Skip to main content

DIY Lighting Part 2

Lesson 2 from: DIY Lighting

Kevin Kubota

DIY Lighting Part 2

Lesson 2 from: DIY Lighting

Kevin Kubota

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

2. DIY Lighting Part 2

Lesson Info

DIY Lighting Part 2

You guys know we like to go cheap, right cheap way talked about is one of reading those people were just joining us who haven't been here in the first segment just to kind of talk about why why d I y and one of the reasons again is of course you just starting out and you wantto make stuff cheap, you need to get great quality lighting, you're not going to get clients if you don't have good lighting, you're not gonna get good lighting if you don't have good lighting skills and some equipment, but you don't need the expensive equipment and I say that having a closet full of really expensive equipment back home so I'm not saying don't ever buy gear I love buying here and I love using nice in here, but you don't have to start that way. It's it's more convenience and a luxury and of course, your professional image goes up when you have a nice looking here as much as we don't liketo admit that that's true but same thing if you show up at a wedding right cut off shorts and a beer t shirt, you ...

know people get a different impression of you if you show up in a nice clothing and it has nothing to do with you is the photographer on what kind images they're going to take, but their impression is different so I considered that but if you make your own dea gear just make it pretty spray paint it they will never know you know put little sparkles and on it or some glitter whatever you wanted to make it all fancy um so you could make it look better so what we're going to do in this section here is to make some v flats first of all what kind of make some variations of those things and talk about using also flashlights, flashlights over the last few years have become powerful enough and cheap and affordable enough with the led lighting that they can actually used in a lot of situations in low light similar to what we have here if you're in a darkened room you can do amazing things the flashlight the great thing with flashlights you see exactly what you're gonna get you know people always ask how can I I don't know anything about flash I don't know how to meet her flat and what the speed I was going to do it's hard for me imagine what's going to come out of that until you have that experience it may be better to to work with flashlights at first because you can actually see immediately what's happening it's good start and it's also easy to just have a flashlight in your bag we're not we'll use these in a minute but I'll just show you this is a flashlight for some reason created quite a stir the first time was on creative live it's a really deep lack does anybody have epilepsy in here? This is serious question. Okay, I did pop it out when it has a strobe mode on it that, uh somebody told me if you have epilepsy that could trigger a seizure. Okay, so this flashlight has this beautiful perfect pattern as you can see here and it also zooms and focus is to make a nice little spotlight but as it when it's all the wide like that it doesn't have a hot spot in middle, which is really nice. And it's it's fairly powerful has three different levels very low for close up to somebody rechargeable battery if you want to recharge the batteries on her it was like seventeen dollars or something. I don't have the link off top head, but last time I gave the link out they sold out completely with flashlights on there. So uh I'll put the think that link is in the pdf download or I can put it on my block or something if you have questions about if you guys wanted to know where to get him but you could get these anywhere but the main thing is to find one that has a nice pattern like that it's even and fairly powerful this one is about one hundred fifty lumen you want one of about one hundred fifty lumens or brighter to really do much for you? The natural extension of the flashlights again, we'll play with these later, and some of you have heard of the ice light. Jerry jonas, design, this is awesome turbocharge version of the flashlight, right and big, bright bull just like smoothies. Khun b and so this is something we could also you're gonna use this for something else, don't you? I know what you use this for. We're not gonna talk about that, okay? Let's, build some of these lads shell way. So the flax, as you've probably seen this week, are very common. They're very useful, and they've been used in studios for ages. When I was first getting started twenty years, almost twenty years ago, I worked in a commercial photography studio, and we had the exact same thing these v flats and they're simple to make. Made from foam core. The main thing is to get them seemed properly so that you can, um, store them and use either side so foam core, you can order it. We have a local errands part supply. They don't stock them, but if you ask, they will order it for you and they are black on one side, white on the other and what we're going to do is just put a seam on them so this is real quick so I need another couple volunteers to come here and help me duct tape the heck out of this sucker. Speaking of duct tape uh I didn't wantto talk to you guys. Those ofyou are not super familiar with different types of tapes we have gaffer's tape and there's a duct tape generally speaking, gaffer's tape is professional take fresh professional that sounds eso gather state the good thing with david a super strong but doesn't leave any goose so if you wrap this around cords here sticking things to the walls temporarily hold strong but it pulls off without leaving do whereas if you use duct tape and you wrap your cords you're hurting. That sucks because it's just a mess to get off so gaffer tape is also more expensive but it's good to have a role in your bag because there's been times when I this is nothing but this would do the job very strong views isto hold things that have broken like my little frame they wrap some around just to make sure it would stay together so get that first aid is great for that but it's also expensive on the other hand, the duct tape which were up we all know and love cheap but it's gooey doesn't hold up as long as gaffer's tape but so what we're gonna do here is we're gonna lay down a scene we have to go and see if we got some duct tape and some gaffer's we'll use the gaffer's because it's a flatter white kind of matches the board and it's going to hold up a little better in the long run and the main thing when you're making the scene here they would think we just lame together lay some tape down on it if you do that it won't fold both directions it'll bind so you want to have uneven space and there's you can either just set it up for about a half an inch. What you want to do is to have enough space between the boards that's about equal to double that the thickness of the board and this looks like it's about a quarter inch bored so we probably have an interest of space you could do it that way another way to do it just get some tens or pencils uh lady goes down as chasers they could put two of them came about half an inch and just lay a couple them down here come down there and you tape right over it on one side and then you just flip it over and pull depends often then lay