Lessons

Lesson Info

General Q&A

First let's start here. Do you guys have questions about either of the exposure triangles? No, they're going no, we just want to shoot and learn it right? That's what you're saying to go way are in great detail. Yes, so that way are going to go through what all these buttons are and all that kind of stuff we're going to start that after the break. That's right? What's next. But we have to make sure that we understand to exposure triangles without understanding those two things everything else will be for not so let's go to that. The chat room let's have left many, many. Okay, we have time for many. Many? All right, let's do many, many okay, ginger coco ass does camera adjust output a flash when you use lens, zoom in her out. It does. After the break, we're gonna show that. All right, well, that's, good timing. All right, let's do another one. Okay, I q b a l um asked how do I avoid the flash reflection on the glasses surface? Say, I have to use flash it's all about the angle of inciden...

ts and the angle of reflection. And so the angle of I'm like, I have a video about this on youtube uh, so, sarah, can I have you commander for just a second? Let me show you something way she had like a stick or something to prove this so look sort of street at me like this okay we're going to go to this camera here so if this flash is going this way and it could be a person a shiny object a mug it doesn't matter if it's anything any light source will do this ambient light something like a flash studio strip it doesn't matter so light is going to bounce back at the same angle it hits an object ok so if this is here the lights going to come straight back which we talked about for red eye if I move this up this is going to bounce back down here moving up higher is gonna move down so that how I move this is how the angle of reflection this is the angle of incidence this's the angle of reflection there the same for a flat surface if you have something that's curved well then it changes drastically just like a mirror that skirt thank you for letting us use your face so to control the uh that reflection off glasses um what you need to do is take your flash get it up and over so that the angle of reflection is out here instead of into your camera and so when we show you how to take the flash off your camera try this out get somebody with glasses take the flash put it here took a picture you'll see big huge uh flash coming right back in the camera and you just start moving your flash up and you'll see it just disappears and it goes away it's the same thing of all those horrible uh facebook pictures of people taking pictures in the mirror and it's like their heads exploding from the flash it's because the flashes just coming right back into the camera and so you have to move that flash way and it goes away so we have to do move your flash get it off okay a question from aidan zero to zero to who is in arizona and says it's always sunny s o is it better to use a flash when doing an outdoor portrait to not have a blown out background yes so in arizona which I know of very well there's something that you should do and that is shoot during the golden hour which is right after the sun comes over the rising in the morning for about half an hour or so they call it now I don't know um or right before the sun goes down at night and what happens is the sun has you know it could be up into the sky or it can be really low and when it's really low happens is you get very directional light the light changes color and so it's golden instead of just bluish and you get really directional life that you can change contrast and stuff and it's easier to balance the, uh the ambient light and the flash it looks better everything's better about that, but to do that in a place like arizona, normally you don't have clouds. Um, what you do is you put your flash on high speed sync, you're going to need a fast shutter speed, high speed sync, and then you can shoot an aperture priority mode, and what will happen is you can open up your shutter, open up your aperture, the shutter is going to skyrocket up to probably about two thousandth of a second or so to compensate for that bright light coming in to flash as long as you have it close to your subject is going to do a great job of filling in that light. And so one of the problems is if your flashes on your camera and your ten or fifteen feet from your subject, you're out of luck. It's not going to work. You need to get this flash about five feet from your subject and you get it off your camera and get it close. That has enough to fill in that light we're gonna be doing that tomorrow out, all right, yeah, on the roof upstairs, it's not gonna be as bright as it is in phoenix we were laughing because the light changes here the clouds it's like those darker is brighter in phoenix it's always just bright and in sun so on I'm sure like in there are a lot of places that's that's true I know dubai they deal with that same kind of thing so um yeah so you want to use high speed sync your flash on your camera, get it close and then take some pictures um you can also do is just use a reflector reflective really close that works yes, sir. That's something you would gel for would you have like with the white balance to be a little different yeah, I got the orange from sun and flashes kind of blue that is true yeah, and so we're gonna talk about jealousy and a second throwing those over but yes, you definitely need to change your color temperature to make sure things don't look weird yeah, you'll get somebody that looks very white against something looks very golden and then we could change that to make them look golden in the background looks weird yeah so we'll show you we have some things that were actually giving away at some point it's really cool things that actually helped fix that stuff from rogue so mark people are starting to ask about modifiers care and four z d says what about using a diffuser on your flash just change everything and then uh r m s studios says mark to use modifiers and what your thoughts okay modifiers all day tomorrow is about modifiers that's what we're doing uh so we talked today about the appropriate amount of light how did