Lessons

Lesson Info

Additional Lighting Gear

as I mentioned earlier we're going to kind of start simple and work our way up and simple sometimes means using natural light but I also want to be able to tweak the natural light to make it maybe just a little bit better and then we'll start to add in some things to make the natural light even mohr better or before we started getting into like the full flash total our control of the light type set up so you got to know a little bit everything because you don't want to go overboard when we talked about that earlier is knowing how to use all these gadgets and all the lights nothing doesn't mean you have to use them it doesn't mean you should use them you should do whatever's appropriate to the situation and if I can do it with a flashlight and the natural light lamps that are right here why golly that's what we're gonna do right so don't get crazy with gear and it's hard for me because as you're going to see I'm kind of ah dear knut and I brought a lot of stuff to share with you guys an...

d this is actually still a pretty small kid but all of this would not be something you'd have to have but I want to share with you guys kind of what I have at my disposal in my lightweight kit for me this is lightweight compared to what I could typically bring to a shoot and just kind of point out a few of the kind of cool things and some little things to know especially for speed lighters like us and what's helpful for our type of photography all right so let's start off with um somebody that's what the flashlights and I did put in there before the break somebody said what flashlight is that that you're using this one right here this airplane thanks say so this flashlight again uh it's not I'm not pumping this website they have no idea we're even talking about their flashlights but it's just a great deal one to pass on to use twelve ninety nine it's a very powerful that has a nice being pattern which you'll see we start playing with it later it's three power levels condition to strobe aske opic dance mode which is very important when you're models just don't do what you want like all right we're going to dance strobe light let's dance okay so there's a high power and it's also azuma ble which is really nice and noticed the pattern is really nice so what I'm looking for flashlights somebody said and twelve bucks that's cheap yeah but it actually cost me like five hundred twelve dollars because I bought five hundred dollars or the crappy flashlights to find the one that was actually gonna work you know so um I just want to share that with you guys if you like to play with this flashlight lighting all right let's uh let's talk about gadgets in the bag here so one of the things that um when you're doing speed lighting or flash lighting is your batteries and that's kind of a silly thing to be talking about batteries but it actually kind of important thing to know what kind of batteries work best when using battery powered gear right so everything that we're using is battery powered so the battery's kind of play an important role they wanted quickly touch on the types of batteries and for your speed lights we all know we can use your charge will batter is anybody still put alkaline batteries in their speed lights tisk tisk if you do nobody here okay that's good now if you're using alkaline batteries your speed lights the kind of batteries that you know they say put him in there when you get him uh bad idea that should be like your last resort if you're desperate rechargeable nickel metal hydride they will recycle faster that will last longer and of course you're saving the environment so please don't put alkaline batteries and he's unless you're desperate you got nothing you got to run to the store to buy something right uh these rechargeable there some new ones I just got one is sure if you were quick to they look really cool look like kind of transformers which is reason I bought them because they just look cool uh there are about twenty five hundred million damp which is pretty good for the low discharge batteries these air loops on you and I got these in amazon good price but this isn't like the best low discharge batteries that I found with the highest miller am parading so they will give you enough juice to keep going so just so you know mill amps means let's go how long they're gonna last so hire me lamps the longer they last so that's ah one of my favorite batteries and then of course you get a charge them and a good battery charger to get there many of them out there uh this one is from ma ha and it has eight individual channels and it's dead simple thank you maha battery charger eight channels dead simple put him in there that's it and it's ah I've used these for years I've got two of these like in charge tons of batteries all one time charge in a couple hours of the most so really great battery charger if you need a battery charger let's look at um I need to walk over here though grab some gear is like okay like this so I'm gonna go down here and do this back so gorilla pod remember that brent right grill pods and this little triple head here's again just a bare bones five six dollars ten dollars piece I can remember what it holds three flash heads so I like to gadget shop because you like the gadget shop to just go online and look at that gadgets like there and half the time you buy stuff in it's crap and then half the time it's like well that's a pretty cool fine so I do have some good fines um this's also pretty cool this is from tamarack who makes all my bags and this is a mini tripod that's like got duct tape all over it's that kind of stake but you shake it out actually guys all get one of these for free and uh and you're a little goody bags of gifts for you guys eso so these air these air made for like little travel point shoot cameras he put it here and you got your travel camera but I'm like dude that's a light holder to me that's a speed light holder you know so I put a little hot shoe on the thing and it's got a bald head already and now you've got a little uh you know quitter speed light behind the model or wherever you want right they're easy to go all right so when you ready to pack it up it's just like like a tent pole pull it apart wrapped the strap and throw it inside your bag so tomorrow I gave one to each one of you guys to take home with you thanks and that's useful uh let's see what else is good to have you gotta have duct tape of course this is um a suction cup mount um we call these things this is from duncan and this has a really strong suction cups to say you got a window refrigerator door or a car or anything else you want to mount speed like two again has a little hot she wanted already and a ball heads you coulda just anywhere you want and it's really solid in fact that used the bigger brother version of this to do a shoot where I had my camera strapped to the back of my convertible mustang we did a shoot with the bride and groom and I put the suction cups on their car leading the camera way off the back you know like with tripod legs on the bumper to do remote shot with the camera way but behind the couple of the wide angle lens and a little suction cups hold that sucker on the car and he drove down the road at fifty so is pretty awesome what else is in the bag mr let's say what happened all right um life meters for those of you waited to tell hawk brief about light years earlier and this is actually probably close to the world premiere of this news iconic meter and it's got a touch screen control it does everything it's like little iphone you compress it and change your meeting modes and your speed and screw ll it's just like so cool and it actually will control your pocket wizards so I could actually control the power from adjusting flack to reading down to stop popping right here hit it again so inner faces with the flex system which is again one of the things we're giving away we're going to complete flex systems away later um if you're if you're needing a light meter this was definitely one of the coolest ones that available right now um again a light meter is a really valuable learning tool really important for in the studio in multiple lights save yourself some time from guesswork however I don't use anymore other than using it for testing and for studio work things like that when I'm on location doing what we're doing right now I'm doing it all by feel and all by looking on the camera adjusting again what I talked about earlier is it doesn't feel right I don't really care if it's three to one four to one five to one which if that light looks good and its way overexposed and I like it we're on right that's what I wanna encourage you guys to do is well too is to learn to feel light and the important thing though is to learn to get what you're feeling conveyed into the flash right or too light once you learn to do that which comes from little bit experience which I hope you'll get more of this week then a light meter becomes a great learning tool but probably something you eventually just put away and not use any more if you like toe light intuitively which is what I'm sharing with you yes so not bashing light meters I think they're awesome obviously have one I have several of them um waiting for a jet to go by but the truth be told I'd be honest with you I don't use it anymore but you use it for a long time I did use it so wouldn't that be fair to say that like you kind of have a light meter in your head now because you got it for so long exact soba fino someone who was just starting out it would be valuable to have a life really be like I'm gonna fight my way through this photo shoot but you know yes you actually have a lot of the technical skill packed away right for yourself that the rights of really great observation and something that I constantly kind of battle with internally is that as much as I I don't like using this I did use it a lot too are lighter but I mostly use it when I was shooting film and there's no other way now we have a way we have our camera so going by feel really hasn't been that hard it's just knowing how to look at that and go that's about a stop fish more than I want and if you think about what we talked about earlier like maybe half the light one stop then it's easy enough to go to your flash turn it down one floats one stop shoot again and really it's almost the same amount of time it would be to take a measurement take a measurement take a measurement go back to your camera now then shoot the shot you're probably gonna change it still after taking a shit measurements and shooting so why not just shoot it and see it from the start and go from there so you know again a lot a lot of teachers have come to head with me on this son why I'm not stressing light meters mohr and so I just want to be honest with everybody out there that I think they're great this is obviously the finest meter available right now it's cool it looks like an iphone which I I really like about it's like hi can you change the light level up like maybe three stops okay thanks I love you but okay so it's great it's great it's a great light meter but uh you don't have to have one so I don't want your run out by one if you don't feel like I really need a light meter okay all right but you're gonna buy one buy the news say connick ill four seven eight d r because this one is the cat's me out he's awesome okay I'm gonna get a lot of flak on that I'm just some sweet come on bring it babies bring it out there the internet world I'm ready for you okay next thing you're gonna need is uh cables which we've talked about to sink your chords um another couple little gadgets that air unique and not absolutely necessary but just nice if you're in a speed lighting situation this is a a sea power pack for speed like so say you're gonna be sitting in the same situation shooting a lot shouldn't rapid fire shooting fashion we've got to do a lot of shots he can plug that right into speed light like this into the wall and now you got all day long on a speed light so it's nice little thing to have if it is a nova tronics uh and this battery power not barry part but will power your battery powered speed lights through a sea even though you know what matters then there's a lot of accessory like this is a bar from scott robert that I come out for speed lights through these little heads and put this on a light stands you could actually four speed lights tau gang him up show him through a scrim which is what we're going to do later