your shoulder stripping state you can use whatever you want that just keeps a consistent distance all the way down like that okay now there are different ways to lay down your scene. I'm going to do the simplest way, which is just exactly we're doing right here is make a space ladies a tape you can also do what's called a barn door hinge, which gives you a really strong allows the board too easily go in and out and all that. But it's, I think it's unnecessary because this this works fine and it's faster, so I want to see the barn door. Here is the main thing here is I don't want to climb on this board or doing this. You're going to take that down to her? I know what you just hold the boards together for us, but we're starting to lay this down. You leave a little extra and you can wrap around it, but not too much just need enough to go around the edge we got yours down then I'll lay my down that squished up sucker over. Okay, keep that spacing for pins out. Use the black gaffer. Is that gas? I once got a cut. Wait, baby, wait. All right. Simple as that you got a b flat is, uh, square instead of berkeley. So the idea is that you want you should be able to hinge it together let's, bring that together here either direction if you left enough space in your hinge that should work uh then we're going to use them kind of at an angle like that so their self standing we like get bounced light into it reflect natural light work beautifully thanks for their super versatile and this is the one thing that you see even in the highest in photography studios they just use foam core and duct tape and it's got a crazy it's like the the premier d I y ghetto set up it works very well so let's do one more and we'll have two of them together now that we have experienced listen go really fast look at that you're all over the pens it's one of chime and kevin while you're doing that hey this is something that people always ask like how to make these how do you make these? Where do you get to be flat from so I appreciate that you're showing yeah good and there is such a versatile tools that everybody should have some pen trick is pretty cool can I lay mine down first hold on your side her lay this one down and line years up and try not to climb on the board as much as you can because it will dent it but no big deal he taped it to his knee got hairy knees that's gonna hurt when you pull it up yes where can you get this? Because I don't think they saw this where I live you have to order it you have like a narc supply store where you live I don't think so no, you can order online it does cost on the ship because it's so big so the other option is I've done this before as I've made my own v flats that are a little sturdier with actual wood frame like um thin baseboard trim would and you just build the frame you can actually put a cross bar to support it as well I'm only mine or yeah, I get mine first and uh fill it with some white um clear plastic on camera but name of it is but I have used that stuff is well built a sturdier version it's harder to move around because heavier but it also last longer and holds up better but you can order this stuff and it's probably worth it because it's something that you will use so often if it cost you forty bucks for shipping, probably I would go for it you know that's an investment future yes, these for my studio using insulation from the hardware store where you come in the same size sheets for eight bucks apiece on their white and silver so you cannot punch your flat or paint decides black yeah yeah, you could spray paint the silversides cause I don't think you'll ever using silver side there's gonna be kind of harsh but spray painted silver side black and then there you go. Yeah, phone cards a super nice because really lightweight so by yourself you could move pretty easily studio with uh okay, so let's uh let's start showing some ways we can use these things and they were going to modify them a little bit more to so first of all this way where is our lovely done? Yeah, could you bring a chair and yourself over here? Um pulls up in a minute let's just use this so we'll bring daniel back kind of similar setup this is one way and there are a lot of different ways you khun position these but if we want to kind of emulate what we did before and generally again lighting for to be natural if you think about portraiture it's a little it's a little different when you get into doing fashion and things where you want like it's not really realistic lindsay showed some really beautiful things last night gorgeous on a beautiful model but it's not something you would use on your everyday person she's kind of exceptionally beautiful. So again, I need somebody really ugly we just don't have a really ugly person to use here, so we're gonna we can't typical portrait light you want it to look like it's coming from a window you want to think like a classic painter they didn't have multiple lights and beauty dishes and all the stuff they had a window and they painted according to what they saw as a light coming from the window and that's always been a really pleasing wayto make portraiture and the best most classic portrait ce the ones that stand the test of time simply just simulate beautiful window light and that's kind of what we could go for what I go through for the most part but I like to do crazy lighting too and that's fun but we're just gonna talk about clean portraiture right now lookit she's already got what if you think back against this chair like one arm up on that chair turn in just a little bit there you go that's sexy I like it so I'm going to shoot from here and I want this to be just outside of camera view okay so we get his much of this towards the front this is going to rap and this is going to be a very directional but soft lights will get lots of light here and it's going to fall into shadow on that side okay it's dramatic well let's see it then we can decide if we want to fill it in with something else we can uh the flash so our flash we can do a couple different things one cool thing again teo use as little as possible to get the most effect is to have one flash that forms hair light as well as bouncing in there to be your main lights if you skim it right over the top of her head bouncing it into their that makes a nice main light coming back but it also adds a little sheen to her hair it's a same time someone light acting is two lights okay so to do that you would take your main light generally position in a cross so it bounces across the top of her head boom into their flights of her face and you're gonna have a nice glow kind like sunlight blowing up the top of her head thing on how much you you resume and feather this depends on how much hair like you get so I can't see the zoom with incoming I'm gonna take this two hundred millimeters so I'm gonna try to keep the beam a little more focused I don't want it all over the place and I'm just over here can you see from there is that kind of just slightly over her head all right we'll play with that you'll see what a lot of her head should be kind of channel stay all right someone channel eh channel a channel wasting my other flash okay with you over there I think it's going I didn't see a flash oh I don't have a dead battery wouldn't that be the epitome of question? Why? Uh, you know what? Victoria has a question on here