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Light Modifiers Q&A

if you could again explain the fall off the inverse square law means you're doing the next one that would be fine sure let me grab my my rope the fancy red rope available on my website for thirty nine ninety five free and it comes a knotted it's customizable I could make some serious money selling clothes line uh um if you can see this as we bring this light in close you can see the inverse square law happening up here right so if we put our light here you can see that that not too this not is a full stop to the two nuts that's a full stop across her face to her shoulder is a full stop at that close to the light source that's what we're talking about it falls off really fast if we moved her closer it would fall off even faster because now our next where's our next steps stop bythe halfway between that knot in here is about there that's a full stop even closer that's a full stop that's fallen off rapidly now so the closer you bring your light in the faster it falls off your angles are t...

wo different triangles the wider you get from where your light sources from access a camera to side like the white or you get the more shadow you create and the higher you get the more shadow you create under the eyes I never shoot my light lower than straight at someone because then you about halloween lighting if you want halloween lighting that's cool that's what you do with light low and if you shoot the light straight at someone you get when I called chipmunk cheeks and that's where the cheek lights up here it gets dark before it goes into the eye then the eye lights up and then it's dark just above the eyebrow because the light's kind of coming like straight at slightly up from kind of thing and you get this becomes a high point and the eye socket becomes a low point if you've ever spent time in a dark room photographing somebody trying to get rid of dark circles under their eyes you know what I'm talking about why created you know so I try to keep my life falling down at an angle that it lights up the eyes catches the shelf of the cheek that's a little bit of a contour under the cheek not on my cheeks but you know pretty people's cheeks onda little bit of shadow under the nose and wraps under the chin that's why my lights right about here on men anywhere you can shoot guys you know light up here with dark eye sockets I've seen some great shots of like clint eastwood where the light was really high across his truly chiseled face you know every line and wrinkled show show it just you could see all the texture in his face try that with b a forty year old real estate lady comes down for real estate shots she's not really going to like it very much she doesn't want to know about those lines and chisels and and things that's not her okay all right so we have actually john you know take it up a little bit higher way have the worst light of the day sun coming down from the top and we get a reading on that now sometimes this this we have to do this commercial photographer we were were guns for hire right and you know I would get a call of occasionally well then you gotta go shoot the mayor okay that's really great oh you mean with a camera that's um so we have to go out make the shot but the mayor is going to give you ten minutes between twelve ten and twelve twenty on june third the sun is like right there well there's a sign up there where point owen eight tenths just about five six o okay so just back off yeah a quick question for you don that is waiting um tim see bring is asking I would love to learn howto use my lighting equipment more I don't always have a model are there any substitutes that you can practice all these lighting tricks with that you could suggest well I I I rarely ever say to yourself because you can't see it you know you're just jumping in and jumping out so if you couldn't find somebody I would say I mean it's tried and true is to get a dummy ah uh mannequin anakin manic and you'll find out that they're probably more expensive than I really think they are um but I found that if you want to try something manic in would be great or torso uh in the studio we've got a couple of fake heads you know they're just yet that's tired from his styrofoam head in the door you'll be like three or five dollars and then it's styrofoam and that's not the same skin texture is us right you've gotta paint it you've got to get it a a semi matt we're semi matt creatures okay see if spray paint with some kind of semi matt and I would probably go with the middle gray or something that would give you a approximation of a skin tone yes but you know you confined if you're if you're good at photography or when I say good I mean entry level good you confined photographs to people a photograph by shooting actors and actresses from your local community theater believe me it's easier than model mayhem because surprisingly enough they actually show up I don't know it's bizarre but they'll be there because they are all about having their pictures taken they want to be stars they want to be actors and actresses so I have done very well with that as fine as far as finding somebody to work with it's been great all right here we go and yes that's what I'm talking about now let's say she was the mayor of seattle I'm gonna have to move right okay so you can go on by these guys and if you if you go on the internet and the interwebs you'll show guys showing you how to use these let's put it us say okay put this thing up in front of the sun okay great well you know what I didn't I got open up yeah thank you I got open up but we opened up stop uh don't remember stop in half and half yeah so we got this thing up there and we've defused the sun and she's not going to kill me anymore she's just gonna hurt me okay I'm not dead man walking yet but what happens if we take the diffuser tilted up just a little bit and bring it forward right right there get the diffuser right down even more john right into there right down here so that the size of the light source becomes more interesting great there reaches its limit right there beautiful now you're not gonna kill me anymore diffuser can we funded laurie hot from they show all three and up if you could show all three across there that'd be great same diffuser