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Lighting Review

This's the only time you need to use your flash during an entire wedding really is the group formal shots right and during the reception really that's I mean you could get by without anything else not with without using flash and just doing those of flash and that it usually the reception because it's usually indoors andi it's very dark that's why but if the reception's even outdoors you might not even need it at that time but really these are the two times when you really kind of need to learn your flash and so that's what we're going to be covering today when you need your flash and it's not a lot of just these two situations here for real okay so topics controlling your manual flash this would be a little bit of a review of your if you don't quite understand this you can get three days of it in my other lecture and I'm not going to spend another three days talking about it so you had to do a little bit more homework if you don't understand it we're going to do some light scribbling ...

with smartphones that going to be fun yeah okay we're going to do some group show you howto do group table shots I don't know if you've ever done that we have to go to every table and take some shots and I've got some great methods on how to do that to get some great light reception lighting you know that's where we're going down and start dancing and you guys are going to dance your little high knees off for me right? In fact I may get somebody to take over the camera and I might start dancing you know? So let's let the audience decide who they want to photograph their section while I start dancing so chat room you start discussing okay cake lighting howto light the cake which is important to so let's get into it first of all we talked about the sandwiching of light blah blah, blah part of this slide let's move on okay t t l vs manual why use flash in manual I'm okay you can spend a lot of money on your gear and you can buy these flashes that supposedly just take the correct light for you and you don't have to do anything and it's so easy why don't you just do that way you just spend all this money why can't you just do it in t t l through the lens meter ring? Why do you have to go to manually control your flash? Anybody know a reasons? Well yeah sorry I was just going to say because we put our cameras in manual we choose what we want our f stop r shutter speed are after everything so that we can create the drama we want to in the picture and then we give up the control on our flash if you do t tl, we can't add the drama of the shadows, this sort of thing that we want to you must have seen crazy, stupid light. Yes, I did that's it on your camera. There's this weird little mode on there called that. Does anybody use it? Raise your hand if you use it. Oh, my gosh, I'll use it. Wait a second. You paid for all those other little most the running man and the portrait mode in the mount you pay. I mean, why do you go to manual? If you've got all those auto, you could look a right below m you gotta why don't you? Just why? Why do you put it in? And because you want control? That correct is that the camera doesn't have your vision. It has new idea, it's just trying to create an eighteen percent gray exposure. And so it doesn't know the drama that you want. It doesn't know anything like that. And so that's why we put it in m okay, so that tells me that most of the time, whatever camera we buy that they don't get the lighting right, is that correct, then if that's the case, why would they control your light, right? On your flash if they don't get it right in your camera why would they get it right on your flash? Its exact saying philosophy that you need to pull back and get all that control another thing is anybody here have studio lighting setups? Okay, did you go out and buy yourself a t t l studio lighting set up? You're laughing right? They don't really exist, right? Ninety nine point nine percent of nine nine. Nine percent of the photographers use when they do studio setting it's always in manual. Shouldn't that tell you something about the reliability of tt l of all, studio set ups are manual. Okay, uh, so that should tell you something right there another thing is costs and when you go to manual, you're going to save a lot of money because you're not paying for technology, you are the technology. And so you just need to learn how to control your flash with more power or less power and know how to do it in conjunction with your camera settings and you can rule the world so here's some light basics. We have one unit of light. Okay, if we were ad and double the light it's one stop so whenever people talk about stops it's always doubling the light, okay, so if I okay, so if I were that's the one unit of light and I said at a stop it would be two units of light now for those of you who didn't see crazy stupid light if I added another stop of light onto those two balls of light how many balls of light would you see if I added you say three you say four she wins it's doubling right so you're doubling again so it's four so two stops of light is four times the amount of light not two times they're not alike it's not linear okay so it operates by the inverse square law can you tell me that okay so if this light creates f four and if everything was the same the s o was the same everything and then we added twice a cz much light what would you have to set your f stop to get the correct exposure when you on those two balls of light there anybody no we're doubling the like you know what the next f stop is up from four what's that five point six she gets a golden star all right does anybody know if we were to add a stop onto that what the f stop would be if everything else remain the same shutter speed I s o man you guys are amazing f eight okay so you'll notice on your camera that they have all these numbers on the bottom and if you anybody grew up during the film days okay, we used to see these numbers all the time is that not correct on our lens that's how we know these f stops but now that everything is digital, people don't really know these numbers and it's just confusion they haven't really learned it so all these numbers here so if you look at this f stop so if you're going from f one point four to two that's one stop alight two, two, two eight is another stop of light so each number represents a stop of, like going up or down and you're thinking to yourself, why did they complicate things and use the metric system for this? Why don't they just do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight is that why do they have this two point eight in this five point six and eleven and what they're picking the most weirdest numbers? Why did they have to do that? Does anybody know? Okay, well, do you guys know what the square root of two is? It's one point four didn't I say light was doubling? So if you multiply one point four times one point four, you're going to get to right? So basically so let's, look here if you go from one stop, if you want to know what the next stop is let's say you're at two point eight you want to know what the next stop is? You multiply it times one point four and you get four point oh, if you multiply four times one point four five point six so that's how they arrive at these numbers it's because of the square root of to the inverse law and all that and that's why it works together so if you really want to know what's one stop maur above the f stop that you're shooting at you times that times one point four if you want to know the f stop below it divided by one point for and that's how you arrive at those numbers everybody should memorize those bottom numbers you should know that like the back of your hand so when your quickly calculating like you can figure things out now let's say you're assisting in a studio cysts situation and the guys telling you to set up lights he goes okay, you know what? I want that one over there an f a a and I want this one it f five six what the heck does that mean when they say faa what whenever that's the situation always assume that one they're using is a one hundred okay and so when you meet her it or whatever, then it meters for five point six here and atm users for eight eight point oh there okay and you'll find out that the reason why that they can on lee just say f stop that you'll find out very shortly. Is that controlling flash shutter has nothing to do with it? So that's why they never talk about shutter? Okay, still anyways, to control your of manual flash there's four ways to control your manual flash there's only one way to control your, um tl flash what's that one way we control our flash and tt elmo, does anybody know let's say you're in t t l mode and you shoot it it's too bright what's your recourse at this point yes, a combination tv compensation, right? So it's a relative compensation toe whatever they this is the reason why t ell is inaccurate the reason why it's inaccurate is because every time it takes a shot it's guessing it's figuring out the exposure and then calculating the light one stop below or whatever we designate let's say we say we wanted minus two third stop it's going to take a shot it's gonna automatically calculate an exposure it could be right or wrong. And then it's going to say from that exposure I'm going to bring down light by, you know, one stop for one third stop or whatever we say it isthe so is always relative and so when you're shooting in t t l let's say you happen to be focusing on the hair which is dark it's going to take one reading then let's say you focus on the eye on the white of the eye then it's going to give you a slightly different reading and so therefore your exposures are going to be all over the place it's not going to be right they'll be close but it won't be a rock solid same exposure every single time and so that's why you want manual control because not a relative calculation it is what you said it is and it stays there until you change it okay so you can do it in four ways oneness flash output now on my flash um I have it goes up or down right and that's how easy to do so I just tell you I can show you how to use my flash and literally thirty seconds like I say hey make sure it's on m there and this is up and this is down and that's it one born up one light is one stop there if I say take it down one that means one last light if I say take it up one take it up just move it up you know or say take it up to stops that's two lights very easy okay that's one way flash out put another way is distance to the subject so let's say I'm taking a picture and I fire it and it's not bright enough I can move it in as close as I want I could move it in two centimeters of I want teo I got full control of my life exactly the way I want it to be right so that's that's distance I use that a lot another one is aperture so you can control your aperture buy if you raise your aperture it's making that small that whole smaller right so it's letting less light in so if you lower your aperture and use a low number it's increasing that light that comes into it and that's how you can control your life through aperture eso let's have a nice so off I like to do this in the classes I want to know here someone here and maybe someone online to off who his shot at the highest isso here we're going to find out has anybody shot at s o sixteen hundred and above raise your hand who? Everybody okay thirty two hundred and above everybody okay sixty for hundred and above whoa okay thes between these two okay what was yours highest there is another setting twelve thousand no no there is another setting on my sixty d it's like high higher than that and actually what it is the high one okay, so that's that's twelve thousand twelve so okay, anything with sixty getting I didn't feel winner right here stand up and take a bow gay twelve thousand I s o okay film days that would be unheard off shooting a twelve thousand eso unheard off if you set your camera to twelve thousand esso and you fire this flash it will light the entire city of seattle. Okay, so for example on a typical flash when you set your eyes so say two, sixteen hundred you just made it sixteen times more powerful. Okay, so that's why this whole entire movement of the strobe iss and that's why my class was so popular last time was because this is a little monster. This is like you can use in studio situations now because now we have the ability to turn r I s o up and we're not afraid to put it at sixteen hundred okay, so this becomes more of a powerful tool, especially low light situations there's two types of professional fash is there's the expensive and there's a more expensive but this is mine is a type one. And so how I calculate my light is at six feet uh this chart tells you it's designed to tell you all you do is you set your s o in fact I have some cards that I want to give you back there can somebody grab those cards back there and white house custom color printed these beautiful cards for you so everyone shout out to white house custom color they're awesome guys give it to everybody and so on the back of these cards I don't know if you can zoom in on this little chart here and scott I