Lighting – Page 4 – CanonBlogger

The week in review

June 20, 2008 Jason2 Comments

globe

I know web links are typically done on Wednesdays, but a little schedule change was in order given the recent news from this corner of the internet. So, for this Friday, here’s some stuff I read around the web recently:

Brian Reyman of Professional Snapshots has released a beta version of a neat Flash program for schematics of lighting setups. It’s a very helpful in documenting studio work and other such photo utilities. Best of all, it’s Flash-based so it will work on Mac and PC! Many thanks to Brian for all the time and energy he’s put into this program.

Being very much a fan of DIY photography, I have to give shout outs to the guys over at This Week in Photography for their post on making your own reflectors from cardboard, styrofoam, or plywood and either paiting white or covering with aluminum foil. Very clever, and a great tip! Thanks to Scott Bourne for this…oh yeah, check out their weekly podcast too. Lots of info and always fun to listen to!

Scott Kelby needs no introduction, as he’s pretty well recognized throughout the industry. He also most certainly needs no help from me for publicity, but his post this week about the “School of Hard Knocks” really hit home as I forgot a CF card for my camera just the other day. So, sometimes I really am just like Scott Kelby!

David Hobby also gave a little nod to this over on Strobist, and while it’s a little late to be saying it here, there was a Shoot! the Day scheduled for today – photogs the world over will be sharing their shots taken from today over at Photoshelter in the coming week or so. I signed up, but because I forgot my CF card, was not able to participate. Still, stop over there to see a day in the life of photographers the world over!

Michael Johnston of The Online Photographer anounced his newist list of Top Ten Cameras, and Canon gear made it in twice (three times if you count them in with the “any entry-level DSLR” listing.) The top Canon recommendations are the 5D and the SD870 IS.

Finally, in Canon-specific news, we’ all have likely heard about the upcoming release of the Canon XS. Scheduled for release in July, it’s gotten a few reviews trickling out from various resources. The best review I’ve read is over at the Photokina site.

Last, but not least, don’t forget to take a break, and laugh a little over at What the Duck! My favorite one from this week:

What the Duck

Hot and Cold Lighting

June 19, 2008 Jason8 Comments

We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

Subject Light	Background Light	White Balance	Results
Tungsten lights (like a lamp)	Flash or cool window light	Tungsten	Electric Blue Background
Cool daylight or Flash	Tungsten lights (like a lamp)	Daylight	Orange Glow
Tungsten (like a lamp)	Tungsten (like a lamp)	Auto	White (or grey¹)
All light	No light	Auto	Black

¹For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

Geographic Composition

June 16, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Jason Moore has an ongoing activity where photographers from different parts of the globe capture their perspective on various themes. I was invited to join this group of photographers a short time ago, and this is now my second contribution to the activity. It’s quite a bit of fun as it challenges you to think in new ways, and in participating you get a chance to see other perspectives and ideas. This is probably one of the most useful ways that you can challenge your creativity and to find new sources of inspiration.

Anyway, without further ado, the theme for the week ending Friday, June 13th 2008, was “Passing Down“. My shot is below, and I would encourage you to visit Jason’s blog to see the other visions for this theme. Thanks to Jason for administering this activity, and look for the next one near the end of the month!

Usual becomes unusual

June 10, 2008 Jason3 Comments

Lighting Objects

The tutorial for this Tuesday, you may notice is not your typical Photoshop tip, trick, or tutorial. I took things outside of the desktop and into the real world to show you examples of thinking outside the box when it comes to lighting. By now we are all familiar with Strobist, and the methods he uses to encourage people to think about lighting and how to do things in an economically friendly way.

Today, I wanted to take a moment to share with you a few lighting ideas I’ve had and some of the effects they’ve produced. None of these home-made products cost me more than 15 cents! Anyway, I’ll let the tutorial stand alone, but did want to include the show notes:

Tune in to Strobist for anything and everything lighting you ever wanted to read – David Hobby is the lighting guru of the blog world!

David was interviewed recently on Studio Lighting, so now I’ve listened to their podcast, and it’s definitely one to return to. These guys just sound like they’re a lot of fun.

And the shots… you saw the montage up top, but here’s the individual shots from my diffused snoot:

Vertical View

Angled View

So, there’s just a few examples of how to generate creative lighting by looking at usual objects in unusual ways. Tune in to the podcast to see what other stuff I’ve come up with. Because it was recorded outside of the computer though, I only have the Quicktime version. I am still looking into a decent Flash converter so I can put that together with the “intro” and “out-tro” clips, so if anyone has suggestions for that, I am all ears there too. Anyway, to close out, I’d like to pose another question: What have you come up with in the way of uses? Any everyday objects become part of your photo gear? Share ’em in the comments section!

Better luck next time

May 30, 2008 Jason3 Comments

Heh – I had been so good lately about planning ahead and recording my video podcasts ahead of schedule and just setting a publish time in WordPress, I got on an automatic pilot routine. When that routine got disrupted from some dental and sleep deprivation issues the other day, I didn’t realize until just a short time ago that the post for Friday had not been scheduled. Not only had it not been scheduled – it didn’t even get written yet!

So, a thousand pardons as I rush to get a somewhat photo-related post out before the end of the day. Since it is on short notice, I will simply relay a funny story that happened to me the other day as I was out walking the dog. I had taken the camera and flash with diffuser attached as the day was actually perfect for photography: late afternon, cloudy skies, and evenly light all around. So, I am bouncing along, trying different settings here and there with various subjects – a flower, a reflection in some water, and I have the bright idea to do a macro shot super close on a flower. But, instead of going wide open to get available light, I figured let’s try the flash here – so I pop the flash on, attach the diffuser and set it to ETTL. Then I dial the aperture down as far as I think it can go on the fill flash setting – f22! I pre-focused on the lower third of the frame, then set the focus to manual. Finally, I shifted the camera up just a smidge, knowing that the lower portion would be in focus and because of the f-stop, I would have a pretty solid dof throughout.

Well…there’s always something you forget, and in this instance, it was the ISO setting. You guessed it – 1600! ARGH! Well, I cleaned it up a little with NN after the fact, and yeah, it’s okay, but imagine how this shot would have been without the noise and tack sharp?

So, it seems another one that got away from me! I think I am going to tape a label to the back of my LCD and write on it in big fat letters ISO! Long story short – always double check your settings, and always take a few shots. I only took the one, so it’s all I had to work from. Oh well…better luck next time! Hee’s your traditional WTD episode for Friday:

Hope everyone has a good weekend. Happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Friday Flights of Fancy

May 9, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

I was out on a shoot Wednesday and in setting up, I realized I forgot my White Balance card. I always used my WhiBal card to get accurate settings – it’s the cornerstone of my entire workflow! I was sweating bullets…what would I do?

Well, I’d read about white balancing en masse off the eyes, so thought it might work out. But, with the sunny afternoon, pupils were dilated, and kids were squinting, so…I went with the next best thing – their teeth! Turned out to work okay, and I’ve got about 20 shots to share with the mother at work on Monday. In light of my “success” at setting white balance off a subject’s teeth, I thought I’d share that tip with the readership this Friday – take flight in charting new waters – shoot without a white balance card and just use what nature gives you.

Since I’ve not gotten the model releases signed by the mother yet, I can’t make a gallery of images, but I expect to have those on Monday, so stop back in to see the full gallery by then. For some reason I can’t get to WTD so will add my “Friday Funny” later. Alternatively, you can just stop over to www.whattheduck.net to enjoy the humor – I hit it every Friday and read the entire week.

Finally, I’d like to close this week out with a challenge – show me your shots! Let’s see everyone get out there and take pictures. Email me pictures taken from the theme for the week (or email me a link and I can download that way), and I’ll put a montage together here on the blog. With me being a Canon shooter, I figured it would be fun to start with a related theme – RED. So, show me shots with something red – anything you want, and I’ll put a gallery together of all of them and offer some thoughts and feedback on all contributions in a post the following week. So, the dates that I’ll take shots starts today, and will end next Thursday at midnight. Please re-size your shots to 800px on the longest dimension before sending.

Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to get out and shoot this weekend – remember the theme is RED! Happy shooting and watch those apertures! 🙂

Friday Night Lighting…(and a funny)

April 18, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Normally Frida posts are filled with humor, funny and generally stuff that is trivia to help keep us all grounded in reality and realize that there is more to life with photography. I am starting to get a little of a backlog with the projects I’ve been working on though, so I am goig to lighten the load by one project here today – and that is a DIY lighting project.

Before I continue, the DIY lighting concept is not something that comes easily to me, as I fully admit that I am no lighting pro. If you want pro advice, the best place to go is to Strobist where David Hobby hosts an excellent lighting blog that has become pretty much the place to go for lighting tutorials. What I have learned from that site would take days to rattle off here. So, rather than regale you with all of that, I’ll just say that Strobist has given me new insight into uses for everyday objects.

Here’s the lighting project – a while back David talked on his blog about using household items to create lighting peripherals such as reflectors, bounce lights, light stands, and has been a common theme for quite a while. So, the inspiration for this came from what to use to make your own DIY snoot. A snoot is a device that focuses the light from your flash (which you know of course to take off the camera if you want really good light).

Well, at work I noticed one day that a commercial industrial sized roll of TP had been used and the cardboard roller that it was on was just sitting on top of the paper towel dispenser. I picked it up, looked it over and it seemed to be close to the size of my 550EX flash. I took it home and tried it out – bingo! The only problem was, it really wasn’t long enough. Well, no biggie, I just waited another few weeks and sure enough, another TP roller appeared on top of the towel dispenser. I snaked that one away, and brought them home. A few pieces of scotch tape to attach the two devices together and I was ready for my test shot:

Notice the light leaking through the side though? Well, I decided good old duct tape might be able to fix that. So, a few tears and strips later, and I got this shot:

Looking a lot better now, but now I am noticing a little light seeping through the back end still – any ideas how to eliminate that, or is that there in most snoots? Not sure, but this cost me a grand total of probably 05 ¢ of tape. So, I played around with the distance, as David suggests over at the Strobist site, and I finally am happy to announce that this snoot works best at a distance of about 4′ from the subject, and (surprise surprise) at about a 45 degree angle to the subject. I was hamming it up for the camera just to give a little variety while I figured this out, and actually came out of the lighting test with a self-portrait I am not too ashamed of. It’s end-of-week scruff, so that will be gone come Monday, but I thought the lighting effect of a snoot (concentrated light) is pretty useful.

So, there it is – the Friday Night Light experiment. I know it’s late, but better late than never right? Anyone else have any DIY lighting experiments they want to share? If so, all are welcome to join in the comments area. Otherwise, have a great weekend, happy shooting, and watch those apertures! (mine was a little soft – but I think that may have been oof, not dof softness)…

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Fridays always feature a WTD cartoon, so here’s my fave of the week: