Seven Days of Self Day 07 — Motion: So you might be a little confused… there is no motion in the picture above or the one on flickr. This is because they are only a preview of the image you can see the motion in the image below. I’ve wanted to do a cinemagraph for a while & thought this would be a pretty good opportunity. Unsurprisingly they are quite tricky to produce as a self portrait. I am sure I’ll be doing some more of them though. Glad I’ve got through this project finished now normal service can resume (Read: Photos of coffee & other, more interesting, people).

The Motion

1, Getting A Camera — 2009

Sort of obvious but everyone has to start somewhere & I look back on this starting point fondly. I got my Canon 450D on the 2nd of January 2009 & I was hooked right away! I loved that camera &reep the benefits completed 300 days of Project 365 before upgrading to a 50D in October & finishing off the project.

2, Switching Entirely To Prime Lenses — 2010

For those of you who don’t know what a prime lens is, it’s a lens with a fixed focal length rather than a zoom. In 2009 I got my first prime, the Canon 50mm F/1.8. I was immediately hooked on the increased sharpness & low depth of field this sort of lens could achieve.

To start with I didn’t feel that moving entirely to primes was the way forward, but I found myself using my 50mm more & more. When framing up a subject I’d be walking backwards & forwards instead of twisting the lens. It took me a while to realise that I could do that all the time with all the lenses. I just had to put myself in the right spot & then I could reep the benefits of a prime lens.

On September 21st I acquired the the final lens in my triple threat attack squad the 28mm F/1.8. My main kit bag now normally consists of a 28mm F/1.8, 50mm F/1.4 & a 135mm F/2.0, I find that this has me covered in 99% of situations. I actually realised today that I don’t have any zooms for any of my cameras at all, even my new X100 is a 23mm F/2.0 prime.

3, Going Full Frame — 2011(ish)

At the very end of 2010 (December 27th) I went full frame. I spent all my saves on a 5D MkII & I’ve been broke ever since… worth it! Upgrading to to full frame has been amazing — improved image quality, amazing ISO capabilities, more space in the frame, getting the most out of my lenses, the list goes on & on. I don’t think i’ll ever be able to go back to having a crop sensor in my main camera.

So now it’s 2012, I guess that means I’m due another milestone… maybe it’s my X100, maybe I haven’t worked it out yet, either way I hope my progression with photography continues.

What about you guys? Any of your own milestones?

Yesterday after work I shot over to Leeds to see bad boy photographer Jordan Green, with him being down in Farnham most of the time now we don’t get to hang out so much but it’s always nice to see him. He dragged out his friend Katie & we played with lights & took some photos in 600 mph winds — challenging.

Luckily Jordan & I are pro as fuck, we got the lights up & shot a few spots around Leeds until we lost the feeling in our fingers (Brr cold!). The shot above was my favourite from the night, which you can see on my flickr too. I’m sure I’ll get some more uploaded when I get a chance to edit them… Hmmm actually maybe my favourite shot was the one of Jordan being a pimp:

Jordan The Pimp

Lighting Diagram

Been a little while since I had all my lights out for a play, been craving it today — so I convinced Sarah to let me shoot her in the face. POW!

You can see it on my flickr too… if you’re into that sort of thing.

My lights TOTALLY looked like this:

Super Bonus Alternative Shot

I shot this one with my Canon 135mm F/2.0L, ditched the ringflash and upped the power on the softbox to a 1/4th.

Shooting Conditions & Location

When you are shooting with the sun, the time of day, location & your positioning are very important. Believe it or not THE SUN IS BRIGHTER THAN YOUR FLASH which can make it very hard to balance, especially since you can only use a limited range of shutter speeds due to the flash sync speed. Shooting a bit later in the day can make your life a lot easier, especially if you’re wanting to shoot with a wider aperture. I did this shoot at around 5pm when the sun was just starting to fall out of the sky.

If you are shooting with the sun behind you, lighting the background & subject, it would be fairly pointless adding a flash you either want to be shooting into the sun, almost creating a silhouette of your subject, or shooting from a location that’s shaded, or both. I went for both on this shoot — I found a nice spot in the woods facing the right way for the sun set, under the cover of a lot of trees.

Basic Framing & Exposing The Available Light

After I’ve got my location right what I like to do is get my basic framing; nothing set in stone (it can be tweaked later) I just need the general idea so I can start getting the available light just how I like it. I use a tripod for quite a lot of my shoots so I get it setup, camera locked into place & then wander round till I’m relatively happy with it.

Whenever I am doing a strobist shot I ALWAYS get my available light, in this case daylight, exposed correctly before I add in any flashes. It will make subsequent steps so much easier to get right & help you get to a better end result in less time. With this shot I wanted to get the nice orange tones out of the sunset & leave my subject quite under exposed, almost silhouetted, while staying within a useable range.

