Lessons

Lesson Info

Getting Started with Flash

Uh, basically how I described this is since it's called through the lens, you need to make sure that your flash can talk to your camera because what you'll do is you will set your exposure for your you're staying over all for the ambient light, right? And then you have your flash and you can leave it normal full power. Ok, so that would say zero compensation normal flash pulse and it will give you what it thinks out of the flash is correct exposure of the flash on your subject what it's doing is when it reads on its sensor that it's correctly exposed in its mind, it turns it off and that's, why it's through the lens and a half to talk so that's the part that a lot of people are they have a lot of questions about how do you get those to talk and there's a couple different systems for it right on the camera? It's not a problem at all if you play if you play it on the hop sure they're talking so yes on the hot shoe it's not a problem, it's when you get off camera to make the tt l through ...

the lens talk okay, we'll cover a bunch of those two yeah, so basically it's sending out a small pre pulse a lot of the time ahead of the actual big flash so some people might even blink it's like an unconscious perception you can't really see it there's a small little pre pulse that's going out on being gathered through the lens so it's just a cz accurate as your aperture priority or any of the other exposures that's why it's a big deal because it didn't used to be like that so what I do personally because I it often found it easier is instead of dialing in and guessing I mean it actually is still guessing where less sort of guessing okay is it one thirty second power is at one sixteenth on the back of my flash I can say if I want it full power or minus one which means the output would be one stop under what it says is correct exposure for coming out of the flash or maybe minus two or something like that so a lot of times for me that was a lot faster I would take a shot check the scene say flash looks a little bit too strong dial it down so flash wasn't a strong the reason I prefer this and this is this is the big thing for me is photographing weddings and events manual flash it is giving a constant output okay it's it's the same output of power every time so what happens is if you have a bride and you have your flash here okay let's see every flash off camera here and the bride is walking down the aisle at you putting out the same amount so when she's really far away she's really dim and as she gets closer, the flash looks brighter so it's back to the bucket example that I was giving or if you know, inverse square law okay, so basically further away that water from the bucket is not isn't going to reach and so as she gets closer the exposure's going to change in the flash will look brighter tt l doesn't do that for t t l it will consistently keep it at minus one or wherever I tell it too no matter where she is and so for me there's no way in a wedding I was going to be ableto this's just may how I work there's no way I was able to do the math and figure it out now some wedding photographers what they'll do is they might have the flashes off to the signs because the distance to the side if you're on manual stays the same. But for me I was just holding my flash like this we're holding my camera maybe on a tripod, maybe on a mono pod and so I needed my lens and I mean needed my flash my camera talk to help me out, help me do the math and give me a good exposure and I could always tweak it and that's a c the plus minus over there when when she's saying it's at zero like tlc plus two and two thirds there, she said zero isn't full power like maxim amount of power coming out of the fresh zero is what it thinks is the accurate exposure so just like p mode think of this as program or auto mode for your flash so p mode will give you what it thinks is an eighteen percent gray evenly exposed photograph tl motor e t t l had zero is essentially the same thing it's going to bounce that light, get immunity and try to give you on eighteen percent gray neutral perfectly exposed photograph where the plus and minus come in as lindsay can say for creative control like okay I want my bride to be brighter or maybe it's the groom coming up with a black tux so the flash is going to say okay here's what I think is eighteen percent gray and it's gonna be like no, I need more light that's a black tux so she can say take what you think is the correct exposure and add one or in this case is you see on the screen add two point in two thirds so it's going to say ok, this is how much flash up what I think is correct and then I'm gonna add two and two thirds stops because lindsay told me to so it's letting it do like the heavy lifting and she gets to be the artist and fine tune the actual output of it tl is great for events and stuff like that where you don't want to do the math of bouncing off the ceiling or a wall or calculating how fast the bride is coming at you it's going to do the math of getting that exposure and then you can just say make it a little brighter or a little bit softer, right? Yeah and what I would say for him is if let's say sure, shooting an event you shooting reception if you know that that ceiling is the same distance and you have on manual and you have it bouncing to a person who's roughly the same distance if you always keep that person five or six feet away manual's fine, but I was just crazy all over the place I was shooting up next somebody's face than over here in the corner, then across the room so there is no way I was focusing more on I'm capturing the moments in the interactions, making sure I had everything and for me it was just too distracted and get yes sometimes it wasn't quite the right exposure but it was close enough to record conversations just like going down and it's easy to do so I'm gonna go over t tl is a massive benefit, ok studio strobes you khun spend thousands of dollars on a powerful studio strobe and it's not going to have the brain of a t t l e speed light so when where you go ahead and talk about off camera lighting setups I'm gonna