just close close to the subject as you can get you could take this there's your sunshine that the net looks just pretty much like the sun right that's the sun that's the diffuser as thing making shadows if that's the best you could do you go with that okay if it has to be far enough away because of something that you're doing in the photograph that's better than this but that's better than that that's full sun outside with the diffuser could you shoot that for a client could you shoot senior portrait's at noon with lighting like that I think so especially when we can do this yes why is the background so different in the last two shots because jon is blocking the light from the background oh I'm sorry why is it so bright because the sun still hitting this that wall the sun is still hitting the wall with me but I had to open up because the diffuser cuts cuts to stop in the third I think we opened up right stopping a third ok yeah so it's cutting the light but that remained the same yes okay we'll take this down just a little bit so you've got your mayor outside we're gonna take this and put it right under here and the key is this has to be small enough that that hides the sun from it with me because if it doesn't then this becomes so bright what happens chipmunk cheeks like john right there good right there beautiful jump in there real quick elissa thing thing on elissa here real quick do without or with with and then we'll take it out so this is with and you know what we'll do john we'll take it out and then we'll head move it back up so go backwards all right good all right now that out here good and in real close to her face in that pretty like that can you close to her thank you then way back up against the wall that's the hour now that's where they tell you in the instruction manual to put it here we go oh that's pretty I like that kind of like yeah we do what we did do a naked one by one we're gonna go up to stop and a half thank you thanks for reminding me they're more yeah yeah yeah that's with the diffuser making a shadow we got a problem right but we really don't have is nearly the kind of problem as we have if we take her out in the direct sun we're taking that little bitty ball of light and we're making it as big as that diffuser what they do in the film industry silks put giant tents of silk up the sun will light him up and they'll shoot inside those silks I love to shoot with silk lighting but uh yeah you sure see that prince to make sense cool as faras the bounce light off the bottom you always want to keep it a flat white or do you ever play around the silver we're gonna do silver we're going to silver I think tomorrow yes we'll show you the difference between a white and a silver because it's dramatic both work for you it just depends on how you want that face toe look because when you had the silver to it you really do blast a lot of light back into the underside of the face I think it had to be careful with it but yes I have ah ah stainless steel piece of metal that's on a stand so you khun tilt it when you do that you get this light source here you tilted it all of a sudden you get that light source is right there and it looks let's say it really does look the same brightness in the eye it's just a little bit less hell you can't double light you'll never do that you can't even take a mirror and take that light and make it twice if we could do that we could light everything with one light right just we bounce it around you're always gonna lose something but it's so bright it really does have a great face filling look to it great question from from sam cocks in loveland colorado after adjusting the aperture wants to account for the diffuser did did you or he didn't adjust aperture again when he made the diffuser close right right and the reason say that sam and the reason sam is that the light didn't change the lights the same distance away really makes no difference where I put my diffuser it's going to kill a stop and a half whether it's six feet away or a foot and a half away you'll notice when you bring it in it looks like it gets brighter when you're doing on sunlight it physically looks like it's getting brighter it's not it's filling in the shadows everything's lighting lightening up it doesn't get any brighter and when we brought the cards and underneath we didn't really make the shot brighter by bringing the cards in we lowered the contrast we created light where there's there was shadow once before the highlight remains the same exposure um a question from it suzi ge what type of diffuser would you use for the mayor if you are by yourself and it's windy I would I will say this there is nothing anywhere that khun b to c stand you cannot be to see stand I I will say that the big avenger stand maybe something but if you're shooting any kind of location work you're going to have to buy at least one c stand so a c stand in sandbags and yeah and sandbags yes see sand and stand sandbags and one of these diffusers well probably handle a breeze a wind no there's I mean at that point you're just you're out of lock your best bet would then take the diffuser away and you stroke demonstrated earlier with the light meter how you're holding it exactly what did you do the same with the ex foetus not pointing it into the light expo disk okay yeah you're you're not the one that's on the camera right I shoot right out that the sun disc you put on your lens yeah usually do white balance or meter reading no if it's a meter reading until you go back to the light yeah I go right back to the camera not to the source the same as the life peter ok yes I would do that yes I used that export this long time ago used to use it for white balance when I was shooting on ly j pegs right um is there is there a time and place to shoot j pegs we're talking modern cameras not talking twenties or with the fifties or whatever the early what well that the cameras with ink well we make a d fifty we make a fifty d oh it's really great guys thank you so much why why would we shoot j peg let's say we're shooting a head shot of him and actress for her model mayhem page or her or her even her actors page my goingto have to really go in there and do a lot of work on color balance on that shot if I've got it set right I'm talking on a like a five d mark two or sixty