do want to point out for everybody at home that that is the card is part of the purchase concluded with kat it yes did you you did anybody zoom in here? We got it already. Okay whatever okay, so what do you see it? It says the I also there right and the f stop so you line up whatever I ask so you're shooting out whatever else stop you're shooting at and it tells you the flash power on my flash it's six feet away damn you right there one shot I've already pre calculated it for you so you can go in shooting man okay, so you calculated I'm shooting at s o one hundred f ate that means quarter power I sent my flash to quarter power I go six feet away if your distance challenged if you don't know what six feet is you know what your hide is, right and that's your arm right right it's like go out here I'm five foot seven on a good day and then I hear is about five foot seven inches five more inches I'm about right here but you just after a while you just go out okay right here is good, right? You just know after doing it just practice one day and you're just kind of by osmosis you'll get it so my flashes operated on a six foot level and these other types of flashes also kind of operated that six foot level to then you have them or expensive flashes which could be upwards to six hundred dollars and mohr and usually I find when I teach most cause I've teached thousands of students and we've had every single flash imaginable on this okay? So I know and it's usually in about seven feet on these other models so which is interesting because if you don't mind standing here instead of here, you might save yourself a bunch of money and just buy a lesser expensive flash okay? Because that's all you're really gaining all you're really gaining is one foot mohr of extra power uh and I literally taught this class for thousands and thousands of students and I've had this chart go out and creative live and thousands and thousands of people have have had this thing and no one not one person has emailed me and said scott, your charts sucks it doesn't work that's a pretty good track record, right not one person has told me that it doesn't work so it's fairly accurate I guarantee it I standby okay so the big question right? I talked about this if I gave you one shot to correctly expose the subject could you do it in manual? Most people would say no oh, I can't I khun store to get there after trial and area but I can't and so that's why I came out with that shark well there's a chart right there so and it tells you what the flash power is so how you do it again is let's say I want to shoot it five, six at s o one hundred all I do is measure out my your flash power all illnesses calculated when your flash zoom is that thirty five millimeters? Okay, which is the standard um, and then you just line it up. I s so one hundred five six tells me one eighth power. I said it on one eighth power, which in my particular case is for little lights here and it says, if you have good eyes, you can see that at one eighth, but if you can't, you can get used to it right six feet away you just moved six feet away and bam, you've got one shot, you're doing it now this is another situation that I get all the time where they built well, scott, you know, I like your system and it's great might my receiver system in my wireless system but you know I cannot control the power of the flash on the camera goes some were more expensive brands allow you to control your flash power on the camera and but what I find is this and they keep telling me, oh, if you can control the flash power on your camera, I would really like your system but I find personally for me when I use flash because I can't see where my light is going I'm constantly moving the position of the flash, so if I'm going over and have moving the position of flash, I can easily go up or down at the same time so it doesn't really save me a lot of time if I could control the manual flash power my flash because I'm constantly fine tuning that in fact, I position to me is harder to get than flash power because I already figured it out here I know that flash power, but the way that light hits the subject that has to be fine tuned to me sometimes it's like this and then I want to feather the light off and I'm changing it here I'm constantly telling this person to move over here and do this, so if I'm having my assistant do that or if I'm moving to stand that way I'm right there I can easily turn my flash power there so doesn't really save me any much much more time and it's much more expensive so that's how you arrive at setting your flash in one shot I feel like I'm talking like a million miles a seconds that's because I've been teaching this for like three years and I was like I could do it like blindfolded okay okay so because I really would just want to get to this this basic stuff you should have learned this in the other lecture anyways I just want to get through this stuff and let's like get into the real application so that's why I'm kind of flying through this if you don't know what to set it on I do have a nap it's called scott robert limbs flash hero so how it works is that uh they just set the distance on the top and you scroll and you said your eyes so you say aperture down there and then bam we're goingto put your flash power this that there and then I've been working with the guy who helped me program this actually we're going to be interviewing him later he's been bugging me to put some lighting diagrams on there but I just haven't had time so eventually I'm going to expand this program and have a bunch of lighting deck diagrams to show how the light different scenarios up there but anyways you could get that a lot okay flash is not controlled by shutter speed I want everybody in this classroom to repeat that can we can we do that? Flash is not controlled by shutter speed. This is a fine example look at this picture what is my shutter at if you look at the bottom of the page one sixth of a second how could I be at one sixth of a second and catch every single beat of water splashing over that ladies lovely body? How could I do that? That seems impossible, right, flash? I mean, when you use flash shutter speed has no effect on the flash power. Okay? And let me explain that that's the number one miss understood concept is that you think you're controlling your flash with your shutter, but you're not you can't. Why? Because light travels at what speed now, does anybody know what light travels at one hundred sixty eight thousand miles per second? But it's getting a little bit slower so who knows what it is but still freaking fast, right? So