reference whether or not it has tl capability or it doesn't because that's a very important thing and in the end I'm going to show you some custom little rigs that I've put together when I shoot events because I'll shoot like a situation where lindsay's talking about where she wants to get really close to the people are far away I'll set it up so I have a flash on top of my camera running tl so if I get close to you little tt a little justin give me a proper exposure and go back and then I have other lights that are just manually set on wireless triggers toe light the room because if I have it here hitting the ceiling or hitting a wall that distance not gonna change that exposure won't change so you can really marry them. But in relation to this presentation of our primer on flash we'll talk about the relation toe having the teacher capability because it's huge like you if you wake up one morning don't have your coffee show up to set or show up to a shoot auto mode and tt l mode will get you through the day alive not hurt not unscathed but it does have a total brain meltdown put on tl and go and it'll do the thinking for you but you also have the fine tuning control if you want it and just a little bit more about what I would do remember how I said I do after parity with exposure compensation I would do after party with exposure compensation to control the ambience so if I want the ambient to be darker I'd go minus so it's the overall room would look darker and if I wanted my flash to look brighter I'd pump up my flash or switch it so they're independent which is great yeah they're not they're not link so I would be able to lighten up my room or dark and down the room and it wouldn't affect the flash and then I could light enough the flash or dark and down the flash and it wouldn't infect the room that's that's how I like to work smart and how my brain works saves you the mouth of having a life okay speed up my shutter drop this down so it saves you bunch that ralph um so here's the manual mode we're talking about this is the other option if you look over there um man you would flash the flash out put one over one is full power on the left you can see one over one twentieth is the minimum power so if the flash has about fifty five watt seconds of power you can do the math I guess what would be one, one hundred twenty eighth of that is very, very minimal so you're going to see how an environment like this where we're shooting earlier where it's very dimly lit it was beneficial to be using a speed light because if you can cut so much power out of it and one of the things I see with a lot of people is that they'll use their flash on too strong of a power and a lot of times I see images that are too flash and then they're shooting at lake f sixteen because they're trying to darken down the environment and and then it's too much and focus like when you're controlling it you can make it really, really dim and open up your aperture for the background and you have a lot more control yeah that's nice if you could buy these nice lenses with one point for two point eight you wanted bill to shoot at that wide open to get that soft kept the soft background and everything um over there you can uh like I said manual you can really go gearhead with this I mean back in the day you had guide numbers on your flashes that would tell you it is this much power which would give you this f eleven at sixteen and now you still have that kind of stuff built in there, but I don't really look at it much because we have the back of the camera, we have light meters, we have so many ways to do it and it's, not scientific, but you saw how with chippy and I got my shot in two two frames, which you could totally do but teach sally studios a lot for events and stuff where things are inconsistent distances from the flash. I just want you to know that both of these do exist out there, and most event shooters actually married the two of them now, so it's a combination of tl and manual flashes as you accumulate more of them. Um, most important thing that was kind of getting that flash off camera, you notice that I started right off the bat with the flash off camera. Lindsey didn't even bring me something to stick on my camera. She has, ah, took a photo of me yesterday when we were walking down the street, and she was relating a story where she shot something with an on camera flash just jokingly and about had a heart attack fell over in the street, so it doesn't even bother she brought about a license to carry ago, um, but getting that flash off camera creates depth because earlier we talked about we're not really looking so much for the highlights alone as we are with the highlights and then the shadows that they cast, so if you have your flash on camera, I want to show you something like this. All of the shadow that you're casting is behind the subject, so this is a very distorted, very on camera snapshot he looking photo it's bad and that's because the flash is directly on camera unmodified and looks flat because all the shadows behind her head to the camera can't see it. So by taking the flash off camera, we're going to create that illusion of depth and make people look more three dimensional. So on the left to kind of forty five degrees over off camera, the image on the right is completely to the side of this guy off camera, so you can see how you have a lot more control over what you're trying to tell what story you're trying to tell with your life if you start getting off camera and moving it around a little bit, so to do that, we basically need to cover the actual nuts and bolts. I don't want to be like okay, cool. We saw the workshop lindsay garrett got me all excited. I want to go out and get off camera now. What the heck do I d'oh? So we're gonna literally break it down for you so you know exactly what you need to be able to do these setups here first the lights stand umbrella bracket mounting shoe and flash trigger now there are things to think about all of this. First the lights stand, you're gonna scoff you look, man, you know I'm paying all of frito watch this watch this like, creative life thing and why is he saying they're wasting my time about light stands? But this is a big deal, john, if you could bring me that big life stand there um, you guys want to pan down here? We're talking about footprint. So with a light stand like this, sometimes people might incorrectly set one up. This footprint is basically the area that is covered. Yeah, giacomo here's like they think it's knocked over really easily. So when you're buying a light stand, you want to think of what light you want to have on top of it, like if you're gonna have a big soft box or large umbrella, this isn't going to be your light stand if I want a small speed light this is a good light stand to do that and footprint is how much area it gets covered with the base here so that's important to think about this right here is more of a ten foot stand you can see it's a much wider footprint with a low base here and this is see how it goes really low and wide this is going to spread out give me a low center of gravity and take a much bigger light in a much bigger modifier you tell me what to you're using there yet so this is going to be a west got ten foot heavy duty light stand and this is a man photo nano stand and I like these for speed lights because if I don't have a large light or a big modifier I'm just using speed lights and expo discs and I'm sorry in flash bender's gonna tiny that breaks up their folds up to and then it still comes out and has a decent footprint and at the same time it's going to give me about six feet of height this is a good mobile stand so if I had a small event bag that would be like a backpack and I wanted the option to do off camera light this would be the stand that I would definitely use for that so and then also you have air cushioned ones which basically means you can't slam that down on your finger it's going to be a rh cushion is going to be compressed in there so slowly falls down. So if you're going to have heavy modifiers, you might want to get an air cushioned light stand. You don't smash your finger in it like that they're a little more expensive, but if you have a heavy light on there, go that route if you have something like this doesn't really matter. So just whether or not your air cushioned or not, and the size of your footprints are two very important things to keep in mind when you're buying light stands. Uh, hold up your body fires in your lights. Other thing is umbrella brackets these are important because this is how you actually mount all your modifiers. So it's, the one you see there on the left he's come with a lot of the kits, like we're going to cover the westcott umbrella it that they do a good job of packaging their umbrellas and their soft boxes in a kit where you get a light stand that's appropriate to the size of the modifier and one of these, which basically goes on top of the flat, are on top of the light stand. Cranks down and then this shaft right here is where you would put in umbrella shaft through and then crank that down so that you could same thing with this it fastens the umbrella and then you have the option to tilt up and down to angle it. So let me ask you this if you're spending six hundred dollars on a speed light on a flash or five hundred dollars and you're spending the good amount of money on a stand, do you think it's beneficial to be cheap and spend four dollars on the cheapest plastic umbrella bracket you could possibly find? This is the linchpin of your whole set up, so spend a couple extra bucks get the heavier metal, steel, aluminum ones, whatever you can out there like these so that the thing holding everything together and everything hinging is a little tough I've actually broken plastic umbrella brackets that I've gotten in the past I'm speaking from experience, you're not worth it, it's amazing you never think they're gonna break until you know it snaps five or six hundred bucks falling to the ground and you're like, oh man, I really don't save myself anybody in here without purchase um that's what you want to keep in mind with that over here is your mounting shoes we have a cold shoe on the left in a hot shoe on the right not temperatures is not how cool they are it's basically just the connection whether it's alive or not the free on the left is what we have here if I could pull it off for you because it's cold yeah you like that you think you think you knew that when they put together a brand that's cute so if you look at the top right there this is basically a cold shoe which means there's no connection alright it's it's essentially dead all it does is hold things in place but I like it because it's plastic these are great because they come in the kit but they're metal so that you're scraping the contacts on the bottom your flash which might eventually give you some issues because there's electrical contacts under these are communicating so I prefer to do it's something like the frio where it's plastic isn't gonna bang up the feet of your flash of the feet of your trigger over here and then it really easily just kind of slides on there locks down and you're good to go so so far we've got our light stand a bracket are cold shoe the one on the right is a hot shoe that's this is for if I didn't have something like this and I was just getting like a normal pocket wizard I got one from over here so this is like the plus x this guy right here I have to connect somehow to my flash this is what received the signal from my camera to tell this guy to fire when it's off camera so that hot shoe on the right will do that by sticking my flash on their creates the connection communicates down the line that plugs into this guy right here and then I can fire so the mounting should you want to decide cold or hot depending on what triggers you buy and then how you're gonna intend to fire them? And then which brings me over to flash triggering because there's a couple different ways to do that you have a camera over here? No, no god one we've got a bunch so I grabbed this guy right here the first lee is on camera in a little bit we're gonna head up to the sanctuary and we're gonna cover how you can get off camera looks with an on camera flash but the first way on camera