Lessons

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Camera Gear

First thing I want to do though, is to go for my general camera gear and some kind of speed lighting tools again mohr more of my everyday kerry kit for speed lighting now I have uh I can shoot in a studio have lots of studio lights and all that, but really for the most part most shoots that I do I can do with just a bag full of speed lights and some random gear, so I think it's a really cool way to g o I mean, speed lights don't work for everybody for every situation but majority photographers you could do almost everything you need to do with these kind of speed lights set up so let's let's take a look at just some of the gear they will be using today if you don't have access to or can't afford all this gear, don't worry about it there are cheaper alternatives to a lot of it some of this stuff you khun d I y yourself to um so keep that in mind so we talk about the camera I'm using a nikon d eight hundred seventy seven fifty both my cameras of choice doesn't really matter what camera y...

ou're using uh speed lights again the top of the line ones for the nikon is the nine ten private other one out they may have another run out I didn't check the internet recently very, very soon. And then wireless transceivers, there's all kinds of good from brands for the wireless transceivers, pocket wizards or great ones. Um, there's some other brands you can try out, some of them work, some of them don't. If you have a name brand, they usually work pretty great. Some of the off brands, the generic brands, the import brands, some of the work really well, someone would just complete garbage, so sometimes you need to find out. Yeah, questions if you have the nikon d nineteen, should she stay with all those or can you mix and match as far as the flashes of the transceivers flashes? Well, if because I know you have to make sure that the transceivers are compatible with everything but can with the flashes, can you mix and match? You can't mix and match to some extent. If you're going to be shooting purely manual, you could use any flash. I could actually put cannon flash on here and pop it off manually. No problem, but if I want to have the tl control, then if your flash is capable of it, it would have to be you want him to be somewhat the same now interesting enough, there are brands that make knockoffs of the high end. Night cons like for example, there's a bolt flash from being a tch is a parent company of this cup product called bolt and they make a flash that's pretty comparable toothy manufacturer flash has full detail full everything that you have with this not quite the same power output maybe not is sturdily built but it's a lot cheaper so that may be something to consider and that will work interchangeably with your other ones as well like like I've got nine ten's sb nine ten's sb nine hundred I've got sb eight hundred here and older nikon flash and then I've got one of the bowl it's a swell that I use sometimes too and so um a so long as they're designed for your system you could mix and match them yeah, but if you're going manual you don't care about the t, t l or any of that you just want a boom a flash of fire is when you get the trigger you complete me choose anything it works okay question right so flashes transceivers ah variety of lenses I'm gonna be using today lenses ranging from a fifty millimeter f one point four and I really like the's wide aperture lenses if you haven't seen people ask how there's a fifty one eighteen fifty one four and eighty five you know which should I go with that little extra yes if you can afford it, go forward because that little extra makes a difference a visual difference and that's, this is the lens that I used for the example image I show you, I showed you earlier of kind of a mona lisa image. Remember, we talked about that shot outside. I was shot in f one point four to make that background just so painterly, you know? And you just can't get that painterly feel with anything over two point eight. Even two point eight sometimes doesn't really give it to you. So if you can, if you can spring for one for their awesome, so have a one four fifty one for eighty five. This is old workhorse lens. I've got a one o five. This is a two point eight micro nick or so you get really close. I want to zoom in on eyeballs. Of course I have a lens, baby. Well, put it this little bit today. Now this is a composer with annette edge eighty lens. The lens is the body is the same and it bends until it's. If you haven't seen these it's kind of awesome because you can shift your focus point this by bending the body of the lens, and then the element itself is changeable from an eighty there's different styles of lenses thirty five fifty eighty you know where you have everything in focus or nothing in focus and everybody between so there's all kinds of cool stuff you can do this is called the edge eighty and it's one of my favorites from their kit of lenses but I have I have all of them I love switching between I'm playing with him nothing I mentioned earlier is a battery of booster battery this is a new one that came out from bolt and it's ah called a cyclone and this is a battery pack for your flashes and what's really cool about this is you can get with this battery this is the battery itself the lithium battery this little lightweight battery will give you twelve hundred flashes on dh has to output so from two flashes you played with here and one second recycle a full power which is you can't touch that with, you know regular batteries to go into the flash so and it's super lightweight you know I threw up in the air bell pride drop it. But the nice thing too is that your flashes connect and this swap so you could maybe by one extra if you shooting a lot big event I can't see where you you always need a lot, but if you had an extra little just this part you just pop that on and boom, you're ready to go twelve hundred more shots full power now if you're shooting less than full power, you get a lot more so this is really cool and it comes with the cables for your camera. One thing that I like about this particular set up is that the, um they lock you, pop it in there, twist the little thing here and it locks you don't actually pull your cable out, which I haven't done on older systems before the past where