Lessons

Lesson Info

Indoor Holiday Photos

Holiday photos or indoor photos where we care about the ambient light we want a little bit of that ambient life on dh so what we're going to do here it's going to change our cameras mode to aperture priority mode and this is really going tio again with a nikon camera using that function e two in your men in your memory I mean under camera you can go teo flash and then go into the two you khun set where your shutter speed is and so I'm not sure if our our kino is there yes, so if we want some ambient light so we want some of this so we have some ambient light this important to us. So what we've done here on this set and I'm kelsey's going to turn this on is we've created just a horrendous looking holiday festive this kind of thing back here. So this is what I want to emulate here is what it might look like. Well, I hope nobody's house looks like this, but what it might look like if you had a tree or something with lights on it and you're shooting some holiday photos or maybe you have a ...

way wedding where you have, you know, trees wrapped in these little holiday lights or lamps, things like that where you really sort of want to capture some of that but it's really, really dark, and so what we'll do is we'll put our cameras to aperture, priority mode, aperture, priority mood or manual mode, so if you're a nikon person, you can put your camera on aperture priority mode and tell it to stop at a certain shutter speed using menu e two, you can tell it where to stop, and so what I like to do is to keep my shutter, speed it about thirtieth of a second or faster, about thirtieth of a second or faster thirtieth of a second when your handheld is going to introduce a law, a little bit of camera blur, you can get a little bit of a blur, but not much, and the flash is going to freeze motion, and so you'll be able to get away with that. And so also, we might need to use some color gels so we might need to snap on some jails to match our color temperature. Also we're curtain sink is something that might be awesome, so we're going to hear again, we have to turn off all these lights. We have to make it really dark in here for this to work, and we're trying our best to emulate what it would be like in a really, really dark environment, so sarah, come on out here. And what we're gonna do here is I'm gonna bring you away from that keep coming away, away, away there you go. So I'm going to do here is I have my camera in apertura priority mode and I'm going to open up my aperture so it's right now, it's a two point eight I've got a really wide open aperture and my cameras focusing and I want to sort of let it try to balance that ambient light. Now this pops up here and we're going to see that we have a balance of ambient light in the background and sarah, now what I'm gonna do here kelsi, can you turn off this big lamp? This white lamp here is sort of throwing off our little demo so we can kill that guy right there. Um and then also the sister of all the lamps was just have the christmas lights going aereo some now we just have some christmas lights going on here, so I'm going to do here is take another shot and you can hear out slow that shutter is so that shutter was one sixth of a second so a little bit over half a second, but notice we got lights and sarah now watch what I can do this is sort of that rear curtain sink, joyce I want to put my flash and rear currents sink and also kelsey, if we can get the twenty four to seventy ready so I'm going to take a shot here and I'm really going to let my camera jiggle, letting my cameron jiggle and watch this now we're going to get some sort of blurry crazy results here see that? So I want to bring out a different lens and street how you can take advantage of this sort of take advantage of this technique here got it? Yeah, thank you. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here, that is a really, really slow shutter speed, probably too slow for me, so I'm going to actually do something. I'm going to take my aperture and take it up to about five to get up to about five point six let me show you what happens here is going to really slow my shutter speed down really, I'm really gonna move around to do to do a really, really slow shutter speed, and what you'll see is now those lights or more defined in the background and they're over sarah, which is sort of wacky, and so with that really, really slow shutter speed, I'm limited that's why I'm saying, you know what? You might want to only have your shoulder speed about thirtieth of a second, so what I'll do is I'm going to put my camera in manual mode I'm going to set my shutter speed to be a thirtieth of a second to get my appetite back to two point eight ok and now what I'll do you have a much slower shutter speed much much slower shutter speed and now look what we have very much faster shutter speed now we have a non blurry photo of sarah and we've grabbed some ambient light so how did that happen? How did that happen? Well, what we did is we didn't need to expose that background properly so when I had my camera and aperture priority mode the camera was trying to expose the ambient light properly and so it was really slowing down the shutter speed but what we said is we don't want all of the ambient light we just want some we just want some of the ambient light and so it's okay to say you know I'm going to prescribe thirtieth of a second and so they don't get everything just totally blurry there and the flash is just going to illuminate syrians are going to get that time now the other thing I can do and using rear curtain sink we froze that motion so ceremony have you move a little bit somebody move around maybe fake dance for me a little bit say I know put you on the spot so she's fake dancing for me when take a shot so she's moving back I'm gonna move quite rapidly so you're gonna move around as well and what we're gonna have here is everything's moving around see, I'm having focus issues why is that? So we'll see we froze her right? We have the ambient light we have her she's nice and frozen check out this the background is blurred and she is not in that cool and so this is that wedding dance thing that we were talking about so what I have done here is I've I've prescribed my shutter speed to be thirtieth of a second so that I can get some introduced some blur but not so slow that the blur overcomes our subject so if I slow this down too much so I'm gonna take my shutter speed down again teo let's say a fifth of a second so again a little bit of motion here we go, so if it's too slow that blur and those lights in the background, they're going to overtake our subject like that we don't want that so we're sort of writing this shudder to control that ambient light so