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End of Day Q&A

we had one more request from a c hew um from columbia south carolina wondering if you could tell us one more time how the cheetah stand is connected to the optic dome the make and model of the bendy thing bendy singing here is magically appears all right cheetah stan is connected to your octo thinking by a little bendy thingy that is from photo flex and I don't know the model number but it's basically if you look under photos flex angle bracket that's what it is and there's a lot of the manufacturers you get these from if you wanted to but the angle brackets essential so that you can of course angle when this is on a pole to any angle and then the photo flex bracket just sits there in that socket that sits on the top of the cheetah stand which is it normal tristan tripod try normal light stand thank you perfect okay yes I have a quick question from powell who would like to know if you always use prime lenses and if so why I don't always use prime in fact um one of my favorites is the s...

eventy two two hundred two point eight I also have a twelve to twenty four which I love a lot but I do love the primes when I can get that really fast aperture like my eighty five one for my fifty one four and the twenty four one for love if I could if zoom could do that I would buy it I don't have any problem with the quality of zoom's it's just that fast aperture you can't always get with zoom thank you yeah um so those were too easy ones okay I give you a slightly more difficult one oh no uh hold me you guys you guys helped time and if you need okay diane lundgren photography from rhode island is wondering it really looks and sounds as though kevin is kind of guessing at the lighting strength uh at a wedding we don't have time to do that is their method that you're using to have your initial settings yeah I mean it is it is a guests it's an educated guess based on experience as far as where I start but in a wedding it be the same if you you'd have to do a test shot if he had a light meter you'd have to run out there and meter it and do a test to see what your lights out and then go back and see your camera so I really don't think it's any slower than going out there and actually meet a ring now you could use tl if you had a wedding um you can use with the flex tt won tt five system from pocket wizard it actually works in t t l mode so you could totally be wireless and using teal um I'm not using tio here because it's a little more controlled situation and it's easier for us to demonstrate without the teal um complexity but when I did shoot weddings and such like that I would use in tl mode to get me pretty much within half that's even within a third of a stop just off t l but I do think that you can make it pretty educated guess make a few adjustments especially when you have the adjuster on your camera and what you've gotta dial then you just start shooting you don't need to go back and just much unless you really change your scene up a lot yeah no I mean it's true it does look like I'm guessing a lot but it's it's guessing based on I know this setting is gonna get me within half stop of what I want of what the lights needs to be and then I just make him one adjustment and I'm there and I think most people once you've done if you do that you're gonna be within a stop stop in half I should take you no more than one maybe two adjustments and then your dial okay another quick question this is from shell from georgia can you tell us what your focal point was when you're shooting both of the girls at the same time the eyes was always focusing on their eyes so whether I'm moving my focus point up or down locking on their eyes and then re composing or using this to centre lock on the eyes and recompose but my focal points always the eyes so one of the girls eyes well they're both yeah one of the girls eyes but I've also put them if you know so we did there shot has them in the same plane so that they really were the same distance from the lens so if I hit one eye the other one's going to be in focus is if they were staggered of course then we've got an issue and it even gotta shoot five six eight which is going to change the look of everything completely I am so I wouldn't do that unless I intended for one of them to be out of focus and would you focus on the inside I closest the other girl versus the outside I if they were staggered and you know if they were on their side by side yeah focus on the when they were just like this but they were closer together was a focusing on her inside I okay thank you um fashion tv from singapore singapore who always asked amazing questions um the hair light did not hit those girls evenly in the duo shots how can he improve that stuart wider grid yeah I would have actually we didn't take the time to do it but at least you put on two stacks of great action bring that uh grid spot out here a leash if you would inside the road grid um when you're assembling this there's actually you can stack these grids okay so when you stack them you get a really pretty tight beam and she set that up for the single girl we didn't take the time to change that for the double and what I would have done if we had just I wanted to do that was ticketed probably put one for the two girls or it gives it a little bit more gives it a wider spread it would have been even across the two or even I've used this without any grids just like this it's more like a snoot and just like that is actually pretty nice too it has a wider being pattern might have been a little more private maybe cause a little bit of flair but maybe we like that right talked about that might be ok yeah so that's a good question and definitely if we were going to take a little more time we don't have a lot of time left um just modifying the grids would fix that okay you wanna take a couple more questions all right tish has a quick question on using wide angle lenses in portrait photography I thought this was a no no because of distortion yes uh what's a no no you guys what's what's what makes a great photo whatever you like okay so but that's a really good question what I use wide angle lenses what I try to do is to have my subject is close to the center and use the wide to tell a little story of the environment you know like we kind of did earlier here s okay she was fairly close to the senator really isn't much distortion this is also pretty awesome lens it doesn't distort a whole lot but use that the wide to tell a story and keep your subject pretty much close to the center and a white england's can work great and I have done so a lot of portrait with my wife and I love it actually for portraiture because you can see so much more has a different dramatic perspective but you do have be conscious of keeping the important body parts in the center you know you know that's what I'm talking about right you don't want certain things going walk in that can definitely happen if she's off to the edge so I just keep him away from the edge of course if you like it like that then it's totally fine see sean walder I was wondering on said if you're one one twenty eight the lowest possible power on the speed light here and this was earlier this afternoon why is there ever a need for bigger more powerful lights on