Ok, so for this post I'm just going to explain a couple quick lighting setups. This weekend I'm teaching a lighting workshop, and I wanted to do some simple exercises for the participants to practice with. One of the concepts I'll be going over is combining available light with flash. So what I did for this exercise was use flash for the main lighting and use the available light as fill/environment lighting.
The first setup was extremely simple; one light, a partly cloudy sky, and a garden on the back of the house with some interesting blooming flowers. Here's the photo:
The first thing I did was meter the ambient light for a decent exposure. At ISO 100 and a shutter speed of 1/250, the reading I got was F8. It was partly cloudy, so I wasn't getting a full direct ray from the sun, but it created a nice even lighting throughout the garden without any harsh shadows.
I know that I wanted my speedlite to be my key light, and the ambient to be my fill light, so I adjusted my f-stop one stop down to F11. I then placed my speedlite over the flower, and adjusted the power settings until I obtained a meter reading of F11. Then I simply took the shot. Pretty simple, right? Here's the setup:
Next, I wanted to take the same concept, and simply add a third light source as an edge light to give the image some more "pop." So I went up to the deck on the back of the house, selected a small potted plant and started setting up the shot on a table we have up there.
First, I took the ambient light reading. By this time the clouds had parted and I was getting full sunlight beaming down on me. I didn't want the light to be too harsh for the fill, so I made sure the setup was done under a huge canopy that we have set up on the deck. This created the same even lighting as in the first setup. At ISO 100, and 1/125, the light meter said again, F8. Here's a shot with just the ambient light:
Looks good. Now to turn the ambient down a notch. I set the camera to F11 and took another shot:
Now I set up my first light, which will be the key light. I used a LumoPro LP120 and set it on a stand with a small shoot-thru umbrella and adjusted the power until I got F11. The setting on the back of the light once metered there was at 1/2 power. Then I took a shot to see what I had so far:
Not bad. I moved the light in a tad closer in order to get a little more light on the leaves. (BTW, since I was checking my LCD screen on the back of my camera in near broad daylight, I was using an awesome little tool in order to see the screen properly. Normally, you can't see squat in the daylight on an LCD screen, so you need to either cup your hands around the screen or get something you can put up to it in order to see it properly. In my case, I ordered a loupe from hoodman.com, and I can't tell you how much I love that little thing! It even has a 3 step dioptric ring on it to adjust to your eye. But anyways... back to the post).
Next, I set up another LP120 on a stand (no umbrella, just bare, as I wanted a harsher light to give the photo more "pop") and metered it until I was at F16. I wanted to be a stop above the key light in order to make sure sure the light read brighter in the photo. Here's the shot:
I was pretty happy with the result, so I stopped there. Here's another shot of the lighting setup so you can see where I had everything placed:
And there you have it! A quick way to enjoy 20 minutes of your time in your backyard and create some photos that "pop."
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.
Cheers!
1 comment:
Thank you!!
More please!!
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