right here is great let me see if I have a slide for it oh, I don't basically it connects on here you're going to get all of the communication possible there directly talking and they're linked to each other it could do manual mode they could do t t l mode it can do t t l mode with the exposure compensation we discussed this is basically great to a communication wonderful relationship they work really well together. Okay, now we have to keep this communication open as we go off camera so to do that we have the tpl cable now this is what lindsay was talking about earlier, right? We're using a detail cable going off camera so this is this guy let's kind of set that up yeah true that messed with your stuff and that goes right there so this is like that umbilical cord it's allowing her to get off camera we haven't cut it yet so it allows you to get it off camera here really quick and still maintain that communication so it's still thinks it's a tash so I didn't and you wonder why this arm is bigger than that are you know I'm just buff yeah, okay, so this basically keeps behind a communication open t tl manual whatever you want to do but now do you see why lindsay was doing that? It gets it off camera so we're casting shadows to the side and we're actually seymour of our our subject we're sculpting our subject I knew something like this I would do something like the flash bender to soften the light yeah um treat a little bit more like a soft box and then hold it off so that there's a little bit more shape to the face yeah that's it basically and that is go to I still do that a ton when I'm shooting events is well it's great because you can bring it over here on camera you can run t t ell all night so that it's doing all the thinking and you're just worried about catching the moments and getting the right parents and then if you need to go off camera for a portrait you have the ability to do so as long as your arms are long enough so the image on there is on camera flash the image the left is just extending this chicken wing all the way out there and get in the shot from the side and one thing for people this is one of the issues I was having is when I was shooting this when I'd want to my camera down like I couldn't because it doesn't hook in anymore so just so you know something I recommend you check out our the spider holster uh the spider holsters that they make if you showed a lot of weddings or events um you can actually their belts and you can actually add little adaptors that you can put the camera on one hip in the flash on the other you know that so you don't have to worry about reconnecting the cable because it won't fit on top now and you have to have some place to put it so that's what I would do something like that yeah it makes a little bit difficult when you actually take a break. I don't know that. Okay, cool. So you learned something created by god uh, the next way, it's kind of old school, but if you've been shooting off camera flash is for the more than the last couple of years. Oh, my god, I broke it and it has my college email on it. Ok, this is how old this technology is, but I have to bring it up because anyone who's been shooting speed light is all like, well, what do you think of the wired infrared transmitters there? Nostalgic? Yes, but this isn't the best way to go anymore. What this basically does is tries to create this bridge this communication between the flash and your camera wirelessly, so it sends an infrared signal, which is great if your flashes here and this is on camera and there's, not bright light and you're not by water, you're not by any large metal structures, you're not by walls there's, nothing else going on in the room. It's, basically a superpower tv remote sends infrared out, is caught by the flash and then triggers it's great, though, because for years this was one of the cheapest, easiest ways with direct line of sight to get that t t l control like I had the five fifties attended five fifty exes and I wanted to be ableto have to seal because that's how my brain works but I wanted to build to get it off camera further than my hands well to have a couple maybe bounced one off the corner over here and have one in my hand or on a stand here that's that's what I used the biggest issue was that is if somebody was standing in the way it wouldn't fire or the reason it was more of a problem is if I had my flash maybe behind a table because I wanted to kick up on a wall it wouldn't see through the table or whatever was there so it had to literally be line of sight. There were times where I was trying to do a hair light from behind and if it couldn't see so would it have to do is creeping out of the side of the person's body so it would see little bottom photo shop it out in other words, it's definitely it got the job done just not well, but now there's a lot better solution, so you're exactly right this many other things to do it, but I still have great friend in new york who's one of the top of any photographers that I know and he still uses thes I don't know how he hasn't thrown about the window yet but he still hangs onto him um here's the next way to go these air now radio triggers so radio triggers art line of sight anymore it used to be with this technology that you would get some sun or whatever or you hid it behind somebody you would lose that kind of training that you'd lose that connection radio triggers can go through walls can go through people um I shot a job in orlando once we're on the roof of like an eight story apartment building and my assistant was unloading all the gear and it was like walking down and he'd left it all kind of connected on the light stan and everything and I was up on the roof and just for fun I was like, well he didn't break it down and gets down going to the car and any starts to break it down so I pop it off and sure enough everything was still on and fired eight stories down so for fun I was like, you know I called him up I was like a run down orange who's running down the middle of orlando he got a couple blocks away down range I could see him from the top of the apartment building and I'm popping these off and these