outside sense there seems to be plenty of power available in higher settings with speed lights yeah a lot of times there are and this we're in a very low light situation right here which is why we could go down that far when we step outside which were going tomorrow it's gonna be a different story we're going to be a probably full power and maybe to speed lights to be able to balance the sun so that's when you used to or if I'm shooting say we're doing a whole fashion siri's here and she was gonna be moving and dancing and shaking your booty stuff and where I'm gonna be boom boom boom boom boom now one speed like I'd still put two on there so they could recycle instantly at one twenty eight power to speed light to be like I could shoot as fast as I want and keep up with her okay let's see um there's dee in the chat room who says I still don't fully understand the idea of auto s o uh should we also be no try changing eso or lock s o two hundred when mixing flash with ambien yes infact on most cameras than icons specifically when you attach a when you use flash if you attach a speed like too tough flash it disables otto so anyway uh if it's not disabled for example you've got it triggered from ah pc st terminal or some like that then it's a good idea for you to turn it off yourself and that's what I do I turn auto eyes so off whenever I'm gonna be using flash because I so get totally totally tripped up by a flash system it just doesn't understand what's going on and it's not made to work with flash but I otto I so is great when you're outside and just natural light and I use it all the time especially weddings that has saved my butt ton of times you know when you're running from inside the shooting inside a dark church and you're sixteen hundred eyes so and then the bride runs outside you're chasing her and you're outside get into the car you realise you shot the whole outside of thirty two hundred eyes oh or something because you've got change it so I love otto I so when I'm shooting natural light awesomeness but when I'm shooting with flash anytime I'm mixing flasher ambient light turn the auto isil off um question in the lying down shot um did they did we need to lower the position of the speed light the person noticed that we didn't we did it because the light was evenly illuminating the pretty much the whole panel and if you remember we did a check of the lighting pattern and was almost even and then I zoom the head out just a little bit more to make sure that I was covering the full panel and that way your your light sources is the face I don't have a panel here but your light source is no longer the speed light your light sources now the panel and once that panels evenly illuminated it really doesn't matter where in that area she is unless she's above it then it's gonna look kind of weird but as long as she's anywhere within it down to the ground it's going to be essentially the same okay I have a question which I cannot find now but quite a few people had asked how you deal with the screams outside like not flying away or in weather or things like that yeah assistance with strong arms yeah yeah clear it's nearly my wife is kind of tiny so she's blowing away a couple of times and fortunately retrieved her from the bushes and stuff like that but you definitely have to have someone holding onto it when you're on the wind or throw some your camera bag I've set up a little rig that has a little arm on the bottom of the screen that I put my camera bag on top to kind of wait it down there's a instead of a sandbag but generally just an assistant hanging onto it's important you don't have an assistant you need to bring some sandbags or something if you're working with yeah okay and that was from michael tolls photography from atlanta thanks michael good question um I guess sort of related lee um any um possible other explanation amy adams from earlier was wondering what did kevin do before he had assistance to hold all of his lights interns seriously I really I don't understand why you would want to work without an assistant unless you're just a real introvert you know and I am an introvert uh could say there's times when I don't want to talk to anybody which is not now but having assistant is like huge and even when I didn't have ah I don't have my wife claire to help me I would have friends I would have interns I have somebody who is getting interesting photography there's always somebody willing and wanting to help you and you just gotta put the word out there again comes back to asking if you don't ask you don't get anywhere right so put the word out I put a put a post on my facebook or put a post on craigslist or something and say hey uh photo assistant needed pay nothing but you're gonna learn a lot you know you'd be surprised you're gonna get people who was so come and help you out you've got to ask and I think it's just so important having assistant to allow you to focus and to um take a least half of the responsibility of moving in worrying about everything off of your brain and it's it's really critical to your success is to have someone else there to help you when you can that's great thank you um so let's go with one final question from selkie photo if affordable battery powered mon alight strobes like I think the one that we're giving away can out power and recycle faster than similarly priced speed lights than why invest in speed lights at all good question in fact um a speed light like an sb nine ten and this battery powered strobe actually when the speed I'd zoom has exact same power and I measure the with my light meter good use for your light meters to test and I've tested all my lights I have an alien bb eight hundred studio strobe light people familiar that's a popular studio strobe that's the same output as an sb nine hundred that's pretty surprising I surprise myself you know like when I fell out of bed that one morning and landed on my nose I was very surprised and I surprised when I measured and realize that the s b is the same power as a uh studio model light the advantage to these um one is the mega battery pack so if you're doing extended shooting and you're ready to shoot really fast they will recycle faster and last longer but you can always change your double a batteries in the speed lights um the other ways it would be better if there's certain attachments you wanted to use like this will take standard believe the bowens type reflector so I could attach this to beauty dishes too big soft boxes to all kinds of things with a standard studio connector so that would be that would be a good reason for it but you have to have the good speed lights you buy them the off brand speed lights most won't have the power they're going to bow to stop less than the latest night cannons like this has a modern light but it's a brief if modeling light like you touch a button and the model it stays on for like fifteen seconds I think to save the battery so it does give you that modeling which is also one nice thing you can fake a mall in light with the speed lights with their struggle scott pick modeling light kind of works the same way this is a constant light that goes on but uh it's not bright enough to really being effective judge of the actual light but it does give you a sense of the direction of the light like that