The most important things to us here at YouTube are 1) listening to our users 2) bringing them the best online video experience with the most cutting edge features and functionality possible. For quite some time our users have been asking us for the ability to upload pictures to their profile. While this would have been a pretty straight forward request for us to grant, we wanted to do something bigger and better than just plain old, boring profile pictures. Come on, everybody does profile pictures. Profile pictures are so Web 1.0. YouTube is about creativity, self-expression, broadcasting yourself to the world - and our users deserve something better.
So, we sent our big brains at YouTube Labs off to solve this dilemma and what they came back with, is absolutely revolutionary. The technology for this new feature is not quite ready for prime time, but we're so excited about it, we had to share it and give you a glimpse of what is yet to come. It's with great pride that I introduce to you.......The Smiley Face Factory™!
You can see below an example of how The Smiley Face Factory™ will work, you select the eyes, nose and mouth you feel best represents your mood at any given point in time and voilà! you've got a new Smiley Face (of course your face may actually not be so smiley depending on your mood). We believe The Smiley Face Factory™ will revolutionize how the online world expresses itself and will push the boundaries of Web 2.0 into Web 3.0.
Stay tuned for the release of The Smiley Face Factory™, and other new and exciting features from YouTube Labs. And as always, we encourage your thoughts and feedback.
Now that you are getting comfortable with the idea of shooting a light into an umbrella or ceiling, creating the lighting ratio and being color correct, it is time to start stretching a little.
Sometimes what makes a photo sing is not so much where the light is, but where it isn't. And, given that you already have a basic, off-camera strobe setup, you can make the gear you will need to restrict light for just a few pennies.
Remember when we put the Velcro on the sides of your flash head? It holds gels fine, but you should also add another piece of (loop side) Velcro so you can fasten a GoBo to your light.
("GoBo" is slang for something that goes between your light and something you do not want it to hit.)
To make a useful-sized GoBo, Cut a piece of still cardboard to make a rectangle about 4x8 inches. Cover it with gaffer's tape and stick some Velcro (the "hooks" side) at one end and at about a third of the way from the other end. This will allow you to attach it to the side of your flash either way so that you can choose how far it sticks out.
While I am thinking about it, you'll want to get a small roll of gaffer's tape. Looks like duct tape, but it is not. This stuff is light-tight, leaves no residue (unless you leave it on for about 6 months) and is indispensable to have in your trunk/light bag.
Back to the GoBo.
Now, you have a sort of "barn door" that can block the light from your flash in the direction that you choose.
Say you are using your flash to side/backlight something. Your flash, being small and not-too-powerful, is just out of the camera frame. The GoBo could be stuck on the side of the strobe closest to you to keep light from flaring into your lens.
You can also use one on each side of the flash to make light that spreads vertically, but not horizontally (or vice versa.) You can keep light off of a background this way, as you may be lighting it from another source.
If you are going to make one of these, you may as well blow a whole quarters worth of Velcro and make four or six of them. They just slide into the lid or back pocket of a Domke bag and weigh almost nothing. No brainer.
If you want to restrict the light even more, you'll want a snoot. It is nothing more than a sort of tunnel for the light to go through that will restrict it is all directions except for the exact direction the strobe is pointed.
Just shape the cardboard into a rectangular-shaped tube that will slide over your flash head. Make a few - 6", 8", 12" - the longer the tube, the tighter the beam of light. Now cover it in gaffer's tape to make it more durable and light-tight.
(By the way, when you shoot with a snoot, set your flash on its most telephoto setting. No sense in wasting power by sending a wide beam of light just to block it with a snoot.)
How do you know how big your spot will be? Pop it against a wall from a good working distance (say, 5 feet) to get an idea of the beam spread of the various tubes. You might want to write your results on the tubes themselves, as in "1x2-foot pattern at 5 feet," etc. This is a flash fired against the wall (4 feet away) at the "85mm" zoom setting. Note the pattern of the light. This is the same setup, with an 8" cardboard snoot on the flash.
Now, how are you gonna work like this without modeling lights? I'll tell you.
You don't need no stinkin' modeling lights.
Here's your modeling light:
You ask your subject, "Can you see the front of my flash through the tube from where you are sitting?" If they can, the light will be falling on their face.
You know that cool shaft of light you like to exploit when you see it coming from a window or something? Now you can make it any time.
This is a very useful style of light for cool portraits, but you have to be aware of your ambient level. Crank up the shutter speed for more drama, or open it up for more detail in the unlit areas.
For many beginners, this is a new technique that will open up loads of possibilities. Spend an evening experimenting with it at home to start to understand what it can do.
I would hope that anyone shooting in color and using flash is color correcting their light by now. But this is Lighting 101. So just in case you aren't, we are going to run through it quickly and throw a couple tips out that you may not have considered yet.
First, the basics. Every flash that you use should have two gels - Window Green and CTO, which stands for Color Temperature Orange (where to get them) nearby and ready to be used at any time. These are your bread-and-butter correction gels.
To attach them to a flash, I cut the gels into strips and put adhesive velcro (very cheap at Home Depot, Wal Mart, etc.) onto the edges. I put hooks on one side and loops on the other, so on very rare occasions you can stack the gels if need be. But mostly it helps to be able to stack them on the side of the flash for easy storage.
You will also be putting the "loop" side of the velcro on the side of your strobe, as shown. This will provide an easy way to attach bounce cards and light shields to keep your flash from causing glare when it is being used as a side/backlight. More on that later.
Back to light color. Florescent light is not white. It is a sickly, putrid green. If you are not gelling your strobe green to match it, objects lit by your flash will be white and the ambient-lit portion of your frame will be green. This is a problem that even Photoshop cannot fix.
The solution is very simple: You place a "Window Green" florescent gel over the strobe head. You color balance your digital camera for shooting in florescent light. You get consistent, reasonably color-correct photos, with both the strobe and ambient light coming out as (again, reasonably) correct color.
I say "reasonably," because all florescent lights are not the same color temperature. And, depending on which part of the 60hz electric sine wave cycle your shutter happens to grab from the florescent ambient lights, they will color shift on you, too.
