Lessons

Lesson Info

Mixing Ambient + Gobo w/ Flash

Mixing ambient with different color temperatures plus flash plus go bows and just the whole kit and caboodle you know the whole thing I told you about not mixing color temperatures with flash and so forth and matching ambient will we're going through that whole rule by the wayside in this story because I'm going to show you a situation where we can get really great effects by doing this and it all comes down to that ambient to flash balance what makes this image work? What makes this balance between a warm ambient light that's thirty six hundred degrees kelvin versus a cold or fifty five hundred agreed kelvin blue flash what makes that work is the balance between ambien to flash and that's a very, very fine tuned kind of thing that, you know, it's all about refining. Okay, so what are we trying to hear? Well, we're shooting inside of our hotel room and we're doing our lovely, like kind of fine art boudoir type shots and I see this mirror and I go man that mirrors quarter's can you stan...

d in front of that mirror and do this? I want you to conceal that bring the hands to the face and kind of concealed not using the actual hands because again concealing with hands is not really, you know, implied it just it just looks intentional, like your covering up intentionally because you want to protect yourself. I wanted to conceal in a way that looks very natural and so that's why we don't have a concern with hands we conceal with the arms and with the elbow and so forth we bring the hand up to the face a kind of draw attention and I go I love that I love this look right here hold that for just one second. I take a shot on my cannon eighty five million to one point two again, the sigma version is a fantastic version of that lens if you can afford the one to l there's also a cannon one eight, which is like five hundred bucks, which is another great version of the lens. Either way, we're shooting it like five six, so it doesn't really matter which version you have here, but I shoot this lynne because again, I don't want any distortion with its have a shot or shooting portrait's who want to make sure we don't have distortion, especially when we're doing like good wine things you want to have a very soft and good look and want to exaggerate her good features, not lengthen her forehead, which is what a fifty millimeter would do, it would lengthen the foreigner, lengthen things that in a kind of a natural way when we're shooting this type so we're on the eighty five were shooting at one fifth of a second f too and so two hundred this is at forty hundred degrees kelvin, just to show you what the annual lighting that scene look like. So this is really what it looks like to our eyes. So for the composition, my main thing here is that I want the frame to be in the back, and I want the mirror as my back because it kind of perfectly frames her body, her face and so forth, but I want to create some separation there, but not to the point where, you know, it doesn't really matter anywhere between two and five six well, it still it's still relatively blurry in the background, we have good separation there, so anywhere between that is totally fine, all I need to worry about is kind of just mai and me to flash balance. So I'm not too concerned with deciding on what aperture and everything that I want at that point, what I do is I take this shot and then I say, okay, left hold perfectly still, let me just put this go up, I'm gonna put the go go up, we have our same goble that we used earlier, right? We placed the black side to the flash we're using a faux takes metros we place this off to camera left we place this close to her her face and we fire through it using a grate on this so that we don't get light spill in other places and then we end up with this shot so this is that one fifth of a second f two so two hundred forty hundred kelvin but this is with the phone text me chose with the grid firing through the gobo at one quarter to one power so we have exact same exposure here between ambient light but now we've added flash now light direction like quality is great I love the lines on the face I love the way everything looks by the way, I remember how we talked about earlier about goa positioning this is a shot where we basically wanted a sharper edge to that gobo you notice that if we compared to a previous shot with her sitting on the bed, you saw that because this is a thick gobo you'll see a separation of the edge, right? But here you don't see that separation nearly as much. I hear it's very, very fine compared to that other shot the whole reason is the distance of this to the subject we talked about before if you bring this closer to the subject, it makes that that shape maur defined when you bring this further from the subject, it makes the shape kind of puff out and it becomes a larger shape and it gets less to find same thing with the flash the less the closer you being the flash to this go botham or it's going to bloom basically so you're going to have the light wrapping around the goble instead of just you know hitting it as a hard light source you're increasing the size of light source and this gives you a softer go bo effect as you bring it close as you pull it back from the gobo you're decreasing the size of light source in relation with gobo which creates a harder light and that gives you a harder definition so to create this harder definition this maur straight lines without that kind of double edge well we bring this up close and bring the flash further back we grid the flash so that it is not spilling onto everything else okay so what's the problem with this number two shot well with our test shots are number two shot here reveals that it looks cool and I'm on to something that I really really like but it's not working yet and the whole reason behind is not working and this is where most photographers would would quit they would quit right at this point where they might even to see the crappy lighting the scene to begin with and he might quit before they even get started really I want you all to again hammer and your head's when you're visualizing a shot and it's not turning out the way that you want don't freak out okay don't go don't throw your hands up on me like I was our thing I know none of you whatever probably do that