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Using Video Light

all right, video, like using constant light sources. Now, using a constant light source is actually a lot easier because you can see the light right, and you can see where the shadow is. And so why don't we just use this all the time? Why do we have to use flash? Mom was just If we can see the light and this is easier, why don't we just use this? Ah, yes, it's not as powerful. So this is like times less powerful than a flash. And that's the reason why um, we can't use video light all the time. Otherwise, I would because you can see the light. It s so it's what you see is what you get. And that's what I love about video light, especially when you're doing a wedding and you need to do a quick set up with the minute or so you can see the light, and it makes it a lot easier to control when you can see it. So when to use a video light Well, as you can see our flash chart here Ah, the best places to use a video light is in this bottom half of the chart. So when you're basically at I s o se ...

1600 or 800 above, that's the perfect candidate. Ah, perfect time to use video light so you could see it. 1602 point a video light there. So to me, this completes the full spectrum of light, flash and video light. So when I go on a job, I bring both because I want to be able to, um, cover the full spectrum. And sometimes in a low light situation, I love using video light. So if you're gonna mix flash with video light, then I automatically set my flash toe 1 64th power and just go from there. That's just my default. It usually works. Then I adjust from that point. Okay. How do use video light one. Set your camera eso to 800 or greater. Um, and with the new cameras now, who cares what you said? That s so it is gonna be fine. But in general, I'll probably start depending on how much ambient lights in the room and and so forth. I'll probably usually start around 816 right there. So use a low F stop. And the reason why we need to use a low F stop is because we have to keep our shutter speed high because we don't have flashed to tighten the image to freeze it. So therefore, depending on your shake and what to do. But I say in general, try to keep it above 50th of a second. If you have image stabilization, you know that's putting you at 1/50 of a second or 1/100 of a second in shake um, level. So I say, You know, make sure you're above 1/50 of a second and you should be cool. I like to take a lot of shots when I'm shooting available light because just focusing issues and sharpness. And just to make sure, you know, I just rip a bum bunch of shots just to make sure I got one really good one and focus. And, uh, here's the video light. I I like the features on this, uh, it's daylight balance, so I like using video lights that are daylight bounce, because I use it in conjunction with natural light a lot. So I want the light toe look the same, and that's why it's important. I know there's a lot of other video lights out there that have a greens, 10 Joe or a pink tinge to it, but I made sure that this is like true, Ah, daylight. And that's what I love about this particular fast. But in a video, but any video light will work. It's powerful, Um, this particular it's, ah, 800 lux. And so make sure it's pretty powerful. That has a dimmer control, so you can control that that way. Power indicators. I love video lights with power indicators, because why, as photographers, you guys ever Do you know what a back to back is? Ah, wedding photographers talk about back to backs a lot. It's when you have to do a wedding Saturday, come home and do a wedding Sunday or something like that right after each other. So what do you do? You come home and you spend half the night charging your batteries. S o. I like to know how much juice is left. And if I didn't use my video light a lot and I say, Oh, man, I got four bar still, I'm good. I don't need to charge this, but if you don't, then you end up like I'm not sure I got a charge, this battery. So for me, I I love that indicator. Because when I go on that that session I want to know how much juice I have. Um, also, what's great feature about ah, lot of the video lights if they have, if you're able to power them in multiple ways, I think this one takes, um, five different power sources. One with the video light battery, and you can use different. They're kind of like standard Sony batteries, actually for video light. Um, and also, you can put double A's in here. Um, so let's say you're doing a shoot in India and you're under power constraints, and you've got nowhere to plug in. Everywhere in the world, cells double A batteries so you could just grab some double a batteries, put him in there and you're ready to go. So that's kind of a cool feature, too. So those are some of the main features that I look for in a video light. Um, but, you know, they're all pretty good. Um, again, I would think my biggest gripe is just to make sure that the light color temperature is what you want now. I use video light a lot for detail shots. You can get this beautiful light with business in the way and a lot of times all back light. I love using a lot of back light, so I'll put the light behind the detail and I'll treat details like a subject. And I know as brides, brides love details. They spend a lot of time figuring out what details to use. And so I like to go to great lengths to make sure I get some good detail shots. And the way you light it is very, very important now. Remember, we talked about the big light theory right? The bigger the light is, the bigger high quality is, and what I love about video light is when you're shooting a detail, a detail is very small. So, for example, that's a ring there on a video light. Right now, let's imagine that that ring was a person, and so this video light would be four times the size of a person's of this person was, like, say, six feet. That would be like using a soft box of 