Lessons

Lesson Info

Gear Discussion

these are my bags I've got a think tank that's for the cameras this is my flash bag okay so that's for all the flashes that will use today there are four of them in there and then here's this stand bag that's it that's the gear I can I can carry and roll all of these I can zip this thing like this so that's one right and then I've got this one I can put on my shoulder so that that's it I can I can do most anything I need to do with this okay now yesterday we yesterday we did some basic lighting inside I had soft boxes and we talked about the what soft box will do versus a harder light we talked about matching light with the window light and things like that right so we got some of those basics out of the way and we saw how big and bulky all the stuff that we would be taking with us and to top that off if I were taking a big soft box with me on the location I would also need about eighty pounds worth of sandbags to make sure that they're not blowing all over the place right so that's pr...

etty small in comparison right all right so now let's look in the back so I'm going to need a cameraman over here and we're going to go in nice and close let's start with camera bag now the important thing about all bags is that each bag is self contained so I can take just this bag and aiken with just the bag I can do everything I need to do without major flash equipment okay so I don't have things separated out into different bags that have to take five bags to do one thing so if I'm just going to take like a little baby portrait somewhere in someone's house or if I'm going to photograph just a neve ent somewhere whatever all I need is this bag so when I open the bag first on the very top I have my spider holster right because otherwise I'll forget this if it's not in the actual bag so I put it right here so that I have it so when I open up pichon strap that on ok so now and by the way these think tanks are awesome because you can lock him and they have a cable on the back here that you can lock it to something that's in mobile so yeah someone could clip the cord and run away with it but just your average whoever is not in the running around with the cord cutter so it's a pretty excellent bag okay so when I open up the bag gonna see first on the top out here I have business cards in their pens emergency vitamin supplements uh lens cloth um some lip balm you know just random things in here I have change for a parking meter right great how many times you get somewhere in the park and you don't have any change in your pocket or car that's their little flashlight and then here I've got some triple a batteries a gel that could go over my flash of course that's the old style of jail I don't I'll show you knew jails in a minute that are even better um and then oh this is ahh insert for ah so if you have the wrong size screw for the tripod like you get a tripod mountain that's bigger you can put that in so just all the little knickknacks that you might need a cable to connect the camera shutter release cables a screwdriver and all that kind of stuff a compass just in case my iphone compasses freaking out because sometimes it doesn't really work so I've got a compass there okay so that's that now come on in here with this and you'll see that I've got two cameras I actually hate having two different cameras I used to use a pro body and then a marked if a five day march too but I hated the fact that when I pulled up one it was different than the other I need to know my camera like the back of my hand and so I have to mark three's have won with the battery grip on it and then of course a spider holster on it and then I have one just small and so the both of them can hang on my hip during a wedding but they're the same there everything's exactly the same on them they're all programmed the same so that every time I pull up a camera it's safe I know exactly where the settings are I know exactly what the buttons they're doing because they're exactly the same so that's my preference I know that that's not always doable because you know you're using your old cameras the second camera and then you're buying a new camera but if you have the ability to get to the point where you have the same cameras it's very useful especially when we're considering shooting in an efficient manner if you know your camera well enough and you're not swap swapping between the two of you will be more efficient okay um and then if you look here there's one flash remember I need to be completely self contained so I have a flash and a transmitter for that flash so that I could take this flash off of camera and I can transmit with that so these flashes are the new cannon six hundred ex artie flash and then the transmitter is the new cannon s t e v er s e three artie and it's got a little computer right on here where I can control this flash and all the flashes in my other bag from the camp all right so that this all goes in this little pocket here so that if I am going somewhere and I'm just going to use one flash I'll have to take this bag I've got my twenty four seventy uh mark to lens which is much better than the original ends you got a fifty one point to right below that I have an eighty five one point eight and by the way this one point twos of super sharp lens right and so I like it it's very expensive it's it's the expensive you know mother fifty cleanse this one eighty five one point eight is not very expensive and super sharp absolutely great linds I love this land so I've never even thought about going to the the eighty five one point two because it's super expensive and I love this linen so all right let's see what else you