Don't believe me? Set your camera on an interim shutter speed between 1/60th and 1/125th, such as 1/80th or 1/100th. You are trying to grab a portion of the sine wave here. Motor off ten available light frames in quick succession. See the color shifts between the frames? That's what I am talking about. Not much you can do about it, except to shoot at 1/60th (to get a whole, 60hz wave) or 1/30th (to capture two complete waves.) Not the ideal solution, but it does help.
So, you balance your strobe output level for the ambient light levels when you shoot (just like we talked about earlier) and you should get a smooth, color-corrected photo. If you run into problems, try warming up or cooling down the the florescent setting on your camera. I know my Nikon digital cameras do this very easily, and I would assume the Canon digital cameras do it, too.
Tungsten is the same process, except you use the CTO gel and balance your camera to tungsten. And again, tungsten is not necessarily tungsten. Some lights burn warmer (color-wise) and some light - especially those turned way down on a dimmer, are almost red-orange. But balancing the camera for tungsten and using your CTO gel on the flash will get you acceptably close on most all cases.
Ah, but what about the rooms that have florescent overheads, tungsten desk lamps and big, daylight streaming windows?
No problem. Just shoot black and white.
(Kidding, kidding...)
What you have to do is to choose your dominant light color and go with it. Bear in mind that tungsten and daylight mix much better than do florescent and everything else.
If the room is mostly florescent light but there is window light creeping in, close the blinds/shades/drapes and try to keep the window out of your shot, because some light will creep around whatever is shielding it at the window.
If the windows are large and/or bright (such as in a classroom) I usually just ask if I can turn off the florescent lights "because they make your skin look green in photos." Very few people object to things that keep their skin from looking green. Besides, if the window light was intense enough to be problematic, there should be enough light for people to work by.
After that you just use your flash without gels. Be aware of light levels coming from the the window and, as they say in Great Britain, Bob's your uncle.
I suspect that as our library of photo examples in "On Assignment" grows, we will be getting into using colored gels for effect. But that's for later. If you feel compelled to experiment, just try to remember that (a) that 80's-MTV-Gel-The-Heck-Out-Of-It look is so over and (b) less is more when it comes to color-gelling your photos for effect.
When last we met, we talked about the idea of balancing strobe with ambient. We were using the strobe as a main light and the ambient as fill, but you do not always have to do it that way.
Straight fill flash is very simple these day, with TTL flashes doing the heavy lifting for you automatically. But doing it the easy way usually means keeping the light on the camera, or using a TTL cord. These little cords tend to make the light come from a consistent position on the left side of the frame because that's where Darwin stuck your left hand.
The goal here is to start to replace the concept of 'fill flash' with that of 'balancing light.' And, more importantly, to separate the ideas of fill flash fill/balance from the rote use of on-camera flash.
The process of using flash to augment (which is a better concept than fill) sunlight is very straightforward. First you are going to start at your camera's highest synch speed, because that'll get you the most flexibility from your small flash. While you're at it, dial your ASA down as low as it will go to get better quality and avoid those CCD-chip dust spots, too.
Now think about your lighting angle. As opposed to the idea of fill flashing, on-camera, from any angle outside without regard to the sun's direction, using a strobe on a stand effectively gives you two lights to play with. You can balance. You can cross light, You can do both. You'll have more flexible (and consistent) results using this approach.
When you just fill flash from on-camera, it does bring up the shadows. But while the flash adds detail it really misses out on the opportunity to improve the depth and quality of the light. So why not do both at the same time?
Step one: Think of the sun as your main light, and your strobe as a secondary light. You are not just getting rid of raccoon eyes now. You are working with two lights. You have flexibility.
Choose your angle of attack. Maybe you have the sun behind you (on the left side) at a ~45-degree angle. Why would you have your fill on on camera when it would look better lighting from the upper right? On camera flash limits you. All the time.
Maybe you turn the angle around and shoot the subject in profile. Say he is facing to your right. You could have him looking into the sun, which is now angled to come from slightly behind his face to provide nice (but too contrasty) rim light. Just move your strobe over to the left side, elevate it a little, and you have a cool-looking, two-light setup.
Whatever the angle, the technique for balancing is the same. We are basing the exposure on the ambient this time, and bringing the flash up to fill shadows and/or provide light from another direction.
Assuming a sunny ambient to balance, set your camera at the highest synch speed (i.e. lowest aperture) to ease the burden on your flash. Now, get your base (ambient) exposure. We'll call it a 250th at f/11 at ASA 200 for the sake of argument.
Now, with your strobe on manual and on a stand, set it to somewhere around a quarter to half power if you are working close. Maybe half to full power if the flash is further away. If you are not lighting a large area (and you usually are not) zoom the flash to a 70mm or 85mm lens angle to make it even more powerful.
Pop a test frame and eyeball it. If your flash-lit area is too bright, dial the flash down or move it back. If it is too dark, dial it up or move it forward.
This is a fast, simple technique that works great. No flash meter needed. Full manual for a consistent shoot.
The important thing to remember (and why I told you the angle stuff first) is that this is now a starting point to turn your outside "fill" strobe into a true, useful second light source. Experiment.
One of the most useful guinea pigs subjects on which to practice your outside lighting is a simple mug shot. What you have to remember is that they don't know you could do a perfectly good job by just sticking them in the shade for 30 seconds and bolting.
Outside? Play with fill light and angles. (You might want to grab something safe in the shade first just in case.)
Inside? Set up a quick umbrella in a corner where one wall is your background and another is your fill card.
You'll turn a mug shot into a head shot, which is just a more professional way to do it. You'll get some good (low-pressure) experience in your lighting. And they'll look better in the paper. It's a win-win.
And, contrary to what you might think, most people will be secretly flattered by the effort you are putting in to making a better photo of them.
And one more thing. Stop thinking of them as mug shots from this point forward. A reporter trained monkey can do a mug shot. Start shooting head shots. You'll improve your quality and get into a habit of using light effectively.