that it doesn't do too much and so I found just through experience that about thirtieth twentieth of a second is that sweet spot now if we weren't getting any of that a background that ambient light we could just increase our s o increasing our eyes so makes our camera more sensitive to ambient light our flashes going to automatically adjust to that, and we're going to be fine now. One of the problems that I would have if that come way far away. So, sarah, go a little bit closer to the background, okay? Now I'm too far away from my subject watch what's going to happen here to my my awesome balance between ambient, my ambient light and my subject watch what happens. It just went from cool toe. Ok, sarah, come close to me. Come here to me. Okay, so now there is so much closer to me taking a shot here, there's something else is going on here and see if you can pick up on this but she's closer. Now watch this even one more thing that we're going to do here. Okay? So based on how my camera's flash is pointing on the background lights and how far away it is from those that that background, that wall, those ambulance, do you see how the distance from our subject really impacts how the background it works? So if my flash is too close to those awesome ambient lights, I'm gonna have issues, and so I need to pull those away. If you're doing a holiday party or something, what you're trying to do is decrease how much of that light is? Hitting that so let's try something else. We have a rogue um that's going to be right here? This little road thing you'll see. I think I need to help her john throwing this on here there's a tripod or an assistant really helps him. Something snapped that on there you're gonna put one of these soft panels here. I'm gonna change my manual zoom. Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna change my manual zoom to fifty millimeters. We talked about that earlier there it is still on the tl mode and then what I'll do here is syria let's have you go closer to remember when we had her close before? We didn't get that background and let's see what happens when we put this diffusion panel on. So the diffusion panel sort of is a half way between so we still get a little bit of that background. We're still illuminating it, but it doesn't look like it did before where it was just looked like nothing was on it all. It's pretty cool, huh? So the distance from subject those two exposure triangles that you can really see how you can control like so sarah also come right here to stand right there now I'm going to take a picture with jim and susan right behind you, I want to be pretty close to you right here take a look at this because jim and susan or far away so I have a step right over here so they can see the screen seal this is just falling out. Okay, now go stand right over here next to colby right by his leg now my subject in that background that I don't want to have together or pretty close together and I'm far away taking that shot now look what happens by being too far for my subjects there right? Snapshot so stand in that exact same spot so this is a snapshot my position is wrong because at this position my life is falling almost equally on everything but I can do is just get closer say hey sir, you have in front of the christmas party all right and outlook what happens? Susan and jim go away shuhm they just sort of fall out of focus they fall out of exposure and it works. So the other thing I can dio do you have a seventeen to two hundred millimeter lens? Well sure that later was gonna say we're gonna show compression but we'll do that when we get to our portrait but I could if I had a, uh assistance I could have the assistant stand close with the flash and then I could stand back here far away and we'd still get that light fall off so again position of the light quality of life all that stuff is playing here. All right, so, sarah, come on over here. Um, let's, do one more rear curtain sink just for fun, but what I want to show you is how your current sync can change with a different aperture value. This came with different aperture values, so I have my soft panel here we'll have you come to about right here. And what I want you to do is when you just sort of twist. Okay, now, before you do that, I need to talk about focus. They started to talk about it, and then I stopped if I am moving around, okay? And she is moving around this auto focus is sister beam that we've been counting on it won't help me because if I focus and I'm I'm focused right here as soon as I get closer or farther away or your subject moves closer further away, your focus is now out of focus. So normally was something like this. You will change your auto focus mode from one shot or single focus to continuous right? So we'll try to do that really fast. Aye, aye, sir. Vote yes, a I serve on a candidate now what happens is as soon as you put it on a I surveil the auto focus, this system team goes away you no longer have that and so it's going to be really difficult to focus, so right now I'm trying to focus on moving around we're uh well see, I just took three quick photos we'll show you those and I'm thinking that two of them are out of focus let's just take a look when these pop up here I think we show yeah out of focus on the next one out of focus all right if you are struggling with your auto focus in a dark room it's because the capabilities of your autofocus system almost go away in dark light if you're always trying to continuously focus it's not going to work for you and your auto focus assist being is going to go away because if you're using continuous focus or a servo because for it to work you have to always be on. So what can you do? Well, you can use a smaller aperture and just know that a certain length you're going to be in focus and then you can let your flash freeze motion so I want to do here is I'm going to change my aperture value change it to about six point three so this distance I think six point three will be fine going too slow my shoulder down to twentieth of a second and I have a rear curtain sink on turned on my camera, ok we're going to immolate you dancing so I want you to just sort of swing around do this kind of stuff, okay? I'm gonna be the annoying photographer who was at the dance. Something moving around there we go. Keep moving. Very good. Excellent. Just keep moving. Okay, so we're getting you can see that we're getting motion and it's freezing in a perfect blank love that on the next one. Also a perfect blink. Okay, but we're not getting the ambient light that we want. We're getting too much of this. And so with that what? We're going to have to do the same thing. So come this way a little bit farther from the background if you can separate your subject from the background