since, like, trying to learn, like duke lighting directions if we taped a little flashlight like a mock modeling light on that without effect, like over a lighting of the picture or the color balance, like if we're just like kind of learning just so we could think for modeling. Yeah, just teo practice. You know, I gotta change six little button cell batteries don't have those. Otherwise, I have a different use. My other triggers in the box right here. Uh, yes, that would work. And as long as you have your shutter speed in your s o, um, center speed high enough I so low enough that you don't get in the ambient light and that can work. But if you're using a slow show fire speed like sixtieth of a second thirty of the second, you're gonna get a little bit of that, um, modeling light in the shot as well, and often times I I've shot that way. Sometimes the accident like you turn the mauling lights in the studio lights off. I set up the shot leave the lights on and then when I'm ready to shoot it turned everything off sometimes I've shot liked the effect because it adds a little warmth to it I'm looking at mom I shot so nice and warm I'm so proud of myself and it's because I left the modeling lights on that I turned him off like I don't like it as much anymore so I turned back on and just used them as part of the exposure you troubleshoot one of the first things they you look at batteries make sure everything's turned on number one on my own and I just I did put a fresh battery and I'm not that stupid before I before I came but for whatever reason it's it's dead so I'm just gonna go again to the old school method very very manual uh flash said it's with sixteenth of a second he's another pocket wizards that don't have the controls manually come up here to set things but you'll be all right we could do with a little manual labor work never heard anybody too much so that's the difference of images curious that this is the pocket was there plus three which is just fully manual just sends a signal fire that's it the tt won tt five which is when I like gives me the ability to control the power so if it's too hot I can dial it on the camera down up or down whatever I want this one I just have to have somebody go over there and change that hey, my model thank you getting off that easy okay, here we are again so what do we do there? We set up a hair light over the top we're going to see how much it's skimming on her and it's very dark, isn't it? One point six, two, fiftieth so how many stops to dark? Ok okay, there we have it a magical portrait of the back of her head pretty close so we've got a nice hare light in one as well as what's bouncing into that so it's give me a similar looked what we did with the other set up which again is jena what? Looking forward portraiture? You may want a little more twinkle, but this does have a nice catch light in her eye from the big white shape here has nice shaping on her face the hair light the only thing we could do to control that because you want to keep this light the same we can't really dial this down but we can feather it so I could lift it up a little bit to keep some of that off of her hair but I don't mind it's not blowing out of here works pretty well um not too much you need to change really on that uh there it is that even it was up there okay sorry you have to look at my arse instead sorry okay so you can see now the catch lights and rise very nice from this tio panel right here. Maybe we had a little phillips the other side but the next step from here it would be too used to the flats and kind of sandwich are in so we have some film from the other side and you could do that with still with just one light or you could add another light into both of them and then you have what almost starts to look like a a ring light kind of look where it brings light all around her face more like a beauty light let's put one more panel in there and this is again these air your your basic setups and they'll start playing with some other options here in a little bit too sorry. So this is all it's gonna do is add some fill light to her I'm gonna get rid of this thing like in front of our faces and we're shooting through so this is ahh very similar lindsay shot like this I think last night it's pretty standard set up um but again raising one little speed light and peace of the phone core so we should now see a little bit of opening of the shadows and kind of flattens things out a little bit but notice the difference too when you think about portraiture sorry honey the wrong screen can you see the main screen over there portraiture the difference between that kind of lighting which really makes your face look rounder than it is versus that type of lighting which could shape and slims the face and that's really important to look at people when they come in and decide do they want where they need short lighting or broad lighting short lighting is like that broad lining is this where you're looking into the lit side of her face this is actually still more lit on the side but we're looking right into the bright side of her face the wide cider face it's called broad light and generally unless you have some of the really really thin face um it's not the most flattering light okay but it's good to know that we can do this okay so nothing weaken d'oh is um let's start too so that's the basic questions on the basic use of the flats there's a lot of ways you can position them and all that but my preference is to use just one like this said I have directional light and I'm gonna need a fill over here and maybe throw a little background are separate hair light okay yes pass the microphone microphone so does this light spell that's kind of coming out from under her arm? Does that bother you at all like this here on the chair? Yeah, like which is that something that you would adjust? It doesn't bother me, but if you wanted to adjust that, you could do that a couple ways you could either put a little flag flag is something to block the light or a mix up that's just spill from this light combine er so we aim that up a little bit more we'll have less there. We may need to adjust the main exposure, but that should take some of that off or change your pose so that there's not a gap. They're um yeah that's a that's a personal preference thing. It doesn't bother me, but you could get rid of you wanted to, okay, any other questions on this particular set up? So one other thing that's kind of cool to do is, uh, you guys have seen ring lights and a ring like basically surrounds the face would light, but some really great great catch flights and big green lights really expensive, but you can emulate that look using one v flat and a knife. Don't worry this will only hurt for a little what so what we want to do is to take this v flat and make it into a shoot through the flat by cutting us a little window here that we can then shoot through all right, so you kind of figure on again if you're going to destroy your v flat, you wanna make sure it's something that you're going to use so think about is this typically gonna be used for ah, sitting headshot or standing head shot? If you put it somewhere in the middle or lower than she can stand up on your shooting up towards her, whatever. So we're just going to cut a hole about that high. So something like this here, I need someone to put their hand right on the other