Usable Range — When you are setting up your camera for a strobist portrait remember you only have a certain usable range with some of your settings. As we are shooting a person we want our shutter speed at at least 1/50th & we are using strobes so no faster than 1/250th. We’ve got to consider aperture here too — if we are shooting very wide, e.g. F/1.4, it’s easy to over expose the daylight; if we are shooting very narrow, e.g. F/16, we could soon be in a position where the flash just isn’t bright enough.

Too Dark

ISO100 — F/2.0 — 1/200th

I guessed some initial settings that I thought might work with the daylight & give me the look I wanted. First try left my shot much too dark all over but I got a good starting point to work from.

Too Light

ISO400 — F/2.0 — 1/50th

The next lot of settings I tried were much too bright for what I wanted & I had lost the colours from the sunset.

Just Right

ISO200 — F/2.0 — 1/80th

Third time lucky, I split the difference between the last two shots & nailed it. My background looks good & subject is underexposed — now I can start thinking about adding some of my own lights to bring the subject back to life.

Add Strobes

Because I was in such a dark shaded environment, I wanted to use two strobes in this shot. The first as key light to expose the subject nicely & then a second fill light reducing the contrast of the scene & illuminating the area around the subject a little giving us a little context. The fill light isn’t essential, you could happily shoot without it, but I thought it really added to the shot & would save me time trying to rescue some of the details on the ground & trees in post production.

I always start by getting my key light right first; I wanted to get a really nice soft light & cast a gentle shadow onto the tree from the subject. The process of getting the exposure for the flash right is very similar to exposing the ambient light, except this time we are changing the settings & position of the flash.

The Key Light

I put my Canon 580ex into my Westcott Apollo & placed them out wide & to the side. I set it to a low power, 1/32th, & took a shot, it was too dark & the shadows were too flat — I turned it up & moved it slightly further from the camera then took another shot. I did this a few times until it was on 1/8th power & I was happy with the positioning.

Adding The Fill Light

Once my key light was dialed in I set up my fill light, for this I was using a Canon 430ex in an umbrella box. The umbrella box is great for giving a good even spread of light. I set it up camera right — quite high & angled down. I then used the same process to get the power right — 1/8th. You can see that the fill light gives us much more environmental detail.

It can take a little bit of playing around to get the lights just right, it’s very trial & error, but after a little experience you’ll notice it’ll take you a lot fewer tries to get it right. I’ve done a nifty little top down lighting diagram for you too just to make it a little easier for you to get your head round where everything was.

The Shot

All the strobes are in place, the natural light is exposed beautifully, all that is left to do is take the photos! Work through some poses with your subject, remember you are meant to be having fun, talk to them lots, put them at ease, make them laugh. Take LOADS of photos, if you take 100 photos & you have 1 good one then you are WINNING & you’ve probably got some tigerblood in ya.

This is one of my finals with a touch of editing, mostly a bit of contrast and some tonal adjustments. You can see this shot on my Flickr where you’ll be able to check out the large version & see all the EXIF data… if that’s your kinda thing.

Watch Me

I didn’t even think it was possible, but I think this video is even worse than the last, at least you’ll be able to see the shoot a bit… I should have planned better.

Home Work

So basically cancel whatever plans you did have for this weekend, you’re going out to do a photo shoot. No seriously, I don’t care who’s birthday party/bar mitzvah/funeral you are meant to be going to — cancel it. You are gunna do a shoot, in the daylight, with a flash, like this. Once you’ve done it leave me a comment & let me know about it. You should upload it to flickr too & add it to my Flickr Group!

You should follow me on twitter to hear about my nextpost, oh & all the other adventures I get up to.

Thanks

Big thanks to John for doing the behind the scenes footage, Leah for modelling & Abi for doing the makeup & styling — & to Josh for letting me borrow his 550D to film this on.

If you want to get started with strobist photography it does not have to cost the earth. I’ve put together a list of budget kit with a direct comparison to their premium counter parts. I set John & a few others up with with exact set up listed on the left-hand-side for their first strobist adventures — happy to report they are still loving it.

Speedlight

Light Stand

Bracket

Umbrella

Triggers

Totals

I am not saying that premium products are bad, I like them a lot, but there is a time and a place for them and making your first step into off camera flash photography is probably not the time or the place. £117 will get you a great setup to start experimenting with and it’ll also feel a lot less rapey than £586!

A Note On: Softboxes

Ok, so since I put this post live I have had a lot of questions about softboxes and what a good cheap softbox would be to get started. Honestly all the cheap softboxes I have used have been horrid, really terrible — fiddly to put up, fiddly to take down. The first portable/strobist softbox I have come across that I have really liked is the Westcott Apollo, and I mean REALLY liked! This thing owns! So here I wouldn’t recommend going cheap — if you really want a softbox splash out a bit, you can pick them up for about £120 & IMO they are well worth it. Also Westcott recently announced that they have a new distribution partner in the UK, so that should make it even easier to get their products. I just wouldn’t recommend buying it from Creative Video.

