QA: Lighting a 1,300-Person Group Shot [Magnum Opus]

Reader Albert Yee asks, via Twitter:

Ever shoot a group of 1,300 before? Trying to wrap my head around a possible assignment: Teachers and staff in a basketball arena.

1,300? 1,300. Hmm.

Lighting 1,300 people indoors is a Herculean task, no matter how you slice it. Can you do it? Do you wanna do it? How would you charge for it? Lotsa questions.

Let's jump in.

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Q&A, Speedlighting a Gym

You got questions, we got answers. This post will tackle many of the questions people had after the Speedlighting a Gym post from a few days ago. If you are coming in late, you should read it first.

One thing before I start. I will not be answering any questions that are basic Lighting 101 fodder.

I am amazed that, given the large and easily accessible library of info on this very site, many people will ask about a technique even when I go to the trouble to link directly to the appropriate reference article right from the post, (he said, smacking himself in the forehead with a Pocket Wizard.)

That said, here we go.

Leading off, the previously promised, poorly drawn lighting diagrams. But first, an error to point out in the "Top View" diagram. One of the other photographers, whose name I misheard, is not "Adrienne," but "Arianne."

Even better, she told me today that she just made staff at the Baltimore Examiner. (Way to go, Arianne!)

The top view, which is clickable to a much larger photo, shows the flash placement relative to the court and basket. The flashes are pointed just about straight out, just over the heads the players, to better feather the light.

This side view is also clickable, and shows about how much higher the flashes were than the players. It is your basic, 2nd-floor balcony railing.

Now, on with the questions, in no particular order. (Q's are in bold, A's in itals.)


I'm curious, did you attach a safety cable to the flash or bracket in case you had a mounting hardware failure? (It's impossible to tell whether or not there were fans seated below your rig.)

I used gaffer tape as a backup. The flashes were small and only a few feet over the band. Battery straps went around the railings, too.


David, I'm just a bit curious, one flash behind each basket, right? The local arena has solid walls behind the baskets and no railing systems I can see (apart from the one used for the overheads). Any idea where else can I clamp the strobes?

Every gym/arena is different, and you are on your own. I can almost always find something to clamp to, either behind the baskets or in/above the bleachers.


I'm shooting a Canon d-reb XT and mostly getting it for learning purposes. I know you probably get this all the time, but any advice?

See what I mean about the Lighting 101 question stuff?


Just wanted to clarify something. The SBs at 1/4 power enabled you to shoot at 4fps with the SBs lighting each of the 4 frames as compared to Patrick's 1 frame every 2 seconds using the huge lights?

Yep. Remember, the flash is only dumping 1/4th of it's stored energy each time it fires.


(Very long question on whether I am expanding the tonal range, or - as I had said - compressing it.)

Compressing it. If I shoot up into the ceiling (where the continuous lights are) I have to over expose the ceiling (and the top-down light) to get detail in the undersides of the players. I can strobe them from the side (from the basket's direction) and bring that portion of them up to a level that matches the top lighting. Thus everything fits more neatly into the tonal range that the camera can handle. Presto - smooth exposures with no dodging and burning.


I'd be curious to see a diagram of where your strobes were in relation to the court/basket and where they were roughly pointed. You seem to be getting much better coverage than me when I do the same with strobes behind the corner of the court, aimed at the top corner of the key.

The secret is feathering the light. Aiming them up a little to skim the players' heads means that most of the close-up action is on the outskirts of the flashes' beams. Combine that with a 50mm throw (you might think a 24mm throw would be better at this range - it is counterintuitive) and that strobe really reaches out onto the court.

Just to clarify, what was the ambient exposure? Obviously 1/250, but what aperture and iso? I would think if the ambient iso was 640 you would get a fair amount of ghosting.

I was shooting at 1/250 (and later, 1/320) at ASA 640 and some at 800. remember, the underside of the players was pretty underexposed before the flash got there (see the referee examples) so ghosting was not much of a problem.