side of my knife. Just getting just hold the boards. That doesn't go anywhere. It is better to start with a smaller hole than you need. Then make it bigger. Robin show. Okay, look, here's, another reflector. Hold that on your chin. Hey, you all right? I'm serious. I want you to hold it in. Okay, so we're gonna sandwich here with this, okay? Um, she's got a little bit of a round or face in a beautiful way. So this kind of lighting is not probably the most flattering. Um, if you had a real slim face person or if you did your models makeup so that you did had darkening two sides of her face that would have normally make her face slimmer which this wood didn't flatten back out to normal so just keep that in mind but for beauty lighting this is kind of a really cool setup um use like this for seniors give young girls seniors from here signor photographers as well you guys to seniors yeah, um looks great because they always have these young perfect faces actually well on and I think that way and I will be just out of my camera view here but slightly to the side again trying to get as much even elimination into this board is possible and I want to shoot with wide open as possible so at one point four and like probably is ok the way it is, why not let us see where we're at with flash check? I'm probably pretty close okay actually I need to change too much right? So we have a nice soft very, very soft even like great for young faces she's got a young face that works really well a little bit lacking in depth which I like in the previous shot where there's more shadows but again we need to know is many different techniques as possible right? Sometimes you need beauty lights in a flat light sometimes you need a directional light so that works pretty cool okay, crank that up just one wee bit and we'll parable silver thing under your face here. So if I could grab one more assistant person hey, let's, grab this other dickie we've made here. Actually hold that. Grab this. We're gonna put that right in front of you. She's gonna hold that for you that when I raise this up about, uh, another two thirds. All right, I'm just changing. My flash was at an eight power. Now I'm gonna go, teo almost a quarter of a quarter. Okay. Waited the sexiest pose you can possibly muster. There we go. Looking to the side there, sit up just a wee little bit. Hey, more and you could smile. Actually, I like your smile. Focus, focus. Nico, your computer is full. All right, so now we've got some beautiful sparkle in her eyes. It's about it to have stop a little bit hot side. But the nice thing about slightly over exposed like that, especially actually this screen, it doesn't look, that looks overexposed. Look at this one instead of, like, um that's about right? But we've got a nice, nice eyes. Very beautiful. Soft, soft light takes away wrinkles and have much to begin with. But also there's a lot of post processing that I know that something it's, slightly over exposed is goingto looking better sometimes it's slightly under exposed on the pre set. You're gonna run. Okay, but I think this is actually a nice exposure. It is, if you have any processing to it. Okay, so let's, uh, let's, take it to the next step. And speaking of this, this kind of set up here, this ring light beauty, like, um, I want to share as I was, I was in peru with jerry jonas, and we're talking about lighting and all that. And he talked about a new product that he had, which actually emulates this beautifully it's genius. Um so this is I think, the first time he's ever shown this to anybody shown this. This is a new product, very creative. I wish I had created, but it's a pop of disc with a window, you can shoot right through it. Five and one, you do white silver, you take off this cover, you can reverse it. Um, or peel it off completely and then shoot right like that. Okay, so it kind of gives you that same beauty light anywhere on I think it's just genius. It's michelle and I were talking about it earlier and it's one of those things where you look at you it's so simple I wish I thought of it, but it's a technique that we've used forever but he's just taking it one step into the room of super easy. So I think these are coming out and a few weeks they just made them theo omega reflector that's what it's called the mega reflectors. If you're interested in something that's not a d a y, um works amazingly well. You could use this so let's try let's, try something with this one. This is actually the first time I've even used this myself. So I'm kind of curious what we can do it shut up, go bows and do some more drama light. Come here, help me. Somebody assistant turned out to silver side and wrap that up on here and then this pull these windows up a little bit what's this over here so we're talking about natural light earlier. So all of these things this these v flats worked beautifully with natural light, so we just screeched up a little bit right there facing the audience, these lights, they is enough to turn down the video lights. Yeah, if they can. I mean, we should have enough natural light. I'm hoping to you're right to see that's it okay, yeah, that's better now we see we have backlight, which is really cool because it adds a nice little glory on the back of for we need to feel something in the front so let's try want to try out that omega thing and said it works they will pull some these foam cores up and see how that works as well so we can kind of look through here so what? We're going for it just to illuminate her that way you can see there look on her face pretty nice, huh? No okay so you could hold that for me way can I shoot now? Nick's okay, so this pretension yeah baby that's good who watch me I am bam damn! So in those two minutes I mean lovely demonstration my friend. Thank you. Did you talk a little bit about again? Why the silver versus the gold? Wendy? Is there gold in the back? Yeah there's gold white, silver black how do you know what I went to choose? What depends on the light that you're trying to reflect so it's a good question because a lot of times people just automatically goto over time I could goto white whatever we have somewhat diffused light coming in if that was direct sunlight and I bounce into the silver not only poke her eyes out but it would should be squinting would look so good to be a lot of speculators but since I'm reflecting a diffuse a light the silver is going to give me a little more kick I could use the white and it be soft um it's just different look maybe we'll try it but I want to just I think with this diffuse light the super is going to give us the kick that we what we need here right on that works for you know of course whatever d I y thing you're making think about what fabrics you in a bit the most useful really is is a nice smooth silver or white another here's another tip teo artists have this stuff called dulling spray anybody here an artist dulling spray is basically it's like a spray paint that takes the sheen off of things and I would spray that on my silver reflectors that were too shiny spray some dulling spray on it and it brings a kind of a matte silver and then it has a punch but not so much of that those hard speculators that you see so get little dulling spray helps too all right let's takes more questions from the studio audience or from the internet one from terry plumber is could you have used