Lessons

Lesson Info

Lighting Dark Events Q&A

So a great card for the set up with a great card does helps us establish what the color temperature is and so syria's gonna hold this now if this was an event we would do this beforehand, we're setting a custom color temperature I'll show you how to do this with cannon and an icon so what we're doing is I'm going to on my nikon I'm going to go into the menu I mean, I'm sorry on my candidate I mean, going to the menu and I'm going to set my white balance to custom white balance, so if you can see this year but I'm sitting it to custom white balance that's the little wedges in the square, okay, custom white mounds, I'm setting that so on a canon camera, you first have to say, hey, camera, I'd like to use a custom white balance and then you have to say, and this is what the white balance is, so we need to do that now so I'm going to do is put that right over your face yeah, right on your nose so I wanted to be there, you get on a zoom this in, I'm gonna get a picture of this great card th...

at great card is going to help my camera understand what the white balance is, so now I'm going to go into my custom white balance and I'm going to choose the picture that I just took my camera's going to say, do you want to use this white balance from this image? I'll say ok? And now, sarah, look at me and you can put that down if you want there you go now we're going to get very accurate color so you can see she's went from sort of these red tinged fingers, orangey fingers, and now her skin is is much better now to do this on a nikon it's very, very similar, so we'll do it without a flash, so we're going to bring in a nightgown out here. I'll put the can down the way night condos, white balance, I think is much more elegant than the way canada's white balance so well together this I mean, we're gonna wait, thanks. Um so now that we have this on here, what we do is on the bottom of the camera and I'm gonna put this in aperture priority mode just to make sure that we can getting exposure, you're going to be really still actually let's use a flash since to sell about flashes. I mean, yeah, it's the same either way, but, you know, let's, stick to the game um, sort of throw a flash on here, thank you. This is on just normal um tl mode okay, so what I'll do here is on the bottom of this camera and depending on your nikon you're gonna have to find a white balance button and you're going to make it go towards says pre pr e pri ok once it's there you've told your camera I would like to use a custom white balance now you have to tell the camera what that white balance is go ahead and hold it up to your nose I'm gonna push and hold my white balance button free will start flashing then I conk my head is awesome and I take a picture of this card just like I did before my camera says good, I'm ready to go so it doesn't actually show up but now we can take a picture you can take that down, I take a picture with my flash and you can see that we got a picture here uh let me do one more that's not so good less blinky their ego, eh? So we can see that we've got some color that works and so that's that's just how you do it just like that cool on why I'll bonetti asks if you have the flash off camera do you need to have a triggering system that will accommodate tl for the light output to become act to be accurate all of the time yes, so? So this some of this we went over access all this were over yesterday's let me just refresh really quickly and then if you missed yesterday, watch that second half of the day because that's where we went in so there are two options for triggering off camera flash you can use a system in does t t l like the many and the flex made by pocket wizard that allows you to control that tl works you can use the master and slave control on your built in speed light. You can use a commander that goes on top of here so all that t t l stuff is going to use that through the lens meet oring stuff or you can set your off camera flash in full manual mode and trigger it with a saint cable or a radio trigger like the pocket was your plus threes that we were using yesterday, but then you have to meet her everything manually to dial that in using a light meter. Or you can do do that by I using the tomorrow levin metering method that we showed you yesterday. So that's the stuff we covered yesterday, so if you didn't see that, maybe is it back there and watch that again? I know it's so hard when people asked very specific questions to answer them without being there, but I'm goingto we're going to ask me a specific question ask us specific it in any way when the sun rises in my living room at three o'clock in the afternoon my cat sleeping like that happens to be great is she eighteen percent gray or more? Is that station way? Get an answer out of you this one. Okay. Dale from england says I did a shoot last month. That was with one speed light in a derelict location. It was a low key image and the model where a sequent top dress when I use the speed like I was getting horrible colors produce that I did not get without the speed light. Why is this? And how can I combat it? I had a hard time trying to edit it out. Okay, um so, sir, what have you brought back? Sort of cameras. So let me get this straight sequin dress colors were shifting when he was using a speed light. Yeah, in a low key image in a low key image. So I'm guessing the light was off. I don't know because it depends on if he's talking about the background or the actual dress. So if if it's the background that could have been the the difference between the flash color temperature in the light in the background that color temperature, you might have two different color temperatures it was just the sequin dress I think it's the dress it could have been that the white balance was set incorrectly because if you don't have auto white balance on when you have your flash on then you definitely we're going to have incorrectly white balance unless you