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Lesson Info

Color It

We have a little bit more to talk about we have to control your speed light this right here where's the bop it that have the way we've been playing with this thing all day I don't know you guys have kids it was just a little thing that you uh it tells me what to do oh I didn't even do it I lost in the first thing way it tells you to pull it twisted it's not doing it now how horrible is that when it's live it is a word yeah anyway it tells you to pull it and twist it and turn it who knows now it's just annoying but normally every other time that we've ever had that it says pull it twist it turn it and that's why I wanted to show you that because we have this right here now celeste is gonna go I will make it work why doesn't it work? We have these flashes right here and it could be a nikon it can be a can and it can be a sony it could be olympus it could be a fuji it could be listen to the brand one of those brands could be anything on dh they do all kinds of stuff that we need to talk a...

bout and so what I wanted to do is finish the day out by talking about this kind of stuff this color it defuse it twisted pull it click it click it again zoom it in the last one remote control it yeah see that should be the bop it if it worked he would understand how cool that is we waited for months to use them anyway way uh let's start by talking about some things that you can do to your flash did you get it to work now it's a total let down but let's do it anyway all right here goes celestica recorded you get the idea that the bop it so I used to play with that thing all the time and I started using a flash I thought if the same was the bop it pull it twisted turn it bullet right or your left and we'll see you can do that the longest I think I'll be the champion but of the weekend uh start here with color it and we're going to color it using all kinds of things now some flashes not all flashes on speed lights come with these little general thing is he's a little color film anything he's do you guys have any of those in your camera bag? You probably lost them all right? First thing you do is you lose them. One of the things I really like with newer flashes both canon and nikon is they're moving from those little gels that you can lose to something that's now a plastic thing that looks like this it's this little guy right here that camera and what it does is it sticks right on the front of the lens just like that and what it does and you might have a gel little flimsy thing that goes on the front of your camera um and usually they come inside of a holder and if you look on the little flimsy gel kind of thing there is probably a little little tabby thing that goes on that little joe and on the bottom of your flash there's actually a sensor and so when you put that little holder that little clear thing that probably looks like this and you put that little gel inside of that when you snap that on your flash what it's doing is it's telling the flash that the color temperature of the flash is changing so let me explain that back here way have a lamp this lamp is a thirty two hundred kelvin thirty two hundred uh not calvin lamp so it's normally an incandescent light this really orange are flash is balanced for daylight and so when we take a picture with her flash and we have a subject like a sarah wait take a picture she's gonna look whiter and our background is gonna look orange so the subject will look proper color the background is gonna look all orangey and nasty and so what we need to do is we need to take our flash and tell it hey, I want your color to match the same color that's coming from this lamp we know this is orange it's very amber so you can take one of these guys stick it on the flash and now what happens? And this is why I think you should stick candidate can tonight got a nikon instead the flash knows that this is on there because there's a little sensor on the bottom so as soon as you put that on there it knows that it is now a thirty, two hundred calvin flash it will tell the camera that one it's another white melons and now when you take a picture, this color is going to be the same as this color and everything will look the same. So tonight when we're shooting outside, we have color changing, we're going to do some of that stuff tomorrow we've got a bunch of lights, the office tomorrow or sunday we have a bunch of lights were gonna be draping on here. This is one of those things if you want to have the appropriate amount of light um that's flattering that and we captured the ambient light to the best of our ability, we want to match the ambient lights color temperature with their flash so normally you don't need that you're shooting outside where you're shooting, where this is the only light source when you start mixing and matching, you need to make sure that the flash and the ambient light match so these little things were great now we have some other things I think this green green's really popular and this is for some fluorescent lights they don't have any green in them so you can add this and so it makes the color balance out if you're shooting in a heavily fluorescent thing, so since most of you have lost your color filters, they're gone right you can get other ones and one of the ones I really like this this right here this is made by rogue and we're going to actually we're giving these away we're giving I don't know how many, but we're giving some of these wait tomorrow all right? I think tomorrow or sunday we're giving some of these away and inside here this is sort of a really nice system there are color filter corrections so in other words, if you are shooting in an environment where it's got a lot of tungsten lights, you need to add some amber onto the front of this so I can just pull this out here and you can look there's blue that makes it better in the sunlight there's this amber so I can pull that out and it tells me right on there it says this will change sixty, five hundred kelvin two thirty, two hundred calvin it tells me on there, and it also tells me, and it also has little symbol little light bulb lovers. If you're shooting with incandescent lights, stick this on your flash so, you know, in the future, when people find these, they'll go oh, that's the symbol for stick this in your flash for shooting incandescent lights and then there's a little rubber band thinking in here and then what you can do on any flash, regardless of brand you just stick this on the front of your flash like this, and then you stick the remand on there like this you're drunk, you that and now you have a gel on the front flush. It looks just great and there are don't know how many jails in here. Lots blues, greens, reds, yellows, color correction filters, diffusion filters, all kinds of stuff in here, it's really, really cool. Then you just take that out. You put it back in and take the rubber band off. Stick this in your camera bag that works great so you can use the stuff that comes with your camera. You could get one of these road kits if you need, but that's what those do they say we need to get our flash color to match whatever the ambient light color is on as we start shooting tomorrow on the next day we'll really see at times where there's this big difference between the subject really white in the background all orangey