If you really cant bare to part with that sort of money you could grab some umbrella boxes, they don’t give you the control of a soft box but they do give you that nice diffused light. You can grab some nice big 43 inch ones here for £44.

My Tools

So these are the core tools that I have in my bag when I go out to do these sort of shots. I found it really hard to know what bits to pick up when I was getting into off camera flash photography so I wanna explain some of the options you have. Remember, there are online universities offering photography courses if you really want to be a “pro” in this field.

Lights

Aside from the camera arguably the most important part of the strobists tool kit. There are loads of options here depending on budget. I use the Canon 430ex, other options are the Canon 580ex, Nikon SB-900 Nikon SB-600, Nikon SB-24… the list goes on. Vivitar & Sunpak make some cheaper flash units that might be investigating if you are on a tight budget but you do get what you pay for. The key things you are looking for is that the power can be adjusted, you don’t need to worry about a flashes automatic capabilities, unless you are willing to part with some serious cash for the new Pocket Wizard ControlTL triggers, I shoot with all my flashes on full manual.

Triggers & Receivers

So really good triggers are really expensive, the real industry leaders here are Pocket Wizard – they are reliable & have an insane range. But they aren’t for me. I just can’t justify spending the amount of money on them that I would need to. A set of two go for £320 and you need one per flash and one for the camera, that would put me out £640 for me to run my current set up! I can’t justify that. I currently use the very cheap but popular PT-04 triggers, you can pick the newly designed ones up from amazon around £20 for a trigger & receiver kit. They do misfire some times & the range is no where near as good as the PWs but for the price they are great.

I have recently been looking at the Seculine Twinlink T2D kit, which seems to be something that fills the gap between the cheap triggers & the expensive ones. I think some time in the near future I will be making the upgrade to these.

Hotshoe With PC Port

I don’t connect my flash directly to the receiver, I actually sit my flash into a hotshoe with a PC port on the side, I then velcro my receiver to the top of my flash & run a cable. Mainly because I don’t trust the cheap plastic that the receivers are made from, I have already lost one flashgun because of it falling off a light stand, I don’t want to lose any more thank you very much. The hotshoes I have are made of metal and hardened plastic they also have a locking nut on them which means I can get them really tight on the light & umbrella bracket. They aren’t going anywhere! Mine are pretty similar to these bad boys but I sure as hell didn’t pay £10 each for them! I think they were around £2.50 each, totally worth it!

Light & Umbrella Bracket

This one is pretty easy, there are a few on the market, they all the do the same thing really. I have these ones, they hold an umbrella & a flash in place nicely but they do require that the flash, or hotshoe if you are using one, screw/lock in to be held securely in place.

Light Stand

Another straight forward one, you can’t really go wrong. As long as they go up to a decent height & aren’t going to fall over you are safe. I use the Konig brand ones which are available from Amazon for just under £12. But there are plenty of other options.

Update: This evening I put together a diy light stand out of some old bits I found in my dads garage, you can check it out here.

Umbrellas

Umbrellas get a little more complicated. Firstly the bigger the umbrella the more diffused the light will be. Secondly the bigger the umbrella the more power you will need to put through it. When using speedlights a good guide size to go for is between 60-100cm. There are 2 main types, shoot through and reflective, I like to keep both handy they are pretty inexpensive so it can’t hurt to have a seclection.

Shoot throughs are the white ones, you point the umbrella at the subject and pop. They also spill light everywhere though, so you don’t have quite as much control over the light, but it will spread it out better. This one would do a fine job.

Reflective umbrellas are the black ones, you point the umbrella away from the subject and the flash into the umbrella. Then the flash fires into the umbrella and all the light shines out, these will still give you the same soft light as a shoot through, but you can control where it goes a bit better. Something like this should do you.

Actually there is totally a third type, this is the kind I use pretty much all the time. I call them umbrella boxes, because they are sort of a softbox & an umbrella all rolled up into one – seriously awesome. I picked mine up from ebay & never looked back.

Camera & Lens

Use what you’ve got… that’s all there is to it. Nikon, Canon, Sony – whatever, it really doesn’t matter. As long as you’ve got a hotshoe on the top that you can get a trigger into then you are good to go. If you want to get a really dramatic bokeh effect though you are going to need a lens that hits the right sort of Fs! The lower the number the better the bokeh! Both Canon & Nikon produce a lens dubbed the nifty fifty, these are 50mm prime lenses that go down to F1.8 & retail for around £100. Really worth having in your camera bag.

Did you find this useful? Let me know by leaving a comment. Or maybe you use some different kit, I’d love to hear about it so get involved.