you like it's not a game it's not even plugged in so that's a nice little booster battery and you can use that if you're shooting in the studio, this is really nice because it's just hang this on the light stand, plug it into your speed light and you've you've got studio power recycle time of a studio flash one second full powers crazy good on you can shoot all day with that. So if you're a studio photographer or an event photographer, this thing is dynamite I think they've got a special I remember what it is, but they just told me about a special on this it's like two hundred bucks off or something like that on their site, ok, the other things that I'd like to you know, keep in hand this is my stick this is also good for getting rid of videographers that get in your way when you're on a shoot you're in my shot new boom no offense videographers here of course I love you guys get up so this is just basically model pod that you can extend and tighten up and I've attached to the quarter twenty thread a spigot that you can now attach the bendy heads for your flashes whatever or you could put a flashlight on here but this is what we'll use if I want to have my flash you know, come up ahead or even just standing right here my assistant can hold this and it's much easier than having a light stand that you have to constantly move around especially on location, which I shoot most of the time on location but even then in a studio if you want to quickly change your scenes around so I think this is actually one thing that's worked for me pretty well is to give a variety and keep things moving with a client. So if you've got light stands everything's planted, we tend to just stick in one spot and just deal with it because we don't want to get up and move things around, but if you're easily mobile and you have an intern or assistant who can move that light you're like hey let's, try this angle down here whom there goes the light let's turn your head up here now look up look straight up in the sky boom right here all right, you're going to try more stuff when your mobile versus if you thinking I've got to go and move that light in the light, stand upright, fall and embarrass myself you know let's just stick with this one shot in the states you stay safe and then which is great, but you don't get the variety, okay? So I find make yourself mobile and you make yourself more creative. One of the other things that everybody should have, which we talked earlier, is a pop up whether it is a diffusion alone but usually is coming to three, one five and one where you have a cover with reflective stuff, my cover's married somewhere over here, I'm not going to use it today, but this again is one of those things that it's just always in my bag. I always take this with me no matter what shoot I'm doing because you can defuse the sun, you can fire flash to the back of it, right? Which is a beautiful thing that you get a giant perfect thirty such six inch soft box right here where if you were to buy a thirty six inch soft box, not only would you spend several hundred dollars when you take all those arms off and fold it all up, this is big old thing and you can't just stuff that inside your bag where is this goes nicely into the side of my camera flash bags so this is my flash um speed light bag and I could just pop that in there and that goes with me everywhere speed like bag I'll go through the speed like bag and this is kind of I wanted to share with you my my d I y story you guys saw me on photo week here I came up with them um and idea to hold mary this with my speed light because my my assistance we're getting tired of holding the two like this, so I decided to mock up something with using a three d printer you guys are from their three d printers and how there you can kind of create stuff, so I had a friend of three d printer and we just said I didn't some drawing listen, can we make this? So he cranked one out and we started playing at the design and it actually worked really well on dh so we didn't went to a higher end made a prototype and so we came over the product too hold that this is going to this is my top secret prototype of the production version of the lunar grip which westcott has decided to produced for me so the way it works this is pretty simple you take your your disk like this and they have these little cool clips. They just look on the ends. You want to just kind of put it in a third big around, and then this pops right in and it's much easier to do than regular soft box and now you've got your magical light. You put your speed light right in here on the top, you'll take it down, make that tight so that follow my foot again. And there you go. All right, so now you've got boom three foot soft box anywhere you go on the speed like months there there's enough room we connects to put another bracket, put a reverse they have to speed lighted it if you want to there's enough room to mount your whatever transceiver you want and the kind of cool thing about this. What I've used before even had the handle was that I could just by changing the zoom on my head, I can change the effect of the light on this side. So if I zoom, I head to telephoto, say two hundred millimeters with this flash, it'll make a pattern it's about the hot spots about that big and we use that coming out this way, you get what you get is this beautiful light words got a nice glow that it has a nice feather you know, great for these dramatic head portrait's if I zoom this wide I cover the whole thing and then I've got a room full of three foot soft box right there effect so I can change that it also works kind of cool is just a reflector holder if you put the silver fabric or the white fabric because it is still perfectly flat it holds it ever hold you reflector and you notice that when you're if it bends and it warbles you know and you you're your light is like beaming all over the place because it's not flat this hold it perfectly flat could be used this is toe reflector feel if you had another one there's also amount in the bottom for your tripods he couldn't actually about this to a light stand if you don't want to hold that I don't have an assistant it works great but this whole thing comes apart fits into the bag with this blaze flattened was still slide into the side your camera bags it's pretty cool so we'll play with this