24 feet, which is enormous. So that's why let's say we have this ring here, okay? And we have this video light. This is going to give some amazing light on this small. So in relation to the size of this, this thing is like a 24 foot soft box. And that's why you get some amazing light when you use video light on small objects. Because this is big light, believe it or not, compared to this makes sense. And you can get some lovely shots that way. And one rule I like to use when ah, shooting wedding detail shots. I have a one rule, and that is, if you see liquid in a container, get light behind it and often. So I saw this. I arrange these together. I put him right under these little twinkle lights that I saw there. And then I put the video light behind the jars and I lit it up and it looks beautiful. So I used any time I see liquid. Ah, and I see a container, a glass liquid in glass. I put that video light behind it. It looks great. Same thing here. This is what they call the sweetheart table. And they had these little candles inside here. Ah, and it was very nice. But without that video light behind it, you wouldn't really get that feel. It would look totally different. Here's glass. They're using video light behind that. Here's some little ah, appetizers or dessert. Putting that light behind doesn't look like window light coming from behind there. That's because that video light is very big compared to the source of the subject that you're shooting. Okay, the quickest the I guess the most popular way that I use video light is for separation or rim light. And then in this particular case, I did use a flashlight here because we video lights at that time weren't really is advances they were now. But you can use a video light, and this is the exact scenario where the main light is the natural light. And then see this edge here that was created, um, by a flashlight. But you can use the video light here it is in other examples of it. In this particular photo here I moved these curtains behind. I moved him over to create a strip light on my subject. Where's the nose? Pointing towards the light the body away So I can get this shadow here so I could see her shape there. And it looks natural. Body away, face towards the light. Who? She looks beautiful. But what happens? Her hair was blending into the background. So I get tell my assistant. Okay, get behind her and showing the video light to create that edge light on her hair. And it's very important to get that edge light when your subject has dark hair so you can see it. Same thing here. Look at the catch lights in her eyes and eso you got beautiful light on her, which was natural light. And then I took a video light off to the side to give me that separation from the background or that edge light. She's basically doing the walk away polls, too. By the way, this is just a straight video light as a main, and I kind of chose my background. I looked for lights in the background and when I use one video light, I kind of like to use sword. Uh, if I can butterfly lighting in this case, it's loop lighting where that it's straight off to the side. But in this particular situation, I had the light high because I wanted to get the shadow in her arm here, okay? And also, she was resting on a white, uh, table counter. So we were in a cafe, actually. And so the light was coming down. It was reflecting on this and coming back up. Also toe lighter. But this was just one video like Scott, could you clarify butterfly lighting and loop lighting? Okay, so in this particular term, in a shot here, you see this little loop that you get with the shadow That's slightly off to the side. That's kind of referred as loop lighting and let me show the next picture May be this is more butterfly lighting where that shadow is directly under the nose. Okay. And when you do that and so how I shot this one. I metered for the highlight, the glow in her hair. So I took a bunch of shots and I and I figured out well, I have live view so I can see that exact highlight. Ah, And so when I get the highlight the way I want it Ah, then I keep it there. And then usually my subjects face is darker. And so to open up the, uh, exposure on the face, I take a video light and I just move it in, usually with I set it to, ah, particular power. And then I just kind of move it with distance to fine tune that light in. And then I can see the butterfly lighting. I put it above. And when I get a shadow that's right directly under the nose, then that gives me that butterfly lighting. And what? Why? I like that light directly above, because then you still get shadow on the cheeks, which defines the face. And that's why I like butterfly lighting in this particular situation. We were shooting in San Francisco, Chinatown, and I did something a little bit different here to get this rich blue sky. What do you think I did in my camera? Does anybody know what? Well, no, because I can't gel. The Transamerica building would be a little bit tough with one flash that at a few miles away Eso How could I get the blue there? This is Yes. This is pretty much in camera Okay, so I change the white balance. So in this particular case, I change the white balance to the little light bulb or incandescent light. And so what? When you said it to the light bulb or the incandescent light? What you're telling the camera is Oh, there's a lot of orange light in the room. I'm gonna balance that out by putting a blue shade across the entire sensor. Teoh, negate the orange light that's in the room. Okay, But in this case, when I put it to the little light bulb, it's putting a blue shade across everything. And that's how I get the blue sky. But there's blue across my subject to So how do I correct that anybody have any ideas on how we do that video? Yeah, Well, yeah, that's correct. So I took a gel on my video light a cto jail. Now my video lights come with a CTO jail and now, shining the light, the blue on her and then shining