have in here hundred millimeter was a macro so I don't have toe I usedto have and I still still have them in here from close up rings but now I use that macro so I don't necessarily need but see how they're below other things and then I've got card cases I've got an extra one of these and I actually have extra so underneath the long lens I have a little compartment here and that's got all of my tools so it's got this which is it's uh screw on my mind my spiders I also have this which this is really curious because has a knife on it and somehow it got through security s so that's interesting if the t s a is watching um we have a pilot in the audience he's like I can't believe it I'm in such danger extra lens caps those air good idea right so extra lens cap screwdrivers um plates for my tripod I have five plates for tripods because I lose these all the time okay oh and lens cleaner and stuff like that okay so that's what we have underneath in the little secret gear compartment even the psa can't discover s o I need to remember that put that into my uh non carry on bag owen and a charger for my batteries so everything self contained right now let's go to our flash bag in the flash bag we have everything that we need for the flashes so that if all I did was take those two I could still use all of that I would need to put them somewhere but they would be able to this functions on its own I don't necessarily need stands like if I go on a baby portrait to someone's house I don't have to bring these stands I could just set little lights all over and pound them off of like white walls and ceilings and stuff like that and get a couple direct ones and I don't actually need anything but this so I open this one up and I have four compartments if you can look in there see that so got four compartments in there each one holds a flash okay I have the flashes preloaded with their batteries when I get home from an event I just pop all the batteries and charge him I've got in this second compartment in the front I have the little stands littlefoot stands for him and also I have another battery pack so this holds eight batteries this is the cp three they have a newer one now but holds eight batteries plug it in so then you end up with twelve batteries running the flash so if all you had was the money to buy one flash then you would want flash an extra battery pack so you have more batteries so that it's it's revving it up faster and it's you got longer life on it and one of these and you can do some pretty amazing stuff with one flash and I'll show you that in a minute then also in the front along with these we have a bunch of filter holders so these filter holders they're pretty cool they're brand new with this uh six hundred flash siri's you hold the filters in here you put the filters in here and I'll show you how to do this so zoom in on me here so here is a filter here's the holder simply slide this into the flash holder and so it will hit these there's little slats in there that you've thrown through and then you clip it here like that on these little clips and then it just simply that it has a rubber band on them so you simply put it on the top of this like that and click it in and now you've got a filter on your camera so that and you you khun they have all sorts of filters so you can put a blue filter in there you could put an orange filter in there you can't even put a defusing filter in there so these air awesome little filter holders and I have one for each flash just in case we wanna you know warm something up okay so that's the flash bag and then of course I can put batteries and battery chargers right in here okay so remember everything has to be self contained so if I'm taking this bag I need tohave a battery charger in it battery chargers on the wall right now charging batteries so it's not in the bag but it would be if I'm leaving this building come see now we're going to go to our stand bag which is pretty basic having a stand bag right but we're going to make sure that everything that we need is in or attached to the bands of the stand bag so I have a little attachment here that just hangs off of it unzip this this is made by strove ease a little soft box so if I want a little bit bigger flat that's that collapses pretty small but it's pretty light then I have on the on the side of this thing I have a place where I could put hardware to attach it to different stands or two different things um including things like this so this is just an arm so that once I put it on a stand I can bend this flash down it will give me angles so we'll end up using that on we'll pull out our this is what the flash attacks is too and then goes into here so I'm going to show you how to put that on right now simply take this and we kind of squeeze it into these hands here there holding it and now that holds the soft box then we take our flash and notice that I have actually put an a on this flash so this is going to be group a so I always know by looking at the front of the flash which group it's in and when I turn it on I have assigned this flash to be group a and I'll tell you more about groups in a minute so I just simply slide this into the holder for the shoe make sure that it's actually seated correctly here so it's looking into the flash soft box tighten it up and now I have a flash that's on this and I have velcro right here at the bottom so I could take my extra power and aiken stick it on here and now this is going to be attached and I can attach it to the flash and now I have self contained flash that I can either put on a mono pod for an assistant to hold and move around really quickly or I can put it on the stand so that's pretty