I am curious about what you do to prevent errant basketballs from hitting the strobes. Damage to the flash is one consideration, falling objects on spectators or players is another more serious issue.

They were far enough back and up to where that would have been all but impossible. Basketballs hitting the fans would have been more likely (and more damaging.)


Why didn't you use the ol' Bogen super-clampy deal to clamp it to the railing (I know, they cost like 30 bucks, which is far more than your $2 setup....) but the seem to be a bit more secure. I thought you carried these anyway, so I was just surprised to see the home depot clamps (which, incidentally, I nearly bought the $3.99 version a week ago before I saw the .99 cent-ers. Spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out the difference between the two - none.)

Why no Superclamps? I'll tell you why. Because I misplaced the @#!$% things and I spent the better part of an hour looking for them before this game. I promptly found them afterwards.


Seems to me that you are having a much easier time with white balance than I am. I'm shooting many different junior HS gyms that range from caves to dark caves; one however, has a good bit of daylight coming through large windows during day games, in addition to the sodium "vapes". I use a Expo Disk for WB; works great, but often the flashes come out too green (when gelled). Lighting is getting much better (thanks to your tutorials!), but having to process RAW files for white balance is getting to be a real p.i.t.a!! Other tips????

When working in noncontrollable mixed lighting sources, I match my strobes to the dominant continuous color and balance for that. It's the best you can do, without pumping tons of strobe in to overpower the mixed ambient.


How do you go about getting your strobes back if you get paged to be somewhere else mid-game?

Seriously, I know it sounds flippant but I really would like to know - adds another dimension to setting this sort of thing up if you nedd to be able to grab it all and run without interfering with play.

I had easy access to the second-floor balcony. If pulled off to spot news, I could unclamp the flash/bracket/batts/PW's wholesale and just put them, still assembled, into a gear bag. I could be out the door in 3-4 mins, tops.


I need to understand the real numbers here. The sample shots with refs to show ambient and the flash added is not what I would call fill flash, but direct lighting with the flash. Please clarify :) 1/250 ambient would show more finger/hand/ball blur and the fill would show ghosting ? - unless the flash took over to freeze that action. Would love for it to be this easy.

Again, there are really two separate components to the light. The top-down ambient, and the front/side flash. They really did not co-mingle too much. Thus, very little ghosting.


What does PITA stand for again?

Pain in the armpit.


I've quite a bit of experience using multiple flashed in "Manual Mode". However you mentioned that the flashes "greened ok". Does this mean that you are shooting with multiple flashes on "Auto". I never thought to try that.

(Wondering whether to take the whole bottle of sleeping pills first, or to start with the alcohol. The question being, which would would more quickly bring about my demise and with it, sweet relief...)


NEXT: Flavored Vodkas

Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite and ST-E3-RT Transmitter: Yep, It's Radios

Photo © Syl Arena

I'm on the road with spotty 'net (and also a Nikon guy, so there's that). But Syl Arena has been playing around with the just-announced Canon flash and radio transmitter. Here's the five-word version of Syl's review:

"Canonistas, hold your heads high."

Well, then. Looks like Canon has uncorked a very sophisticated and robust flash system for discerning photographers who like their photos well-lit, if not quite in focus. (Kidding! Mostly!)

Check out Syl's evolving coverage of the new system.

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[UPDATE: Official price for the Canon 600EX-RT speedlite was set at: 1 Paul Buff 640WS Einstein + 8" hi-output reflector + 2-grid set + 64" soft silver PLM + 64" diffusion fabric.]

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This Stuff Ain't Rocket Science

Pictured above are the students in last week's five-day lighting class in Paso Robles, CA. Teaching one of these extended classes was a first for me. And while I was expecting a fun, intense week, what was more interesting was watching the students to see how they learned.

That was an eye-opener, to say the least. We had a wide range of ages, personalities and learning styles. And I am more convinced than ever that anyone -- anyone -- can learn to light in a relatively sophisticated way in a pretty short amount of time.

