help me UNDERSTAND speed lights for portraits, please

[table1349]

Get this and read it. Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting: Paul Fuqua, Steven Biver Fil Hunter: 8580001063096: Amazon.com: Books

 

[andrewdoeshair]

Sweet. Just ordered it. Thank you

 

[Derrel]

I really like the portrait of the woman with the colored hair!

A snoot tends to put out a small, concentrated pool of light. Can a reflector work as a hair light? Sometimes, yes, depending on what light is hitting it, and the angle and distance of the reflector to the person. A metallized silver reflector for example, can reflect a lot of light, and if it is angled and held in place correctly, it might make a good hair light, but if the main light doesn't hit the reflector well, it might not work very well. In lighting, everything, and I mean everything, interrelates with everything else, and there are no hard and fast rules, but there are generalities.

Basically this is the generality: snoots are not nearly as versatile as are honeycomb grids which are paired with diffusing material. If the hairlight comes in at a steep angle, it will be "hot" light, so the angles of 11,12,1,2,and 3 o'clcok make the hair light or rim light "hot". Less-steep incoming angles make a hair or rim light less hot, and more diffuse, more subtle. This is why a snoot is not the best tool for lighting hair.

The "best" hair lighting is subtle, and is close to the main light's character, not "hot", not "look, I used a hairlight!" This is where a 10 degree or 20 degree or 35 degree honeycomb grid with a diffuser over the grid, is fantastic. Or, you can use a strip box, or small umbrella, or even a ceiling bounce off a wall, as a subtlle, soft, diffused source of hair lighting. As you have already learned, the light shaping tools for "real" studio flash units, like the grid you now own, make life much easier than making do with speedlights and makeshift light shaping tools.

For hair lighting, I would really,really suggest a honeycomb grid set for the second light, and a barn door set for it, and at least two diffuser attachments for the grid. This will give you fantastic hair lighting, from close distances; this is what grids and diffusers and barndoors are expressly for. The barn door set can also prevent lens flare, and can be used with one door almost closed, the other door wide open, so you can light the backdrop a little tiny bit, yet still control the light that would otherwise flare the lens.

The biggest issue with a speedlight and a DIY snoot is how to get the light to be subtle. It CAN be done, but again, remember the way light becomes specular, and "hot" when the angle it hits is steep in relation to the lens axis. Look into drinking straw snoots for speedlights if you want a project. YES, there are some massively heavy and big C-stands. My Avengers have a base that is roughly 30 inches in a circle, about like a regular light stand, so maybe the borrowed one was extra-massive?

 

[Derrel]

In Los Angeles, and in-stock: Matthews | Hollywood 40in. Double Riser C Stand - Chrome | 756040

 

[andrewdoeshair]

Thanks for the reply. Today I built some racks to store my tripods, stands, and folded modifiers against a wall instead of in a pile in the corner, and in the next few days I'll be installing a pair of big heavy duty wall-mounted boom arms that I found on Amazon. They appear to be pretty amazing from the reviews and customer photos. They can support like 15 lbs, extend 5 feet (my studio is 10x10), fold up against a wall when not in use, and swivel almost 180 degrees both vertically and horizontally. I figure if I can get stuff off of the floor and (functionally) against the walls it won't be a headache to have one stand out with a reflector or light. I'm going to see if there is an appropriate thread to which I can contribute with photos of my stand rack.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

Ah whatever, I'll just side track this thread to show the racks. I'm really happy with them. Saved a lot of floor space. They match my coffee table perfectly (mahogany and walnut)


Here they are after putting them up.

 

[nickgillespie]

Ok. I'll admit that I haven't read the whole thread, but I have a few tips.

Firstly, move the lights as close to the subjects without getting them in the shot. The further away the lights are the more harsh the light will be (shiny skin) and harsh the shadows will be.

Then for exposure... f4 is fine. But, turn your iso up a bit. If you are at iso 100 vs 800... the lights have to kick out light 3 stops brighter.

I think that with just those two things you will see a huge difference.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

I put up some cool boom arms today that saved a TON of room. They're really neat. I can support my Canon SL1 with a 50mm F1.8 lens on it for overhead shots when I do haircut videos. It also holds my beauty dish with no problem. I took this pic 3.5 seconds after I installed them, and I just threw some random light things on there to make sure it would all fit. The LED guy on the arm by the wall would be a go to for my YouTube videos, and the beauty dish is probably going to stay there for a long time. When the arms are closed up they fold against the wall and out of my way. Very happy with the purchase so far.


I had a few minutes to drag a neighbor in for some test pictures. I can tell that I'm cooking with fire now, compared to when I had speed lights and amazon's cheapest shoot through umbrellas. I feel like I've got LOTS to learn, but I'm excited to try. I have models lined up all week (well, they think they're just getting haircuts, but they're also going to be my test subjects). I've got a big soft box and a snoot coming from Amazon, as well as the book which was mentioned earlier in this thread. Hopefully it's only up from here!

 

[Derrel]

Looks like you did a great job with the boom arms and the racks for the stands! I think this latest haircut image with the woman is dramatic, and I like the way her hair is illuminated in the pool of light, aqnd the way the light on her clothing falls off into darkness. The background lighting pattern is very nice as well, and it makes her stand out well, with that bit of light hitting the wall behind her.