so that your flashes an illuminating that they will try one more time. Let's have you do a fig dance? There we go. So I really jiggled the camera there and we're seeing that here we're just getting too much light feeling so they're sometimes that what you want is not going to get you where you are, but let me try this. I'll take my aperture value we'll take it way back down to two point eight way back down to two point eight ok well, let's see what affected that has just moved really quickly this background is now going to have a little bit more boca to it a little bit more. Look to it and you can see that we didn't freeze her. Uh absolutely. And so I was moving a little too fast. So let's have you spin go ahead and spend there we go. Good did. So I'm going to try to take my movement down and allow the person to take their movement up. And now look now, it's totally absolutely frozen. So when we talk about and if you sit over here because we could get this game around yeah, so we talk about controlling motion, the rules of camera shake still apply you still want to try to keep your camera still, even though we have our subject moving or flashes able to compensate and grab that. But when we start to add more movement to are seen by moving our camera around, we can run into problems. And so just because your flashes going to freeze motion, it doesn't give you liberty to just, you know, twist and shout and move and do all kinds of crazy things and do this kind of stuff you'll still get some blur in that shot. This one, I think it's sort of cool, ok, so let's, ask nicole um, let's, ask some questions. Do we have questions online? Okay, wake unzip the lights on if we need some light on you guys I'm fine with that but we sure do hate mark wade like to know how you turn on your activate the second shooter ok, so your current state let me show you where they turn these lights on so you can actually see on a cannon it's on the flash just wanna canon camera there's a button right here that says high speed saying career current thinks if I push that once it's on high speed sync I push it one more time signed a rear curtain sink on a nikon you do that in the camera menus in the cameramen uses where you do that and so see if we can grab our nikon grabber nikon and then I'll do a live you and I can show you how to do that we're bringing that up on the five eighty e x which is my flash the rear curtain is a custom function okay? Yeah and there's old and that's the fun thing about flashes there are about twenty million different ways to do it depending on you know which flash you have so you know day one we talked about make sure that you consult your user manual and you need to do that so see if I can remember going into our menu all right menus there I mean, you're sitting we're gonna go down tio bracketing and flash okay? And I need to make sure I remember here um and I might have to look at my user manual to to remember how to get to rhea curtain sink on my nikon in fact, I think I know I do I can't remember how to get there. Um lester's a nikon person online this is oh, yeah is this function go right here? So I'll have to look and see exactly where the curtain sink is, but I know it's it's in the menu settings where you can go and tell it this is high speed sync is what this is so rare curtains think I'll have to look and see where that is. So maybe after the break, I'll I'll tell you, I can't remember after top of my head, I remember right question from sue in lincoln at what shutter speed does rear curtain sink not matter? Or is that based more on subject movement rather than shutter speed? Um, you know, I think that around um sixtieth of a second thirtieth of a second round, they're going to start to see that you can't tell when that fires but definitely you can tell in were curtains think really is something that you turn on when you're like, really, really, really dark environments because the shutter is so slow wanted to fire at the end but yeah, if you're if you're shooting at speeds of twenty thirtieth of a second some like that you're probably not going toe going to see it too greatly albert, twenty eight, would like to know this seems great for weddings and events do you have any other ideas of other uses for the yes so that we had on day one I had some pictures of cars, so if you're, uh like advertising photographer or a photographer that does auto sports or motorcycles or something like that and you want to show emotion, then yeah using rear curtain sink will show trailing lights from a flash instead of lights that are in the wrong place and so if you're shooting cars at night races at night bicycle or sports that kind of stuff then re a curtain sink really really works well, but it really it only happens at night in dark environments I have one where I think this is a great question valley foo shi ass is a negative of doing we're curtain sink at faster shutter speeds and my question is why would you know always have it? Well it faster shutter speeds um you won't see it this want to see it and faster shutter speeds above two hundredth of a second you probably want to use high speed sync and so you can't have it on at that point so really if you can't see the effect until you know you're you're shutter speed gets really slow then it's something that that might not even matter so really could just leave it on um but any time you could ever want to go above that two hundredth of a second is when you're gonna need high speed sync and then you'll have to shut that off question from isabel shots what if the dancing couple couple is lit with a big spotlight? Is this working what you just showed us with that work? Um well the spotlight it is going to count as ambient light and so again it's one of those I don't know because I don't I haven't seen the spotlight in the room and what it's reflecting off of in all those kinds of things but it depends on how bright that spotlight is, so if that spotlight is coming in and at shutter speed of twentieth of a second it totally overexpose your bride and groom you can't shoot it those shutter speeds in the technique I just showed you is not goingto work so probably won't work light depends on how bright it is and what your settings are aye sir houston would like to know will this work with strobes? Yes, yes speed lights air just strobes they're small they're the same. Um, so, yeah, if you've got studio strobes, you can trigger them using a rear curtain sink, and so you have to go in, depending on your camera. So some cameras elated, turn on rear curtain sink on the camera itself, others it's on the flash. So if you can do that on your camera, then yeah, you can use your curtain sink. Um, yes, it's. One of those things is awesome, but depending on the cameras off.