Lessons

Lesson Info

Going Wireless: Zoom and Triggers

Three images these you're older images but a show we have a t t l guide that we sail that has these images in it but it works really, really well, this is a real wedding we, um, chinese wedding so we actually have the tea ceremony. We were waiting for the actual ceremony and so we had some time they thought we were actually taking a real photograph, something which we were but I was experimenting, so I actually had my flash set to default because by default your zoom in your flashes twenty four millimeters we mentioned it a little bit earlier. It's an actual mechanical function of your flash that and you won't be able to see it on camera guys and I'm sorry, but here in the class you can that I literally can change right here. You can actually see that flash go in and out the flash to going forward and back and so it basically changes the with that the light pattern comes out and so what it is is kind of a built in snoot it's already a built in diffuser in a sense in your camera and if ...

you don't know what a snoot is, you guys here once listen to create alive suze basis something that titans down light it basically focuses the light into a mohr defined pattern so if I'm not getting the power I need I could only get plus three out of these flashes of high man who can only get one toe one out of these flashes so if I can't get that like I need I can snoot and so basically a twenty four you could barely see the light it wanted seventy you can see the light a lot tighter and one o five it looks like I actually put a layer mask on or in a spotlight on her very, very simple makes you come out here and we'll show a few examples of some of the problems that this gun calls and some of the examples I mean, some of the issues again guys, I'm not trying to get all nerdy here I'm not trying to make fancy photos I'm just trying to actually show howthe this works and this is one that I was talking about that had a problem so we're going to use the new six hundred because the six hundred and nine hundred siri's can actually go from what used to be twenty four to one or five can now go twenty four to two hundred so think about it again is a millimeter your camera twenty four is this wide and the two hundred really tying it down just like a two hundred millimeters so you're literally using a twenty four two, two hundred millimeter leon's with zoom light all right so I'm gonna zoom this in we'll start off at twenty you move over just a little bit because I wanna put this on the light behind you and you'll see it not very broad lit very lots of light going out everywhere nothing fantastic but it's very very broad so I'm gonna go ahead and tighten it down to seventy millimeters take the same shot you can start seeing it getting tighter now that's starting to kind of vignette the tops not so lip and now we're going to go toe one off one oh five start to get a little darker more darker and now we're gonna go all the way to two hundred and so now the light is really just center focused completely different almost wow look at that they get all fancy on me did I do that? Did I do that so it literally shows a wide pattern you can even tighten it down more now I want to be honest what you can do with this because I'm a redneck a great snoot is along that beer paul cuzzi drinking cozy little styrofoam things you can get the neoprene things cut off the bottom stick that on there and there's your there's your snoot and afterwards you can have a cold beer now that's not the funniest redneck thing you'll ever hear from a photographer that's on the p p a board of directors but it's extremely easy to do this, you don't have to get real creative now. The problem with this is sometimes and this is such a great flash you're not gonna have it. Some of the older flashes that when I want to take us and I'm gonna back it off when I want to take a wide angle shot. I mean, a tight shot, it's great! And this is nothing fancy. Just a nice shot straight on. No, no off camera lighting wanted nice shot that's great, but if I zoom in all the way now, the problem is and manisha, I'm cutting off the bottom of her with this tight light it's little just right on her. The advantage of that is how you can use that in your vantage, if I'm outside and full sun and I want to take a tight shot and I've already got my eye on camera or off camera flash, I mean that plus three power and I don't have enough like maybe I tighten up my band because it's not putting on any more light it's just condensing it into a tighter pattern, and so instead of like being all way down now, toby, here I've got a two hundred maybe it's here and I could just get a head shot, so it will actually give you in a sense. It's not more light but it's gonna give you more, more light into condensed area but if I was going to take a full body shot tighten up all the way is not gonna work because you're gonna lose everything on the lower part of her body. So that's how we did that shot with the bride in the bed we zoomed in and just held a light up focus it on her. The other problem is if I'm doing this with wireless lining take this off real quick if I do this with wires lighting twenty four millimeters, I can just kind of hold this light up, shooting it over here and it's gonna be fine at two hundred millimeters. Just this much turn of the light completely gone off of her. You won't see anything so the old cop in me goes, well, this is easy when I used to qualify