just get those things in balance? And if you notice the pictures today aren't going there really nasty pictures right? We have sarah just being light coming into your face we got big shadows who got kind of craziness we didn't car for out of the environment, we need light lot of fires and so I love to use lock boxes, so we've been the last light soft blocks called easy box that I love um that really makes the shape of the light much larger softens those shadows we have these rogue reflectors that will show you that you put on hearing it increases the size of the light we're going to show you how to bounce the light and so that you can do all kinds of neat things we're gonna show you how to use walls a soft boxes walls for sidelight ceilings for more natural light howto ad catch lights but pulling stuff out we're going to do that does it change everything? It doesn't change everything the two exposure still works the same way the difference is the lightest spilling in in different ways and so the understanding of how light is shaped does change a few things and it also takes more light from your flash to fill those things up with enough light to make a proper exposure so it does change how much light you need on it it also changes where the light needs to be to get in good exposure so some of that stuff but we're tomorrow we're going to bounce the light we're gonna go to the roof we're going to shoot with cem a soft box we're gonna shoot with a kicker light we're going to shoot the fil light we're going to do all kinds of things with modifiers to show you we're going to be a bulgari falling here we've getsem the rogue stuff that's really awesome we've got some things that snap on here to create sort of like a soft box we're gonna have fun summer house give me fund today is fun today is fun I know today is lots of math and fund tomorrow is like well let's shoot um question from um not sure how to pronounce it but external battery packs please yes uh quantum battery packs I love using we have them we're going to use them all day tomorrow the external battery pack is something that will there's a little report on the side of your flash that you can plug the cable into and then you can put a big battery on there what it will do is it will allow your flash to last a lot longer so you don't keep replacing batteries over a year or two, you'll actually save money because you won't be buying batteries constantly will still buy batteries, but just not all the time your flash will recycle much faster, the color temperature will be more consistent and the exposure will be more consistent because the power is more consistent. So tomorrow morning I think it about nine thirty or something. We're in a drag all those out and show you those and that's part of modifying the light. So yeah, that's a sneak peek of tomorrow, so I love that everybody is sort of ready for that part, but we promise you a solid foundation before we go and there's still much more we have learned about this way don't know that yet. Ok, next question actually have a question about the direction of your speed light ok, on that one look, roma asked, when shooting motion in a dark place, he is the auto focus assist built in the speed light or a different method? Yes, I don't focus in the speed light, but we're going to talk about right after the break there's a different method, though, depending on how how much motion so let's have sarah out there yeah so sir I mean use you again so let's say I'm gonna put you right over here let's have you standing here okay you don't have to do the hot that was just me uh let's say I'm shooting right here and this is my camera position and I am not going to move and sarah's moving left and right so go left and right so yeah so maybe it's like a dance recital and she's doing I don't know so I'm like is that whatever okay so the distance between the camera and the subject is not moving so the focus could be pre focused you can say oh it's ten feet away I'm focusing on that and no matter where she moves that distance is the same on so you can use in the built in speed light auto focus assists which I haven't told you about yet but it's their networks just great however if you come this way come toward me now it's a much different game because the distance between camera and subject is moving and you really have to be able to focus that a lot faster and the accuracy decreases rapidly in low light especially if there's no contrast and that's why a flash that has the focus is system really really helps out and so my technique is to first news auto focus with the lens that's really high quality because the lynns is going to make a huge difference in your focusing ability and two point eight lens or wider aperture focus is faster than a variable aperture lens like a four point whatever to five point six one of those kit lenses they don't focus anywhere near as fast as the hiring lends even with a lot of folks assist so this combined with the great lens it's going to help out and if all else fails, I will pre focus knowing that whatever I'm shooting is going to get to this point help refocus on that wait till they get their take the picture that's worst case scenario, but good lenses plus this equals good focus in the leg you thank you all right, love high five high five degree so a number of folks have been asking if you can address rechargeable versus alkaline versus lithium batteries for speed lights, which are the best to use. I have a very strong bias, so this is this is just mark wallace. This does not represent my sponsors or anybody else, just me. We have a rule at the studio snap factory where all of mark wallace people work. If you don't buy duracell batteries, you could be fired, and that is not I'm not kidding, you can be fired if you don't buy duracell batteries, we've never fired anybody over that never, ever but I've done events and all kinds of things over years where we need batteries in our microphones, which of these guys in our flashes and, uh, and all kinds of gadgets and I have found just based on experience, I don't know if it's just my feelings or whatever, but duracell batteries just work every time. So that's, what we use are we using to ourselves today? No, we're not. We