are the old plus twos so I mean these have incredible range and can go through just about anything but it's on ly manual yes way to bring it back so these air basically just sending an impulse to fire we've no longer have the communication anymore, so this is like a long distance relationship? They're still together there's still communicated talking but the communication is where we've lost tl we're missing something so this right here there's a different ways to connect it to plug it into your flashes and stuff. This is a super reliable way if you're shooting studio strobes or speed lights and you're just doing a manual and you're going to settlement forget him and you just want him to reliably fire this is a great way to do it I want to bring it back because we've got newer thing are here's how you would connect it? This is connected to that new loom a pro lp one eighty, which is a cool all manual flash option that's way more cost efficient unlike the new speed lights but it doesn't do tt out just manual just came out that's a shot of that, but now we can get you t t l with radio technology I've been using the pocket wizard flex units it's what you've seen today lindsay was shooting them down in the fluorescent area shooting in t l I was shooting with exposure compensation yeah and I was up here manual mode with um power settings to have it yeah the right here so there's the flex and then the other ones over there okay, so yeah, you got that john's gonna bring it over okay, so what these guys basically dio is one goes on the camera and then one goes on the bottom of the flash just like you see here I'm gonna set that up just like that and this wireless invisible radio connection right here between the camera and this is like this umbilical cord they finally brought the technology full circle where we have an invisible been our umbilical cord with tio capabilities and manual control and now it's wireless they can throw this thing behind a wall behind someone's head down an eight story apartment building like whatever you want to do and you have that controlling that communication again and the reason that I like this is what he said is it's actually kind of cool because it's not digital and actually really easy but you can easily flip it tio t ell with exposure compensation and its little dials where I can dial up so it's not like I need to go into a menu and change plus or minus which drives me crazy because you got to set it in the ones he didn't set it so blinking and all that stuff you literally just dialect so aiken d'oh you know right on our plus one I mean just that slipping my finger, I mean then if I wanted to get a manual which I don't but if you wanted to I mean it's again it's the flip of a button which I don't know, I find a little bit of a relief after going through the menus in the back of this thing recently because it has accessible what I actually want to have accessible and I have to not have to dive deep into it. So that's why I appreciate it and it's cool because it's one third stop increments so literally it was just like tl when it's bottomed out you start at zero if I want less power, which is base going to give me a t t l if I want exposure compensation down one, I literally go one third two third to one down ones it's just like you're pushing the buttons up and down in the back here flash happened right here, way faster not having run back and forth your flash. Um, so this was really, really cool. I do want to skip over here to the canon stuff we had a question about remember the auto focus assist team really quick before I forget um, the autofocus just mean, we talked about I use that a lot of the time when I don't even want my flash to fire becca innate from studio to to to photography down in orlando killer wedding photographers but he messaged me during the break and he's like dude cannons are way better they could totally turn off the flash. So he's saying you can still use your infrared a focused beam on your cannon speed light and then turn your flash off, not fire at all you don't even need a new gaff tape well, I'll let lindsay take this away because someone finally got it all these all these options are work arounds to make the flash work off camera and cannon finally said okay, fine. If you insist, we'll do it so lindsay's just started shooting with these he's the new cannon one so I'll let you explain with okay, so this is the six hundred e x artie flashes the new cannon flash is what they do is they take the technology but I said before remember how I said you could come kind of control the flashes from this but this was line of sight now it's radio and as you would say, it's stupid easy like it is really easy because what I'll do is I set a channel on this so I can call this flash eh that can go wherever it needs to go I put this on my camera and on channel a I consent thie compensation or you can set the compensation let's say you have like six slashes in the room I consent the compensation so all of them are plus one or all of them remind us one one of the downsides however for what I can see so far is that if I have multiple flashes let's say I have six hundred to have a few of them I can't set this one toe like minus one and the other one to minus two separately I can only do ratios so I can say they want this one twice as bright as this one that was okay with me when I was shooting a lot of times clint knew the flash I wanted on them I wanted to be twice as bright as the one I wanted the hair light like something like that you don't have is much control versus manual where you can set it exactly um but a couple couple other things with it um it's really, really, really simple it seemed to have pretty good battery life but then here's another but six hundred are awesome like this I promise you is easy as you can imagine you put it on you set the flash compensation, make it brighter or dimmer, but if you have anything other than these it doesn't look like all the other options here can plug into these have to plug into any nikon speed like these can be any speed like period the's are very proprietary talks that's just to the slash not to this one so it's not like it's technology that goes back so your five fifties are not going to be tl off camera they are unless you plug him into like maybe a pocket with right and then you would then why would you then you just go with that by the way just in case you missed this you do need something for the camera and to buy for the flashes so that was something that I liked it I just need something to put on my camera I don't need to buy something new for all my flashes so it was a lesser expense to me but if you have like six flashes that you would like to use that are older it won't work but I can set them to trigger on manual but they won't be detail so it's like it's it's give and take their first foray into this which is you need to see because hopefully somewhere stuff you'll be able to get the zones like we can with some of the other solutions out there we need to see how it goes so and we don't like the answers you honestly like sincerely I took this out of the box and it took me like two minutes and it worked like that that's it does it? It worked it was great and it wasn't you know, not too expensive. I mean, look cool for buying your flashes of that. Okay, so really quick we're talking about basic modifiers here we have a few minutes left. These are the ones that I always have in my kit the first one's the umbrella so we've got it right over here. This guy um I like the like the removable this one in particular because it's got a removable black cover you can kind of see in the picture how it's falling off a little bit. It comes all the way off and you get something like this, which is a shoot through umbrella and this is great because I can get this if I have it plugged into my umbrella bracket really, really close to lindsay without I'm gonna use it for model. Ok, we go really, really close to lindsay without poking her in the eye. The problem though you get with bounce umbrellas has got the black cover that we can put on this and use it in the bounce orientation is that the closer I get, the more likely I am to blind my poor partner here. So this is neat because it could be a bounced umbrella for a big spread of light or it can be removed and uses a through m it's very similar quality so beautiful so there's a cover that goes on it is removed while seeking to bounce or shoot partially covered so there's a lot of different options to go that route it's the umbrella with the removal cover like this is definitely one of the first ones that I recommend people pick up when they're looking for modifiers for their speed yeah inexpensive you're not gonna break the bank for that if you can afford a speed light the umbrellas within your cost branch um the next one's going to be the road flash bender's we've covered these a bunch I love them they come in a million different sizes you tell you to bounce that could be turned into soft boxes they can do all kinds of stuff and they go in your pocket um if you want to pan over to my rolling bag over there really quick that's ah airport security version too I think so it's a really big rolling bag but in the outside pocket you'll notice a bunch of flash betters kind of stuff in there those air with me all the time so no matter what I have small medium large soft boxes diffusion bender's flash cards so even if I go on a job and I don't think I'm gonna need an off camera lighting setup, I still have the option to do it if I want teo or if something comes up and that's saved my job that saved me a couple of times I had when I first started using the flash benders, I went like photoshopped world or something like that. I saw them on the expo floor, and I was like, out these, they're kind of cool that you picked up a couple and I went and shot a job down in florida where I was covering big annual meeting for a company that's a client of mine, and I had to go and shoot basically event style when they were releasing new numbers and kind of having, like, a robber, a meeting for all the vendors and stuff around the country, and the one of the handlers comes over to me and she's like, oh, well, we've got like the ceo and couple execs coming over then, like one of, like, the reps from this region coming over, we want to do porch it's of them on this product that we have over here on the floor and I run in minimal, like, I mean, I have a twenty four to seventeen my cameras in flashes, like I was there to shoot event style stuff bouncing off the ceiling if I was feeling ambitious. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, crap ninety two a formal portrait and they flew me down and I'm in florida that put me in a nice place and pay me well so I'm not gonna be like oh no sorry can't do it yeah, I'll hit you with a camera flash so I basically had my two flash bender's one is a key light one is a rim light I put them on like chairs I had the handler holding one and the other one I propped up on a chair with the big soft boxes like that I just had her move around they don't want is a rim light and they gave me focus light I could control one so it didn't flare was kind of like focused as a rim light and I have the other one is like a big soft box and I pulled off a great portrait they ended up making prints of them and giving them like to put in the office or whatever and they were impressed and I kept the client and there's still a client of mine three years later so these guys really kind of saved my butt there um the next thing to is the road jails we've talked about these got a pile of them so these are the correction filters they also have a theatrical one which is all the fancy fund colors that don't fix white balance, but kind of puts splashes of color on stuff these air really important ones, though, because you just saw a couple of it's go how I had to use a full cut of cto to balance with the lighting here. And earlier this morning, lindsay used the full plus green downstairs to die along with the fluorescent, so we just walked up one floor in this beautiful place of awesomely horrible light on, and we've already had to use have to kit essentially to balance that are flashes, so this is clutch like you need this. Well, what's really nice, too, is