More than maybe anything, the quality of light in a photo comes down to the lighting ratio. On one level, it creates the whole look of your photo. On another, your lighting ratio will likely be the key variable in determining whether your paper can reproduce the information in the shadows. It's all about the shadow detail - either you want it or you don't. And you want to make the call on what reproduces in the paper.
Balancing with ambient is the same process, whether you are lighting an interior portrait or fill flashing a headshot outside. Always think in terms of balance instead of fill. The concept is less limiting. And it will not predispose you to use the sun as your main light when the strobe might be the better choice in a given situation.
I am gonna make the assumption that not every one here owns a flash meter (I have one somewhere, but I no longer use it) and give an approach that will allow you to just eyeball your way to a good balance. Flash meters are great, but they are one more thing to carry around. And if you get used to lighting intuitively, you'll find you really do not need them.
Let's start with the example of balancing flash with ambient light in a room. In this case, we'll be using strobe as the main light, with ambient as fill.
Back in your Neanderthal days, you'd pop the flash on the camera (by now, the thought, "on-camera flash: bad" should have just run through your mind,) put the aperture on f/8 and set the shutter at the camera's highest synch speed.
Great depth of field. Horrid light.
We humanoids typically light to light our interiors to about 1/60th at f/4 at ASA 400. While this may be rapidly depleting our fossil fuels and sending our global climate spiraling out of control, it works out just peachy for photographers. It is a very flexible light level, and we'll use it to run through the idea of balancing strobe and ambient.
OK, so without strobe, you'd be shooting at 1/60th, f/4, ASA 400. And there are many times when you will happily bang away without strobe. Go to 1/125 - f/2.8 if you need the speed, or 1/30th - f/5.6 if you need depth of field. But this is also an easy position from which to create a nice, balanced ambient/strobe look. And we are all about that here.
So, we're going to balance to use your strobe as the main light source, with the ambient providing the fill. Assuming you have solved your florescent/daylight/tungsten color issues (which we will tackle after we learn balancing,) you now have two, color-consistent light sources: flash and ambient.
Let's say for the sake of argument that you are going to shoot some hotshot New York designer in his apartment filled with dead, stuffed animals, as in the above photo. You throw a shoe-mount flash onto a stand and bounce it up into the ceiling at a 45-degree angle to him. Why? Because you only have a couple of minutes before the guy becomes fatally bored with you. And you want something safe that will not give you too many things to worry about. (You'll be way past this soon.)
You park him on his couch just behind his genuine, stuffed-rhino-foot planter(!) and get ready to shoot him.
Bearing in mind your original ambient exposure was a 60th at f/4, you want to drop the ambient down, say, two stops. This will create your shadows - but with detail. Assuming your camera can synch at up to a 250th of a sec, you have several choices. You can stay at a 60th and go to f/8, for depth, but your flash will have to work a little harder to put out the extra light to support that aperture.
You can keep the aperture at f/4 and go to a 250th of a sec., which might be a good choice if you are powering with AA's and/or want faster recycle times for better chance at grabbing moments.
You could split the difference and go to 125th at f/5.6. Whatever. The idea is to build an ambient-light-only exposure that would result in an underexposure of 2 stops. That will be your lighting ratio. You can choose another ratio (and you should experiment) but 2 stops is a good starting point.
So, now that you have a 2-stop-underexposed ambient photo, you simply dial your strobe up or down on manual until he looks good well lit. If this sounds a little seat-of-the-pants, it is and it isn't.
One the one hand, lighting is a little like horseshoes and hand grenades. Close enough is close enough if it looks good. You will quickly start to learn to judge what your display (and histograms) are showing you. But the advantage to working this way is that it is fast and intuitive.
And this is not to say that you want to be lazy. Fast is important because you (a) frequently do not have a lot of time, and (b) you want to get to making well-lit photos of him before you have used up all of his good will waiting for you to get your light just right. Hey, he's got stuff to design, right? So lose the idea of the Minolta meter and tenths of f/stops and learn to quickly go with the flow.
You'll light more often and your photos will look much better.
Besides, as we'll talk about later, you'll quickly get the kinda-scary ability to set your flash's manual setting very close to where it needs to be on the first attempt. I find that I am rarely more than a stop off on my first guess now. It is a very quick, intuitive way of working that fits well with the variables you need to solve when shooting an assignment.
In our case, this lighting scheme can be completely set up in about three minutes with a little practice. And that is including 30 seconds to pop few test frames to adjust the strobe's main output to nail the exposure down.
Rewinding for a sec here, we are talking about using the flash on manual, and adjusting your output up or down (usually you can do this in 1/3 to 1/2 stops) to fine tune your flash exposure. Check your manuals for your particular flash to learn how to do this. The advantage is repeatability. You nail down the light, and it flashes the same way, every time through the shoot, for consistent and predictable results.
One more thing. If you want to change the lighting angle during the shoot without going through the process of balancing (just the 30 secs worth of test popping, that is) simply keep the flash at about the same distance from the subject as you adjust the angle. Cake.
When most of us started out using flash, we did it primarily to increase the quantity of light.
But the quality of the light really stunk. So we started looking at work from other photographers, who used things like bounce, umbrellas, soft boxes, etc., to change the quality of the light. And we began to think, "Hard light bad, soft light good."
Those bad early experiences, I suspect, have built into many of us a bias against hard light. Which is really a shame.
There is nothing inherently wrong with hard light at all. The problems with our bad early experiences were largely the result of bad light direction (as in "on camera") and truly horrid lighting ratios (as in "nuke 'em 'till they glow.")
But if you approach hard light with an eye toward light direction, light color and lighting ratio, hard light can really work for you. Which is a good thing for small strobe users, because these units really do have a lot of power to give if you are not diffusing it away.
And hard light - especially from multiple angles - has a crisp, high-end (if you mind your ratios and fill) look that reproduces well even when printed on Charmin newsprint.
Soft light may be safer, more predictable light. But, the way I see it, the little TFT displays on the back of our Nikons and Canons give us the feedback we need to live out on the edge a little when it comes to light.
