Free online photography course

I am not talking about someone putting out teasers for an expensive DVD, but a true online course — complete with photos and discussions. I came across this on one of the photo forums, hope this will help budding photographers:

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classroom.php 

This is really great, better than any basic photography book I have come across. Happy shooting!

The best explanation of flash sync speed

I have read a lot of articles, but nothing comes close to this video on what a flash sync speed on camera is:

Thank you, SnapFactory!

Random lessons on lighting set-ups

Yesterday was a great day. I learnt a ton from a great teacher — let us call him Jim. He is sharp and very responsive to my questions. No wonder I learn best when I can question, not for the sake of questioning, but getting my fundamentals right.

I captured some lessons for the benefits of others to learn, discuss, debate, etc. Please feel free to do so using the “Comments” section.

Note: I am posting this without pictures, just to get it out on the blog. I will post the pictures soon to go along with article. In the meanwhile, please use your imaginative mind!

#1: Inverse square law is your best friend

If you don’t, you better internalize this like breathing. Simply put, the law says, the power of light at a point is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light source. Come on, you are technical enough to understand this!

Let’s say you have a light source pointing at a subject, and distance between them is one foot. If the background is a foot from the subject, the background gets 1/4 the amount of light falling on the subject. Meaning — the background is 2 stops below the subject.

Why does this matter? For one, you could easily darken the background, even if it is a light one. How? Think about it, if I make the distance between the light source and the subject same as the subject and background, the background gets light 2-stops below what the subject is. If you metered well for the subject, the background becomes darker. If you have a white background, it comes gray. How simple can changing your background be, without using gels!

Also, this factors into if you should use a reflecting umbrella or a shoot-through. A reflecting umbrella adds additional distance to the subject, so you will need more power to light your subject. Simply reversing this, and using the umbrella as shoot-through, you can get the light closer to the subject — imagine all the savings in the power, batteries, etc.

#2: Plan your set-up space for reflections AKA consider a softbox

The inverse square law is within ideal conditions — meaning, the light falling on the subject comes from one source only, and there is no other source. But come to think about it, there could be multiple sources within a studio — walls could reflect, so can other things within the set-up. This is where a softbox or a strip light needs to be considered. Softboxes make the light directional, unlike shoot-through umbrellas which diffuse light in all directions, hence increasing the potential for reflections. By directing light in one direction using softbox of strip light not only reduces this, but also gives you controlled lighting.

#3: Rule of thumb: Stop down about 4 stops to cut off the ambient

Assume a normal exposure for a scene, lit purely by ambient is f2.8 at 1/15 (dim light). If you stopped down the camera 4 stops or more, the resulting picture would be dark — as if there were no light. Once you have done this, strobe lighting becomes the sole light source for you to paint the picture.

The question is, which of the Aperture, Shutter Speed or ISO would you change to get this change in stops? Any of the above, but if you plan to use strobe lighting, it almost is Shutter speed. However, if the ambient is too strong (too many windows open), you can change shutter speed or aperture, but try doing it merely with shutter speed as you will have much more latitude with aperture.

So, in the above example, you could meter to f2.8 at 1/250 and you have a lowered the exposure 4 stops. What if your sync speed is only 1/180? Then you could work with f4 at 1/180 and get the same effect.

The rule is just that — you can break it if you want, but make sure you have lowered exposure at least 2 stops, else the final picture will contain too much ambient light.

Another side point, if setting your shutter speed to the sync speed gets you 4 stops or more, simply set it to the sync speed. Stopping down the shutter will only help cut off ambient.

#4: Open up the aperture to save flash power AKA “Shutter controls the ambient, aperture controls the flash”

It is well-known fact that the shutter speed has absolutely no effect when using a flash — the flash occurs for a very small amount of time, much smaller than the sync speed on most cameras. A typical sync speed is about 1/200 second, and the flash duration is usually 1/1000 or smaller.

This means, the only way you can control the exposure by flash is by the aperture. Think about it: When the shutter has opened and closed, the flash is already done firing, and is relaxing for the next shot. Making shutter go faster has no bearing, and besides, you cannot make the shutter go faster than sync speed. However, if you stop the aperture down, you let a smaller amount of this light through.

Ambient, on the other hand, is a constant light and hence can easily be controlled by the shutter speed. As mentioned in point #3, save changing the aperture until you start working with strobes. The biggest advantage of this is, with larger apertures (as in small F numbers), you will need only small power from the flash. This will not only save batteries, but with some flashes, like Sunpak 383s I use, you can get more flashes with single recycle. If you are using larger strobes, like Alien Bees, you will see this benefit as well.