a second set of the flats with a reflector to shoot through rather than making the hole so when we had the big v flats up and you put the cut the whole inn could you have used a second set of the flats yes and then a reflector yes, you can you're still going to have a little gap in the you know, like we kind of did that was alluded to that by putting one on each side okay and we did think what do we do the reflector under with that to be flats just the one b flat just with the one right? So yes, we were almost close to doing that similar thing and that works pretty well you don't have quite even coverage because you have big gaps top and bottom and you also got these two giant things to do with keep it simple one works really nicely and it's easy to move and readjust right? I think we're good. Okay. All right, all right. I'll go lets go. What side are we on their silver nice like that if she looks so that I guess they've designed it so that the whole and here is well just about the right size for changed my eyes so some shooting natural light go up a little bit and the flash turn off thank you. So I have assistance. You're my wife so probably texting me in a two minute turn your flash off. Okay? They're beautiful. I said my eyes so on here too um what I said it to twelve fifty more natural ite toe work with um they're uh gosh that is a nice gorgeous lay on her face cradle twinkle in the eye the thing with the ring light is it does give that nice bright sparkly to the eyes and shooting at one point four of course softens everything else for jewelry the back of her head only the eyes are focused that's again it's not a lighting thing but it's just a stylistic thing I really love to shoot wide open to get that as much as possible to soften everything else up so yeah that's beautiful. So we started without it let's just shoot it before just kind of pointless because we know it's gonna look done who? Not too much. Okay, so works pretty well let's, turn around with this. What is this gold on the side that looks like a little bit there and it works really well wish I'd thought of it, but I showed this today because it was another great example of a d I y where he started with a d I y version of ah ring light thing like that and evolved into something marketable it's better step above and that's really what I'd love to see you guys do is to find ways to create your own next great maybe make a product we can sell again maybe I get first a copy of that if you do this but dad why is where all the great inventions start and if you want to be the next great thing or have the next great invention start inventing stuff you never know. You know, I have so many friends now that started off a little products in the garage that have turned into these great products that we all know in love. All right, so, um very cool baby wants to play with this after on the brake if we do that, this is a beautiful thing here with my other beautiful thing and let's start playing with more cutting these things up again. So what I want to do now, any other questions that I didn't answer forgot to ask, didn't you keep going? Okay, well I want to do now is when I start playing with our flashlights and making go boz he hasn't gobo czar go boz basically it's anything you stick in front of your light to create shapes or shadows or to block light, and one of things I used to do with my foam core is to actually cut shapes into it. One of my favorite ones years and years ago was I cut a fake window it's like the window panes like that's like got a little arched windows shape into the into the foam core and you shine a light through it and it looks like it's window light shining on the wall behind your subject you could do any kind of shape maybe just cut some random sort of somethings actually we'll cut this sucker up right here who wants to be my artie's my resident art east come on, don't be shy you can do it we'll put you right in the lights you can work your magic andre I want you to do is to make some sort of a shape maybe like some some branch kind of thing a dragon if you can make a dragon would be awesome peace sign you know whatever I'm gonna give you a knife don't promise you won't hurt anybody where to go who's got my knife right here there you go. Okay, so I'm thinking we have something um right out here and just does not be very big maybe just sort of ah branch he kind of a thing okay, so cut me some other nothing of course you goto the fabric go to michael's gonna michaels I kind of hate that place gives me the hives because it's so creepy grandma like but it's great for stuff because there's ah branches, fake branches and all this kind of things and all I've always find stuff to use for goebbels in there in my studio that's beautiful that's really looking good no it's great yeah, nice work keep it going so what we're gonna do is kind of just create something that we can cast a little light through it through in the background and let's do let's do this okay want to try something here we'll take our little flashlight and what if we could do if we did like you like you know like a terrell stipe dramatic kind of lighting our flashlight by itself works pretty well but if we look up look up but I hear it in you and look towards the light it's typically that's it's very bright but that's what they use very direct hollywood style lighting and for that you really have to be careful because it has to be facing exact right direction but I want something a little bit softer so I'm thinking what if we put the flashlight and to hear waken soften it a little bit isn't it better and we'll turn the lights down so we can see but now we have directional light that soft just a flashlight and this one doesn't this flashlight's not gonna cover the whole back of this thing it's only to cover a little bit but I consume it just determine how directional it is so what with the d I y person due to attach this to here gaff tape yeah there's also uh bend these dandies dandies she's really going to town on that thing how you doing over there kennedy ever so your hand raising your question yeah I've got more questions for you jessica had followed up with the question when you were showing us a five and one about whether you use silver versus gold depending on skin tone and another question had come in about the black side of that and when you would use that one lakh side uh yeah skin tone actually makes a difference to so if you lot of it depends on the light works pretty good if you have someone with very, very pale skin the light gold can work really well if you want to make the california girl look golden sunlight that works really well some of them have the the mixed silver gold which is nice because not quite as gold the gold I rarely used the super super goal because it just looks to california fake kind of thing you know nothing about california I lived there for a while so no passionate but cliche silver will make more speculum highlights so if he has someone who has skin that's a little shiny er um you're going to see little speculum highlights because of that so either put makeup on him or defuse that light with whiteside okay and the black yes, absolutely a lot of times I hear that's a good point because a lot of them we think of lighting is simply adding light it sometimes we don't want to add light we just want to subtract light and I