simple easy and think about what you could do with food photography with that that's brilliant right you could do so much with that and you can put your gels on there so that you could warm something up cool it down or soften it even more but that is a really great weight I do ring shots with this all the time of course I do ring shots at weddings with iphones and ipads to take that you just take a white screen on the ipad and that becomes your soft box and then you take like the so when you're shooting a ring shot I know this is off topic but there's a good idea um I'll show you us a photo from this actually think hold on light light that shot completely with iphones and ipads so the ipad is the main light source or the soft box and it's off here and that's what's lighting up the front of the rings nice and light and then the blue light coming forward that's a nap in a flashlight app that can change colors and so the entire the ipad are ipod no the iphone the iphone is all blue light and that's coming from the back here and then if you see there's a little bit of warm light over here so there's my assistance iphone has read on hiss and it's coming this way so that's where you're getting this kind of light and then we have one more iphone that's you always need a sparkler when you're shooting jewelry so on I like just a soft box doesn't give you sparkles in the jewels because it's too soft and it's too it doesn't mean as much direct light so then you take your your iphone and you go to your your flashlight and you turn on that a little little led flashlight on the on the back and that becomes the sparkler so it it nails and you just kind of off to the side here in order to get a little bit of sparkle in those diamonds and kind of get himto pop that's it so we just put the camera on the tripod because it takes time and then you khun it's maybe like uh second exposure half a second exposure and you just have all those set up and then you just take the shot and sometimes if you want to get even you gnome or of a raft you can take the ipad and go like this during the exposure and so it'll kind of give you mme or it'll look like a bigger soft box than it really was because you're moving the ipad will you go so ipads and iphones are great for little table top shots that's brilliant f y I know so okay so back to the topic at hand so here's a typical mono pod just doesn't matter what it is just a mono pod but I have a head on it the reason you want the head on it is so that if your assistant is going to take one of your flashes and put it onto the mono pod whether it's on a soft box or whether it's just bare headed you uh you just slide it on here tighten it up and the head allows you although I have the head a little bit helen have the skewed anyway the head allows you to bend it down and up so that you can you know so that he doesn't have to be going like this he could just be standing like that and he could just drop this down and now he's got an angle on that without having to hold it so my brother who's my chief assistant um on photo shoots see I used to have a stand that was on ly this long and so he would always have to be like this and he would just be burning by the end of the photo shoot and so I just got this like I don't know a year ago and when he when he saw it he's like why in the world didn't we have this for all the years that I was doing this anyway yeah so this one goes pretty high like you khun so you khun what kind is that it's called the a g I o t t o s I have no idea how to pronounce that geo toes photos but that's pretty high and then for some reason he needs toe he can just do this or you can put it in his belt like this and you know it's pretty simple toe light something up that sum so that's that's if you have an assistant that could move around rapidly just a model pods the best thing to have if you don't have an assistant then what you want is these kind of these air called cheetah stands so when you set them down they just automatically open up this's the one that doesn't little foot fell out okay so they just opened up see that so when you pick him up and set him down so that allows me as a photographer to come into the shoot add my light into the foot here tighten it up and now I can just walk around with or throw it lips so you need to tighten it up just you know that's probably a good idea why would he yelled in an assistant for that but I want you all to myself so there you go so this is what I'm doing when I'm shooting all by myself I just have this up here like that take it with me I've got my camera on my hip walk around set it down walk away shoot okay so it's very easy to walk you know assistant needed you got one light if we want to lights just simply start setting up another light yeah question okay so I just did a photo shoot in a very busy very small cramped kitchen in spain and there really was no place I could set up a tripod without trip people tripping on it and I didn't have an assistant um do you have any suggestions or somewhere in between if I were in a kitchen I would find a shelf up hi I'm setting up their idea okay and then if you're if you're in tricky spots you could also make a third bag a little bag that has clamps and these air lightweight so if you just got yourself a clamp and sew like just get ahead like this and get yourself a clamp that has a a standard photo post in it clamp it to whatever you want up there and then mount this to here right so just mounted to a clam I have I have a whole bag home full of claims so that if I'm in a situation where all I have is a post up there like if there's a drain or something like that or ah telephone post or something like that