with a weapon that had a laser sight, so I went to officemax and deep poem about a two dollar laser pen velcroed right on top of my flash put the laser being right where I wanted to target to go and took the shot take the laser beam off, take the shot sounds goofy, but a laser pen is only a couple bucks that sits right in your camera bag and it really comes in handy when you need it so it's a simple little trick yes, sir mike, we have a question actually from the chat rooms that applies to this same kind of thing basically, darcy was asking if you do a vertical portrait do you leave the flash on the light stand horizontal? Or can it be changed to vertical? And it seems like kind of when you're narrowing the beam like this, I may have a difference horizontal, vertical absolute when you're nearing the being that actually will make a big difference when I'm actually shooting a lot of ah wireless flash and I need to spread the light a little bit more I'll have it here if I need to spread it, I will turn the flash this way I need to and that's one thing I like about having some attachments where I can actually rotate this sideways and so I can actually put the flash as you can see, I use this is actually one that I really used to speed ahead, so I use it but yeah, actually that's a great question I try not to, but no sometimes and sometimes if it's really really bright, we're talking really harsh the closer you get to the equator, the harder partial delight is the heart of this technique is to do the farther north this guy here in seattle this is this technique is made for you guys, this is it's also, but I also can also put a flash even and then actually term one side. I saw the even the one that's normal accident, maybe the upper body and the one size always lacked spread and hit hit their feet if I have to sew it again. There's, there's pros and cons of this the negative isn't a small light source. You gotta get a little creative sometimes where you put the light and if you only have one line, you could only do so much. You can't do everything with one light, sometimes on a really harsh situations, but you can and we'll show you examples tomorrow. Actually, I'll do him. You can make decent lighting in horrible lighting situation, so I'm hoping tomorrow is going to be sunny because we're going to really have some fun up on the roof, having a question from frank from who? From frank. Okay, frank all right, here's to you, frank, and we get this question a lot in lighting classes. Does the distance affect the quality of the light? Of course, it's going to I mean, you always had that in the father, the farther the light it spreads, mohr it's goingto absolutely be a different, and you're gonna have different defusing panels, but again not to not people that sell defusing products because some are really, really good, but some of them I can cut you know I can go to the store and buy a half gallon of milk, have a great great glass of chocolate milk, pour the rest out and stick that on top of my flash and it does the exact same thing that jacqueline half gallon jug a lot of them aren't worth the money that you buy and sell you the only thing worse than photographers I've ever found in buying useless crap that comes down the down the pipe is either fishermen or golfers and I do all three so I'm really, really screwed but the quality of light it absolutely can't distance can and you just have to kind of play with it again find the life that you want there's no question direct flash is going to be a little more harsh than that beautiful soft box that we had earlier there's no question it's going to be because it's a small light source it's up close it's gonna happen but you can bounce it off walls that we talked about you can use diffusers, which will talk about tomorrow there's so many things you could do to soften the light to make quality if you want to okay, so now that we done the optical on how we did the greatest advantage of wireless transmission device is when it comes to this is really not the radio wave to me because I know this optical is very, very good and I can get fifty feet in the reality is for most portrait's fits feats all I need I don't need any more than the greatest advantage of using a radio transmission device is when I'm photographing I don't have toe she's here do this shoot shoot and then I move over here I got to turn the flash no it's gotta go this way turn here then I could shoot and for nikon you're like which sign is the batter always on this side? I want to do any of that that's the me the greatest advantage of having a radio transmission life because if you know how to use this optical it's great and one of the reasons why I like the radio popper system and we're gonna talk about it is that I can actually use their product and optical together at the same time. So if I'm building I don't have a lot of money and I'm building my product I'm building my equipment this product doesn't change anything that I've taught you today it works within the limitations of the cannon and icon flash system so I can literally by one radio popper and put it on a flash it's behind the corner and then I can still use this as my optical upfront we'll talk about that on certain things so there's three different levels of radio poppers the new nano's very inexpensive and I think they put out that there's a discount code out there but very inexpensive pure manual so for those son pax is vivid tars is off brands the chinese brands are