could if I was looking her in some flat lighting I could actually create a dimensional light by taking the flat light and subtracting with the black on one side of her face, which would make more directional light so that's one way to use it the other way is simply just to block off the flag, something with the black bloc alight from spilling like we're talking about around the back of her chair or wanted to keep it off your hair, we'd use the black that it is a work of art. What she's working on that let's go ahead and see what we can do with this thing doesn't have to be perfect. All right, look overhear daniel, look at this beautiful light look without without anything face yeah, just that there was just one little flashlight and we're using a center part so we're creating a smaller diffused areas it's still going to be somewhat directional and if I want to make it even mohr directional, I'll zoom this thing a little bit not too much though, so when we have somebody come over here and hold this for me you know the way that you help them the last one then you turn right just hold that like that must do a shot with just this thing while she's finishing up her masterpiece there ghetto baby didn't make it tight enough it's my fault, yeah are we good with that? So you become really close right there daniel look right into chin up towards that light nice to meet you keep your chin word is just over here beautiful right there. All right, so there we have that's just a flashlight one flash like boys and girls again so we can turn so they can see it there which in this light we're using the room light is a backlight shoulder light hair light we're balancing it with this light that's enough light right there to give us a beautiful portrait and the lighting quality of course shooting through this discus this optimum distance is awesome. I love this light person I'm kind of this is like one of my favorite styles of lighting is a is a medium defused and that's in my longer classes we talked about the three quotes three styles of light there's large window light medium defused and small indirect and the medium diffused which is somewhere on this distance is my favorite because it creates shadows, depth and dimension but it's still soft enough that it's flattering and it's just a beautiful quality like you're gonna have something or no no oh yeah things ready right here okay, so let's see what we can do now with that thing so wei have gobo take this down just all flashlights now it's gonna be so moody in here waiting to a couple of things we can either shine light through it oregon is illuminated from the background and when that other fancy ice like hell here and shoot right into it so let's say then move your it you gotta face that we need to help her to come on over here so what I'm gonna do here is just illuminate this as a shape it'll be slightly out of focus will see kind of that shape behind her and we could make it growing out of her ear position it just right so this is again this is not a gobo goebbels something put in front of the light but just occured to me let's try this why we're doing this so, um then I still need mr flashlight or miss flashlight who hasn't helped me you know, everyone has to help this portrait comes out bad it's all your fault. Okay, provost robo we're gonna hold it right there. Yes, we'll do a tree growing from her head that's what we're gonna do for uh sorry khun these lights go down again. I'm probably lying because that in a lot of phil that I don't really want to hear what is it with these flashlights and ice lights? What do you have your white balance setting on for this type of lighting uh right now it's on auto white balance and it's kind of a cop out because it's easy but I shoot raw so that I'm playing if I need to do any white bones corrections I just do them in light room real quick afterwards but jenna, I'm shitting on auto these lights are all daylight balanced this flashlight because it's not made for photography is a little bit cooler it's little bit bluer but it's not actually looking very blue to me today for some reason maybe because it's going through this old disk the ice light is perfectly white balanced for daylight and yeah, so that's kind of what what we would white balance for that's a good question though the white balance is always a tricky thing when you're using different light sources she has a tree growing from reindeer lithe reindeer girl yeah ok, so then let's use it as an actual gobo that was just something that came to my head just that as a go bo this is going to cast light on to something and one of the things that give us too much stuff around here I slide this out one of the things that last night didn't they watch their little shoot out last night that they did that was so fun I loved that and rush was trying to get that beam of light really tight like a defined square on lindsay's face and I wanted to jump in there and help him but I didn't force you think that was appropriate but one of the things that you need to know about light and shadows so just cast the shadow into this wall right here let's see if this is bright enough okay bright enough is the farther away you look at the definition of those lines the farther away your light source the more defined your lines becomes and the closer the light source the more they're diffused they become you see the reflection over here to wait what oh, if you could do it again so we could see on here on their awesome yeah can you see it? Okay, so you notice just the edges how if I go closer the edges get softer and if you're farther although this light's power is going down, the diffusion gets the lines get more defined and that's something that a lot of people get confused about if they're trying to make a defined pattern on the wall you need to do two things either you've got to move this closer to your wall which is not always practical because your subject's gonna be there or move the light source further from your gobo so if I pull my light source way back in a flash would be better for this I'm trying make this we could see it live if I pull it way back I'll have really defined lines that's kind of what russ was going for you wanted a real define square so he needed to pull the the actual shape square shaped further from the light source which he couldn't really do because it was attached to the front of the thing but when it's closer your lines become soft and there's not much you could do about that other than bring your subject much closer that's not really practical so just remember that light source further from the object makes this lines more to find okay makes sense all right let's do it you could just hold that over here would just do something okay and then a flashlight girl flash oh flesh and reflect or we'll have a fight after my program stuff on the side so we're just basically casting a little bit of, um shadowy stuff of this speech with there into the background well that that I slide around buddy so you see the lights on the background so they can see what's going on back there you see that the shadows moving around okay okay they're going to be very, very subtle because really we're just getting you just slide and it's all out of focus is one point force let's just add a little bit of texture to the background we're a little bit hot so I'm gonna go down just a little