nasty so you can fix that we're just adding that on there the cool thing is if you use the one that comes with your uh your flash specifically with nikon there's a little sensor underneath here when you stick that on there it tells the flash which tells the camera hello thirty two hundred kelvin and so then the camera's white balance is set so everything is balance and looks good and you don't have to die eleven using a great card if somebody asked earlier so it automatically does that so that's another reason why he's due a lot more than meets the eye there's a sensor right there that tells it what color filter you're using pretty cool some flashes don't do that today there are some flashes that don't have that on there for example this's a cannon five eighty x two you can buy filters for that different panels no sensor on they're not on their right so it doesn't know that one of the things though that does happen with this flash the cannon flash and the nikon flash and many other flashes as well um color temperature and a flash can very depending on the amount of energy in the flash itself so what happens is that the flash has a thing inside called a capacitor and stores of energy when you tell the flash to fire it throws that energy out and then it recharges and it's ready to go again if you listen to your flash when it's at full power you can hear it do this little noise it goes he he he stick it to your ear and hear some flashes don't do that the best ones don't a lot of them do most of them do that what's happening? Is the flashes going uh already charged up ready to flyer losing energy but in charge of long depending on where you fire your flash if it's at the low point of that or at the high point of that the flash output changes slightly and the color temperature changes slightly and so that's why flash to flash to flash flash? You can have exposures in color that very what you don't get if you're using my studio strobes solution to that add an external battery back they really matter because it keeps your energy topped off. It really helps ok, so that's the color it's tough questions on the color of any questions on color it before we go as you're doing that I'm gonna get to the next one that diffuse it, defuse it these things you have seen these things ask a color question for a question bob in the u k wants to know what is the best way to gauge what amount of gel to use one half one quarter one eight how much gel to use well there's two different things one is t make sure that you have jail that corrects the color on based on what that is it will absorb a certain amount of light so putting a gel on your flash and I just realized I'm answering a different question than he asked but let me finish this so depending on your uh your gel it will absorb a different amount of light and so on the road kids it will actually say on here it will say today we'll stay on here on this and there's no way you guys going to read this but I'll say it says stop loss equals one so when I put this on my flash it takes the power down by a full stop so half power so it really absorbs a lot of light so that's originally when I thought he was asking is how do you know how much the answer that is you want these two absorb his little light as possible um the question I think he really is asking is there are jails in here and they're jealous that you can buy it lots of camera stores and things that will say like these different gels one here's lighter and this one is called a quarter cto one quarter cto you have one half cto full cto I think that's what he's asking which one of those who use c t o stands for color temperature orange or ctb itt's adding some more so how do you know how much to put on their um I do it just by uh by visually looking at the picture you know is my subjects really orange and my backgrounds not so orange too much gel take it off if my background is really, um is blue and you know, if I just look to see if there's a balance and I add or subtract the best way to do it if you have the cash which I don't, you get a color meter and you can meet her those two sources of light and see exactly which one to do it's a con it's got the c five hundred that we've used but that's just very one thousand dollars that meter so sort of unless you're architectural photographer um just do it visually yes. What point should you replace the job? Because it's gel on you're exposing heat to it it's gonna work overtime yes, or just figure so and that's why I love these so these are the these solid ones like this come with the new sb nine ten they come with the new um there's another nikon sb seven hundred, I think, yeah, sb seven hundred has these it's got the filter and the censor all built in and the new cannon six hundred e think e x also has this style so candid and iconic moved their nikon really invented this a long time ago, and I think canon it took him way too long to catch up, but they have, um, those I think are the best because they're not going toe degrade rapidly. As far as the other guys with rogue ones and the little flimsy guys that come in, I'm not sure it really depends on a couple of things it's sort of like when you change the oil in your car. Well, three thousand miles, but how long does it take to get there? Depends on how much you drive, same thing of filters, you have to change those when they start to degrade, and I don't know at what point these rogues started, the greater the built in ones, but you'll start seeing that is not doing its job, but usually they last a few years. Unless you're shooting the president every day, maybe then maybe you'll replace those. So, um, I don't have a good answer for that, but I'd say probably every two years, at least, I would replace those yeah, if there any photo journalists out there that do this heavy duty, they are going to have the answer to backed photojournalists, man, they're the real deal, so I say, all right, another question on color. Oh, we have a question from dale from england who asked, is it worth using a gel when you're only using one speed light? Because shooting and raw, you can adjust white balance manually? I always stop shells were best when you wanted to mix colors ok, great question misconception, though if I'm shooting with the flash remember we have how many exposures? Two, two different sources of light, and so if I have a person here eliminated by the flash, they're going to be one color temperature and the ambient light is going to be a different color temperature, and if I don't balance those, the only way to get them balanced in raw is to go into photo shop or light room and use a local adjustment brush and adam mask to this one and change the color temperature to mask to match that or you can just go click, shoot it's all done, and then in raw you can change the color temperature to raise the color temperature everything up or down, and so yeah, it doesn't matter if you're shooting with one flasher are bunch you want to make sure that the color temperature matches as much as possible between, unless you want to creatively change that, a lot of people do. They wanna have things different way. Do that all the time in the studio. So, for example, one of the things we do is we try to have color temperatures of lights much, much warmer than the ones that are here. So we get this really blue background, and so we do that.