If you want to dip your toe in the water, try working close to the ambient level. (If you do not know what I mean, you will learn how to do this a couple of posts down from here.) The fact that the shadows will have good detail will lessen the chances of getting a bad result with hard light. But the edgy effect will still be there.
You can easily create your own soft light/hard light combinations by using two small strobes, too.
Say you had an environmental portrait in an office. You might bounce one small strobe off of the ceiling, softly bringing the room up to, say, f/4. Then you put your other strobe on a stand, point it directly at your subject's face, and dial it down until it gives you an exposure of about f/5.6. You may wish to limit the area the hard light will hit by moving the flash up close and zooming the head to an 85mm coverage angle. Or use a quickie snoot made out of a piece of cardboard.
So, you'd be shooting at f/5.6, with the shadows lit to f/4. The effect will be crisp light on the face of your subject, with nice shadow detail everywhere. Brownie points for thinking to cool the bounced strobe down a little (with a cooling gel) and warming up the harder accent light. (You'd then have contrast in color, direction and hard/soft quality of the two lights.)
Of course, you can just as easily get this effect with just one strobe and some ambient light floating around. Which is what we will talk about next.
One of the limits of using a small, shoe-mount strobe is that all of the pieces are integrated into the flash. Power, capacitors, flash tube and reflector - all wrapped up in a package the size of a small Subway sandwich.
(Mmm-hmm-hmmmmm, saaand-wich...)
Larger flashes tend to have a more "component" type of layout, with separate power packs, flash heads, tubes and reflectors. While this generally adds more weight and size, the fact that the reflectors are usually removable gives the big-flash guys the ability to shoot "bare-tube."
Bare-tube (or maybe you have heard the more old-school term, "bare-bulb,") means nothing more than having your flash tube sitting out there in open space pushing its light out into (nearly) a 360-degree sphere of coverage. I say nearly because there has to be some wire carrying power and triggering the flash. And that blocks some of the light in one direction.
But, for all practical purposes, it acts like a strobe-on-a-rope.
Why is this cool? There are a couple of reasons.
First, you can light a room with one head, effectively spewing light in all directions. Two bare-tube heads, high and at 45-degree angles, will light one very crisp-looking group shot. (Just drop one of the heads down a stop or so to get a nice ratio.)
Second, and one of the reasons the light looks the way it does, is a bare-tube head generates its own fill in a typical room environment. Since the light goes in all directions, it bounces off of walls, ceilings, etc., to fill its own shadows.
Third, you can stick a small bare-tube flash up close (or in a small enclosure) and it is going to light the entire area, regardless of the angle the subject is to the light. Think sticking a small bare-tube behind a computer to light the wall and the user. Or in a refridgerator to light someone looking in. Or in an open book. Or just about anywhere. You get the idea.
But since most of us do not have the ability to yank the tube out of a Canon EZ strobe, the guys from Sto-Fen invented the Omni Bounce. And, fortunately for you poverty-stricken photojournalism students, someone also invented small, cheap tupperware-style containers. More on that in a minute.
The Omni Bounce, which comes in a variety of sizes for different flash heads (and one "universal," one-size-supposedly-fits-all size) is a small, translucent piece of white plastic that pops onto your flash for a quick and easy bare-tube effect.
The bad news: It eats light. That's just physics. Sorry. It also costs about $20.
But the good news is that it is very small and light to carry around.
And if you a bit of a DIY-type, keep an eye out for a piece of tupperware container that will do the same thing for your strobe. You can either find a bottom that will scrunch onto your flash, or cut an "X" in the lid about the same size as the cross section of your flash head and just slide the closed container on. Just be mindful (as in test) to make sure the tupperware is not giving you an unwanted color cast.
But under no circumstances do you need to drop a hundred dollars for a piece of fancy tupperware, no matter what magical properties may or may not have been ascribed to it. For that kind of money, you can get a small light stand, a, umbrella swivel, and umbrella and a PC cord.
I'm just sayin'.
There are many neat things you can do with a 360-degree bare-bulb flash, no matter how you get the effect. We'll hit some in the On Assignment section soon, and will link to them from this page.
The past few months have been phenomenal for us here at YouTube, thanks to all of you. We've been going through unprecedented growth. Most days it seems we can barely catch our breath trying to keep up with everything, and sometimes I sit at my desk and look around at the 20 or so people around me and cannot believe how far we've come in such a short period of time. No matter how fast we grow or how large we may become, our primary goal is, and will always be, about being in touch with our users and providing them the best online video experience possible. That being said, we've gotten a fair amount of emails lately about the new 10 minute limit we've implemented for video uploads. For those of you not familiar with this change, we've always had a 100MB file limit for uploads. We also recently implemented a 10 minute length limit. This change won't impact the vast majority of our users. We know that over 99% of videos uploaded are already under 10 mins, and we also know that most of our users only watch videos that are under about 3 minutes in length.
So, if most of our users are uploading and watching short form video clips, why even bother to make the change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it right? Well, if you've followed our blog postings or any of the press articles, you know we're constantly trying to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of our users. We poked around the system a bit and found that these longer videos were more likely to be copyrighted videos from tv shows and movies than the shorter videos posted. However, we also recognize that there are legit content creators out there who may have videos over 10 mins, so we've created a Premium Content Program for those of you with professional-produced videos.
What about the little guys you ask? We hear ya. We know that although most users are uploading short form clips, there are those of you out there that are video bloggers or amateur film makers that have legitimate, user generated content over 10 mins, and obviously, this is not an ideal situation for you. We recognize that, and we're actively working on a solution that will allow for those of you with longer form user generated content, while still preventing copyrighted full length episodes from entering the system. In fact, if you are a user with videos over 10 mins, please contact us. We want to hear from you. We want to know how you've been impacted by this change and any thoughts or ideas you may have.
Remember: this site is about you, and we're listening.
Before I even start, I know what many of you TTL bouncers are thinking.
"Why bother to take your light off of the camera when you are just going to bounce it off of a wall/ceiling anyway?"