d or a seventy or a nikon d seven hundred really am I gonna have to go in and do any kind ofwork like that uh and if you've seen a j peg comin off of a d seven hundred hold onto your butts it's awesome so if you set your light and you got the shot that's the shot why not why not there are certain places we're all going to shit wrongly there's somebody so I might not hesitate to shoot j p right and the internet is responding to your question which was photojournalists on a deadline and sports shooters that gotta get those images back but getting it right in camera just get it right in the camera as best you can you know I showed a lot of dancers and ice skaters and those ice skaters so I'm shooting competitive ice skating minute and thirty seconds for the little kids on the ice minute and thirty seconds and I got to get those shots I'm not going to be standing there waiting from what card to read even the bigger cam unless we're talking really big bad boy cameras they can handle it but you know seventy years something's gonna start backing up you put a seventy or d seven hundred aura kanan sixty d on j peg you could just simply click like like like like like like like like and get the shots you need it's gonna be an ice skater she's gonna make a five by seven of it let's be real okay let's not get caught up in that the minutia of things let's get riel about it so yeah I shoot life music using available whatever I have available that thing on the stage and I shoot j peg there well you got what colored lights yeah sure you don't know what you're getting your shoot raw so they can get back and take all these pictures and you put him out it's got a blue gel in a purple gel coming in so good luck with that yeah absolutely john the thing is to get the shot gonna take it back to wei have parents here moms and dads okay you little child is doing something so adorable you've never seen this child do it ever before your dslr sitting over there in the bag lens isn't even on it a little point and shoot things in the pocket are you going to miss the shot to get this thing out and shoot raw are you goingto iphone it for kodak snap if I out or whatever get the shot first get the shot that's the most important thing we can do you're out shooting live music absolutely because you have to you have to bang yeah I didn't have to wait with that either had a friend whose driver who drove stock cars and last year we were not shot a stock I just put on j pigs so I could just bang bang bang through it all we needed were shots for the website trust me I have a quick question for you that was came a little bit earlier where some folks work and we're asking about when you were taking the light meter and you went from for nine to five six and it was somebody was familiar with four point on five six but not the inbetween okay my meter is a very old light meter and it does tense of a stop so was f four point nine which is one tense a stop away from five point six um the newer meters like this the conical three fifty eight etcetera they I think they have that feature presented birds stop still have an oldman ultimate too I think there's still measuring intense maybe maybe you think you can do it you have to do a setting though because when you get it out of the box exit said at half stops and then you go in and you said it third stops and then you'll it'll say like six point three and I think that has a little hash tag or a little hash mark they will say you know a tenth above six point three or something where it gets really confusing is between eight and eleven because that's old time we'll say eight and a half eight and a half is actually higher than nine oh yeah because now your camera says eight nine ten eleven where we think of eight eight and a half eleven so eight and a half is between nine and ten now you just confused every way remember wei didn't even have a human dimension way had a high center of the limbs you had the lens had f a v f eleven that's it nothing in the middle seat a high center it so you were okay you can always send it to marty for sure to have a quick stops in between yeah for a thousand carefully because to do it marty for she was his great repairman in new york used to be able to customize your cameras and fix just about anything I'd like to be able to put him a meal lens on my nikon if two hey can do it trust me he can do it you can pay for it but he'd get it done for you um but yeah we just we didn't have that so we do that so these meters air set up intense of a stop this is an old minutemen ulta for and I gotta tell you if you're looking for a meter there on the internet now where they run about two hundred bucks probably yeah three and the four the three was my favorite except that it used ten button batteries yes before they went to the gays they have a they have a single double and then one of those like watch batteries that's really hard to find kids can go to safeway and buy that one but these air wonderful meters and one hundred two hundred dollars in the last year for like I said I've had this meters since my daughter was one year olds twenty five so and I paid a lot of money for us why can't I have another one I just bought one on the internet it looks like it's brand new it's still in the box when old morty goes well you know hang him up in a place of honor I will not throw it away because it's just been my buddy for many years and I get attached to it I'll just hang in there big place of honor and pull his younger brother out of the box and use him so and you know it's when I bring the meter up under the chin there's a reason why I put it under the chin I want the meter which camera I want the meter to be in the plane of my face I don't put the meter here because of my lights and really close and I put my meter here that could be a third of a stop right here is where I want to know it the other reason I don't put it in front of the faces I'm a klutz so I'm going all that's really cool and I hit the model she's just been in makeup for like two and a half hours and you kind of go I'm really really sorry but you're gonna have to go back because I just made a big smear across your face okay and you never want to touch the model's face ever especially smacking her with the light meter just doesn't set up a good precedent for things