Our tutor and his assistant are to be teaching us how to apply different techniques using a wide range of studio equipment such as snoots and barn doors to get creative lighting effects from the studio strobes or flash lighting.
On my first day in the studio we experimented with strobe lighting using barn doors, snoots, reflectors and gels to enhance our portrait photography.
One of the key things to remember regarding studio lighting is that there are basically two kinds; continuous light, and strobe lighting. Tungsten lights are ones which provide a continuous source of light. Strobe lights on the other hand emit a flash when triggered, and are the most common kind of light you will find in most modern studios.
Strobe lights are used a lot in fashion and portrait photography, as they’re the same colour as daylight so no alterations to the camera’s white balance are needed. Tungsten lights on the other hand tend to be quite warm and emit a yellow glow, and so filters are needed. They also become very hot when being used and this limits the amount of accessories you can use with them because of health and safety risks. For example if you was to use a softbox on on a tungsten light, it would be a fire hazard.
We initially used one strobe light and the following kit
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| Clockwise from the top Barn door, Reflector, Snoot |
A Barn Door is made of four adjustable flaps in a square shape that attaches to a mount which fits the strobe light. Each flap can be adjusted to move the light into a different direction causing highlights and shadows wherever you want them.
A Snoot is a cone like metal tube that fits over the the front of the strobe flash light. This is to direct the light into a small area in particular (bit like a mag lite)
Honeycomb grids can be attached the the above too, they help to give a more accurate direction of light and help to soften the edges around the said light.
Narrowing down the beam of light produced by the strobe light allows us to create directional highlights on our subjects. It also allows us to place lighting behind the subject without blinding the camera. I will go into this in more detail later :)
The images above are a few examples of my results using a snoot, and lovely model and fellow student Fanni. The images were taken with a canon eos 1100d, f/stop 9, ss 1/125, ISO 100 , lens was open at 55mm and I was about a mtere away from the subject. The bowen strobe light was set up with a snoot and I had a colleague holding a reflector to direct the light back up to the models face. The power was set to half as I didn't need too much as it was set up pretty close to the subject to create light falloff and a more direct channel of light on her face. I also experimented with a blue gel slave flash light in the near background. ( I will be discussing flash gels in my next post)
I have also edited these on photoshop with a slight gaussian blur mask and a touch of blue fill to create the cold look.
I will go into more detail regarding the photoshop editing in another post, step by step.
Lea
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A Snoot is a cone like metal tube that fits over the the front of the strobe flash light. This is to direct the light into a small area in particular (bit like a mag lite)
Honeycomb grids can be attached the the above too, they help to give a more accurate direction of light and help to soften the edges around the said light.
Narrowing down the beam of light produced by the strobe light allows us to create directional highlights on our subjects. It also allows us to place lighting behind the subject without blinding the camera. I will go into this in more detail later :)
The images above are a few examples of my results using a snoot, and lovely model and fellow student Fanni. The images were taken with a canon eos 1100d, f/stop 9, ss 1/125, ISO 100 , lens was open at 55mm and I was about a mtere away from the subject. The bowen strobe light was set up with a snoot and I had a colleague holding a reflector to direct the light back up to the models face. The power was set to half as I didn't need too much as it was set up pretty close to the subject to create light falloff and a more direct channel of light on her face. I also experimented with a blue gel slave flash light in the near background. ( I will be discussing flash gels in my next post)
I have also edited these on photoshop with a slight gaussian blur mask and a touch of blue fill to create the cold look.
I will go into more detail regarding the photoshop editing in another post, step by step.
During this photoshoot I learnt something fascinating........Light falloff
LIGHT FALLOFF:
Creating a dark/black background that is originally white/light. This is achieved at its best in a large room where the subject/model is in the centre of the room and not too close to the background wall. The strobe lighting(with desired attachment is then placed close to the subject/model. What happens is that the camera will record the main light hitting the subject/model and darken the area behind because of fall-off caused by the Inverse Law of light. This is best used where there is some depth to the area behind the subject. Walls should be at least 10 feet away. Darkened rooms offer best results.
Please visit my other post STUDIO LIGHTS & MODIFIERS for a more details on light modifiers.
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What a great blog, thank you for letting me comment on it.
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