imported these guys are so reliable the beauty of the radio popper is and there's other ones I ll apocalypse and have a lot of them but I like this better and the beauty of this is it came out twenty twenty five years later right technology changed a lot in twenty twenty five years. The biggest part was the radio frequency technology the radio frequency that these work off of is extremely clean there's not much interference with it and so I don't have a lot of problems and I get an extreme amount of range. I'll get hundreds and hundreds of yards out of this very simple and what I like about it the nano's is there's four channels it's the same four channels is the other two products and to mount this also have to do it's got a hot shoe and it just simply slides right on its mounted this goes on my camera and I can trigger this it's that easy it's all manual I have to go over and adjust the power yes, sir the part that goes on your camera allow for putting a flash on top of that I know you cannot you cannot have flashed on top of the camera with this this has also amounts you can put it on a light stand if you need to um so this just goes on here and so the other thing I like about this it's a very low profile I don't have any intend sticking up I don't have any big thing and it's very low and it allows me especially if I'm using like a black rapid strap one that hangs down on your side it doesn't hit I don't break anything to me that's a very functional aspect of photography I have little kids running around my studio this is very very easy so this is the first step the other advantage of this is fun family will be is I can connect to flashes using one nano receiver so I have to vivid tars and I want to put two together all's I need is a saint court and they have an extra little cube which is like a twenty dollar part he was plugged at an amount it and now I can actually fire both with one transmitter and so for a somewhat a photographer that's on a budget this is a great great product because they're inexpensive there like seventy dollars sixty dollars so they're very expensive and extremely loud the most reliable radio fission device in the world hands down and I've tested almost every single one of them out there because of the technology they have behind the radio the radio frequency itself that's the whole key behind anything that uses radio frequency is the clean frequency they work off so very simple, very easy to use, plug and play four channels the first four channels of the other two products, which has sixteen channels, so when I want to shoot manual, which I do, I do a lot of commercial work where I'm doing well maybe inside house is where I want to have little flashes and little corners I'm all manual amount the's not a little stick him all in the corners control each power I want and I get back and take a shot and I'll do hdr underexposed overexposed putting together afterwards but this is what I use thes for tremendously if I didn't have my t t l flashes and I have my manual flashes over here, this is exactly how trigger and because it has the first four channels which we're going to get into in a minute I could actually put tl on one and use this in manual in the back so I can actually excuse me I have tl upfront my main lights I don't want to meet her it and then I am a backlash and over their meter stuff I have this is manual so I'm blending teal and manual together and we're going to get into that in a minute that's what I love about this product is extremely versatile and allows me to do any type of lighting pattern in any setting I want ok any questions on the nanna trying to pimp radio popper I am but I'm I'm not trying to I am doing it but it is what we use it is the foundation of our business this is my old junior is beat beat beat it's all it's one of the very first one has come out and it still works like crazy going through thousands and thousands of flashes with this they weren't run off a one to three batteries the same is as the nano's I buy the batteries online like the other ones and I get him under a dollar pop so you can get a pretty cheap and then this is the receiver um let me get that strobe out here question no okay perfect yeah so you were saying that you were shooting with the nano but you were also shooting on t t l we're gonna get there okay haven't got there yet but I'm just saying sorry is capable no it's good means you listen you're not sleeping I'm happy because if the nano is has the adaptor on top of the camera how are you triggering your tl just went oh well just wait yep. And you don't necessarily use the nano for the triggering device. Just remember that you could just use the nano is a receiver. So I'm gonna turn this on and it needs to be plugged in. That's. Um, that's a minor detail. Jeez, you're so picky. Sorry to break in tv. So this is the juniors and they work off a simple pin system. That's really, really bright. So there's two ways of doing it, and I'm gonna turn it this way. Turn that off right now. So this is will trigger any strobe. Any speed, like just like you normally hand just I mean, just like just like your old school pocket wizards it's just manual triggering it triggers everything you need. Just like this. However, what I love about this with the alien bees is it also has a secondary hookup. This little phone cord that comes with and I can plug him in the back here. And when I turn this light on groups, hang on. Let me turn this off so you'll see it. So now when