Lessons
Class Introduction
06:16 2Two Exposures Explained: Ambient & Flash
09:13 3The Triangle: Aperture, ISO, Shutter
10:00 4Overpowering the Ambient Light
07:30 5High Speed Sync
11:26 6Shutter Priority Mode
04:13 7Manual Mode
12:24 8Color It
06:55Lesson Info
Limitations of Your Flash
So what we want to do is we want to have a reality check with our speed lights on. And I'd like to say they're not magic speed lights or not magic on. And I want to try to help set expectations because there are those folks out there that believe that you could just do anything with these lights. Let's be honest, right? Let's be honest about what these can and cannot do. Um And so what we're gonna start with is we're gonna talk about power output and how bright our these things and compare a little bit of the different types of strobes that we have. And we're gonna start by using a studio stroke. Now, this studio Strobe is a 500 watt second. Strobe, is that right? Yeah, seconds. Which means it puts it sort of in the lower end of the stratosphere for power output of a studio strip. So this would be a low power studio stroke. Not a big, big gun, but a medium gun. And what we're gonna do is Kelsey is gonna come out here. We're gonna use a light meter and this light meter later, after lun...
ch We're gonna explain how light meter works. But what we'll be doing is we already have this set up. Teoh measure the light output of our flashes. So what she'll be doing is she'll be pushing a button that tells the light meter toe wait for a flash. When the flash happens, it will give us a number. It's an aperture value. It's a meaningless. Okay, the number that we're getting is meaningless. All it means is it It will help us set sort of the the relative power output. So it's going to say something like 10 or 5.6 or something like that. I don't know what is going to say and then we'll be able to compare those numbers that come out of all the different flashes. Okay. And so what the thing to understand is, ah, higher number means mawr light. The bigger the number, the more like that we get okay. And these air aperture values that equate to stops just like our stops on our cameras. So if you know about stops, you can start to start to see the differences. So if you have something that is an F 10 and something that's a 2.8. That is a magnificent difference in power. So what we're gonna find is when we go outside and we start to try to fill in some light and overpower the sun when we have a flash that, uh, loses this much power when we zoom out, What, we're gonna have our problems. We're trying to fill a soft box or an umbrella. Well, that soft boxer umbrella when he lost it. So you can sit down, Kim, thank you very much. And Kelsey's done here, but we try to start to fill this umbrella. Okay? This is a big umbrella. If we have our zoom set to full power and resume it all the way in 100 or 200 millimeters, it's only gonna light up a small part of this umbrella. And so we're losing sort of the point of the umbrella, right? We wanna have our zoom set to really wide so we can illuminate a lot of this. But when we do that, we just took our power output significantly down significantly. And not only that, but it's bouncing from the umbrella into our subject. And so we're losing even more power. And so we might have a flash that as a bear head, we can shoot at F 10. But as soon as we add a light modifier and then bounce it, we might get enough light to illuminate at maybe to something like that. So are light output just drops? Significantly, Really Significantly. And so the thing to understand is that you have to be realistic with your speed lights when you start trying to shape the light in the same way that you would with a studio Strobe. It's not apples to apples because this to us drove here. It has no reflector on it. And so what we just shot this guy at at F 11 was at its widest setting. That's the least amount of power we're gonna get out of that guy at with that reflector. And so if we added it, a normal reflector on there and popped it in this number is probably gonna jump up to about 22 speed lights or not magic. And if Ugo salute, see hundreds. Um, so if you try todo and make the jump from a studio light, it doesn't matter what brand to a speed light. One of the frustrations Kim's going. Yes, I know this. You sort of go. Where is my light? Where's the power? Because we're spoiled with those big guns on DSO. That's the difference. So I want to make sure that you understand that there is a big difference between those two things, and I'm going to show you something here. So if strobes hurt you, this probably is not the thing for you. But I can assume as I flash this, it's gonna be put me when it's ready to go again, right? It can go pretty darn fast. And so, um, some of these drugs can shoot up Teoh, you know, 8 10 frames per second, some even faster. I know there's the d eight. Um, that go it, uh, I think it's 30. 15 or 16 frames per second. Super fast. Faster than your camera can shoot. Um, really fast. With a speed light at full power, we're gonna have a couple of problems. One, it's gonna melt down. Remember we did that yesterday. We melted it down, but just let's see what this does. So I'm gonna fire this at full power. 1234 four seconds. OK, instant, four seconds. Um, now this is a pro photo, which is really, really nice light. So you're not gonna get that all the time? There are definitely some studio strobes that will take a couple of seconds to recycle. This is four seconds, which is pretty good, but the next journal battery pack, you're gonna get maybe a little bit better performance, but it takes a while so you can't shoot the same way you can't just click, click, click, click. It's not gonna keep up, and it will melt or shut down. So again, our speed lights are not magic. The other thing that we have our distance limitations. So, uh, with our speed light, we're not gonna be ableto illuminate a large area from 20 feet away. It just won't happen. We're not gonna be able to do that. So that's another reason we need to get these guys off the camera. Get it closer. So these air really good to about 15 to 20 feet. You know, you can get farther away. There's you can increase your eyes, so we'll show you later this afternoon. There's a calculator that show you how far away. You can go. But if you want to add nice, large, soft light at great distances, you're gonna need to have more than just one speed life. Um, because they're not magic. They're not magic. And then we have this thing I like to call battery angst, battery angst. Okay, so we had this last night on location. We were shooting in the swings and we shot a couple of shots. And then we realized, Oh, our batteries were dead because we were shooting really fast. So he added an external battery pack. And so I hide They can't tell you how much I love external battery packs. So this is a quantum battery pack. This is the turbo SC. And when you buy these, there's this is my old school battery pack right here. So this is a quantum turbo battery. So these are both the same brand. This is old school. This is new school. So we have that. And then the last thing I want to say about all this the they aren't magic is that TTCL is stupid. Hang tt Ellis stupid. What? I mean and we've talked about this, you know, bless the little heart of the speed like it's trying its best, right? It's trying to do what it knows it should do, but it doesn't know it doesn't know that. You know, right now, I want to illuminate Josh perfectly, because it might think, Oh, it wants to eliminate way back here. We're already sitting against the wall. It doesn't know it's trying, so you really have to tell it through exposure compensation with their metering modes, with all kinds of things. How Teoh do the best job can. But even then, it can get things wrong because it doesn't know. And so I prefer in situations that are challenging to throw that t TL meter off and throw it into manual mode and do my own metering so I can take a light meter wherever that is. And let's pretend this is a light meter. Take a light meter over here and safe and know exactly what my light output is adjusted in every single time it will be the same, from shot to shot to shot to shot. Okay, so that's my reality check