Lessons

Lesson Info

Roberto Valenzuela: Multiple Speedlights

is going to be a very creative segment on very fun but off course we have to start with understanding a little bit off off the background of the theory behind it and then we're going to get right to it um we're going to go through the thought process of image making on dh what creates a really exciting image on it doesn't matter if it comes out or not because we're here just to learn whatever comes out of the photograph it's only for your benefit and for your benefit so we're gonna work together just to kind of create cool photos and realized that the flash on top of your camera speed like it's actually not that scary despite all the incredible amount of information that's been given today once you understand you break it down and you watch the course over and over you start to see how things start to come together and the dots become connected especially from the science part tow the creative part you can start connecting the dots unfortunately if you don't understand the science behi...

nd it you're just going to keep guessing the rest of your life so I don't want that for you I want you guys to have control we have three models on we're going to photograph them all three we're going to play we're gonna have a great time we're going create problems and fix them if we have too much contrast we're going to reduce the contrast through the ways we know how if we have too much light we're going to reduce the light if we don't have enough light on somebody but we have too much light in the others were going to fix on that as well we're going to change the color and the mood of the whole room using just speed light's gonna be so much fun so stay tuned for this one um I want to turn your attention to my keynote please we can show that on the screen can we show them on that screen thank you very much very quickly when you are shooting in manual flash you have to think about to exposure there's the first exposure is the ambience that you wanna how you wanted you wanted you wanted dark okay you can control that when you are in manual flash we repeat this only works in manual flash you can control the ambience brightness and darkness through the shutter speed okay if once you have the background I mean the background dialed in or whatever is being led by ongoing light which is like what what this is once you have it dialed in your brain now switches gears so the light that's gonna be hitting your subject using speed lights okay so two exposure's going on in your brain first worry about the ambient light get that dialled in then worry about the light coming from your speed lights eliminating your subjects for example if you are outdoors on do you want to balance the light you probably want to bring the exposure value all here ambien or your surroundings to just maybe half a stop lower so just have a stop darker okay if you bring it down three stops darker and then you illuminate your subject with flash there's gonna be too much of a discrepancy between the lighting heating your subject on the lighting in the environment which is a telltale sign that you use flash which is horrible so balance them out you know that the ambient light can be exposed to about zero exposure or a normal value and then bring it down half a notch just half a stop down so suddenly hope a darker okay you're not going to lose any information we've have a stopped darker then you grab your speed light and you've got to tone that down are you gonna do whatever it takes to make sure that the light on your up subject sort of matches the light on your ambience and third you're going to remember that you need to be able to read the color of light if you do not go through this mental step they will be telltale science if you're shooting in john set time or a time like past six o'clock where the sun is starting to go down remember that the electromagnetic radiation going around the photons is going to be a lot more orange and if that's the case you need to grab your speed lights which are daylight balanced fifty two hundred fifty two k to two hundred k on you need to put half a city or fielder or a full city all filter um you know what the cto filters are so when you do that not only are you now exposing the improperly but you're also balancing the flash exposure properly and your subject and then on top of that you're going to the next level by matching the color off the ambient light on match it with the color of your flashlight I know you have a photo that doesn't look like you used any flash at all for example this portrait here that we have if you think if you take a look at this picture which I took in new york city you cannot tell that there was a flash being used in this photograph it's beautifully done because of the steps that I just shared with you when I showed up to show photographs this I said okay we have trees we have this arch okay I want my aperture to be pretty shallow so the truth can go out of focus and I could bring attention to my to my subjects once I got that tile down I tone down the explosion for the ambiance by about half a stop down just a little bit darker you see that once I got that and I liked it and I got that dialled in switch gears and then I put my flash in the back off the bright pointed toward your veil on manual flash so I can control the exposure had I not done that the flash was going to hit them see the black tuxedo legs see the black because he was on the floor that flash would have I would have read the light would have read part his black pants would have read the scene which had a lot of dark inimical she was it was very close to his legs and it would have given me three times more power giving me a total telltale sign that I use flash so tt l was not the answer for these pictures were