but either way don't freak out in your head just think one thing the reason that this is not looking like how I wanted to is most likely because my ambient to flash balance is not correct okay look at the image and then just analyze what needs to happen well, my flash is a little bit too bright my ambiance is a little bit too bright okay, let me start making adjustments we take the same exact photo this time we went to f five six so from f two two five six we've dropped let's see two point eight four point oh five six right that's three stops we went we kept the iso at two hundred we kept the white balance of forty hundred degrees we went from one fiftieth toe one thirtieth of a second which is almost twice as bright right? We almost added one stop in the shutter speed so basically overall we darkened by just a little bit more than two stops and because we did it with our aperture we darken the flash and ambient by three stops and we increased ambient by nearly one stop by slowing down the shutter speed. Right. So the flash came down three stops. The ambien basically came down to stops. We take the shot again. And look at this. We get a beautiful image. And the whole concept behind this, the whole shot that I want here is I want this almost blue light kind of coming in. Very neutral light. Coming in. Lighting her up is if there's a light outside and it's nighttime and it's, you know, kind of lighting her face through the blinds while we have a warm light on the inside of the room that just gives shape and definition to the shadows. I want to show her form. I want to show everything. Now. This shot is great. Notice how the the lights kind of come right over the eye like that that's intentional again. We're using that flash test button to make sure that our goebbels placed in the right spot to make sure that our model is in the right position. And then we make micro adjustments if needed, so use that test button so you can fire off that kind of temple temporary, that one second kind of strobing actions so you can see where the lightest falling now look from this from number three to number four to number five. I labeled all these with check marks right because timmy any one of these is acceptable and you just need to decide what you want your ambient light bounced to be so if you notice on shot for in five I actually brought my shutter speed upto one one hundred a second okay so one hundred second we brought the actor is still a five six isis still a two hundred on both the shots what we end up getting here now is a background that's about a stop to a stop and a half darker now then it was let's actually stop and a half darker than it was here in the one thirtieth of a second so you can see the background dropping down I drop it to the point where I still see shadow and shape in her body but we just see less of that ambient light now anywhere between here I would say is great it's up to your discretion to choose what ambient light balance to flash balance looks right for you and your stylistic effect that you want over your image so I loved all these for the last shot ahead or look into the camera I had that light just streak right across the eyes that we can see that one I and this is not photoshopped this is you know if you have light directly entering the I like that that's how it's gonna look it's going to look very bright and beautiful, you don't need to do any additional brining into it. So this is that that shot now, if I wanted to in photo shop, I could go through and remove you can actually see a little bit of global off to the side of these. I'm actually okay with that. For the most part, the reason why is because it ended up looking just like the window, like the window blinds were actually just in the shot. If you don't like it, you could always just take a piece from, you know, the other mirror and just kind of clone it out whatever you can do that photo shop, but that's really up to you or you could just place thie go bow a little bit further back so it's not in the reflection. The one thing was that I wanted those sharp lines and to get the sharp lines had to be that close, which meant I was going to be a little bit in the reflection, and I was okay with that. I made that decision to be okay with that, okay? So key components with shots like this is the analyzing step, you're going to take several test shots I think we took, like probably four to five test shots on this particular image to get to where I wanted you're going to take several test shots analyze the shadows analyzed the highlights make sure your gobo is in the correct spot and one little tip if you have something like a geo wanna joo won is a gun light or a led something something that can kind of is a constant light and kind of mimic a flash the geo one is fantastic because you can kind of zoom it and you can throw it right in that go bo and I had one on hand so I used my joo won and I know the jones a very expensive lightest six or seven hundred dollars so don't go out and buy it just for this one single purpose it's a fantastic light which we're going to get into in lighting three oh one but if you're using it just as a modeling light which I'm going to mention it's kind of overkill but anyway I was doing I was placing the jail one just right where I wanted and I was firing that constant light to just get a gauge of where I wanted to put my gobo and where I wanted for my flash and relation that goebbels so that way I can have my assistant hold of jail one I could back them up I could bring them closer I could get that all right I could visually see it because it's a constant light and then based on where I had that I placed my flash, and then I place my gobo and so forth. So it it helps to make scenes like this go a little bit quicker, although you could do the exact same thing, you know, with just a flash test button and moving a little mohr and kind of manipulating us little born, it takes just a bit more time. But if you're going to get the deal, one it's, a fantastic tool in this kind of situation, to just help you out and it's, also a great light in general, which we're going to use a lot in lighting. Three, oh one, hopefully you have all enjoyed this chapter so far. There's. One additional video I want to show you, which just gives you an idea of how better light khun. Simply make a scene work.