the orange light on her, it balances out and everything is just like daylight. Okay, so then you get blue sky. But then your subject looks perfect using a CTO jail Then I took another flash of this way with the red gel on it just to give me some red here because I don't know China and red seems to go together. Whatever. Maybe it's the flag. I don't know what somebody it lurks. We were as Chinese. I think we were a lot of red because I think that looks good with her skin tone. But I don't know, red is red is ah is kind of, in my mind a color that I associate with Chinese type of, uh, images. So and that's how I arrived at that show. Any questions on sino That's a little bit complicated, um, to think of white balance that way. But is that clear in your mind? Okay, good. White balance to incandescent light bulb video light with a C t o jail. CTO means what color temperature orange. Okay, camera, right. Flash with red gel. That's the set up video light through umbrella. I love this technique, and we're gonna do it, okay, because it creates very, very, very soft light, um, and will demonstrate that, and it's diffusing the light. And that's why I like using a fairly bright video light. Because when we shine light through an umbrella, how many stops do we lose? We're gonna lose two stops on that sucker. So the brighter the video light, the better. And it gives a very, very, very soft light. And I use that as the main and then I position the light and so I can see the shadow on her cheek here. And then in this particular photo, we took a blue jail that those curtains back there were actually ugly green. This was were on a cruise ship here. We're taking a cruise to the Bahamas. That was, Ah, Bahamas Workshop that we did last year. And I took a on 64th power. I put a blue gel over the flash and shine and fired it in the background. So that's how I got that blue. So here I was using both, uh, video light and, uh, flash Here. You can see with my terrible photo shopping, but it's great because you could actually see it. Do you see an umbrella in the reflection? Yeah. OK, great. OK, so, uh, I was thinking about, like, taking that out, but I don't know. This is a great example. So what did I do? What's my work flow here? And I'm using video, like through an umbrella. How did I arrive at this photo? What did I meet her for? First, the background. What? Did I set my camera too? Man, You may Okay? Yeah. Manual, But what else? What? Why? Eso is? Yeah. So I think I said my eye sodas. 1600 here. Okay, Because why do I set my eyes? So so I can keep my shutter speed up, Okay? Because it's not like Flash, and it's gonna tighten up my image. Um, it's, you know, everything is going to show in your camera cause you're using all available light. Okay, so that's what I do. I metered for the background, and then I just brought my video light in and I just adjusted it by distance, back and forth. Just the kind of light. I want it. I could see the shadows. I got the light hot nose is pointing towards the light and then I can get this. If you look at her cheek, you could get this short side shadow there. Look at her arms. You get shadow on the arm so you could define the shape of that. And that's what I did. Same technique here where I used the, uh, okay test. How do you shoot this shot? What do we start with? First widow. I meet her for first background. Very good. So I'm at I s So what, 1600? Okay, probably. Ah, I think the lens I had on there, I could only go down to 2.8, so I'm pretty sure I was at 2.82 point eight shutter speed over 50. I get that background the way I want it. Okay? They are dark at this point. So I bring in my umbrella and I and I just positioned the light how I want it. And bam! I leave it there. And then I took a flash off to the side because I'm doing my sandwich technique, and I am lighting up that edge with a flash. Who cares? Really? What it is is by personal taste. The main light is already set. Uh, so, you know, I probably started off it because it was pretty far away. More than six feet maybe was 10 feet away, so I probably said it off at 32nd power or 16 hour. Who knows? This is the Spanish steps. Anybody been there in Italy? Okay, there's literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people at the Spanish steps. And what we decided to do is that we Hey, we came over to Italy. We paid all this money. Let's get some good shots. When do you think we started this session? Way started at 1 a.m. Because we didn't want anybody there because literally, there are thousands of people crowding this place because it's a very, very, very, very famous tourist spot. And there's a lot of high end stores on this street to like Prada and whatever. And so they're shopping. And then that man, it's just a crazy mess. So we go, Hey, we came all this way. We're getting some good shots. If we have to take a little nap and get up and go at 1 a.m. we're going to do this. So that's what we did. We went at 1 a.m. And nobody was there and we got this shot. So what is my workflow meter? Meter for the background first, right. Hi. Hi. I s 2.8. I bring my video light in with the umbrella on the top. Now, if you can't see it, but actually there's to catch lights in Iraq. Dio does she look like she's glowing? Whenever a subject looks like they're glowing, there is up light involved. Yeah, so I did my butterfly lighting here, But that shadow is not pronounced, so that means that there must be some other light this way. She's also wearing dark and to even the exposure. I need to put more light on her dress because that is darker than her face. Does that make sense? So I can still see the detail and address. So I had a video light with an umbrella here. I had somebody else hold. This is why I don't use reflectors because I use the video. Light is my reflector, and I just pop a little lit a light below so I could get that catch light right there, say that catch light and make her glow a little bit