bit so I'm shooting now because I'm shooting with natural light I'm shooting aperture priority just typically would shoot and I think I mentioned my other settings sosa twelve fifty. I could probably shoot my shutter speeds pretty decent here sixteenth of the second, so I could probably go teo thirty if it's eighty of the second, they're told fifty so we could go toe so six hundred and forty eighth of a second if you wanted to. Okay, so we have a nice little just some dabbling in the background. Let's. Throw some real light through that thing through a flash on that. Okay, you guys could take a just hold still for a second, and we'll throw a flash. Where's, my toilet paper flash. All right, so let's, take toilet paper. Man on fire this to theirs. We have more defined pattern going on light light figures. It was here. Hey, who's. Got the, uh, another of these pocket wizards. There it isn't. There. Thanks. Three questions. One switching these things here. Questions, miss jones internet. Well, uh, see a lot of things we've already covered anyone in the room. Let's, just remind everybody that you khun download the pdf guide because people are still asking, what kind of a flashlight is that, what kind of fabric is that we've got kevin's prepared a pdf for everyone to use art to download and you just go to kevin well gosh I'm going to screw it up now kevin what is it giving a photo image tools ford's last see live d I y thank you okay so let's let's do this now will turn that off we're gonna aim that at the back of this thing you're gonna need to be a little bit for the back whoa hang on there grab that pride back about here in the red centre that thing so we're going to combine the flashlight with a little speed light put all year here in one piece test that boom okay flashlight girl flash oh okay so let's put your hands down to the side of the thing kind of squeeze yourself up against the front of churches that it's like that you know you don't like that at all all right so now we have more you're eliminating isis put on a little but we can ah we stand on the side a little bit we see the branch shapes behind her now the light patterns so much more to find they are I'm kicking that flash on there so what with the reflector down there I'm gonna move it over so it's casting a little more to the right side things were good when things were getting stuff through the hole which of course is easy to fix hey on flesh oh reflect or on game is right it was good more to light sign here a little bit but I pulled it further back so we can see more of the background that's going on with that booboo okay so we could play with that little more if you want that shape to be lower what was he what did he do? I want that shape to be lower he needs to raise his hand up a little bit yeah yeah there you go that's interesting pattern and going on pull that down for a second you're gonna see okay, so coping with the go boz is you can put whatever you want on that and I used to have a collection like a card file of two two foot by three foot foam core that I had cut different shapes and you kind of like filter through today I want a window we pull the window out and today I want you know, a gorilla people the gorilla shape out or whatever you know banana goes with the gorilla see of all the different shapes you can pull out sometimes just random patterns and it works really pretty cool on dh again if you want it softer, less defused then what we do closer the light yeah and then we kind of soften up those edges a little bit okay? Questions that no questions on the go go thing okay, cool let's do, um stay look, they always opposed the best when you're not photographing them, right? So, like that and let's go high has come higher and kind of you. So if you are using those two by three pieces of foam core do you only shoot through with then otherwise you tend to spill around it. Yeah, okay, yeah. He's a snoot or you can put barn doors if you have barn doors on a regular studio typically I would have the barn doors on my lights bring him in. So I'm only illuminating like this much of the back of the board so let's do ah, let's do kind of dropped that light. I just love that light. I'm gonna make this a little more tighter, okay? We're going to bring our beam in just a little bit. A little squishy snake thing holding that there. Okay, so what I want to do is to create as directional tighter light. So if I want more directional light uh, not more directional but harder light make the being smaller, right? You know, the smaller their light source partial light, the larger the light source softer it is and that's kind of the general of lighting so we're trying to do I want to have something that's, a little mortar, harsher but not as hard as a direct flashlight and you know let's try this try to do a pseudo harrell type thing so if you take back in the chair germany long red boots you can put on I knew it reminded you yeah that's good and bring a chin towards me this way here okay? And then we're gonna come over here. So what you're looking for with the direct lighting is what they used to call butterfly lighting you guys from the butterfly lining and whether they call that because you actually when you light something like this bugs come out of their nose it's it's crazy if you watch see there is a little butterfly no really creates a little shadow under her nose if you position it right, that doesn't even look like a butterfly. I don't know why they call it that but that's where they got the idea so lift your chin just a little more than you okay towards me this way. Okay, here it is, right or nose or that nice little shadow and that's a very typical hollywood hurrell style lighting. They would use something harsher like he used these really direct hot lights that they have that seriously they spent three days on makeup to make these women's faces so perfect because the light was show every little tiny imperfection and then of course they painted to retouch them for days to sew to save ourselves some of that we soften the light a little bit still keep it directional there's fall off so you can see you know you don't really see much light down the rest her body's just on her face they're okay you you're doing such a goodjob way we're gonna throw some light I'm gonna shoot kind of like this way and I just want to throw a little light on the ground so what I'm going to use is mother little flashlight is this a cute little flashlight how bright it is this is that I don't use this for lighting so much I just thought I'd try it now it's kind of kind of cool but this is a great little book like just have in your bag when you're working in the dark are you getting tired of course it is all right so forget this thing we're going right now with this flashlight and we would turn this off trade you you broke my flash dude yeah okay so what I want to do this it add just a little glow on the behind her so I'm shooting this direction on a little glow here so it sort of adds a little glow behind her head this could be on the wall of course but since I'm shooting down this is where I'm going to see a price till this crap on the ground to wake uh we'll see what's happening here cabbage here sorry all right lights up citing stuff there okay beautiful daniel reyes jr and this bring flashlight man shine it down here more okay then up more over there