I turn this on and the light comes on when I turn this on it's going to go down, up and then flash and what it's doing, we show you what it just did this controls it now it's saying I know the low end of this power the stroke I know the top into the power of the strobe and I can fire the strobe and so now I can adjust the power of this light all right here in my fingertips through the three little knobs on the radio popper junior transmitter main feel hair so I can actually have three of these and control all three if I want to all wires no no t t ell all manual but I can also put a little cube which I don't have which I showed you earlier on any stroke, any speed like any of the speed lights and put him out there and control that power as well with that little knob so now I'm using a nice big strobe outfront makes my life easier and put a soft box on a beauty dish whatever and I could put my speed lights in the back and control my main in my hair and my two rim lights whatever else all manual but just controlling take shot you look just for light meter it see what it is power up down and you get the shot extremely easy extremely easy makes sense they have a pin system which can be a little confusing basically kind of put this up the vanna white it they have a pin system the first four pins or what controls the channels all the way down on first four is channel one all the way up this channel sixteen any where in between is one of the other numbers and they have a little cheat sheet so you'll know it here's the main thing? Just make sure whatever the first four pins on this are are the exact same thing is the first four pins on this and they're going to fire. I don't care if it's channel one or channel seven or channel nine if you're the only one out there, it doesn't matter now if you have multiple stations like in my school volume business, where I'm photographing high schools and I have six stations, I got to know what he's channel is. But even then there's along this channel one and channel three don't have the same pattern they're going to fire it's fine, so don't get wrapped up into that so wanted kind explain that is a lot of people get wrapped up in it, then you have pin five and six and that's the group's on? Yep in five and six, which are the groups the a, b and c the three knobs that I have in the transmitter so I literally khun do the three different groups is technically four groups group one when this goes on my cameras, the knob closest to me so if I want this to be on group one I would actually put pin five and pin six all the way down if I want the other light have another light out there that I wanted group too so if that's my middle knob here I'd put that pin five up pin six down now my middle novel control that power and then my other one over here group three pin five down pin six up and that will control that group and then if you put five and six up you can't control any power but it will fire when you actually take the image when you actually fired so you actually technically of four groups three controllable one two and three and in that fourth we do this all the time when susie goes out because she has packed meal mike to carry her lights she'll use it daily be upfront and while used to to speed lights in the back and we're controlling all of them just right here so all I have to do is is like mule fulton is put the light where it needs to be to fall onto the subject as we talked about earlier with those light patterns I make sure that light is exactly where it needs to be suzy not to worry about that because I got it under under control she takes the shot looks a just and then off we go on the set the session you can do that. Obviously, if you're by yourself, it just packed meal makes a lot of easier. So that's the ready popper junior's, what comes with it? If you're going to use an alien bee and I really like using the alien bees because they're inexpensive when I'm going outside. This guy right here is the only b eight hundred it khun things like two hundred eighty dollars, they actually have canadian distributing to and some overseas and australia there. I mean, in there, great customer service what the actual optical slave is because if I pull this out when I fired my flash now the optical slave is working and it will actually fire that strobe as well, because this is the optimum slaves. So what radia papa comes with is this little dummy plug, and so you just plug that into the sink port when you're using this and it kills your optical slave. So yeah, now, when you're using the regular state court that's just a dummy fire, fire, fire, you don't worry about it, but when you use this, you have to plug that in to kill the optical slave. And if you have, like, a little bag upon many which they have a little battery pack, which is great it's only two and a half pounds and it last like five hundred of these flashes outside. You don't want it to go off randomly you kind of want to save your juice so this thing really khun khun sake because you have a flash on your camera or your doing just a little bit of natural with a little bit of just a little kiss alight with on camera flash and this picks it up, it'll start firing and you don't know in your batteries go dead in the middle of nowhere so that is the juniors I really love it I love the portability I love how you can mix and match and it's kind of a hybrid so you have the nano's is the bottom the entry level pure manual, just manual away the first four