said it to flash and then it should be correct so that could have been it you may have been if you're off camera then it might not have been able to communicate the white balance that could have been it you may have had a diffuser on there that it was causing a color cast I don't know there might if you were bouncing the light if the wall was a certain color that could have caused a color cast to hop onto the dress so there's a lot of things that could have caused that but without seeing the photo it is is really it's impossible for me to tell you that was a nice effort I was trying thea others there a number of different things that could cause that ok cool um nibbler would like to know do you focus and recomposed instead of using different focus points in your day to day and does that affect the late ing the flash lighting? If you're using spot mita ring on some cameras the spot metering is connected to your auto focus point and so if you are focusing and re composing you can I have images that are aren't metered correctly, and so the reason we we aren't doing spot monitoring in the speed lights one o one workshop is to go through all of that stuff would would take quite some time, and we'll do some examples, so but if you are using spot meandering, that can cause issues with your with your meeting, if you're focusing and re composing what ideo, I'm fortunate to have cameras that have a lot of auto focus points, so so I shoot mainly with the d three s and the d siri's, the one d siri's cannons and both of those have out of focus system that has fifty plus auto focus points. It's a normally what I'm doing is I'm putting my autofocus point as close as I can possibly get it and focusing there, and then if I have to recompose a little bit, I will. So when I'm shooting with the five d mark two, I'm doing a lot more focus and recomposed because it can't doesn't have the same reach without a focus points and so five d mark three autofocus system is so much more improved in the five d mark to you can you know that, you know, focus, recomposed, you get a lot more, a lot of focus points, and the same thing is true of a lot of the newark nikon cameras as well so if you have the luxury of auto focus points, then I try to get them just as close as possible without having to recompose if you don't, then I think focus and recompose will work great unless you're using spot meeting and then you can have problems and so but that's a topic for a different class on the spot mentoring stuff. You okay? We're getting a lot of white balance questions now, um I have a question from rough l come in not so who would like to know if you use the color checker and is that better for color correction? Yes. So, um remember auto the white balance is going to be specific to the light source and so and that we do use this guy this is a color schechter passports it's ah helps you do two things. It has a, uh a neutral target for sending custom color temperatures that's highly accurate and then on the inside there is a color checker which has calibrated colors on there. And so this is something actually in the studio lighting essentials workshop in the down ones I have on the bonus materials we talk about using this for color correction but this let's just say sarah's right here and she's illuminated by the flash and I put this next to her tio calibrate color well, if if the flashes falling on her and it's added color temperature of fifty, five hundred kelvin, but the background is illuminated by incandescent lights that are thirty, two hundred degrees kelvin, if I color correct using this, sarah is going to be corrected and accurate, but the background is not, and so the point of the gels is to try to get the color temperature here the same as it is back here, and that is practical sometimes, but if you're shooting in times square and there's, all those different signs it's not practical. If you're shooting outside on dh most city streets, you'll notice that some of the newer city street lamps have a different color temperature than the older ones. Some of them are white, and some of them are yellow. In phoenix, you can climb upon these mountains and see the whole city, and you can just see streets that air lined with white lights and some that are yellow and some of that air, blue and it's just all mixed and so shooting outside cityscapes and stuff. It's really not practical color to balance everything. So the important thing is to try to make sure that your color temperature in your main subject is as accurate as possible, and I think the best way to do that shoot rock, shoot one of these guys and then do your post production work is that practical at an event? No, is that practical other wedding? No, it's it's, really not? Because you're changing all the time, so just you need to do is the best you can on dh, and then you'll you'll do okay. So and also like this, you know, the table shots and event photography things were just trying to document the memories. Do people really care of the color? Temperature is shifted a little bit? No, what they care about is that was awesome. Joshi totally boldest strike and he did that funny thing at the bowling alley, and it was cool, they're not going to be oh, you know, that'd be a great picture of the strike that he hold a time in the role except color temp is all wrong. Nobody's going to say that, right? If you have a bridal shot of a wedding gown and it's in a beautiful field and there is the sun going down and there's the flowers, whatever they're called, not a rubella, and you have that and the color temperatures off, is that gonna matter? You bet that is absolutely going to matter because we want to dress to be white when what the skin to be radiant. And so, in some of the portrait set up or something like that, you do have the luxury of slowing down and controlling things. And making sure everything is set up with the other things. You do. You don't. So it really depends on the scenario and how much time you have.