Lighting advice

I was taking some pictures today and realized afterwards how yellow and purple they looked. Yellow from the lights in my room and purple/blue from the light coming in the window.

 

So I thought it would be good to get some advice from those with more experience. I have a pretty decent DSLR, but I only remember some of the basics from my photography classes in high school (which was forever ago).

 

What do you do to light your shots and what kind of settings do you use on your camera?

If they look yellow or purple tinted, it might be your white balance instead of the lighting itself. SirNarwhal has to adjust the white balance a lot when we shoot indoors because everything comes out... kinda yellow. If you shoot in RAW it's super easy to fix though!

White balance is important, but if You have mixed light, it's not easy task even shooting RAW, because different parts of the image have different white balance.

Therefore I prefer using using one type of light source. For example, I use only existing light (daylight) and set WB accordingly (sunny/shadow/cloudy or even manual with gray card). Sometimes, when there isn't enough light, I use a tripod (don't have a fast lens yet).

And at night, when I at last have the time for shooting, I use something like this.

Okay, during the day too

 

 

A stand, flashgun with radio trigger and an umbrella. White one for diffused light and silver for reflected/condensed.

Bought this fairly cheap and the results are quite good. And WB is pretty uniform, because the light coming from the flash is predominant. Camera is set to manual - shutter to sync speed or a bit slower, aperture according to light and desired effect on the final photo.

Have to buy second flashgun and receiver, so I'll have more lighting options.

Flash should have the possibility to reduce the power output (to 1/2...1/16), then You can use large apertures and keep the shallow DOF if You need to.

 

On different flash techniques You can read on http://strobist.blogspot.com/ for example.

Here's a tutorial for adjusting white balance in Photoshop-

http://www.eyefetch.com/tutorial-white-balance-ps.aspx

 

You can also try PS default settings like auto color, auto levels, etc.

If your camera can shoot in RAW format, it's better to do these changes in post instead of relying on camera defaults, you'll have finer control. You can recover an underexposed shot, but you can't reclaim lost detail in an overexposed shot.

Great advice! I actually have access to an umbrella and stand setup like that, but no remote flash head.

 

I've never worked in RAW, maybe I should try it.

 

I've been using PS for over 15 years and I use the levels box regularly, but I never looked at the eyedropper tools all this time. I'll have to give that a shot.

A flash with remote trigger is a great tool - You can place the light wherever You want to. No more flat photos from direct light from above the camera

You can even place the flash behind the subject, above, on the side, bounce it from ceiling or wall... If You have two, the number of possible setups is even bigger.

I have to agree with Kumi - my Polish brother! Wireless flash is fantastic.

 

I've been using wireless flash triggers for a few years now and LOVE THEM. I spent a long time using a crappy set I got from Ebay for about $30. Even with fresh batteries I'd have them not go off maybe 25% of the time. I eventually tried this for less than $30, from Cowboy Studio:

 

http://www.amazon.com/CowboyStudio-NPT-04-Wireless-Receiver-cowboystudio/dp/B002W3IXZW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306795310&sr=8-1

 

This thing is fantastic!!! I have had them for about 2 or 3 months now and dont' think I've missed a single flash yet. Granted, I'm no more than 4 or 5 feet from them usually but they are great. The wire shown in the image is optional - it's wireless.

 

I have 2 Nikon SB-26 flash heads I got on Ebay - not very cheap, about $140 each. There are cheaper ones but I got these since I can cut the flash power down to 1/64th power. I usually only use one though, mostly because I'm lazy that way. haha I also use a 2 light stand/umbrella setup I got on Ebay. Finally I use a 2X3 foot sized white foam board on the other side to fill in the shadows.

 

I can usually have the lights setup in about a minute or so and start shooting.

 

If you really get into using flashes and find it's hard to balance the color of the flash with the room's light color you can get a set of these gels:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Rosco-Strobist-Collection-Cinegel-Strobes/dp/B002SWIOOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306795708&sr=8-1

 

put the correct one on the flash and now it matches the room and white balance problem is solved. Plus with an extra flash you can go a little crazy like I did with this shot of Sakura against a black piece of cloth - using a red gel on the background flash:

 

 

 

Kumi, good job recommending Strobist! We share very similar interests I see. I owe Strobist so much as I learned so much good info from him and his DVD video series. When I saw what could be done with a $100 flash and a $50 stand/umbrella I was amazed. I watched his entire 8 DVD set in one night! haha

 

I recently got to see his new series of DVDs and they are just as good as the first - The only down side is there isn't the lecture part he started the first DVDs out with but I still learned so much. Another great one is Zack Arias - One Light DVD:

 

http://www.onelightworkshop.com/DVD_Ordering.html

 

I better stop now or I'll keep going on and on - Billy and Frank have both been victims of my endless photography ramblings, I don't want to subject everybody to them.

 

**James

HA HA HA! Endless ramblings indeed!

 

I'm glad you do tho because it helps me learn more about taking pics. I was always happy with my pictures until I started collecting Dollfies. Then I saw what others were doing and was like "Wow, my pics suck."

 

So now I try all sorts of stuff to get better pics. I need to invest in better lights like the ones you showed me before on Ebay. I think that will help me out a lot on my indoor shoots. I mean, I think I do ok with the horrible setup I use now. If I can get better lighting, I know I can get nicer shots indoors.

 

And after finding and using lens adapters for polarizers and such, my outdoor shots have perked up a little bit too. I still need help on some of them but that will come with more time spent doing outdoor shoots. I find doing is the best way to learn with all this.

 

 

Billy

I better stop now or I'll keep going on and on - Billy and Frank have both been victims of my endless photography ramblings, I don't want to subject everybody to them.

 

**James

BOKEH!!!!!

 

Well, this is the right forum for it, and I also have learned a lot from your photography tips. I don't think of it as endless, really.

 

For me, I also enjoy using the remote flash guns for my indoor shots. I have an umbrella to get really nice lighting, and started playing around with the white balance and ISO settings to get my pictures to be both brighter and a little warmer.

When you have 2 different colour from 2 different lighting source... you have to use colour gel if you don't like the idea of having HUGE STROBES and setting them up.

 

Let me explain colour gels.

 

When you shoot flash, it is white light bursting out right? So let's say, you have a place where the ambient light and some places is tungsten. Tungsten light is brown btw, so if you are shooting without flash, you can easily overcome the tungsten browness using white balance, tungsten.

 

However what happen if you are using flash?

 

flash firing range isn't that big btw, so some part of the tungsten won't be wiped out by the flash so it will till remain present in the photo. Therefore,

 

White + brown = ????

 

White balance set to tungsten = ????

 

yeap. This is where the colour gel usefulness comes in.

 

Let me take the brown colour gel as example.

 

You apply the colour gel, and then the flash will become brown, so brown + brown = Brown, white balance set to tungsten = ???? = PROFIT!

 

The whole photo will be brown so the white balance will adjust it to be white.

 

There. Hope you learn something.

 

People often thinks that colour gel that was provided by the flashgun don't do anything, but actually, it helps a lot.

 

However if you feel lazy, you can always disregard the secondary light source and set the camera white balance to the main primary source so that you can hope people will not notice the different colour at the background haha!