Lessons
Chapter 1 Introduction
01:26 2Why Just One On-Camera Flash
04:22 35 Reasons to Use Flash
10:37 4Common Flash Myths
06:51 5What Makes Flash Challenging?
04:56 6Chapter 2 Introduction
01:36 7Flash-Strobe vs. Ambient-Constant Light
08:19 8Flash vs. Ambient Light Exposure
03:07Flash vs. Ambient Demo
06:42 10Flash and Ambient Balancing for Natural Effect
07:11 11Flash and Ambient Balancing for Dramatic Effect
04:19 12Flash and Ambient Balancing for Creative Effect
07:10 13Understanding Flash Duration
08:37 14Chapter 3 Introduction
01:34 155 Common Key Light Patterns
08:38 165 Common Key Light Patterns w/ Diffusion & Fill
07:42 175 Common Secondary Light Patterns
08:28 183 Primary Subject Patterns
05:27 19Light Qualities
09:56 20The Inverse Square Law
07:50 21Inverse Square Law in Practice
08:21 22Corrective White Balance
10:02 23Creative White Balance
05:47 24Chapter 4 Introduction
01:58 25On Board vs. Hot Shoe Flash
05:57 26Full Feature vs. Manual Flashes
08:59 27TTL vs. Manual Control
08:12 28TTL vs. Manual Recycle Times
04:43 29Flash Power & Zoom
09:18 30HHS vs. ND Filters
12:29 31FCS vs. RCS
07:11 32Chapter 5 Introduction
01:38 334 Tips When You Must Use Direct Flash
06:00 34Bare Bulbing Done Right
11:42 35Grid Snoot + Direct Flash
06:43 36Mini Beauty + Direct Flash
06:08 37Ring + Direct Flash
07:52 38Understanding Modifiers
09:24 39Direct Flash + Shutter Flash
09:07 40Chapter 6 Introduction
01:55 41Ambient vs. Direct Flash vs. Bounce Flash
14:27 42Silver Bounce
14:27 43More Light Silver
11:02 44Soft White Bounce
15:41 45Overhead Bounce
11:39 46Overhead Bounce + Fill
09:42 47Event Bounce
12:42 48Chapter 7 Introduction
01:38 49Natural vs. Dramatic Light
17:43 50Filling and Refining Existing Light
08:44 51Coloring Light for Corrective Effect
13:33 52Coloring Light for Creative Effect
10:27 53Chapter 8 Introduction
00:43 54Case Study 1 - Dramatic Sunset
09:45 55Case Study 2 - Desert Sunset
10:04 56Case Study 3 - Sinister Headshot
09:40 57Case Study 4 - Family Portrait
08:21 58Case Study 5 - Athlete Portraits
11:19 59Case Study 6 - Working Angles
07:22 60Case Study 7 - Drag + Composite
08:09 61Case Study 8 - Less is More
07:16 62The Good Karma Jar
01:41 63Favorite Feature Flashes
05:52 64Favorite Manual Flashes
21:35 65Favorite On Camera Flash Modifiers
21:21Lesson Info
Ring + Direct Flash
another fantastic direct flash modifier, which is one of my favorites, especially for studio use, is the ring flash. Now this is the Expo imaging ray flash, too, and it's a fantastic light modifier for on camera flash to turn that on camera flash essentially into a ring flash. This is fairly inexpensive compared to most ring flashes. Now this is about 140 bucks. There's also a budget version of this. If you go to D. I. Y photography dot net, I think for 25 bucks or so, they have a D I Y cardboard ring flash, which will get you a ring flash type. Look, I wouldn't ever take it in. Show it in front of client or anything. This is actually something you can use professionally, even using from clients, and it looks nice, and it's far less expensive than a traditional ring flash. If you already have a hot shoe flash, that is because you do require hot shoe flash before you can actually use this guy. Traditional ring flashes, I think, in range 5 to $600. But this ring flash look is it's a very...