Because you move around when you shoot, which changes where the light hits/comes from in a room.
Because lighting on manual from a set location gives you consistency in exposure, light direction and hard/soft quality.
Because it is a quick technique to half-way set up and begin shooting while you decide what you really want to do with cooler light.
Because working with the light off camera is a good habit/ethic to get into, whether you are just bouncing off of a wall/ceiling, or using a stofen with a half tungsten gel through an office-plant cookie to make a slick, layered quickie portrait in an otherwise drab, flourescent office.
This technique is easy, heavy-use, bread-and-butter stuff. And, you will notice, we are talking pure technique at this point and not hitting you up for yet another piece of hardware. 'Bout time, huh?
OK, then. So this gives broad, room-filling light and is good for setting up a forgiving zone of directional light. Smooth and flat, but crisp, too. This is the strobist's version of quick and dirty.
Things to remember?
First, watch your wall color. It'll color cast your light.
You can frequently use it to advantage, as in the warm light the wall kicked back in this artist portrait.
Use the lens angle adjustment on your strobe to control the size of the patch of light illuminating your subject. Just pop the flash and eyeball the hotspot on your bounce surface. The above photo of the county sheriff had the flash set on 85mm, bounced off of the ceiling near the subject. Note the fall-off through the back of the frame.
Conversely, this shot of a midnight Harry Potter fanatic was lit up into the ceiling behind me with the strobe set to 24mm. So this just casts a wide, soft swath of light.
Ed. Note: This post was originally written in early 2006. In the interim, I have grown to use umbrellas completely differently than when I first started this site. To that end, please note the update at the bottom of the post. -DH, May, 2011 __________
Remember that umbrella adapter you stuck on the top of your stand?
You are probably going to want an umbrella as your first soft light source. There are two general kinds -- the reflected umbrella and the shoot-through umbrella. I strongly prefer the white, shoot-through version, as it is more versatile. In particular, because you can bring it right up next to someone's face for both power and softness.
If you are going with the compact light stands, you'll probably want a 43" shoot-through umbrella, which is pictured above. It folds down to about 14" so it transports very easily along with your compact stand. You can ball-bungee it to your strapped stand and have a nice, transportable light kit.
They are cheap (less than $20) small and easy to transport. Because of the telescoping shaft, they can be a little fragile. But use care, and they will last.
If you are saving money on a moderately priced light stand, you might choose a standard (i.e., not a double-fold) umbrella. This is not really a critical choice. It's going to be based on your workflow. Don't agonize over it too much -- you'll likely have several stands and umbrellas before too long.
I used to use the reflected umbrellas (they have a white or silver lining and a black backing) but I almost never do any more. I pretty much stick to the shoot-thru's 99% of the time.
Now, let's look at how to use them.
Umbrellas give you a good mix between softness, efficiency and control. Softboxes offer more control over the beam of the light. But they cost way more and eat up much more of your precious little watt-seconds.
With an umbrella, you get soft light that is reasonably directional.
(If you want to light a whole room, you will likely be bouncing off of a ceiling. More on that later.)
Stick it in close and you get soft-but-controlled light that works great for headshots and environmental portraiture.
This is a very simple way to make your mugshots look more like they were shot by a professional and not by someone from the Department of Motor Vehicles. With a short tele, and umbrella'd strobe and awareness of your ambient light, you can make a headshot look more like a cover shot.
Back it up and you get directional light that will cover a larger area. You can move the subject around a decent amount (or not worry if the subject is moving around on his own) and the light will stay good.
It is safe, classic-looking light that is easy to tote around. Total no-brainer in the bang-for-the-buck department.
Update, May 2011
In the photos above, the umbrella is being used from what can be considered to be a "classic" position -- 45 degrees up and over to one side. There's nothing wrong with this, and it is probably how you will start out using the light source.
The danger is, you don't move past that and your photos start to all look alike. That is the blessing and curse of an umbrella -- it is easy to look good with it, and it is a very safe light source.
But, as seen above, umbrellas also can be used to create more unusual and dramatic light. And that's where I like to hang out now.
The portrait of cellist Caleb Jones is a great example. (Click here to have that assignment -- including a behind-the-scenes video -- pop up in a new window.) We were flying the umbrella just over and behind his head. By doing that, we created a light that was less predictable, and more ethereal.
An umbrella on a small light stand is light and portable enough to be flown over someone by using an assistant as a "voice activated light stand". This gives you all kinds of opportunities for different lighting directions.
Work the angle. Try different orientations. Get out of the 45-degree rut. You'll be surprised at what an umbrella can do.
Take this portrait of Pat Morrissey, in Edinburgh.
By flying the umbrella out over him (but, unlike the cellist, slightly in front) we create a more mysterious "character" light. You can see the location of the light by looking at the reflection in Pat's eyes.
Again, atypical position for an umbrella light. But, I think, more interesting than the standard "45."
For Dancer Kassi Mattera, left, we took an opposite tack. The umbrella is being used not as a key light, but as a "fill" light. (Don't worry, you'll learn more about multi-light setups soon enough.) The umbrella is coming from below. It is actually positioned on the ground in front of her.
Not typical, but interesting. That umbrella is filling at about two stops under the main exposure level. Kassi is being lit by another, hard light source at upper right.
The umbrella, on the floor, is bathing Kassi in soft, "bottom light" and keeping all of the hard light's shadows from going to black. (Click here to see a full run-thru of this shoot in a new window.)
Long story short, umbrellas are a great choice for a first soft light modifier. But even better (if you allow yourself) you can grow them into far more interesting light sources by getting them out of their -- and your -- comfort zones. __________
This shot of a commercial real estate developer shot in Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a good example of how to easily overpower daylight with a small, AA-powered strobe. Most high-end shoe-mount strobes these days are designed to calculate and provide the "right" fill flash values while sitting on your camera (or at arm's length with a TTL cord.) But I rarely use that feature unless I am working in a fluid situation where I am following a moving subject.
I still like the control (and choice of lighting angle) I get working in manual mode with the light off camera on a stand if my subject gives me that luxury.
First, who's to say what your TTL flash in going to think is the right amount of fill? Even with the compensation buttons, the camera is really driving, not you.
And second, I like having the ability to put my flash anywhere I want, while working wirelessly. (Yeesh, say that three times fast.)
So, in this case the ambient light is coming from behind the buildings but is going in an out of the clouds. So I exposed for the blue sky and set the flash to 1/2 power, which still gave me a very good working distance.
Remember to start out working at your maximum synch speed to give your strobe the most flexibility in a bright-light situation.
There was actually a stop of power still to burn here. I could have made the sky a stop darker for a more ominous look by cranking the strobe to full power and dropping the working aperture a stop. But I wanted to save some detail in the buildings (as it was I brought them up a little in Photoshop) so I struck the balance between the sky and building exposure.
Again, plenty of working light from the strobe in the middle of the day. These little strobes are far more useful than just automatic, TTL fill-flash-o-trons.
This photo brings up another point. I was following this guy around for the morning, shooting mostly available light. But I knew I wanted a lit portrait I could use as lead if I wanted, so I carried the little "light-stand-on-a-strap" on my shoulder with me all morning as I worked.
Those little guys really are not that much to carry around, provided you are working light on gear to begin with.
Camera: Nikon D2h Lens: 17-35 f/2.8 Flash: SB-28 on a stand Exposure: 1/250th, with aperture chosen for the sky (unrecorded)
One of the biggest (and economically variable) decisions you'll make is choosing how to trigger your flash off-camera. Your method of choice will probably evolve with your pocket book.
There are a few ways to trigger an off-camera flash. Some are cheap, some are expensive. Some are very reliable, some aren't.
Basically, they fall into two categories: Wired and wireless. The wireless category can either be radio-frequency based, or infrared.
The good news is that you may already have the capability and not know it, depending on your camera and flash model. Nikon and Canon both have proprietary, infrared triggering systems that also make use of the auto, do-everything TTL flash systems.
But (a) those TTL systems don't always make your photos look the way you want, and (b) infrared systems need close quarters, line-of-sight and specifica angles to work.
That said, save the money and experiment with your Canon E-TTL or Nikon CLS systems if you already own them. You can learn much more about these systems by searching (here) or asking on the Flickr Strobist group discussion boards.
The next option is a "PC Cord." It is the wired version of the off-camera flash world, and it is a reasonably cheap, reasonably effective method. The main consideration is what connections your camera and flash have that you can wire together.
Your camera will have either a hot shoe (up top, where you attach your flash) or a PC jack (little 1/4" round concentric-circle-looking jack) or both. Higher-end cameras usually have both. Lower-end camera have hot shoes. Point and shoot cameras frequently have neither, so thay are not well-suited for off-camera flash.
Your flash will have a male hot shoe (that's how and where it connects to you camera) but it may also have an external sync jack, such as a female PC connection just like many cameras.
If your camera and your flash both have a PC jack, just get a male-to-male PC cord and you in like Flynn. If either or both of them only have a hot shoe, you'll need an apapter or two.
Any hot shoe flash can be adapted to have what is called a "household sync" (like an American power cord) with something called a Wein HSH adapter. Any hot-shoe-based camera can be made to have a PC jack with a PC adapter, such as the Nikon AS-15. (The latter is not restricted to use on Nikon cameras, either.)
This probably sounds a little confusing to a newb, but fortunately this (and many of the other decisions in the gear portion of the Lighting 101 section) have been solved by a guy named Moishe Appelbaum at Midwest Photo Exchange. He has put together reasonably priced off-camera flash kits (stands, umbrellas, sync, Ni-MH batts, etc.) that can be shipped anywhere in the world.
The prices are reasonable, the gear choices are sound and it is a great way to save the time and headache of trying to figure this all out for yourself. The only thing you will need to know is (a) if your camera has a PC jack or only a hot shoe, and (b) if you want to spring for pair of the high-end-Pocket Wizards, which we will get to in a minute.
If you have specific hook-up/gear questions, I am setting up a discussion thread here, just to preserve everyone's sanity.
Now, if you are just a student or hobbyist, this next part is going to sound needlessly expensive to you. And it may very well be. But if you are a pro, you will eventually wind up at the doorstep of the Pocket Wizard. We all do, pretty much.
They are $375 a pair, and they are pretty much the Gold Standard of off-camera synching.
Why? Insane range (1600 feet) and rock-solid reliability. They just work. Every time. Period. Try to find someone who uses them and does not like them. You won't.
But if you are just sticking your toe in the the of-camera flash world, there is no need to break the bank yet. For those just taking shots of their kids or playing around at table-top studio stuff, you are probably fine to start out with PC cords or your camera's infrared systems.
But be careful before you go out and buy a $300 flash, so you can use the "cheap" infrared Nikon/Canon system. It may make sense to go with the cheaper, manual flashes and the more expensive Pocket Wizards. (That's what I do, BTW.)
(Click the play button for a tutorial on the newest base Pocket Wizard model.)
There is another alternative that won't break the bank while you experiment. There is a Hong Kong-based company called Gadget Infinity, which makes very inexpensive radio remotes for flashes. And they are all hot-shoe based, too. This solves a lot of connection issues for newbs.
Best yet, the set is $29.95 at the time of this writing, and you can get extra receivers for a nominal fee. These are not suitable for pros, IMO. They are not nearly as reliable as the Pocket Wizards.
Strobist reader David James demo's the Gadget Infinity remotes here:
But the PW's cost about 15 times as much. So hey, there's that. There is always a discussion going on about them here, in the discussion threads.
Finally, you could choose the option of a DIY Pro PC Cord, which I have detailed in two posts that begin here. If you want to read through that, it'll keep you in the Lighting 101 series when you exit.
Or you can just skip ahead to leaning about umbrellas, by clicking below.
If you are confused, take heart. This is far and away the most confusing thing about off-camera flash. And there are many people that can help you on the above-linked discussion groups. Don't let this one technical issue throw you off.
OK, so now you've got a flash and a stand or clamp, you'll need a way to join them together.
You'll probably want an umbrella stand adapter. I suppose you could get a ball head if you were sure you would never use an umbrella (to soften the light) but the decent ones cost a bunch. And (even though you may not know it yet) you are saving your money for a set of remotes. Because that is where you will want to splurge in your little light kit.
The advantage of the umbrella stand adapter is that it does everything the ball head will do, plus it'll hold an umbrella for bouncing or shooting through. Plus, it costs less.
You just fasten the umbrella swivel to the top of your stand (or the stud in your super clamp as the photo showed in the post about clamps) and it'll hold your strobe at any angle you want.
We all have our crutches go-to techniques, and one of mine is using a single flash as a backlight in an otherwise ambient-lit scene. I like the effect because it provides depth, color and separation, which really helps if your image is going to be printed on Charmin newsprint.
Didn't need much flash here. One quarter power (on manual) and the coverage angle on the flash set to 24mm for a nice, wide throw.
The flash is directly behind the guy. If you look closely, you can see the feet of my stand peeking out. In retrospect, I could have easily glopped some snow in front of the feet to hide them. Oh, well. Next time.
Again, the flash is doing double duty by separating the guy with a rimlight and lighting the snow for a good contrast against the twilight sky. But it is also providing fill for the guy's face by bouncing up off of the snow, which is a very efficient reflector.
It was getting pretty dark at the time, so I had the flash on the light stand backwards (with the head turned back around towards me) so the ready light would be visible. This told me that (a) the flash was charged and (b) where, exactly, the flash was so I could position myself to hide it behind the guy while working in dim light.
Camera: Nikon D1h Lens: Nikkor 17-35 zoom, slow shutter speed @ f/2.8 Flash; Nikon SB-28 on light stand behind guy Quarter power; 24mm throw Sync: Pocket Wizard remotes
I almost always use light when shooting with a macro lens. In addition to adding to the quality and direction of light, it provides a smaller working aperture, with is important for scrounging some much-needed extra depth of field for close-ups.
And this little guy, who was one of about a gazillion cicadas that invaded the mid-east Atlantic area as part of the 17-year "Brood-X" cycle, was no exception.
This is a very easy thing to do, provided you have a strobe/stand setup.
I just pop the strobe onto the stand, set it to manual power (1/32 or 1/64 - really doesn't take much) and position it before shooting a test shot at the camera's highest synch speed. Use the best guess on the aperture, and then adjust by checking out the image on the back of the camera.
Once you have a good working aperture (the background will likely still be very dark) just dial down your shutter speed until the overall ambient exposure is reading 1 1/2 to 2 stops underexposed. This will create a good lighting ratio.
Once you are familiar with the process, the total time is about 30 seconds (if that) from the point that you plunk the flash down.
Camera - Nikon D2h Lens - Nikkor 55/2.8 micro Flash - Nikon SB-28, 1/32 or 1/64 power Exposure - Unknown, but probably about 1/60 at f/11 Sync: Pocket Wizard remotes
While driving back from an assignment in Western Maryland I noticed some archeologists digging near a zoning sign for a new intersection.
One of my favorite things about being a photojournalist is the "license to be curious" that comes with the job. So I stopped, got out, and ended up with a fairly interesting story.
The light was typical mid-day light for autumn, and it was coming from back right, which was the wrong direction. So I set up a strobe (pointed back at the sun) on the left, set it to full power and zeroed out my exposure at my camera's fastest synch speed (1/250, or 1/500, can't remember what body I was using.)
Then it was just a matter of moving the strobe forward or backward until I got a good balance with the sunlight, which acted as an opposing light in a cross light setup with the strobe.
I often do this rather than meter or dial down the strobe. Setting the camera to its high synch speed lets me use the least amount of strobe possible. Setting the strobe to full power (and moving it back until it balances) then gives me the greatest possible working distance.
One light, working against the sun, can give good shape and shadow detail to a whole scene if you shoot from the 45-degree angles from either the sun or the strobe.
When shooting outside at full power, I use a high voltage battery pack (usually a Lumedyne 052C minicycler) to get recycle times of about one second on the SB strobes.
Camera: Nikon D1h (I think) Lens: Nikkor 17-35 zoom @~24mm; 1/250 @f/16 Flash; Nikon SB-28 on light stand to camera left Full power; 70mm throw Sync: Pocket Wizard remotes
While shooting a story on the wind tunnel at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering, I wanted to get a photo of the giant fan that creates the 100mph+ winds for studying airflow around objects.
The available light was depressingly crappy - about 1/10th of a sec at f/2.8 (ASA 400) with typical institutional sodium vapor as the color temperature.
So, to separate the blades and draw the viewer into the frame, I stuck a Nikon SB-28dx on a small light stand and set it to 1/4 power. Remembering that the shadows always point to the light source, the flash is obviously behind the bottom blade. The flash is pointed directly at the camera, but hidden by the blade.
(I do that a lot, actually. In a dark situation, mount the flash backwards on the stand then turn the head back around towards the camera. The ready light will act as a guide to help you keep something between you and a backlighting flash in a darkened room.)
While the sodium vapors looked pretty bad at the correct exposure, they gave a neat, warm color cast when underexposed by about a stop and a half. Always consider altering the ambient portion of the exposure when faced with a light color you cannot easily balance for in camera. What looks terrible at the proper exposure might look cool and dramatic when over or under exposed.
So, now shooting at 1/30th at 2.8 (wide open and getting a saturated ambient color) I adjusted the output of the strobe by trial and error and arrived at 1/4 power as the best look on the backlight. Love that little digital polaroid on the back of my digital camera now. (I no longer carry a flash meter.)
The lens angle adjustment of the strobe was set to 24mm to get a nice wide throw of light in the cramped area.
I like this solution because the one small back light is accomplishing a lot of things. It is providing a hotspot to lead the eye into the photo. It is separating the person walking toward the fan. It is providing a nice spray of leading-line shadows coming from the fan blades, the braces and the guy. It is lighting the floor, which shows up reflected in the bottom of the motor housing.