are using some other kind of battery wear using energizer industrial batteries, which seemed to be working just great, so it looks like energizer work. So in my experience, I like the duracell get him at wal mart, you know, batteries with an external battery pack those those are just great, but I am no means am I an expert on which double at the double a batteries to buy? But, uh, we always like to herself batteries, so now so you don't use retarded once I do not use rechargeable is and in my experience, I used to use rechargeable to try to save money, not to try to not buy batteries and buy batteries. When I found was that rechargeable just didn't hold up, he just didn't in my exposures just went everywhere all over the place, and so the thing that I found that saves me money and solve that frustration was an external quantum battery back because then that's a rechargeable battery it's a big rechargeable battery that you can use and then you can put yourselves or energizer or whatever you want in there and you're going to get a spectacular results out of your flash so I think if you're gonna buy a rechargeable battery skipped the double a batteries, get the quantum or external battery pack that's that's the way I recommend going if you look it so there's some documentaries on pbs one of them that I love and it's on netflix so search this on netflix tonight it's called the president's photographer so this is a guy this is an amazing documentary so it's on tbs this's a guy every president from a long time ago to now has always had a photographer that all they do is they get up early in the morning they followed the president everywhere every meeting for every handshake for everything and they take a picture and by law as soon as you take a picture of the president on his staff it is part of the national archive and by law it cannot be deleted. Nothing can be deleted by law and so every single frame goes it's you can get it at the library of congress looking up everyone the white house has all those pictures on flicker this really incredible anyway, so my point is I'm getting off track I wanted to know like what does this guy use right? What does he used? Because he gets its you know, here's the president and some foreign dignitary they're going to come out he's got one shot to get a perfect exposure that has to last for hundreds of years that can't be deleted by law all right, so he shoots with a candid camera he shoots with the five eighty x two I think he uses a five d mark to actually at least on the document a heated and a quantum battery back that's what he uses he hasn't quantum battery pack he has it in their sort of tucked in I'm like man if that's what that guy uses that's then that's what I want to use because if anybody has to have stuff that works every single time, I think it's him so check that out it's on netflix is its spectacular it's called the president's photographer I think it's it's really, really cool get story I know it's really girl I love netflix that's good stuff all right, my friend from gary, my friend for boston gary is gary young photo he asked, how are you getting proper white balance if shooting with ambient and flash are you shooting auto white balance or using a great card? We're shooting with auto white balance right now and before when I did the night gone it was off and we had a wacky results remember that um and what happens and we're going to do this after the break there's some communication that goes between the flash and the camera tio get the white balance correct for the flash that doesn't count for the ambient light so not only do you have two different exposures between ambient and flash you also have two different white balances between ambient and flash and so they don't always match sometimes you have ambient that's tungsten and flash which is always um hmm equipment equipment which is about five, fifty five hundred okay but I'm gonna get into that after the break we're going to show you how to do that I know it's like so much all right question from e do you eve with manual mode we have more control but in a hurried environment like a birthday party or photographing kids is that a problem? Would it be better to choose aperture priority in that case that is a really uh great question because I think it's a misconception that when you shoot an aperture I mean in aperture prior to your sort of priority mode it's easier to get the correct exposure but I think especially when you're shooting in low light like a demonstrated earlier you're actually get better results more consistent results shooting in manual mode if you don't care about the ambient light so you can just say I want to make sure my my shutter isn't so slow they have blurry images I want to make sure things are in focus so I'm gonna shoot around f ate well, it might flash, which is by the way, going to use the ninja right to figure out exposure it's going to do a pretty good job of that almost always and then you just you don't have to worry about that slut that shutter slowing way way down you have to worry about all that kind of stuff and what's going on and everything balancing you can just say I just wanna make sure I get this so shooting in manual mode I think it's actually easier because you just you not to worry about it, you can just click, click, click at a wedding or something different story, right? You really have to control that and for that I would say I'd still shoot in manual mode, but you should never go to something that you're being paid to do or something that's high pressure that you haven't practiced a lot before you get there, I think you're doing yourself and everybody else into service if you show up in the first time you've tried to figure it out, is that the thing you're going to shoot? And so in a pinch yeah, stick it in appetite friday mode and throwing the flash. I think you're better served doing the little cheat that we saw earlier, shutter priority, sixteenth of a second. Let it roll even better manual mode, and you can dial things in and out it's really fast. And when we start shooting tomorrow and the next day, and we start doing that, you'll see that I'll do stuff really, really, really fast. And just you can dial it in like that.