what happens is this let's can I borrow that little book of yours? I won't read it or anything. So let's, pretend this is your camera sensor. Okay, so this is your camera sensor here. Now we're going to use flash your shutter comes up and it lets light in and and it limits like right let's say you're firing your flash I mean, you're you're letting your pusher shut her down your camera and then your shutter starts toe reveal the the censor what happens if your flash fires right now, you're going to get a shadow across the sensor? Did you could control light at that point? No, you just made half your sense or dark that's all you did, you did not control any light, so now the only time you can use flash is when your shutter fully reveals the sensor and that's what's called extinct speed and that's the whole reason why you have to keep it below one two hundredth of a second, because that's the time that it khun sync and hit your sensor so the only time that you can control your life, you can't do it with your center, because all you're going to do is get if you're going to try to control the light through the shutter, all you're going to do is get black lines across it that's not controlling it at all because light is instantaneous and so that's. The only times you when it was revealed is that one two hundredth of a second and that's called x ink speed is the fastest shutter speed you can use in manual, but technology is progressing to the point where and you're going to see soni do this first. I guarantee it because I already talked to the techs over there and it's honest way that you will never see a physical shutter again which means that the xing speed will be as whatever the shutter speed khun because you know why they're just going to turn on and off the sensor why have a shutter speed you don't need it why do you need this physical thing when you could just turn it on and off doesn't that make sense so if you could turn it on and off you can sink it better and then now you can raise your shutter speed toe whatever so right now we have to deal with one of two hundred but probably probably within the next two or three years we're not going to see shutters anymore it's just not going to be there okay so let's understand this and unpack it a little bit more on how I actually captured this picture if this is blowing your mind away and you don't quite understand how this works let me show you what happens so here you have a situation where there's light coming into the room okay if you created a black box so if I created a situation where we're in a in a room and there is no light at all coming into this room okay what I did was I took my flash and I calculated the power that I needed to illuminate my subject and have it perfect whatever perfect exposure that I want I know what it is that flash illuminates the subject for what a fraction of a second right how fast this turns off and on see how fast that is that's when it illuminates your subject that's your shutter speed because look it I consent my shutter speed for whatever I want let's say I opened my shutter okay let's let's turn everything off okay there's no there's no light in the room can you see the subject no right I opened my shutter right now is there any like going into my camera is not exposing anything it's completely dark my flash goes off for a fraction of a second is that subject still there yes but you camera cannot see it so that person could be doing this or whatever it could be getting stripped naked I don't know you can't see it you cannot see that person in this completely dark my shutter can still be open I can go out to dinner I can have a fabulous sushi dinner I could come back I could close the shutter that's that is perfectly exposed that shot it has no bearing on the shot my shutter speed because it's just a fraction oops sorry a fraction of a second that boat boat on off that's it so my shutter speed is actually the duration of my flash when you're very little light situation and so let's go over to this picture here so what's happening is this is I have clouds back there okay my flash fires for a fraction of a second the subject is not seen I keep my shutter open to expose those clouds in the back which is very very little light that like from the clouds is not goingto not going over expose my sensor because it's just a minuscule amount of flight but I want it in my camera okay? So shutter controls the ambient or the available light the flash controls the light on your subject so when you use flash believe it or not you're shooting two exposures in one shot that should blow your mind right now because that should open the floodgates because if you can take to exposures in one shot your mind can go wild and think of different scenarios I can have one exposure to expose the background I could leave it open for a second two seconds whatever and and then to get whatever background that I have and then I could properly illuminate my subject at the same time so that was one sixth of a second took handheld okay, so look at this shot here let me demonstrate this is the same lighting set up I'm at one sixtieth of a second this next shot that I take I'm at one point three seconds handheld okay now looks like that and I get the background you could tell it's handheld because look it is the background blurry if I wanted that background tight what would I do put it on a tripod but I don't own a tripod so that's not gonna happen all right so I don't have too much stuff to carry around so I just so lookit now let your mind go wild whatever your vision is if you want more of a silhouette shot and let last light in then you can change the shutter speed tio change the ambient light or if you want to let more ambient light in you can open it up and create a shot like that so you're in full control of whatever you want to do with flash and so that's how you look at this shot so I took this shot yes on guess the flash er shutter speed on this shot that I used anybody want to guess this one sixtieth of a second okay she's one sixtieth of a second she's jumping in the air I'm firing my flash it's freezing her right she's falling down while the shutter is still open but because there's no light on her you're not seeing her fall down okay jump bam flash for a fraction of a second then she's dark the camera can't see her and she falls down you understand that concept but I leave the shutter open why the background. I need that sixtieth, if a second to create that background exactly the way I want it. I sent my background first, and then I do the flash and that's, how he created that.