#5: Setting the flash power levels

All flashes, manual or automatic, have power setting guides — based on the ISO, f-stop and distance to the subject. I have noticed that these are fairly accurate when the flash is used without any modifiers. When you use a modifier like an umbrella, you lose about 1-2 stops. That means, you should easily be able to set the power levels without taking too many test pictures.

#6: Balancing the ambient and flash is easier than you thought

This is best when you work outdoors, and there is a bright background — bright daylight, sunset, etc. If you have a person against the background, you will notice that the person is either silhouetted or just simply not exposed well. You could use the flash as a filler in this dark space, but the question is how.

Let us say the metering for the background is f8 at 1/500. To match the sync speed, it becomes f13 at 1/180. Set this in your camera, and set the camera power appropriately (as mentioned in #5), and shoot away!

You can create nicer pictures by subduing the background exposure — by simply stopping down the shutter speed 1-2 stops, depending on how dramatic you want the contrast. Remember, use shutter speed, not aperture, to  control the background/ambient.

the chicagoland strobist meetup: Part 1, what I learnt

The meetup of the Chicagoland Strobist enthusiasts this past weekend was fun, and yet tiring. I don’t remember running around, or carrying anything heavy, and yet I have sore legs. I met a lot of cool people, full of energy. Coordinating something of this scale is tough, as I have learnt in the past, and hats off to Kevin for not only doing this, but also being able to secure such a neat place. I wish our work place had such a large conference room, I would be spending all my weekends there!

So, now to the boring part — capturing what I learnt from the shoot.

1. There’s a lot you can learn from a group
   If you are a beginner, or even an intermediate-level photographer, there is a lot you can learn from your peers. Like musical notes, everyone’s creativity can be brought in to produce different results. For the most part, I was a “fly on the wall” (Sorry Cadge), trying to see what others were doing, how they were posing models, the light positions, etc. Like I have mentioned in the past, being an assistant to a photographer has immense benefits — you don’t have a great deal of responsibility, but you can learn a ton.
   
2. There is a lot you can learn about your camera
   he group setting reinforces the fact that you have to be good with your photo equipment. With time being limited, and people lined up to shoot, you better know how to set your camera exposure, else you will bore the model. While I didn’t have a lot of these problems, there were a few who had the trouble (Danielle, I won’t tell it was you).  But hey, lesson learnt — get good with your camera. Know where the aperture settings are, how to dial in the shutter speed, or set the ISO, etc. While there is no real pressure, you are wasting your own time that you could have used to shoot a few more shots.
   
3. I need a lot of time shooting by myself
   I like the group to learn, but there is a lot of givens — there is some pressure to “move along” once you are done 10 shots with a model. But my creative side says, there were a lot of poses I would have liked to take. Guess what, you could do that. Hire a model or get one on a TFCD basis, and practice on your own. I am going to get some books on posing, expect another post on this. But the main point is, you need to spend a lot of time trying out or researching poses, since your time with models is limited, and you’d better get some good shots within the few hours you have.
   
4. I need more equipment
   No one said photography was a cheap hobby. I’d heard the same about running, until I saw people buying GPS, Watches, expensive shoes, nutritional material, etc. — I wondered if they were running or training for the marines. Well, every hobby can be expensive, depending on how much support you need and how crazy you can get.

   For the purposes of the meetups, I think I may buy the PocketWizard MultiMax Transceiver. They are expensive, but in the time you have at the meetup, if you don’t have one, you waste a lot of time just borrowing someone else’s. People were nice about lending theirs, but nothing like having your own. For shoots I do by myself, I think I will stick to the Cactus-brand triggers. I also bought a Wein Peanut Slave from Craigslist for $10 (you can get a new one for < $20), and the thing is very sensitive and accurate. Collect a few and, if you are shooting by yourself, you don’t have to spend the $$$ on the Pocket Wizards.

   I am also thinking of buying a background stand, the ones you get on eBay. The lowest I have seen is about $90, with shipping, and with some seamless paper should give me something basic to work with.
   

5. Working with ambient lighting
   One of the things that puzzled me was — if we are going to shoot with flashes, how the hell do we light up the models? With the ambient, fluorescent lights, of course! I had no trouble with the white balance, partially because the ambient wasn’t too strong that we had to use stronger strobes. Well, I am looking into some daylight-balanced fluorescent lights, and will report back. These lights are supposed to balance with the sunlight, so having one in your studio will give you one less thing to worry about.
   
6. Last but not least, all the lighting techniques and all the improvisations
   I will have a follow-up post soon, but the lessons learnt around lighting positions was great. It is great to learn how the position and the power setting of the flashes affect your final pictures. We also improvised a lot — we used one of the walls as a backdrop, and worked out great (as you will see in follow up post).