later on too this is ah this is just a small camera bag that I use for flash so I can have a five speed lights stashed in here in little pockets all my transceivers, everything I need, the main thing you're going to have to pack and your these little foodies for your flashes so that they can screw on to either a tripod head or a bendy bracket we have always carry those around to my other bag um lots of st chords that appropriate for the things you're using here's a nice little tip to for you guys if you say you're using like pocket wizards or any any type of flash that uses a little headphone style plug, I love people think you have to have one receiver per flash we don't if you want them to just fire and sink use a headphone splitter this is your typical you know, ipod headphones, splitter be by wherever convenience store and that works just great to split the signal so you just plug this into one transceiver or receiver either one on then send this off teach flash and you could do this double this again put another splitter here and send it all so you could have three four flashes all triggered by one receiver transceiver so it's a good way to save money if you don't want to put one receiver per flash now, the only only time that's not going to be great is if you want to use tl that won't work because you need to have one per unit to intercept that complex details signal okay, so that's good stuff in there I've also got in here filters and flash filters a really important these my favorite ones are the sticky filters if you guys have seen these before but I've been using these for years and basically you've got a collection of color correction filters that are like posted notes so when you want to make this flash be warm like, uh tungsten light just slap it on the front we kill it off we use it save it and it's guaranteed to not lose it stick for as long as your cat lives so over that long that is that's how long into these little last but they do replace them if you kill the sticky on this and they come in a variety of different colors there's blues for color correction so basically you can correct for fluorescent cast you can correct for tungsten cast and also daylight you want to turn daylight to tungsten or vice versa boom they're all here so this is one of those great products for something about these like that's genius is so simple but I don't know why I didn't think of it somebody's d I y project you know it turned into something pretty cool so I have a stack of those that I carry with me everywhere when I want more these air rogue rogue lighting here and these have like fancy colors, you know, if I want to purples and things that are not necessary color correction these work on a variety of their products as well as their grids or you could just throw on the front of your flashes as well but they don't stick that's kind of the cool things you have to find a good use of rubber band or some way to stick them to the front of your flash here's the ones for the front of the flash those the ones for their grid spot and these are the ones that could wrap around the front your flash there's all kinds of cool colors and these and they just go around the front and they provide you with the heavy duty rubber band basically just strap on the front and there you go so we're pretty simple just no sticky on it these have all kinds of colors so that's kind of cool when you want to throw up a you know, funky background color purple screens all kind of things that you wouldn't normally find in your color correction pack of the sticky filters okay, we got that going on what else we got in this bag? More extra spigots oh in my neutral density filter which is this's the waist pack from my camera bag which will bring out later and show you but um carry a couple more lenses and accessories in here but the neutra density filter we talked about earlier this is the one from sing gray that I like and and the way it works is you just turn it and you can kind of see there is returning but the darkness changes thanks so from two to six f stops and it's a fairly thin this is called a thin mount variable future density is what this particular one is and the thin mountain means it's a little bit thinner this way than their normal one, which is a little thicker but this lets me use a wide angle lens is better, especially using full frame camera you need something that gives you as much release obstruction is possible that's a groovy one and that's kind of the basis for um basic gear that we're going to be using it to make sure this seven anything else in here extra batteries of course going to show you those extra rings oh, this is another important thing. If you do end up getting a neutral density filter, don't buy one for every size lynched by the one for the largest lens open you have seventy to seventy seven whatever it is and then by step up rings or step down rings which every would you want to call it to go to your other lend sizes and that way you can use the same filter with all your lenses? I just have step brings to go to my different lens sizes okay kuol. Any questions here on the gear yes, my, um we just have a comment I love that people in the chat rooms are getting crazy with sharing their d I y ideas as well I'm up so go into those chat rooms keep sharing those ideas frozen photo dog who's a regular here says you can also use the colored cellophane on gift packages right? Like recycling totally find stuff anyone writing everywhere still exactly so keep those ideas coming in, folks yeah, those are great. They may not give you if you're using it for color correction they may not give you the exact color temperature, but for just effects those things are great. Yeah, I think of you whatever you can use, you know, it's funny I was that little gag store looking for gifts and things for my kids and, um, we're put it here, but I found a it mentions the prism, the rainbow prism thing, you know? So it's things like that you always keeping an eye out for what might work that you just I don't expect, you know, because that's kind of makes things interesting and that's, what could lead to a d I y project that actually turn into something is if you're trying something that from a toli, another industry, it totally different usage scenario and you're bringing it to photography and now you're making it years