I can clamp it to something and then I've got a light sitting on someone's post that's great okay they're also strapped clams but have they have a post on them and they're just a strap so you just wrapped the strap around any telephone post and strap it and then because these air light enough they'll hang on almost anything that's great okay so just get your just goto a photo store and start looking for clamps and looking for like little tiny stands for things that's what you want I've acted on them the lighting it's just one night and s o if I were on ly getting a one light stand and a transmitter you'd want a transmitter to go with it then you'd be running a little over six hundred dollars for the flash this stand is like seventy bucks fifty fifty to seventy bucks something like that and then this one is about half the cost of the flash so you're in it for less than about a thousand dollars and you have a really great lighting system and then as you have the capital to do so you start adding lights I didn't develop this immediately I mean I developed it pretty quick cause these air only less than a year old but I developed it over a series of months so I'd buy one and then I bought another and then I bought another so as I had the capital to buy him I would buy a couple more or one more until now I have five which to me is overkill but it's awesome so this bag is really overkill you can do a lot with just one so let me just prove yet teo ryan can you come in and settle this stuff up let me show you some work we're going to go to our speed light so everything here that I show you was gonna come over this way so can you guys all see that okay so I'm going to show you images that were taken with speed lights now this first image was not taken with the speed light this image was taken was just a reflektor so all we had was light bouncing off the train and then mom and sister were on the photo shoot with us so I had them stand in front of the camera so I could use them as people walking around in the train station and it's an abandoned train station so there's nobody there so I needed people to make it look busy and then I have a stand over here because I'm the only other person here so have a stand over here with just a reflektor that's taking the light that's barreling down through the corridor of the trains and it's pushing light back on her and that's it so just having a reflector with you it's not a very expensive lighting tool and it can do a lot for you so just remember that if you have no money for something like this a reflector can sometimes do the job of a flash if you have enough sun hitting it it just requires an assistant which if you're going to pay an assistant on a regular basis you're going to afford a flash really quickly have you used the little reflectors you pop into the top of the flash the bend or like the little squares oh have you tried one of those the whale tails yeah yeah I have actually have over here I have a uh and do you carry a wrong thing um so this thing right here is great when you're you have to have your flash on camera it'll help diffuse that light and if you take the top off of it then you most of the light ends up bouncing off the ceiling or off the wall if facing this way but a little bit of the light goes forward to catch life in the eyes and kind of make sure that there's no like you know like raccoon eyes or whatever and so those that those air useful for when you have something on camera but once you go off camera those that doesn't that's no longer necessary I mean you could still use it off camera but it's necessary because now you can actually you can actually manipulate your life much more suddenly when you're moving your flash around and he doesn't remember the only when we want a full remember yesterday we talked about the concept of hiding our hand way want it to look like it's really we're manipulating the crap out of the light but we want it to look like it's just natural so when you move something off camera so if your flashes here and you're here the mine doesn't think that's a flash the mine thinks that's a natural occurring light somewhere and then if you put other flashes around that helped to mimic that the mind will even think mohr that it's a naturally occurring light so one flash on this so this shot and this is in the absolute heat of the day arizona sun bright bright light when the sun shines in arizona it shines by the way it's it's raining outside for those of you who are not here in the studio it's raining outside it's cold and so we're pretending that we're outside today so if you look up here we've got this really bright light that's what my arizona sun is like constantly and so as soon as it comes through the clouds you can see that it creates a shadow here see that shadow that's coming this way on on kevin this is this is kevin burdick one of the guys on triple scoop music so you see the shadow here but there's the cloud of the clouds have separate and allowed the sun to come through to create this and so I got a really bright sunny day beautiful clouds behind us but if I had shot this without a flash this side of his face would be completely dark so it would be way too contrast ing so all I simply do is set him there and then I've got the flash right here okay so but remember the flash is always on the side of the sun so it's actually the flash is hitting him on the right side of the face and the left side of the face but because the sun is more powerful than the flash it doesn't matter what hits him on the right side of the face and it's on ly filling the left side of the face because the light that's hitting him on the right side of the face is