And, most importantly, it is providing another light color and level on which to base my exposure, which allowed me to underexpose the sodium vapors to use the ambient light's color to my advantage.
Welcome to On Assignment, where you can build on your Lighting 101 skills by learning exactly how real-world assignments were lit.
The object will be to explain the process of making the photos as clearly as possible. But if you have worked your way through the Lighting 101 section, you should be able to reverse engineer the light on most photos just by looking at them.
Try to test yourself, then read the copy for specifics.
OK, can I tell you how much I am starting to like these things?
Being a guy, I realize I am genetically predisposed to liking bungee cords. But the thing about the ball bungees is that they have no metal hooks to scrape up your gear. Sweet.
Fellow Baltimore Sun photographer Karl Ferron turned me on to using bungees to secure a flash to a variety of things. On the rare occasion when I am caught without a light stand, these (and a little placement creativity) will get the job done in a pinch.
You just stretch it around whatever you want to fasten you flash to, aim the head, and start shooting. You can double them up for fastening flashes to thicker items, too.
They do double duty by holding my umbrella to my light stand when I am packing gear. They weigh next to nothing. They cost next to nothing - I paid $1.93 for a four-pack of 8" Ball Bungees (which is a very useful length) at WalMart. So get plenty.
They are good for fastening Pocket Wizards (we'll get to those soon) to a strobe, too.
While stands are usually the best choice, they aren't the only way to hold a light in a specific location. And other options take up less room in a lighting kit, too.
The favorite of most shooters is the "super clamp." It can latch onto just about anything, provided the thickness is a couple inches or less.
The bent arms of the clamping jaws make it particularly appropriate for clamping onto a variety of shapes. Pipes, railing, doors, shelves, tables, tree branches, electrical conduit running up the wall in a high school gym (not too tight...) are all no problem.
It comes with a stud that will accept a ball head or an umbrella stand adapter, too. So mounting your light is very easy. They are about $22.00, and every photographer should have at least one.
With the right accessory, they can hold remote cameras too -- or fix a roll of background paper to a light stand. A super clamp is one very useful piece of gear.
Now that you have decided to get the flash off of the camera, you'll need some place to put it. And for most situations the best choice will be to attach it to a light stand.
Most any light stand will safely support a shoe-mount strobe. So look for a stand that that is reasonably priced, can stand up to some abuse and is light and easily transportable.
For a compact, 5-section, six-foot stand, I like the LumoPro LP605 ($40) stand. I have half a dozen of them, and they are my go-to stand for small flashes. If you do not need the compact size for packing, you can save $10 and get a standard eight-foot stand for $30.
Both of these stands are sturdy and reasonably priced. If you are not going to put a stand through a hard duty cycle, there is no reason to spend a lot of money. Stands are not in the optical chain. They hold up the flash -- and a very small flash if you are using speedlights.
The 5-section compact stands are my workhorse (I use them regularly) because they fold up to a very compact package and will support a shoe-mount strobe just fine. But if you are looking to get a little extra height and are willing to forego the ultra-compact folding advantages of the compact stands, you have many good choices to suit just about any budget.
The second example, for instance, is a sturdier, taller, general purpose stand will double as a support for larger strobes when I need it, but does not fold as compactly because it has only three sections. There are plenty of good choices. But if you are shopping price, make sure the stand is a full-sized version, and not just a short "background" stand, though.
Besides extreme portability, another reason that I like the 5-section stands is that they use solid aluminum legs to save space. This means that they can be easily drilled (1/4" hole works fine - see detail photo) to take an O-ring so you can attach a strap. This is a great setup, as it allows you to just throw the stand over your shoulder as easily as carrying another camera body.
You can easily attach a strap to a tubular-legged light stand, too. Just use a little gaffer's tale and 3 or 4 inches of a straight section of clothes hanger wire with a little "bump-out" bent into the middle of it. Use needle-nosed pliers and gaffer tape the straight parts to the stand legs. Hook the O-rings to the middle parts.
One advantage of stands other than the compact variety is that it gives you more choices on the umbrella, which we will talk about later. The 5-section, small-folding stands are pretty close to the same size of the double-fold umbrellas, so they travel great. But if you get a normal-sized stand, you have a much wider choice of umbrellas to choose from.
(It would make very little sense to get a compact-folding stand and bungee it to a full-sized umbrella, or vice versa.)
Whichever way you go, either version will be very functional. TI use the compact stands most of the time. But if you do not need that Nth degree of portability, the normal stands and umbrellas will give you a more sturdy support for less money.
We are pretty much starting from scratch, so no worries. The first posts will be about what kind of gear you will need to do the minimalist strobe thing.
When we are done having our way with your wallet (remembering that light gives you far more bang-for-the-buck than does fast glass or the latest digital camera or 300/2.8) we'll move into basic technique. And after that, we'll keep it going with periodical essays and ideas on how to improve (or refresh) your lighting ability.
When you've worked your way through the basics of designing your light kit and learning how to use it, make a point to browse some of the examples in the "On Assignment" section. Those will be updated constantly, too. So keep checking back.
You will likely have some questions along the way. Sadly, it is not possible for me to take the time to personally answer all of the one-to-one lighting questions that pop up. So try to resist asking them in the comments section. The only people reading this behind you are the people who are, well, behind you.
You will find the one-to-one knowledge bank you seek in the Strobist Group on Flickr. There, you can ask away and get the diversity of response that you need. These are the lighting grad students, so to speak. They know this stuff, and are very enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge.
But please do your part and be considerate enough to search the Flickr group threads for relevant keywords in your question first. You are probably not the first person to ask. Or the tenth. Just sayin'.
Most of all, remember to have fun and learn to make some cool light.
UPDATE, Feb. 2, 2008: For a very nice head start into Lighting 101, take a couple of mins to watch this informative little slideshow.
It is by Paul Duncan, whose site you can see here.
Lighting 101 Series
(If you start with the first one, they are linked in order to each successive lesson.)
