Coloring black background with a strobe and color gels
15.8.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
I have been trying out who know how many different types of background but I always came to the conlusion that the most suitable for me are my gray patterned collapsible backdrop you must have seen on my portraits before and the one I recently purchased which is black/white collapsible one. I bought it from Digitarvike.fi store which I have purchased a lot of different photography related products from them and continue to do so. I recommend this store to everyone for the great products the have and great customer support if you ever would need one.

Helios black/white collapsible backdrop

Black background, as funny as it may sound, makes a perfect color for making white or colored halo behind the model. The things works in such a way, that you put a Stofen light modifier on your flash and then place the strobe about three feet from the background facing it. Place it so that the stand and flash is behind the model so they won't show up on the final image.



Then all you need to do is to find the power setting which is good enough for the effect you want. I usually start with 1/4th power setting. Below is an example on how the backround light illuminates the background when the model is in fron of the strobe.



Then you just pop in the key light and the portrait is done.



Next comes the coloring the background. Best and easiest way is to still use the same black background and add a color gel into equation. By placing the color gel between your background strobe and Stofen, you illuminate the bakcground with the color. You can also mix different colored gels to get exciting colors as well.

Little word of warning: When you use color gels, make sure the model is far enough from the background in order to prevent to color spill into model's hair. If the model sits too close, especially blonde hair can be colored with that color as seen below.


DIY gobo, snoot and grid snoot
18.4.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
Even though sunny day, we have a cold and windy conditions. Kids are staying home and I had some free time in my hands, so what is a better chance than this to work on some DIY light modifiers?

So I went through couple of DIY tutorials on the web but after all decided to use my own gray matter and work on a design that would fit my strobes and needs. This ain't no astrophysics after all.



The materials are simple:

- One microwave popcorn box
- Electrical tape
- Painting tape
- Five black straws from Ikea
- Couple more pieces of cardboard

I started with a grid snoot as I knew this will take most of my time. The popcorn box was surprisingly good for my strobes so that I didn't have to bend the cardboard much at all. I just cut out some of it to make it a nice frame around my 430EX strobes. Black straws I cut so that each was about 3cm in length and I needed 9 straw pieces per row. I placed te cut pieces side by side so that there was no space between them and then I stuck them into the painting tape like in the picture below. By glueing them into the frame would have looked more pro, but takes much more time and patience which I don't have either... especially patience.



When all five rows where in place, I taped all rows together with another round of painting tape.



After this all I had to do was attach the straws into the frame. I created double-sided tape from the electrical tape to attach the straws. When the whole package was done, I wrapped it again with couple of rounds of electrical tape to make the frame stronger. Some of the corners had empty space but I don't see this as a problem.



Below is a picture of what kind of light this grid snoot produces. Because the grid was done with circular straws, the spot will be circlular as well. If you would have rectangular straws the outcome would have been rectangular as well. The shape of the grid snoot does not affect the light shape on the wall.



Next I built a snoot which was a whole lot easier to accomplish. I used the popcorn box for this but you can use your favorit cereal box as well. Just make sure you empty it first.

After I cut out a frame with perfect fit with length of about 15cm, I taped the electrical tape around it to make it strong. Now you can squeeze it flat to fit it in your camera backpack and when you need it you just grab it out and form it according to your needs.



Light travels according to the direction of snoot but disperses some of the light around the target as seen on the picture below.



This snoot procudes a little larger light spot as the grid snoot.



I haven't tried these light modifiers in my portrait shoots yet as my younger models are not up to modelling today. Once I do get them to model for me I will post some results here.

I also built a gobo but since the gobo is just a rectangular cardboard, I will not go into how it was built. Anyone can cut out a rectangular peace of cardboard I would presume.


Light strobe stands are a joy to have...
14.4.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
Sometimes I just don't feel like carrying heavy and sturdy light stands with me with all the umbrellas and softboxes. Sometimes it feels like my 30D with battery-grip is enough for me to carry. So what is a better idea than to get a light stand that is light, small and portable? Especially when I go out with kids it is nice to have something small instead of big and heavy because then it's easy to position the stand in the right location and fire up your camera. Ofcourse you will have to re-locate your strobe every once in a while but the idea is to have the strobe in one place and let the kids do their thing while you shoot.

My point today was exatly that. When my younger daughter Adele wanted to go out to do her street art, I decided to grab my portable light stand and shoot her with bare strobe (don't worry, I didn't really shoot her). I wanted to get better-than-out-of-your-little-camera pictures of her and using off-camera strobe is the way to go. Besides, shooting with bare strobe without all the umbrellas and softboxes minimizes the chance of being seen crazy in my neighbors' eyes.