over there there's a bug right over there on the floor status good beautiful on you and your right hand kind of just put it like that your necklace just sort of play or your left that's fine she's got veins popping out of her head made her laugh too much just relax call home all right flashlight man over there now a bug for your toe right there way go flashlight girl shut up just a wee bit you know that lake probably turn it down when not tapped the back of that thing there's a dimmer not that much okay teo bring more behind your head so toward your two over there and step it up one one more brightness level one click just have tap it can you have tap it there you go to the middle one cheerio back this way toward your toe toward your toe left bring it toward you so that you know more toward your toe all right there is pretty isn't it in there this here lift your head up a little bit and we head back to begin there okay uh toward youto where was that light it's not quite hitting the globe um towards your left yeah uh, she started to smile. Oh, okay, so you're okay again. Two flashlights, hurrell style lighting. Uh, private tweak with her hair a little bit. We could add a hair light to it. Very, very simple. That one more flashlight at a little glow to her hair, but yeah, I kind of like that. They're, um so cheap, so simple. One of things with the flashlights, of course, has mentioned you see what you get, you can play around with it. You learn about lighting it's a great way to start learning what you would do with flash what you do with more expensive this stuff if you had it but the flashlights sometimes I was going to studio assistant and we go in the studio, just play one of them. Actually. Another project that would be great for all of you guys to do is a day of lighting and what you do. And this is actually how my my book came about was I I got with my buddy and I said, let's, go take a whole day will grab all the junk in our studio that we have no idea how to use let's throw it in the car, go to the park on dh, just try to create different lighting setups. And so we would take turns like he'd say, all right, I've never used a b flat, let me see what I can do with the b flat, and then I'd say, okay, well, I've never done anything with flashlights, and you've got flashlights, all you so basically spent the whole day, so we got a couple of models just basically past clients of ours, but the whole day all around town studio went to a furniture store asked if we could shoot without us shooting this cool modern furniture store, and we just came up with all these different lighting challenges for ourselves and was most amazing education for us. It was a ton of fun, and I made a blogger post about it and got asked to write a whole book on different lighting setup. So, again, is one of these things where it started, his personal project turns into something much better than that, and it was the biggest growing opportunity I had. I'd put myself to from that one decision to do this day of lighting, so I would really encourage you guys it's fun and you learn so much, but take out the tools, take out things that you've seen all the classes this week, and and find a way to try them that's the only way it's going to make a difference in your photography is if you block out days too go on play play with light so um getting signs that were getting close to wrapping it so let's take a few questions now and if that was the last thing you were going to show us or we've got about seven whole minutes that was a wrap so it's a up to you okay that's good threesome questions all right well thank you teo beautiful danielle here and to all of our volunteers here in the studio yes thank you guys all right, grab mike if you guys have any final questions but we'll start with the internet mh photography what do you think of using the led light strip right with those work in instead of the ice fight foreign place led strip lights nobody said what strip workplace oh, work lights yes, I've seen those frequent home depot you guys price he knows do and I'm always looking at work lights cia those going to work for photography as well and some of them work darn well, you don't have the control like the nice thing about ice lights if you guys haven't seen him they have dimmers on them they're perfectly white balanced which is nice you don't worry about color correction but some of those some of those other lights work yeah I mean if you're in the d I y face yeah trying yeah this is an investment it is worth it I think these things air again pretty awesome but they're not cheap their investment in something you're gonna spend time with but if you decide that natural lighting with flashlights is something that you really like and you're gonna do more of that than you invest in this but to experiment goodbye cheap flights and play until you figure out if that's your that's your thing or not your iphone you know the little light on your iphone toe light anything up or shoot yes I have actually you know it's kind of a cool use for that I went to I did a shoot once in a bar and had a read cosmopolitan drink and I put the iphone behind the drink like the drink and clothed this amazing red and then I had the couple in the background making out you know so that was my drink light was the iphone but yeah that's that's great I wish I wish there was a little more powerful but in a dark bart pretty free cool how about a bloody mary bloody mary light a little too dense for awful lighting but should order bloody mary anyway I'm a big fan of you guys don't know yes exactly it's gotta try out all the bloody mary's right? Yeah have a good recipe please follow you on it. So you post them to your instrument. I put him on my block. We have a lot of bloody mary section of my whole blogging way. True story. Bloody marys all over the world post that raid. Um, you know, like their salad bar, quality quotient, the salad bar, quantity quotient, spiciness, density. Final question. Yes, it was it's less of a question, but tip for the person with the work lights. I remember I was here last year for a week and somebody did a whole fashion shoot with just work lights. And then, you know, like, like in a d I y way and they used those as well. So I guess it came by last week. Yeah, yeah, but the lady ones they have now are pretty bright. They're close to a white balance thing, which means you get, um, they're bright man, those batteries last long time to or if you don't like it, very cool. Will another fantastic kevin combo to a workshop on free? Thank you.

Ratings and Reviews

Amy Wong
 

I enjoyed the class very much. Kevin Kubota shows how amazing images can be achieved with some practical DIY lighting. Makes me want to get out there and try these options. He makes better images attainable through a little innovation and practical problem-solving.

the best photographer on earth
 

Very useful stuff in this class! Not only does he teach you how to build your own lighting equipment, but he throws in a lot of good lighting techniques such as controlling your flash, background lighting, and exposure.And as always, he has a great sense of humor ;)

Paul Werbicky
 

Great Class! I learned a lot about lighting and enjoyed Kevin's humor and style. Kevin kept mentioning a PDF available for downloading but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES