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BONUS VIDEO: Lunchtime Q&A

So I'm just going to start going through these. We're starting with some of the inverse square law questions. So texas even think said the spectator highlights matter if it is in a person that you're shooting absolutely speculate highlights actually matter probably maur if you're shooting product than they do on people, and so things like wine bottles and shampoo, uh, bottles and things like that really speak your highlights count because you want to control this reflections, things that air like porcelain and pottery and glass and trinkets and all that kind of stuff. Spectator highlights really, really, really matter and it's something that most product photographers spend more time on. Then then dio, uh, photographers. They shoot people like I do, ok, so, um, zik zak hope this is right. Can we use normal reflectors to induce catch lights in the eye or glass? Absolutely any light source. If it's a reflector or stroke, it doesn't matter any light coming in it's going to cause a speculu...

m highlight, and so you can. You can use either reflectors toe add suspected highlights or add some phil or if you're doing product photography specifically or even people we're going to get to this I think right after lunch you can use a subtraction panels or black flags to actually eliminate this reflections and eliminate some of those speculate highlights to make things look more natural and so yeah, I think it's more important for product photographers than it is for a portrait photographers they're shooting okay, so um let's see who's going to the next one here? I didn't have time to read these so I'm just going as fast as I can through this okay? How about just choking up on the umbrella shaft control side spill um and then there's also some of the companies that make small parabolic umbrellas for more control? Absolutely. So you can take those umbrellas and put him closer and farther away from the actual source of light to control spill but what happens when you do that is the closer that large umbrella gets to the source of the light it's gonna control spill but also the amount of light hitting the umbrella it's gonna shrink, you're gonna change your effective science and you're not gonna get as soft of a light as you would if you used the entire umbrella so definitely there's always a compromise so you can control the light but you're the effect of size of light is going to become a little bit smaller if you do that and the thing is the thing that we're talking about today they're all principles once you know the principles take him and um you know, modifying and do whatever you need to do but you'll see that you khun principles will remain constant but the application can change a little bit somebody asked what kind of of lights that we're using what brand so we're using pro photo lights they're not rangers to some asked if they were blown call earth rangers but their pro photo and right after lunch I'm gonna show you exactly what they are so hang in there for that one um let's see what's he seeing on the meter that is telling him that he has too much like oh that's a good question so um ah in several occasions I'm meeting I'm saying I have too much light and what I'm eating is the aperture values telling me something like twenty five or less and amateur value but it's something above twenty two and my aperture only closes to twenty two so anything that's above that my camera's gonna be overexposed and since the shutter doesn't affect any of that light from the strobe then it's too much light and so I have to make sure that I'm below that twenty two the other thing that's happening is happening really quick and so you might not be seeing that in real time is when I meet a ring I'm shooting with the d three x that's so one hundred I am sitting with the d three s that's two hundred lowest so I'm eating for my d three x, which is I saw one hundred and take a meter reading and I'm seeing eighteen or whatever it is and then I pushed I s o two on the meter it tells me what that is and a higher s o level and normally is going to jump over my smallest aperture, so I have too much light and so instead of explaining all that like you just did because it's happening a lot all this meat and go too much take the power down and we move on because we have so much content you're gonna see that we haven't even we've just gotten a taste of what we're gonna be doing over the next three days and so we have to get keep things moving right along okay, which light is softer? A shoot through umbrella or soft box and probably a soft boxes a little bit softer and I don't think there's gonna be a big difference between those two things except for the control and the power, but you're going to get a little bit more punch out of a soft box because you have more reflected light coming through instead of your your reflector just having stuff so there's more diffusion panel so it's a little bit softer but I've done a lot of classes where we'll just take a soft box and shoot and they will take an umbrella, do a shoot through the results or are almost exactly the same so that's that's how that works so if you're just starting out and looking to say you know should I buy a soft cock? Should I buy an umbrella because that's the question that we're seeing a lot of now which one should I buy? Start with the umbrella and unless you just have money to spend, start with an umbrella, use it a little bit and if you are trying to do things that you can't do then move on to a soft box but there's no use spending a lot of money on some gear that you may not need so in my situation I find that I really, really, really want to control the light so soft box really works um caleb needs to see here so umbrella lighting is directional whereas a soft boxes not no um a parabolic umbrella is mohr directional than a soft walks a parabolic umbrella it's a different umbrella than in normal umbrella because it's specifically shaped to focus the light and that is more directional but a normal umbrella and a soft box they both diffuse light and so the large umbrella just is taking in a lot of light and scattering it all over because to get soft light that way the soft boxes actually taking that light defusing it inside it's bouncing all around inside that soft box and then it comes out as a nice even diffused light and so it's nice and soft so they're both you know, going in the same direction but a parabolic umbrella specifically anything parabolic is very, very directional so it's not that it's an umbrella or soft box but it said it's a parabolic umbrella and supposed to soft box um the difference between a normal soft box and shallow soft box and how they affect the light and softness um man that's a good question I think that's when I need to save and actually show on the floor down there but uh what happens when you put a light inside of soft boxes? It diffuses all that light and there's a diffusion panel inside that and so with the normal soft locks you have enough room for the light to travel bounce around off that soft box and come out in a nice even corner to corner diffused a manner there's not gonna be a hot spot in that like if you have a more shallow soft box then the light doesn't have a cz much room to travel and you can get a hot spot in there so those shallow soft boxes are good if you need if you're working in tight spaces something like this were really tight space here or you need to pack tighter there some reasons that you would need those but for most applications I like big deep soft box not to get really really nice soft even light ana let's see okay, so uh mark showing and drastic example of light modifiers is there a noticeable difference between the same size or square octagon so there's not a big difference between the same size between a lycan octo box or four by six let's say soft box they're the same size the differences remember we have thie effective size that's what we care about when we're talking about how big things are but shape we're talking about how things look in the spec other highlights so the difference there is you could use get nice soft light out of four by six soft box but the spectator highlights are going to be square you'd get that same nice soft light out of a parabolic area aka box, which is just a sort of around soft box but the spectator highlights going round so remember we're talking about two different things we're talking about the size and the shape so that's why you used different shapes and sizes for uh, hard soft and how far away you're gonna be okay? Um let's see to answer that one so fall off works that way with the knocked a box and on the square soft bucks. Okay, uh, that's that's when I think of trying to come back to bed. So when I was explaining the point versus the soft box and I'm saying, if you meet or you're not gonna get the same results, so, uh, the inverse square lives going is going to work pretty much identically with an octa box and a soft box and an umbrella, they're all going to work very, very similarly, you're still gonna have that same fall off when I was trying to illustrate is that if you actually go into the studio and you measure out one foot two feet four feet, eight feet and, uh, you meet her delight, you're not going to see that drop off that goes from full power to twenty five percent because it's not a single point of light. And so the laws of physics say that when the light is scattering in doing different things, that the light fall off is a little bit different. It's still follows that same curve, just not as drastic in some cases. And so for fun if you want to try this out. Take a strobe and just use a bear stroke head and then meter it one, two, four, eight double distances and see what you get and then put a soft box on and do the same thing and then do an umbrella and do the same thing and you'll see how those all, uh, everything with the modifiers going fall off pretty much the same way as opposed to that bear lamp. It's not going to fall off exactly the same. Um, so we've got that we're going to be about five more minutes for questions actually got about two minutes. You're telling me here. So one more question, and then we're gonna be going here. Um, okay, how can I turn a white background? Two black and a limited space that's? Very difficult, but what you can do is, um, you're not going to turn them background to black unless you have a lot of separation. So you need to get your subject as far away from that background as possible and then used the inverse square law to your advantage. So get that light, whatever it is, as close as you can to your subject and then don't line it up. Uh, so it's hitting that background. So move that light, so you're gonna have to have more high contrast to move it to the side and then maybe use a light modifier. So we're about to show you some things of how to control light with grids and that you know what this is. I think a good question to lead us into the next section, so we can show you how to control all that light. In fact, I think they just removed the white background. That's. Okay, we'll show you how it works on a on a great background, but you use a grid and move the light and then use the inverse square. A lot of pull everything back, and you can do it in a pretty limited space. But you're gonna have a really, really contrast you like.