You are indeed cooking with fire now! No longer are you speedlighting; you've got regular studio-type light modifiers and those bring with them a number of things. Like, for example, notice the under-the-nose shadow placement in the shot above: perfect! That's what a modeling light can do for you: you can literally SEE exactly where the light is striking the subject. Good days are ahead for you, I know it.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

I watched a bunch of tutorials covering grids and gels last night and I just purchased some grids and gels, and nicer flash thingies (the metal hood sort of thing), apparently a dimpled metal surface will produce a better result than the shiny smooth surface that my stock dealies have. I might be going overboard with purchases, for a guy who has almost zero experience with studio lighting so far, but I want to get good at this. I want to be able to cook up dramatic lighting for dramatic haircuts, and classic lighting for classic haircuts. I want my photos to be an extension of the message behind the haircut.

I've hired photographers in the past who have done amazing work but the whole time I'd feel like I wasn't able to accurately tell them what I saw in the haircut that I'd want the pictures to say. Ultimately I was happiest working with one photographer regularly enough to start knowing each other's tastes, and letting him be completely in charge of the photos, but I still want to be able to have a voice through photos like I've been able to have through haircuts.

In my field (instagram hair doers) 99% of the photos look the same, you get barbers with Rebels shooting every haircut at 1.8 because the shallow DOF is new and cool to them (nothing wrong with it, it's just everywhere you look), then you get stylists shooting everyone with a ring light and an iPhone, then using an app to smudge the background. Even when I find someone doing great photos they kind of have their style of shooting, which is the same across their entire portfolio. I want my content to be more versatile and ever-changing than my peers. Something they couldn't copy if they tried. I want my Instagram photos to look like something you'd see in a magazine, not something you'd see on Instagram.

I've grown a decent following on Instagram, one of the biggest for what I do, and along the way I'd see that a handful of us would step up our photography a little bit and then slowly the rest of the scene would follow. Like an echo chamber. Someone pointed a flash light up at the scalp to get more highlights fading into the dark hair at the top of a fade, and then you started seeing shadows above and behind the ear on everyone's haircut photos. I got a few candid shots of clients hanging out after their haircut, then I started seeing that become a bit of a thing, to break up the stream of mug shots. I'm not complaining that everyone's work looks the same, and I'm not saying that people are copying me, but I see it as an opportunity not just to get to do something different, but to have to do something different. Maybe not different to the world of photography, but different to the world of haircut photos on Instagram. I recently started shooting haircuts in a candid manner with a Pentax ME Super and Kodak Tri X (pic below), but while I love the aesthetic it hasn't been a big hit with my crowd. I think they want something with more detail in the hair. Hopefully this venture into lighting will give me the voice behind a camera that I want.

 

[Derrel]

It sounds like a situation and industry tailor-made for Instagram and cool lighting set-ups and so on. You've now got some basic stuff. Start learning about studio lighting, and about how light behaves "in general". Really learn and understand the Inverse Square Law, which relates to smallp-space lighting and shoots to a very important degree. The Inverse Square Law means that the closer the light is to the subject (or background!) the more-rapidly that light's intensity drops off, and the farther away the light is from the subject, the more-even the light's intensity stays across increasing or decreasing distance. Many people do NOT understand this, even some professional shooters. Working in a 10x10 foot space, this is a critical thing to understand fully. I cannot stress enough that the ISL is critical in such a confinded, discrete shooting area!

Grids keep the light traveling straight forward, and reduce angular deviation. They also cut don on the intensity/brightness of lights to which they are attached. Grids help keep light rays from hitting areas that are outside of the main area being lit, so they can help to prevent stray light from hitting the camera lens, or the background wall, or whatever.Grids for octaboxes and softboxes ofren have 1.5 x1.5 inch or 2 x 2 inch grid size spacing; grids for a 5 or 7 inch or 11 inch or 16 inch metal reflector often have drinking straw-sized holes, up to maybe 3/8th x 3/8th inch holes. A grid is a way to create a subtle bit of lighting, like on a head of hair, from a light only 3,4,5 feet away.

Grids are a specialized tool. Think of them as thinning shears. Adding a diffuser over a grid can change the the light works, to a huge degree.

I would say one thing: lighting depends a lot on the specifics at hand: the room size, the walls, reflectors or not, diffusers or not, and so on. Small changes in placement can make a big difference. MANY on-line lighting diagrams have things shown wrongly, for various reasons, so if you saee an on-line diagram and it does not work the way the photos seem to indicate it should, then consider that some thing or some things, plural, were illustrated wrongly. Little things can matter.

There is no doubt in my mind that your lighting efforts WILL give you the voice you want.

 

[Designer]

I want my Instagram photos to look like something you'd see in a magazine, not something you'd see on Instagram.

 

[andrewdoeshair]

The Inverse Square Law means that the closer the light is to the subject (or background!) the more-rapidly that light's intensity drops off, and the farther away the light is from the subject, the more-even the light's intensity stays across increasing or decreasing distance.

I need to go wipe bits of my mind off the walls. Is there a "mind blown" emoji?

 

[Designer]

I need to go wipe bits of my mind off the walls. Is there a "mind blown" emoji?

 

[andrewdoeshair]

A few more quick questions, for anybody still reading this thread (sorry, I don't want to start a new one for every little question I have regarding this ongoing learning process). I haven't bought a good soft box yet because there are so many kinds out there and I'm not sure exactly what to look for. My lights have a Bowens mount but I keep finding extra terms like "bowens S mount." Is that the same thing? What's an S mount? I'm tempted to get something like a 24x24 softbox because my space is so small, but is that going to end up being a novelty item that is too small to do any good? Should I plan on buying two of them, or will one be plenty if I'm also using my beauty dish? And the hardest part of these questions, can the right softboxes be found on Amazon? I came into a big Amazon gift card so I'm hoping I can find the right softbox(es) there, and not Adorama or B&H.

Thank you!!