rogue flash benders these are the you do dads we strap around the speed light head let me do that for you right now okay event shooters love these things gary fong makes a really cool anybody have the gary fong uh lights fear it goes on the top of your speed light that's a really nice one for keeping nice even illumination when you have to have flash on camera this is another way to do that so flash on camera here pop that sucker on and now you've got this nice soft bouncing what's kind of cool about these then my friend would drop the camera is that you can bend it but these little mini bars and say I want mohr like to fly forward unless they're on the sides ended in a kind of shape it into the light thing you want to use it as a flag if you want light to go one direction but not the other and flag it off means light goes here but not so much they're so it's almost like barn doors put into a snoot if you don't have a extra road grid little volker on it like that and now you've got a little pinpoint like little kick alight here in there that's handy so they're pretty versatile tools and this is part of what we're giving away actually right uh complete kid of these plus the road grid and one of our giveaways couple of giveaways questions so far any little gadgets today you talk about that does not really clear okay are sticky filters what you talked about earlier always have these I've gotta several sets in my bag so that I have is money is a need for different lights and these just peel right off I talked about them earlier but basically here's your you're warm tungsten gel it going here we peel this off and stick that on your flash okay so now you got tungsten flash to match tungsten or candlelight or whatever um take it stick it on your flashlight got warm tungsten light candlelight beaming down from wherever so it's a really nice tool we can stick it on your fluorescence uh they're small enough um our little video light they were going to use in our dome and a little bit put right over that led light so again great little accessory tohave you can get these we have a package available my lighting notebook and the sticky filters for a great price part of our little lighting special package for those of you out there who want to get these get him on a website or through the specials page I believe we have listed somewhere okay let's start uh playing with some of these big things I've got to move over here now we're slowly alicia help me poor little frames so these are frames we're not gonna pull these out right now but these are our old panel frames we've got the photo flex meddle with that our homemade dealio here um and this bag has just light stands nothing unusual there just light stands the only other light stand that's kind of unusual is the one I mentioned earlier which is the automatic stand that is somewhere over there which will be using and I like that when I'm kind of traveling light because again moving things quickly and easily is really nice right here we go so this one is just down it's good to go and that's great when you're trying to move through a crowd you know to get through to another space you know what you guys have all done that before right yeah what is that light over the legs it's a cheetah stand is from cheetah like okay reminds me of a joke when someone's told me why shouldn't you play games in the jungle something about china there's too many cheaters ok all right so it's a cheetah stand it's got a cheater stand yeah hey yeah my six year old joke I have one more six years another six year old when he was six said uh knock knock pants or no pants I'm going swimming okay so let's uh let's get ready to light so before we get started I just want to show you back on my computer what are set up looks like we're gonna be tethering right into light room I'm using a d three tethered by us be uh three s and what we've done is I've set up a folder on my hard drives let me show you this little folder set up you see back there so on our um on the hard drive we have a client folder and this is not a full blown workflow workshop actually do these like two full days of just workflow and using light room and all that stuff but I'm gonna do a real simplified version of it because we want to focus on the lighting so um basically we're going would just create a client folder and my client folders include a template folder that I duplicate each time I started new jobs if you see there we have a client template and inside that template these are empty folders right now but they're already organized zero one two three in the order I'll use them and of what I need to do so my originals will go into the originals once I convert sometimes I convert to dmg and I make photoshopped versions of a file they get moved saved the masters have a folder for the j peg proofs my slideshow files going to separate folder um I'm gonna use light room to create blawg ready images and actually send them to my blog's right from light room via the e mail log function uh my print files obviously and then the albums and have a catalog template as well which I normally used for my wedding portrait in other jobs that has a light room catalog already set up with a lot of the settings that are unique to a catalogue created so I don't have to create them each time I start a new job because the key to my work flow is having one light room catalog per job not one giant catalog for everything one per job yes no I mean you can search if you have your meditating in search for the bridge or something else if you want to find a vehicle in which is fun to search everything I would use bridge or I'm generally know about which job it wasn't looking for I'm not looking for just a random picture of a face right I'm looking for a picture of the smith face so go the smith catalogue so it really hasn't kept me from finding images I know which catalog to go too but the benefit is that when I'm backing up when I'm organizing my hard drive everything to do with the client is in one folder my client folder there catalog the images the originals the the jpeg versions and tweaks print files boom one little nice tidy baggy and if my catalogue crashes which they do I don't have to rebuild everything that I've ever shot just the one job