already more powerful and so it's filling in here and giving us a little bit extra light but it's just one life building in that shadow so one light I've got a son that's way over there rippling across their hair so off her left shoulder back behind her the sun is coming through right so that's creating this little crest of light on her leg it's creating crest of light on her shoulder and on her hair and you can't even see it kind of coming through onto her face um right here you can see it coming through on her face right there see that so that's the sun but my flash is over here just filling in less powerful than the sun and so you as a viewer dont think thats flash you just think that that's whatever light was spilling on tour from the northern sky okay so one flash so I got her in a forest she's on her piano lugged a piano into the forest so we've got her on the piano in the forest the sun is filtering down through the trees and it's giving a crest of light on the top of her hat and on her shoulder and through her hair here and all I have to do is grab a flash and put it off to the so if we're looking at her it's off to my right just a little bit and way up high and it's coming through and the only tail tell signe that there's a flash is that there's a little bit of a shadow on her face from that piece of hair see that but it looks like a piece of hair the tiny shadow but it see it looks like a piece of hair but it's actually shadow of this piece of hair so we get away with it even though it looks like it could be a piece of hair but it's really a shadow but that's it that's the only telltale sign because it's weaker than the light that's coming across here so we just kind of disregard it are I will always go to the stronger light and so our eyes will always see that light source as being the thing that stronger so if you have weaker flashes filling in and they're not really going beyond the sunlight then all is good you it won't look like a flash one flash come into the bride's room she's getting ready I walk in I've got one of these lights don't have stands I just have a light I put a little foot on it said it on the desk that's over to my right pounded against the wall kind of up so so if I'm looking at her so we're in the room right now and that's where she is and right here there's a desk to my right and to her left and I set it on the desk and I point it at the wall kind of up into the wall on the ceiling and it's pointing towards her a little bit so when it hits it makes a forty five degree bounce to hit her and what happens is you get a nice bit of light coming across here but remember I want so I've got this nice light coming from behind her because I've matched I walked into the room remember yesterday we walk into the room we first get the ambient light then we had a flash so I come in I exposed for the ambient light which is this stuff I want this to look nice and bright and airy and then I add my flash just to give some volume to her and light up the interior of the room and so you can see there's the telltale sign of the flash right there see that shadow that pillow is casting a shadow on this pillow right here that's the telltale sign of the flash but because it comes from over there and not where I am the mine doesn't think of it as a flash thinks of it as another window that's over here there's no window on the side of the room there's only the only window in the room is here and yet it looks like there's a window on this other side of the room I have no home of the between joe can you talk a little bit about how you know where to relations as is in our world mangles them absolutely when we shoot our models that come in today we will talk all about that will go into where we're going to place things based on the light that we come into so yeah we'll get and I think I see models awesome come on in jared you don't have a reflector in your uh bag uh no cause I very rarely use a reflector if I have an assistant with me he'll have the reflector with him or it'll be in the trunk of the car so if we need it I can use it but I'm not going to generally pull out the reflector first generally I'm gonna pull out a flash first the problem with the reflector you guys model a lot no someone have you ever been have you ever had someone use a reflector on you you hear what she just said watch this I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna cause problems before our assistant's army isn't that isn't that enjoyable to look at what what watch her eyes we can't see her can you please open your eyes and look wonderful so constant light sources like this are great because you see what you get but they're not great for the person in the photograph and so I take a very different approach of talk feel around though because when I come into a a portrait shoot or I come into a corporate thing where I'm doing portrait's for people or when I come into a wedding I'm all about trying to make people feel natural and comfortable and because it's an experience as much as it is a photo shoot and so I don't want people squinting and you know what I hear every time I get the groomsmen to like get together and turn away from the sun I say turn away from the sun their all thank you and then they're happy because they're not squinting and they're not you know and I never used those because they're just too blinding and if you are using him you have to have the assistant go like this and then go ok pretend it doesn't hurt pretending doesn't write but with a flash it's only a momentary blink so they don't even react to it and we get the same amount of light so you just have to be able to then in your minds I think what's going on