quickly switched it to manual I put it on the floor pointed towards the the veil because the veil was going to be illuminated by the flash I wanted a veil to stand out I changed my eyes soto a pretty high I s o because the flash was on the ground at least three four feet from the veil which means I need to make my sensor senses sensitive enough to the light that the light will not only hit the veil but it will kind of wrap around very gently around a couple had I shot is that I also one hundred that veil would have been illuminated beautifully and then the rest have been pretty dark people ask about the supper asses that's pretty much that's one of the thought processes that goes on with pictures like this um we're going to create this kind of photos here with hands atlanta and katie were gonna go all three and we're not going to get scared about it because we're just going to work with it together we always have different skills in this room and we have different skills on people watching okay um the flash sweet spot this is more for people watching that are interested in in creative lighting using your spiel lights on location the flash has a sweet spot the sweet spot the flash works at its best when the sweet when you are at that sweet spot off settings if you shoot at aperture you want a life and you want your savages to be separated from the background so you're shooting at eight your background and your subject going to be the same a lot of it is gonna be in focus that's not that attractive and then your flashes to work really hard to get all that light into that little tiny hole ate through your shutter just a very small amount and when you do that it slower is that recite so is a recycled time creates problems what you probably want is to lower your aperture as much as possible you know that you want to lower your aperture so low that you're at the maximum shutter speed your flash can handle which is what two hundred for cannon to fifty four nightgown at two hundred shutter speed your flashes in heaven because of two hundred your aperture is at its widest is that two point eight or even lower okay which means that that light can just hit on all that beautiful I will just blend into your sensor and it'll just go right into your sensor to point at the hole is like this big on two point eight okay and you're a two hundred shutter speed you get the best quality of light on your flashes using that flash sweet spot once you put your flash on high speed sink which is what the next topic you basically grabbed your a knife and you stabbed your flash to pieces and then you tell you then you tell the flash to continue working for you and he will but he's bleeding like it's like life shows guarding out of a flash so it's basically not meant for that it's like telling you guys to go lived six hundred pound ways like olympians you just not meant for that if you do it you'll break your back you can probably do it you'll break your back okay when you push that high speed sync button you better have more than one speed like ready to go because it's bleeding and all that blood is just spilling out of the light so you need more flashes to compensate for that you lose a large percentage of your light power when you shoot it on high speed think let me explain to you why understanding high speed think is an interesting concept let's take a look at this okay if you look at that chart real quick if you look at that chart for me take a look at what's happening the flash is closed on the left because there is no way let's pretend we are at one for thousands off a shutter speed let's pretend at four thousand no way the flash is going to be is going to work okay flash is not gonna work it's gonna give you a black a black line around it okay then you push the high speed sing button and your flashes cool I'll do it but I'm gonna not be able to give them like you think you can again when that shutter opens like on the second square if you can see the second square there that white rectangle at the top resembles the flash going off in that part of the window that's open and that the first current left open on the sensor so the first curtain comes down and it reveals a little percentage off the sensor to see what I'm saying at the top and when that little percentage of that sensors revealed your flashes I got to go now so the flash fires a burst of light right there but that burst of light is blocked by ninety percent of the of the curtain you see that ninety percent of the current is blocking that light so that flashes went at it I'm all its might and hopes the current ninety percent of the current so close so only ten percent got in okay then the second curtain starts to close like on the middle square I know you have the sensors exposed in the middle by a tiny little percentage ten percent of the of that is being exposed because the second current cannot wait so the first one is all the way down before he starts closing it has to start closing otherwise I won for thousands of a shutter speed it will just not be possible that's what mechanical cameras like the old like us and the nightclubs and all that their maximum shutter speed that they could possibly d'oh it's five hundred or thousand shutter speed because mechanically cannot they cannot close this is electronic so it's easier so we can go to eight thousand mechanically was too hard for the show for the curtains too close okay so in the middle that ten percent in the middle of the centres exposed the flash goes party whom flash and then oops again only ten percent of that light went through now you're killing your battery right because your flashes thinking it's it's all its glory and its not it's always glory but only ten percent went through and it's going so fast that the battery just gets drink then you get to the third curtain and now the second curtain is almost all the way close to and only the very bottom of that centres exposed now on again when that little parties exposed to send the flash goes boom again which means that now after that that shirt that shirt shutter closest and the exposure is now over so instead of having one burst of light in the middle without exposing the whole sensor now you have shutter opens exposes that center a little bit and then boom one flash then he moves down form another flash then he moves down pullman of the flash then he moves down form another flash and then the shutters almost close boom another flash and then the shutter closest okay what does that remind you ofthe having that much light going through your shutter what does that remind you off what light behavior does that remind you off you know how strobes we behave strobes behave the first curtain goes down and in just one burst of light illuminates the whole center and then it's over some crazy speed but when the light seems to keep illuminating that sensor many multiple times it reminds you off the way natural light hits sensor natural light hits the sensor the entire time which is hitting the sensor high speed think resembles natural light because when the senses being exposed little by little the flashes keeps going like he was some light does that make sense now what does that mean it means that that whole concept off your shutter speed doesn't affect your flash is out the window on high speed think because of your shutter aperture and I s so affect your ambulance on high speed thing behaves like ambient light now your shutter your opportunity so is also going to affect your flash was that somewhat clear please like no okay when you have when you're outside you think a picture you choose your at your settings based on your aperture shutter speed and s o tow be able to get an exposure the faster your shoulders be the darker the smaller the aperture the darker less light gets in that light is continuously just keeps on hitting that sensor high speed thing behaves the same way because even though it's exposing the flash little by exposing the sensor little by little it's still exposing it repetitive li like natural light wood so now you're shutter speed dos effect your flash on high speed sync if you grab your your shutter and you're on high speed thing and you turn a upto a faster shutter speed your flashes you're the flash that comes out it's going to be dimmer and dimmer because he behaves just like natural light at that point so you can go above two hundred no yes that's why is our is our max with high speed eight thousand you can go all the frickin halfway to eight thousand shutter speed but it's very important that people make the differentiation in there at home when they're using flash you know I see a lot of people pushing that high speed sync button and they just keep shooting like nothing and then they wonder why the raccoons are still there they wonder why things which is not happening properly they change their shutter speed and all of a sudden the exposure's old dark now they're like do what I have my flashing what's my computer's broken my flash is broken and I'm like no just you just don't know squat you know like you didn't read the science of how this light works if the censor's getting continuously hit by light then you have a natural eye situation whether the lights coming from the sun or from the speed light but if the center is only being hit by one blast of light at incredibly fast speed then you have a strobe situation which is a totally different beast then your aperture controls the output on the shutter speed controls the ambulance so below two hundred shutter speed you can you can control to exposures the ambience on dh whatever's illuminating with flash to think separately but whenever you go to high speed think everything behaves like natural light okay but then you can go all the way up to eight thousand shutter speed but your flesh is weak only ten percent of that light went through so you need to gain up on more lights three or four flashes at the same time but we can't get that that this thing here got it this is the I d c triple threat I don't know if you guys know what this is you can put three flashes here one here one here one here and in this basically attached to your umbrella and then you have three flashes going off these are great little tools when you have high speed sing situations you have now three flashes working together to create a good exposure so now each flashes toe work less more like it's true it's beautiful on on the speed light so can't you aren't you limited to about like twenty flashes at at full power before it'll start burning out what is high speed sync due to the unit excellent question yes if you are busting out the flash of full output that speed you're goingto probably burn out its own overheat your flash and they were shut off but high speed think the burst of light are very weak they're low frequency bursts because it just it's not going to get through so it just gives you a little touch lucas off like so it actually it doesn't yeah I mean it's still burnt out if you keep doing it all day but there isn't what you put three or four more here's because when you have high pitched high speed thing I recommend two things a your flashes better be a lot closer to your subject because the light output is so weak or be put multiple flash and getting them up together so you can grab your flash and just keep keep begging them in that in that things didn't go like this one flash goes here another flash goes here another flash goes here they're all in there one here one here they're all in high speed sync boom all work together and you can expose properly with only one you better be very close to your subject okay