I have two light stands. One is big and sturdy but it comes with a price of being heavy. Another one is cheap and light which works just fine if you shoot without umbrella. With umbrella this stand will not stand for long on even smallest wind. Up until now I always had a tendency to grab my heavier stand.

This evening we had a beautiful sun and thus I set my shutter speed to 1/250s and the ambient light got correctly exposed at f/7.1 so I set my flash either to 1/2 or 1/4 power, whichever exposed my daughter best. It all depended on where I placed my strobe in relation to her. Mostly I tried to do cross-lighting, having the strobe light coming on 180 degrees in relation to the sun.

Few times I under-exposed the background to bring in the flash on her little more. This in turn gave the pictures a more of a 3D effect.



Even though most of the time Adele wanted to draw on the street and other things she usually likes to do outdoors, she asked me few times to take a portrait of her. I just couldn't resist and perhaps the outcome was the best shot of her tonight...



The idea of using small stands and bare strobes came from Brent Williamson, a father in New Zealand who also loves to photograph his kids.

Check out his Flickr photo stream to see some amazing bare strobe lighting!

Check out rest of the photos of tonight's session


How to get perfect white balance?
12.4.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
Over the years I have learned that you can't always trust that you will find a spot in your photo from which you can obtain neutral gray to correct your white balance in Photoshop or Lightroom. It gets even worse if you start trusting your own eyes and you just didn't manage to calibrate your monitor. Sure, the skin looks great and natural on your monitor, but it might be that at your friend's computer your model looks pale or orange. Either way it's bad.

This is the reason why lately I have taken into habbit to use a gray card whenever I shoot more serious portraits, like my kids. I have a grey card I purchased from eBay that fits nicely into my camera backpack. The usage is really simple:

1. You always shoot in RAW mode, adjusting white balance in JPG images is a pain of a butt.

2. Before actual photo shoot and after you have set the shutter speed, aperture and your lighting, ask your model to hold the gray card and take a shot.

3. Start doing the actual photo shoot.

4. Open all photos in post production, in this example Lightroom.

5. First we process the reference picture we took in step 2. Take the white balance pippet (press W) and select a spot inside the gray card to set the neutral gray. You instantly notice and the skin tones become more natural.

6. You copy this white balance setting (Ctrl+C and then make sure you only check the White Balance) and paste that into all the rest photos from that current set.

Please note, that as the day goes by and you change locations, you need to take new reference shots as described in step 2. This is because the ambient light changes as well as other conditions.

Below two examples of my daughter hold a gray card. On the left side is the photo of imported RAW file into Lightroom and no processing done. On the right side the photo is color corrected by obtaining the correct white balance according to above instructions. Left photo might look OK to you if you wouldn't see the image on the right, but the truth is that the left image has a blue tint.


Raw white balance Corrected white balance





























You can get these gray cards really cheap on eBay. Try search with the keyword Ezybalance.


Portrait photography on easter
5.4.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
This easter we went to my in-laws in Rauma and for some reason I decided to grab my light poles, radio triggers and the whole arsenal with me. I'm lucky I did, because the weather was most beautiful for portrait photography.

The sun was shining warmly in between few scattered clouds and I decided to do some cross-lighting photography. It has been a while since the last time as it's known fact that Finnish winter is long and dark. So I had to take back the time I missed and start shooting.

First I set the ISO to th lowest possible, ISO 100 in my situation and max shutter speed that is syncable with my flash, which in my case is 1/250s. Then I set 1/4 power in my flash and tried test shots with shoot through umbrella. Because it was really sunny day, I decided to use shoot through umbrella instead of reflective in order to stay away from competing with the sun.

So the point in the photo shoot was to use sun as the rim light and flash as the key light. If the sun comes from behind and left of the model, you place the flash opposite so that it is to the right of you.

I then set the aperture based on the exposure of the model. If the model gets over exposed, you dial up your aperture to make the f-number bigger. If the model is under-exposed, you increase the aperture to make f-number smaller.

But what happens when the sun get behind the clouds? Easy. Because the model exposure is set by the aperture, you don't want to touch that. The ambient light is controlled by the shutter speed, so when it suddenly gets dark, you dial down the shutter speed. Just remember what shutter speed you had before, because when the sun comes back it's easy to get perfect exposure without trial and error cycle.

Here are some pictures of the easter session with my daughters:

Adele pose Aliisa laid back

And here are rest of the pictures at Flickr.


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