because they have, like the lesser cuts of things, it's like a fourth color temperature orange. Sometimes we use out on location or when I'm inside teo ad just a little bit of warmth, like just a little bit of warmth to the face, to make the person stand out from the background if they're an environment where that light is just too cool and you just want to give it a little bit more life to it, instead of making it feel cold and sterile, I usually keep one of those on top, my flash it all time, because I'm coming with, like, florida mentality of everyone being tan, and they're living in the midwest in the new york for a few years like I just want to give everyone like a little something in the photos so the quarter cto kind of stays on my flash all the time and I think people would love me for it so that's definitely a staple for sure um so the next thing finally what we're gonna talk about is uh how much control you have when you're running with the manual flash lindsay kind of touched on this with using aperture priority and exposure compensation so she gets her control by letting the camera give her a base value and then she says I want you to take this environment and dial it down some and then she lights them with a speed light and then she says, hey, I like your base value but I want my people to be brighter and that's how she controls her world um I like to do this with the manual flash way and this translates over to studio strobes to so she doesn't give yourself enough credit cause she's like oh, I used t oh well if you ever seen this girl with like a room for lebron color strobes it'll blow your mind and all of them are sent manually all of them it's incredible but it all has its roots right here in these basic tenants so is so is a global controller most of us shot on film we talked about it earlier most of us are stuck in this whole mindset where four hundred s o do or die that's it that's all I can. I'm setting it, and I'm forget. It also needs to be something that you had just as much as your shutter speed and your aperture when you're on the job, because if I can go from one second exposure to one, two hundred fiftieth exposure and not bad and I and I find go from two point eight f twenty two and not bad and I I should be from s o one hundred s o thirty two hundred not bad and I you have the range it's, the third party, your triangle so definitely use it and basically by globally I mean it. When I turned up my s o and I have my flash manually set it's gonna see more of this, its sensitivity to that will increase and will also increase the sensitivity to all the ambient light and just know this is for manual manual. Yeah, not seok so that's, why we're jumping out there and this is all manual approach cameras on manual speed, lights on manual shutter speed controls the ambient light so by speeding that up it's gonna give less time for all the light in the room to come up and macon exposure and by slowing it down it's going to get more time for all that light to bleed in an aperture is the size of the hole in your lens that lets the light and so if you make that a bigger hole, more lights going to get in right away if you make the smaller hole less like we'll get in so that's what we're essentially going to use to control our flash power and if you if you understand, um studio lighting, this literally is the exact same thing, so if you understand studio, just go, ok, I could do that to my flash yeah, so you would set in it so you would set a fast shutter speed so it kills all of the ambient light in there in your studio, and then he would just dial in your aperture and your power associated in your flashes and you're good to go so here's, I'm just going to give you an example to make it really, like, palatable because that's cool, I wrote it down in my notes you're gonna forget about it, it seems to go shoot so here, right here's an example of shooting in the lower east side of new york I flew in this is actually before I live there a couple years ago I flew and I wanted to shoot a photo kind of demonstrating this I grabbed a friend of mine and the lower east side there's no shortage of beautiful graffiti I think they paint this wall every week now that I live in that neighborhood gets tagged every week but this photo right here is a girl at a light lit with one flash this guy right here okay, so I've got one speed light manually controlled in apollo which is basically like a small dr signal soft box and it's lighting her up. What I did is I basically set my I s o to s o eight hundred okay? And then I set my aperture to five point six okay? And that I set my shutter speed to one two hundred fiftieth of a second so all things being constant, my flash power hasn't changed. So eight hundred five point six ok, one two hundred fiftieth of a second now watch ever all of the environment it's all black right? Somehow I turned the lights off on new york there's no way I could have asked all these. All these new yorkers have turned off their lights, but I did it with my with my fast shutter speed because there's not enough time for the ambient light now that one our one one hundred twenty fifth of a second so I basically slowed it down by half all right this is one one sixtieth of a second this is one one thirtieth of a second. This is one one fifteenth of a second I think this last one I got to see what happened there really quickly look att one one fifteenth of a second one two hundred fiftieth of a second all they did was slow down my shutter speed and it controlled my ambient light. Now look at the intensity on my model. All right, two fifty one twenty five, sixty, thirty fifteen did the power intensity of the light change it all on my model zero? Right? All right, now, if I did my eyes so up and down everything would go up and down so that gives you all that control. So I set everything manually and all I did was run that little scroll wheel on the back of my camera to run my shutter up and down. And I have this image versus this image to drastically different images. Now it could be this could be at a wedding when I want to highlight my bride and groom during their first dance. This