channels you can fire but they need about now I don't have any control expects I can't control it, but I still on the same channel so the nano's will fire the juniors as well. And this is why I like the radio popper family because all their products work together and there's a definite, precise organization to their products. So if I don't have that, I don't have the prospects but I'm in the studio a meter and everything you don't need to control aspects or if I want to use this outside hardwired I could just grab a nano and just distance the subject like we talked about to and then last but not least is the big boys the px system we're gonna use this and again in a second but I'm gonna put it right here but I turned the light off okay the p x system is the top of the line of their products it's the very first rate of transmission device they had full tl capabilities and kind of give you a little story on this where how I got involved radio popper years ago there's a guy named kevin king whose inventor radio popper I love the man to death but um he's so smart he has no common sense sometimes love you kevin um but we were we were all tl freaks and there was only this is like right when the internet forums photography forms first startup before facebook was out or anything else and we found this form there was like four five of us that are on it the on ly did teo well there was no creative live back then for mike fulton or whoever else a talk t l so when we had problems we were kinda each other support group we didn't really know where to go but I was like man, I had this problem the day I don't know how to solve all the problems that I've gotten teaching this class I had the exact same problems and so we would help each other out. Well, the form kind of went away. Facebook got up or whatever else and everything disappeared kind of like they do and I lost track of kevin fast forward a few years for five years and I hear this guy named kevin king is coming out with this invention called radio popper is supposed to control tl lighting that can control the power of flash I cannot be the same kevin king that was in that form because it's such a common name for the whole scale of things it's a common name it can't be the same guy I didn't have his phone number and I went, wait a minute. I have an old phone that had his number in it. Let me see if I can find a charger for it. Charge it up. Find his number. Hope it's the same guy calling because this is like life changing. This is like the holy grail for flash photography if you like tl because up to this point there was it was all optical and there's all the problems with it. If I the limitations of hind behind doors and everything else, I thought it was great finally got ahold of him but had had a workshop and he lives in phoenix, phoenix, arizona the time and had a workshop in san diego and I said you'd have a workshop in san diego, I would love for you to come out and see it because it was the same guy he goes, man, I've been trying to find you. This is awesome and he goes, but I don't have any really money to get get the phoenix I mean, to get to san diego because he was a struggling wedding photographer, like so many other photographers, I mean, and he I rent a car, we came to phoenix and we're sitting there, and I remember the workshop the night before the workshop, I'm sitting at denny's and we're eating, and it reminded me of albert einstein riding him sequel square on a napkin, he grabbed an ak and he was telling me all the stuff that's behind radio popper, and I got I got a lot of education, and it was so far over my head, I was like, dude, I don't understand what the heck you're talking about. Well, the next day he comes in the first radio, papa, I was on the board about this big, and he lays it down and there's a little wire that comes out because giving your flash and I'm like, no, I'm not giving you my flash, you're gonna blow the thing up. Just shut up and give me your flag so it gave him a flash and plugged it in and he turned the power up on the flash went up and he turned the power down the flashlight down annoyed I'm sold I will care that big square piece of wood around because I'm so happy this is working out for you so then the first product came out and the second one came out and so the way this works is such a beautiful beautiful thing is here's the transmitter there's no wires there's no anything it just sticks or I don't help you flash and the way it works is right here in this little little nipple right up front is a metal dialled that picks up a magnetic pulse basic science one on one when you're in high school lots of times when you had a little now and had a piece of a piece of copper tubing going around and you cranked it up and it lit up the light bulb because it may be every time this flash fires a little magnetic pulse pop right after it so many people this company's been chasing the light the pattern trying to figure out the light pattern kevin written a machine set in his garage det d analyzed this pattern a cannon figured out the magnetic poles made a dial to pick up the pulse of the magnetic not the light so as that morse code goes off that we talked about it picks up the magnetic pulse after each one that's why you only have to have this stuck on top your flash close enough to pick the magnetic pulse up turns it into a radio wave sends it over upto like twenty five hundred feet and on the other end picks it up and on lee on the other end turns it into