Tag Archives: studio lighting

$20 Rice Paper Light Modifier – Great Light, Cheap

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Want good light?

Then pick pick up any one of the large softboxes out there that are made buy Photoflex, Lastolite or Westcott. I’d recommend 24″ or bigger, especially for shooting full length people shots. Expect to spend anywhere from $100-200.

Want really good light?

Then pick up a 7-foot OctoDome. It gives you about the best light that you could ever imagine, and in a pinch, it’s big enough to sleep in. In fact, at around $500 with shipping, it costs about the same as a small tent. Probably not as waterproof, though, especially since it has a big hole in the back where the flash goes.

Want good light really cheap?

Then check out the Style Selections 70-inch 2-light Rice Paper Floor Lamp with With White Shade. It costs $19.98 and you can get it at Lowe’s.

I spotted this thing a few weeks ago while on a home improvement mission. Realizing its potential as an awesome, inexpensive light modifier, I threw it right into my cart.

I’d been looking for a chinese paper lantern type thing for awhile, but since this one is a long tube thing instead of a round globe thing, I figured that it would work even better for full body portraits and situations where I want a big blast of omnidirectional light.

Of course, I’m talking about just the paper lantern part, not the floor lamp itself. Who cares about another floor lamp? That thing is still sitting in a box at the back of my closet ready to go to the giveaway store.

As a light modifier, this thing is so easy to set up, it’s got a little metal loop at the top that fits right over the stud of a small light stand. I simply clip a flash to the middle of the the Nano Stand with a Manfrotto Justin Clamp and drop the paper lantern thing down over the stand. Done. Two minute slater, you’re ready to shoot. Now that’s going fast with light. Folded down flat, it’s only 14″ in diameter.

To trigger the flash inside the lantern, I’ve tried it out using the D700 pop-up flash and Nikon CLS TTL, as well as with the Nikon SU-800 wireless commander and with SU-4 optical slave mode.

As for light quality, it’s just as I imagined it would be. Big, soft, even, and it wraps unbelievably well- as good as you would expect from something that puts light out in a 360-degree pattern.

The photo below was taken with the lantern light. Single SB-800 set in TTL mode at camera left, and another SB-800 through an umbrella at camera right.

It’s easily as good as an umbrella and many softboxes, and since it’s tall, it will throw great light against the side of an entire person. Can’t wait to try some full length shots with it. Also, imagine the effect that you could get if you hung it horizontally above your subject?

Last week I reviewed a new ebook called Great Light, Easy Light and pointed out how the fundamentals of great light revolve around factors like direction, angle and distance. Practice your strobist-style techniques with this 20 dollar lantern thing, and you’ve got great light, easy light AND cheap light.

 

Location Photography At Speedway Cycles- Anchorage, Alaska

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Yesterday I did some location photography at Speedway Cycles here in Anchorage. The subject- Tim Reinbold, the head mechanic building up a Fatback snow bike.

In some ways, shooting inside can be way more challenging than shooting outside. For one, there’s more gear involved. Since the workshop is basically a dark room lit with overhead fluorescents, I took in my full location lighting kit, which includes a Nikon SB-900 Speedlight, a pair of SB-800s Manfrotto Nano Stands, Bogen Justin Clamps , a Lastolite TriGrip Diffuser and a 3′ x 6′ Photoflex Lite Panel with translucent fabric.

I set up the Lite Panel, which is attached to a light stand with a Manfrotto Super Clamp and a Bogen Friction Magic Arm over the main work stand. That would be my main light source while shooting at the stand and I placed a pair of Speedlights behind it with the dome diffusers on.

That worked well to light the shop with a large, even wash of soft illumination. Then, to add some additional interest, I took the third Speedlight, which was usually fixed to a Justin Clamp, or stuck on the Nano Stand and placed it somewhere else in the shop. I used that one to throw hard directional light onto the scene and add contrast, or else bounce light off of the tool wall. Sometimes I ended up using two directional light sources with only one flash behind the Lite Panel.

For what ended up as my favorite shot, I didn’t even use the Lite Panel. I stuck an SB-800 on the a stand about four feet away from Tim and then lit the back wall with an SB-900. I placed it as far away as I could in the right corner of the shop and set the zoom to the 200mm setting so that it would throw hard light through the bike frames and cast those shadows.

After a few shots, I stuck on the CTO gel to make it look like there was end of the day sunlight streaming in through a window of the shop. It’s certainly a feasible look, so I went with it. I love the way it came out. Here’s the scene without the CTO gel.

I triggered all the wireless remote Speedlights with the pop-up flash on my D700, which worked fine, even though I was moving around and sometimes standing in front of one of two of the flashes, like the close up shots looking through the bike wheel.

Aside from the lighting aspect, what made this shoot challenging is that Tim kept moving around. I didn’t want to disrupt his workflow too much, so I’d just follow whatever he was doing at the time. Unfortunately, sometimes meant figuring out and setting up a lighting scheme right when he was finishing a task.

Overall, this shoot was a great experience in efficiency, because it forced me to be quick, and imaginative with camera angles, lens use and lighting setups. I used everything that I took in there and I was really happy with how all the equipment performed. The SB-900‘s high temperature cut-off only kicked in once for a minute or two, but otherwise it worked great. That’s where the Nikon SB-700 would be a great unit for a shoot like this.

The SB-700 apparently runs a little cooler than the SB-900 and plus it’s quite a bit less expensive. If I look to buy another flash unit soon, I might consider the SB-700 as addition to my 800 and 900 kit.

Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites

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I’m a Nikon guy. I use Nikon cameras and Nikon flashes.

So, when I go looking for information and inspiration to learn new off-camera lighting techniques, I turn to the guru of lighting, Joe McNally. I’ve mentioned his book, The Hot Shoe Diaries a couple of times here on the blog. It’s an awesome reference, but it’s limited in one major way. It’s Nikon only.

Fortunately, there’s a brand new book out for you Canon shooters. It’s called Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites. It’s basically the Canon equivalent to The Hot Shoe Diaries and it looks to be the long awaited Canon flash bible that the other team has been waiting for.

Written by accomplished photographer and workshop instructor Syl Arena, this book is an awesome in-depth manual that shows you how to get the most out of your Canon Speedlites.

He explores it all, starting with how to navigate and use the functions, menus and buttons on the specific units, and then goes into overall lighting and flash basics, how to balance flash fill with ambient light, how and when to use E-TTL vs. manual, how to balance color and how to create dramatic effects whether you’re using one flash or multiple off-camera flashes.

The book also covers studio lighting, location lighting, how to use gobos, scrims, snoots and diffusers, how to combine the light from multiple Speedlites, and how to control slaves from your master flash or camera. Basically all the stuff you’ll want to know in order to take your Canon flash photography to the next level, expand your creativity and begin your new lighting journey.

With over 400 pages and over 500 photo illustrations, its book is packed with a tremendous amount of detailed information. And even though it’s only been out for a week, it’s already received tremendous reviews from those who have read it.

In the past, you had to cobble this info from a wide variety of sources. No more. If you’re a Canon shooter, then is absolutely a must-have reference. If I were a Canon guy, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Creating Dynamic Images of People

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Although my business revolves primarily around commercial, editorial and stock photography, I also shoot portraits for both consumer and commercial customers. It’s not a service that I advertise, aside from a “portraits gallery” on my website, and most of my … Continue reading →