could be it the same reception where I want to show all the guests all in all and loving and crying behind them all I did was just my shutter speed that's it so I just want you guys to really impress upon how much control you have if you want to go that route and same thing from speed light to q flash to brown color strober pro photo stroke whatever you want to play with same same math applies so that really is how you control your manual off camera flashes so you guys have any questions on that to feel uh from the in camera audience anything kind of coming through our line there are a ton of questions online if you guys don't mind taking a few of those faraway cool so um earlier today and throughout this segment nance see twenty three and several others were wondering if either one of you ever work with a light meter it's a question that comes up quite often here created all the time you have got one in my bag as well I think we're both using the same warrants just because it looks like an iphone you touch screen okay, so I never used a light meter up until recently because the light meter's run off of like your manual controls and I started using theis flexion it's the new pocket wizard ones that are basically they have ah control channel, which is a different wavelength and the regular pocket was their channels so I used a lot of speed lights and I've been using these a lot and I wasn't able to find a new adapter on the back of my light meter that could trigger these remotely so I just said screw it I can champ I can do whatever you know, memorize stuff going appreciate whatever I have to do but this new one came out it's the for the all forty seven d r is the noose iconic and it has something in it that allows you to remotely trigger pocket wizards normal pocket wizards all the different channel of pocket wizards all the new flex and tt out like the tpl compatible pocket wizards so when this came out, I was like, oh, crap, that covers all the bases like it covers my studio strobes, it covers my speed lights, so I immediately jumped on it, and if you're shooting controlled environment catalogue stuff for studio stuff, I need to be able to consistently get the same look even though I might be shooting over multiple days, consistency is key for a lot of my clients I like a light meter because it allows me to go in and get the exact same thing every day, so I do use one a lot now uh, tommy's it most commonly is when I'm taking my studio strobes on location and so it just gives me a good starting point on either end to make the meat in the middle basically I'm trying to balance the two so I can figure out well for the other one, what do I got to do to make them meet what's neat is it's ah it's got a percentage on there so when you take a photo and you when you get her a meter reading especially outdoors it will say, okay here's what to say your camera too, by the way seventy percent of this exposure is flash, so you can actually get a feel for how much ambient light you have in your exposure how much is bleeding in for a phil? What kind of lighting ratios you have um, but to put that in perspective, I mean, I didn't start really using this until the last year to, um and never really had an issue and didn't miss it. It makes me work a little more efficiently now and faster, but by no means do you need to run out and get one of these. This is not the first, second, third or fifth thing to add to your lighting kit. How did you know that? I never use it for this stuff that I'm talking about right now? Yeah, never so I mean in the beginning of a shooting film, but after that you want a digital cam resident? We're not that old, but we did learn on film, yeah, yeah happy birthday yesterday so I'm grappling with age right now, so all right, by the way I feel like we should give you a shadow because your mom uh lindsay's mom excuse me wish to you happy birthday oh my god also I think I think and also said that she was your biggest fan so mom love going on in the tech room as well as curiosity as always so totally ask kind of a general flash question but only asked flash and blinking eyes had I recently had a couple with him responding to almost every flash blinking at he's the flash for phil a lot how would you work in this situation? Eric and lynn oh my goodness. Okay, so what he's probably blinking too is I think I mentioned earlier tl sends a tiny pre flash out and that's what bounces off things and the meter off of some people are perceptive like can pick that up and don't even realize it because most of us don't um so you're gonna have to get out of t l mode do you think uh would bouncing it help it all or no still sending out that pre pulse that's the only way to not send that pre pulse just probably causing that gentleman to blink is the tt l mode, so you're going emmanuelle in this instance it's very rare and don't count down just has the fbi because they're saying ok three, two, one and click on the it's like some people just do it or if I ever do that I go on like two and a half so I'll be like one to click three ha got you so if you have a blinker just shoot early I could definitely had that like they blink every time because I'm counting on you great question from chris walt as does exposure compensation adjust the strobe when in th e l or just the camera and the ambient exposure it doesn't adjust the tcl because the tcl is talking to the camera and it will shut off her on lee put the amount out to make it whatever you said it at at correct exposure for that flash or minus so no you khun do the two separately, which is why it made me really happy because I could put my brain in two different planes and say ok aperture priority exposure compensation average ford that's okay environment darker flash brighter or switch the two and I just I like separating the two my head so yeah it's really useful that ability is equivalent of doing this but teacher which is great but I didn't think that was always available for some of the older night cons and stuff too, which is proud, which is why I went this route so can hats off to them for yeah, it doesn't doesn't affect you could do it independently