to happen I’d still rather use preventative measures.

I’ll post up my final solution I settle with. My guess is it will be a lot like the mat board with clip, except with magnets since they’re way easier to change quickly and if they’re attached I can’t lose them!

Researching these holders was a big help and lead me to request sample packets from a few other companies such as Lee and Apollo Design Technologies. We’ll see how long it takes for those sample packs to come in.

Update: Lee Gels vs. Rosco Gel Swatchbooks

The Lee Gel sample pack came almost days later. And I prefer using the Lee gels because they use larger samples which cover the flash (or my gel adapter) nicer. I managed to get my hands on a couple of the Rosco Roscolux Swatchbook and I see why they are recommended, that book has a wider variety of colors and focuses mainly on gels. Maybe I’ll do a full review of the different swatch books once I get the last one I ordered.

Photographing Flowers; The Strobeless Approach

by Learn More Photo 1 Comment

I am big fan of the strobist home photographer revolution but sometimes I don’t think you need to use fancy flashes and strobes or bright lights with umbrellas, sometimes you can make a beautiful photograph with just a subject, the light attached to your ceiling and some white packing foam.

The Final Product

Let’s Tarantino this and show you my final outcome first

Without using an external flash, my on camera flash or any other strobes of flood lights I took these lovely photographs. Just my overhead room light (with two 60 watt bulbs) and some white Styrofoam as reflectors.

The Lighting Setup

Here’s a quick lighting diagram of what I was doing, though really, there’s not a lot of stuff going on.

The Props

Though I did not use any off camera lighting I did use a lot of things I had around to really assist in making the best I could out of the light I had to work with.

Styrofoam packing sheets
At work last months we got seven new filing cabinets (pre-assembled) that were all packed with four sheets of crisp white Styrofoam. I know that since Styrofoam has a matte finish it will reflect light very evenly, and since they are 1.5 – 2″ thick they’re fairly sturdy. Not to mention free!
I took about eight of these 24x18x2″ blocks home; only eight cause that’s all that I could fit in my trunk.
Bed side table
I use the same one that holds my alarm clock, just to put the subject on to elevate it to a comfortable tripod height.
Glass
I used the glass from a frame I picked up on sale at Homegoods for $15 cause the frame was damaged. I had plans to put a new picture in the frame and clean it up but I broke the glass. Read on for that…
Mirror
…I’ll tell you another day how I came into a mirror that is approximately 1/2 the size of the one that may and or may not have fallen off my bathroom door.
Shoji screen / privacy screen
I’ll use this to hold up my background. In the off season (when I’m not taking pictures) it serves to hide the mess in the corner of my room.
Black bedsheets set
The pillow case will be used to cover the table to protect it from the glass or mirror and the flat sheet will be used as the background.

I can almost guarantee you have 1/2 of those things around the house and with you don’t have you can pickup at a discount store for a great price and probably still be able to put it to good use.

How big does the mirror or glass have to be?

I really only needed the glass and mirror to be maybe 2ft square. Bigger is great but only necessary if you need that much reflection, which on a small subject like a flower and vase is adequate.

Setting the Scene

Glass Topping the Table for Subtle Subject Reflections

In the first photo you see I put the pillow case over the table and the glass atop that. Then came the subject, the vase w/ flower.
In the last photo you see how I then used the Styrofoam reflectors to bounce light into parts of the subject that needed more light.

I put the black flat sheet over the Shoji screen, and put my bedside table about 3′ in front of the screen so I could ensure that the background would be beyond the focal point and blur out any texture attributed to the bed sheet.

Excuse the quality of these setup shots, this is about behind the scenes remember: the quality is in the product.

Here are the photographs this setup produced

White Background

With my white backgrounds, I will admit most of it really becomes “white” in post-production (Lightroom).

Moving from the previous setup I propped Styrofoam against the screen so it was high enough to serve as a background. Since I decided I was no longer going to do a full length shot I replaced the glass atop the table with another piece of Styrofoam to help bounce from below (remember the light is directly overhead of my subject.)

I still used other pieces of Styrofoam to bounce in at an angle, especially the face of the flowers. Don’t bounce your light directly into the flowers though, you want it to angle and cascade to give the flowers depth. a flat bounce to the face will make your flowers look just that…flat.

Photos from my Styrofoam White Setup

Mirror Reflection

First I removed the Styrofoam from the background and replaced the Styrofoam table top with the mirror (pillow case used to protect the table.)

In order to get the black background and ensure there were no wonky reflections besides the subject in the mirror I needed to move the background closer. I needed to get the camera at a high angle to get a healthy amount of reflection so I really brought that background in close by leaning the screen till it was touching the back of the table. I pushed the table so it was about 1′ behind being below the over head light so that when the background was leaning over the table I could still easily bounce light into the ‘dark mirror tent’ easily.

I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to actually make this happen without breaking things.

Here are the photos from the mirror setup

Word of Caution

I may have gotten overly excited and careless with my props while shooting this, and well I stepped on my glass top. So keep a paper bag and broom/vacuum around when working with glass. Trust me!

For more talk about using reflectors check out one of the installments at Strobist – Lighting 102 – 5.1 Refract and Reflect! Think foil, mirror, and use a strobe or flash or like we did here just your run-of-the-mill home tungsten lighting.

First Self Portraits with Impact 1 Light Umbrella Kit

by Learn More Photo 3 Comments

Last night, before I headed off to bed for the night I took a bit of time to set up the light kit, Impact 500W Light Umbrella Kit, and actually get snapping some photographs this time. I created a very simple set up and had intended on going black and white with the photographs from the start. Next time, especially with color portraits, I’ll use my SB-600 as a fill flash.

Here’s the set up I used:

I was pretty happy with the results which is fantastic since I hadn’t done my hair and was wearing no makeup and have never really had a lot of luck with self portraits in the past. I found three or the 60 photos really embodied the emotion I wanted and I used Lightroom to go gray scale and adjust my settings to really make the photographs pop. There were a couple other shots I liked but I think I might try them again another time and see if I can have better success without that silly hat on!

Hat used solely to hide my bad hair day

If you were cool enough to have a browser that could view frames there would be a lovely slideshow here waiting for you, since you are not cool enough: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/terriann/tags/20071204selfportrait/show/” mce_href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/terriann/tags/20071204selfportrait/show/”>view the slideshow here</a>