distinctive look for two reasons. Number one The catch like that it creates in your eyes. It creates this ring type catch light. And because it comes directly from the lens itself, I'm gonna show you had a mountain. I'll show you exactly where it comes from and how it looks because it comes from that angle. It creates a very unique, even shadow across the body. Basically. So you get this nice shadow halo. So here we look at the bearable effect on this side and in the ring flash it back. You can see especially like on this more close up shot. You can see this little shadow halo that's gonna go around her entire body. Okay, so especially here as well, you can see right there see it along the shadow side. So this is a very distinctive look that's created by Onley A ring flash. Let's we had to put this guy on. So I have just my standard camera and ah, hot shoe flash mounted right now, we don't need the bracket in this case because you actually need this right next to the lens. We're going to just aim the flash head down and I'm gonna go ahead and take the hood off. And you know what? Before I put the flash it down, one very important thing that I oftentimes forget This little guy comes with a rubber band. It's kind of like rubber bands like this little rubber circular. Do not throw it away. It's not for good looks, it's not because it's just an extra part They thought you might need a rubber band to, I don't know, tie your hair together something this is actually to go underneath the flash itself. Because when you're putting this ring flash on, it's actually gonna way down the flash head a little bit. So what you do is you put this down right into this little slot, and now when you bring it down and kind of hits that little thing, and doesn't it prevents it from gave basically drooping. Okay, so once this is on, all you're gonna do is just grab your ring flash. You're gonna open up this side of it. I took the hood off just so it doesn't like constantly being against the bottom of this thing. You place this over and then you make sure that this is the right length you can pull it out just a little bit where it goes directly over the lens and from here, if you want, you can reattach your hood. If you're worried about light spill from other sources, then you can put the hood on. If you're working indoors and it's dark, you don't really need necessarily the hood on because the lights all coming from behind the lens anyway. But you can see that the light now comes directly from where the lenses that so you get this beautiful ring shadow effect around the entire body. You have this great catch light. Look at the caps like that. You get especial on your shooting closer. The catch light opens up, it becomes even larger as you get closer to your subject. So this is that ring flash. Look, now let's go over some primary tips here. Number one, make sure that the ring flash is placed correctly. If you don't have the band on, this is gonna droop down, okay? And it's gonna flash kind of down, and you have to constantly hold it up. So make sure you have the band on. Otherwise your basic gonna be losing light, it's going spilling to the wrong area. You're not gonna get the right effect. Okay, so likelihood of red eye is also increased. Why? Because now our flashes coming from directly behind the lens, which means that it's gonna enter the pupil of the eye and it's going to refract around all those blood vessels and come out red, Which means more likely than not, you are gonna get some red eye with a modifier like this because coming from the same angle of the lens, but red eyes pretty easy fix. It's just one of those things that you will have to fix. Ring flashes that modified direct flash like the ray flash tend to have a heavier shadow on one side. Let me show you exactly why. So, with the ray flashes basically channeling the light down from the flash head and into this little ring area and goes around now what ends up happening and this is kind of more pronounced when you're shooting portrait aspect ratio is that the light that's entering from here is gonna be a little bit brighter than the light that's entering, or the light that's coming out from this side. Why? Because of same thing. Inverse square law. Rumor like coming from this side will be a bit brighter on this side because this is closer to the flash head. It's closer. The light source. What ends up happening is that on one side of the model, you can kind of tend to get a little bit heavier of a shadow. So if you look on this side, we still have a little bit of shadow around this left edge, but that shadows more pronounced on the right side with any modifier that modifies your hot shoe flash like this, you're gonna get that just because part of it is going to close to the flash head than the other side. So if you want, If you use this effect a ton and you wanna have a fantastic ring flash, you can get a dedicated ring flash now dedicated standalone ring flash. They provide a better and more consistent look because basically, the light is placed all around this center area. So everywhere from one side to the other is all even. But they're going to set you back quite a bit of money. They're going to set you back probably 500 bucks for a basic unit, and they get even more expensive. But if you do shoot a lot with it might be worth investing in. Okay, Number five for this particular set of images, what we did actually for this shot and for this shot, you can see that her hair's kind of blowing back a bit. So we added a fan for a limited production. It's actually not a fan. It is a gigantic leaf blower that were using because we have it around the office, so why not use it? But if you don't have a leaf blower or you don't want to buy a leaf blower, you don't need to just get a reflector and you can actually do the same thing. Just hold a reflector like a five and one and just kind of laughed it back and forth, and you get that cool looking the hair. So we got a hair to kind of tip back and kind of be flowing like that with that fan. But you could do the same with reflector from there. All we're doing is moving in and out. You'll notice that in this shot, because we're shooting landscape aspect ratio we get a really nice light, and we get that even shadow across both sides because we're not tipping toe one side or the other. So I would say that if you are using the ray flash and you want to make sure that you have that perfect edge of light all the way around the body, then make sure that you're shooting landscape asset ratio. Otherwise, stand back a little bit further and then go with the portrait and you'll get a little bit better effect than if you get too close. Okay, so you can see the overall look once again. What is the light doing in comparison to bare bulb? Well, we talked about the shadow that it's creating. We talked about because of basically where the lights coming from. You're gonna have a little bit different effects there. But also just think about this. The light it looks like. Basically, it's the same type of light source as a flash right. We have silver background, and it's basically silver direct light that's coming out of it, so it's gonna be non diffused. It's gonna be a very speculative light that's coming off of it, but it's larger. So the surface area of this, compared to your flash head, is much, much bigger. That means it's gonna be a software type of lights going team, or even is gonna be kind of it will be speculative, but it will be a little bit softer all around. And that's what we see with a softer shadow transition everywhere. So the shadow transition from areas of light to dark is much softer than with a direct flash again, just trying to help you all toe understand what these light modifies gonna do just by looking at it just by kind of thinking through logically, based on the size based on the material used inside, whether it's silver reflective, whether it's Matt, and so far we guess exactly what is gonna dio
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Sid
The best class for understanding light and lighting there is bar none. Pye is an excellent teacher and the quality of the material provides for a rich and very informative experience. Pye breaks down the fundamentals in easy to digest packets and then elaborates as needed. If there is one class that you watch this is it! Worth purchasing and saving for future use. I would also HIGHLY recommend downloading the saving the PDF of slides that accompany the videos. Again, and can't say it enough, this is THE BEST video to lighting on Creative Live. A must watch for the novice and the expert.
Petra
Great course, I highly recommend it if you want to become a more confident flash user. Pye is a wonderful instructor and just such a nice guy, it's a pleasure to listen to him
Simon Metselaar
This is the best thing that happened to me since I've been into photography. What a lifesaver. Unfortunately I already payed for some courses that are not Pye, but Pye just nails it. Amazing, and kind of a life hack. Thanks again :)