Natural Lighting Help

[nala]

One of my biggest challenges is figuring out the lighting in my pictures. I have problems with something as simple as using the sun to strategically light up the backgrounds of my photos. I would love to get this figured out and then eventually move on to more dramatic lighting scenarios. Can anyone point me in the right direction of some good resources that could help me learn more?

Thanks!

 

[IgsEMT]

Strobist might be helpful, also look into David Ziser's lighting.
Dramatic lighting, is also about camera settings, like shooting above camera's sync speed will darken the background while flash will illuminate your subject - dramatic.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you're doing portraits with sun as your light, your subjects are HIGHLY likely to squint & sun leaves harsh shadows.
Good luck.

 

[musicaleCA]

+1 for Stobist. Get a flash and learn to love it.

 

[IgsEMT]

+1 for Stobist. Get a flash and learn to love it.

If I'm shooting landscapes, then chances are only dynalytes or monolights will help me and I'm not dragging those for fun. If shooting people, even on a sunny day, I'll use my flash, even on lowest possible setting just to fill in the ugly shadows and soften the overall image. IF however, I want a high contrast b/n two sides of the face, then I might not need a flash or will use a snoot to ad to natural lighting.

Another thing to keep in mind when shooting with natural lighting (post processing aside) is white balance. WHITE isn't SAME WHITE at every location thus be careful with skin tones. I'm a JPGer, my white balance is preset really to my flash and skin tones come out to what I want them to be.

 

[KmH]

One of my biggest challenges is figuring out the lighting in my pictures. I have problems with something as simple as using the sun to strategically light up the backgrounds of my photos. I would love to get this figured out and then eventually move on to more dramatic lighting scenarios. Can anyone point me in the right direction of some good resources that could help me learn more?

Thanks!

Natural lighting is difficult to use because you have so little control over it's direction or brightness.

Controlled dramatic lighting comes from using strobed light, either from speedlights or studio strobes.

Strobist.com is undoubtably the best resource on the Internet for off camera flash techniques. www.planetneil.com is the best online resource for on camera flash technique.

If you like to use books the Strobist book equivilent would be:

Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography by Kirk Tuck

 

[nala]

Thanks for the help everyone! There is so much to learn - I think those sites will be a big help!

 

[nala]

Ok... one more quick(?) question. I have a Nikon D80. If I were to buy one on-camera flash to start learning with, what would be a good choice?

 

[Phranquey]

Ok... one more quick(?) question. I have a Nikon D80. If I were to buy one on-camera flash to start learning with, what would be a good choice?

Go with the SB-600. I would recommend the SB-800, it is more versatile & more powerful, but it is now out of production and getting more expensive...even used. The SB-400 is a little too underpowered, IMO, and the SB-900 is outrageously expensive and, to my knowledge, still has overheating problems.

 

[snaggle]

Here is a good video on shooting out side.

 

[IgsEMT]

Go with the SB-600. I would recommend the SB-800, it is more versatile & more powerful, but it is now out of production and getting more expensive...even used. The SB-400 is a little too underpowered, IMO, and the SB-900 is outrageously expensive and, to my knowledge, still has overheating problems. __________________

Ditto!
ebay for sb800. I recently got sb800 used and wondering how I was happy with SB600. It isn't so much the power of it, it is also the quality of the light that comes out. Now my SB600 is mostly backup light.

 

[nala]

Thanks so much for the great advice and helping me to get on track. I really appreciate it!

 

[JerryPH]

The bottom line is that if you leave your lighting control you, your shots will come out based on the circumstances. When YOU take control of your lighting... you are way less dependent on natural lighting's limitations and can get better results.

 

[nala]

Since I'm just starting out, I was planning to go with the less expensive SB-600 flash, but now you all have me thinking about buying a used SB-800 instead. Is there anything I should be concerned with about buying a used flash? Are there any parts, like bulbs or capacitors maybe, that would wear out and make the flash useless? Or are these kinds of thing easily replaceable?

Thanks!

 

[ddeerreekk]

One of my biggest challenges is figuring out the lighting in my pictures. I have problems with something as simple as using the sun to strategically light up the backgrounds of my photos. I would love to get this figured out and then eventually move on to more dramatic lighting scenarios. Can anyone point me in the right direction of some good resources that could help me learn more?

Thanks!

I'm also pretty new to lighting in photography, however I've done a lot of research about things and have a few comments.

From your post it sounds like you're only wanting to use natural light - is that the case? If so there's a few things you can do to get pretty nice pictures. Shooting in the 'golden' hours, when the sun is low and the light is nice often gets you pretty nice results. I'd suggest picking up a good size reflector, if you're bouncing the sun directly onto it you'd be surprised how much light you can add.

If you want to use flash - that's a whole other story.

 

[nala]

I'm also pretty new to lighting in photography, however I've done a lot of research about things and have a few comments.

From your post it sounds like you're only wanting to use natural light - is that the case? If so there's a few things you can do to get pretty nice pictures. Shooting in the 'golden' hours, when the sun is low and the light is nice often gets you pretty nice results. I'd suggest picking up a good size reflector, if you're bouncing the sun directly onto it you'd be surprised how much light you can add.

If you want to use flash - that's a whole other story.

Well, I took a portrait class over the summer where we only used natural light. Since I'm just getting into photography, and so many of the photos people took in class turned out nice, I thought that I would try to keep costs to a minimum and just stick with natural light while I learned. To tell you the truth, until I started reading your responses, it never even occurred to me to use a flash in the sunlight. Well, (I'm sure you all know how this goes) now I'm getting sucked right in to photography and am starting to think I need a flash. Especially since, now that I think about it, living in Minnesota means that during the winter months I would only be able to shoot on the weekends if I relied solely on natural light.