infrared light in the exact same pulse pattern that the camera flash thinks is needs to be there so to your cannon and icon flashes it thinks its line of sight there has no clue that there's a radio transmission device involved in this and that's the beauty that's what sold me on this product over the other ones because the other products out there changed the whole system it's a hot shoe system and it changes it which is great but if that fails I have to know the system that I've been teaching in the flat you know this flash and if this fails or if I forget it it's the a normal nothing changes and to me that was the greatest advantage of this so this just goes right on top this is a foot this is the cannon it actually has its very hard to see you probably won't be able to say it, but here it has all the models of the flashes and if I'm using the five anyone, I'd put it in that right slot. Mount the flash and it puts it right where it needs to be. And then everything that I've taught you about. Teo manual control, the power, everything else work flawless. But now I have radio transmission. And the beauty of this is if I have this on top of my camera and this is my wireless and optical and I have another one hidden behind you with a radio popper on it. This will send the signal to that one back there. This will send a signal to that one right there. And so I don't have to buy a radio popper for every single flash. Or as we talked about, I can mount the nano to my flash. Put that back there manually controlling the power. And with this, this one will be t t l so a t t l right up front mainly control the power in the back, or I can actually trigger. This is manual up front. I can put this t t l in the back. I can do whatever I want. I can trigger strobes. I control your manual flashes, I can trigger tt l flashes that control everything from my camera with a flash on top of my camera. And that's the beauty of it I don't have to go anywhere and I'm in control of every single light and every type of light they make that's why I like the system is the most versatile one out there so I want to kind of show you how this works so you can turn this on and I'm gonna be on channel one and we don't I'm not gonna need a model I just want to show you and we have this and we're gonna be on channel one and I have this right here pointing towards my master flash pointed toward job when I have this being nice because I like you on your came to visit me and I'm gonna point it up in the air so won't blind you and I'm gonna have this just turned on actually know what let's turn it off first so I'm gonna have this in master mode channel one this and slave mode channel one I know it's in slave mode it's blinking at me same thing with nikon this will be turned on channel one is I hit it take the shot that will go off and this one did because I don't have this on turn this on and now I'm controlling tt l I'm controlling manual and I control everything right here with the light to go up here on this I just it back here on my flash just like you normally would now that's really going off a plus three if I want to control this there's an actual setting in here and I'm actually going to revisit it to digital setting look the light going up actually you know what let's changes the group too good now I can't see because I blind myself so group to what would that be pin five up and pin six down and actually did group three so we're going to group three so I go to group three is a g three here and I'll simply raise the power up and I can raise or lower the power of that flash right here from my radio popper and so now controlling everything power and everything any channels any power anything I want from here here when you could do that that we started off very basic today for ending very advanced and tomorrow we're gonna talk about all this and we're going to show you how it works in detail with this right here if you can do this guys if you can do this out there and creative live will land you can do anything you want anything anything at all with light and that is exciting to me because I'm a light nerd I'm a nerd to begin with but I'm in light nerd a bond nerds and this excites me because when you can start understanding this and it's going to take a while for it to absorb and as you say, when I when I was going to tell you I'm doing tian manu and everybody's eyes are kind of roll in the back of their hand there wondering how in the world I'm doing that and I just showed you how to do it. This opens up a whole another ballgame of creativity is an artist this is this this is the nerdy part of it this is the science, the geeky part but now when she learned it and the squirrel starts slowing down on their head is you ever watch nfl football talk about quarterbacks? Because, well, the game hadn't slowed down for him yet? Well, the game hadn't slowed down for you guys yet it's still really, really fast, but when that game starts to slow down and you start understanding all that I just showed you your world changes for the better and the light that you create completely completely will separate you from anyone else in your community. Anyone else in your area from your kids, you just want to shoot two very sellable, profitable images that excites me when I know I can help you make more money or I know I can help you be happier in life just by using your hobby that's why I teach that's why I'm here that's why I'm standing on my feet for eight hour state that is what I love