Some thoughts, punctuated by their photos, after the jump.
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NOTE: Photos are credited at the bottom of the post. Click on any photo to see it bigger in a new window.


The Usual Suspects

One of my biggest apprehensions before the week was having no idea where the students would be, ability-wise, when they arrived. Would some of them be long-time pros? Would some be rank beginners? Worse yet -- maybe a mix of both?

So we spent some time Monday morning looking at photos and getting to know each other. And as it turned out, the class was a decent cross section of the readership of this site.

They were mostly amateurs, and some transitional pros. We had businesspeople, a dentist, a pioneering punk rocker-turned rock doc filmmaker -- even a cog in the military-industrial complex. We had all ages, from a 22-year old bachelor to several old far .. er, middle-agers.

In the end their age, profession, skill level and/or personality type really didn't matter when it came to seeing how they progressed. Which is really cool when you think about it, and also nukes about 90 percent of the excuses people have for not jumping into this stuff head first.


Left Brain, Right Brain

Many people look at lighting as a technical thing. In reality it is about as technical as playing with the bass and treble knobs on your stereo. And about as difficult, truth be told. I would rather be math-challenged and very creative and be learning this stuff than to be an engineer with the same goal.

Why? Because absolutely anyone can learn to do it. And when it is said and done, you'd rather be a creative person who knows how to light than a tech-head with yet one more new skill in your back pocket.

The biggest hurdle with learning to light is just deciding to do it. It's math anxiety, or being afraid to walk across the room and invite a partner onto the dance floor in sixth grade, or just about anything else that has seemed intimidating -- until you learned how to do it.


It's Not About the Gear, Either

Syl Arena is the proprietor of Paso Robles Workshops, where we were all learning together. (Syl's the guy under he mop of red hair at center left.) He and I originally planned on forming the class into teams based on their brand of gear and various synching methods. In the end we ended up rotating them into a completely new group every day, making for a more diverse experience for the whole class.

We quickly realized it was not the gear that was important. Throughout the week, I could not discern any correlation between how fast someone picked up new skills and the weight of their gear bag. To be sure, you do need some stuff. But you do not need to go into hock on a bunch of high-end bodies, lenses and strobes to get great results. So, for those of you who have more time than money, take heart.

In fact, to be honest I think being a gear hog can be a handicap when learning. Practice frequently and learn to use what gear you have. Then slowly add gear only when you have a specific need. You'll make better photos that way, plus you'll prolong the fun process of gearing up.


It's All About Balance

After this week I feel even more strongly that the key to understanding lighting is to become very comfortable with the concept of balance. We have talked about it in L101 and L102, and in just about every OA post. But everything comes down to how well you understand this concept. All of the other stuff is icing on the cake.

In its simplest form, begin by assessing your ambient. Make a normally exposed photo. Tamp down the exposure a little, until you get a photo that would make a nice "floor" exposure for your final, lit image. Then lay in your light, be it soft and flattering, hard and edgy, or anything in between. We have a little visual run-through of that process coming shortly. And that will reiterate just how easy it is.

Once you get that ambient/flash two-step down pat, you can begin your all-flash photos that way, too. Now you can lay in your fill, ensuring that whatever your key fails to illuminate will fall to exactly what you want. And now you have control over both the quantity and quality of your fill, which is when the photos really start to get interesting.

All of the various styles of key lighting, the light mods, synch methods, gelling, etc., rely on the foundation of balance. Unlock balance, and everything falls into place.


Build Muscle Memory

Once you get the concept, play. A lot. That is a big part of the strength of a five-day workshop -- total immersion learning. I demo'd on Monday, and they shot every other day.

But you can do it at home, too. Make headshots of family and friends. Photograph your own house as a project. Try new fill methods and accent lighting styles.

Reps matter -- every time you previsualize a photo in your mind then pull it off with your camera and flashes, you get better. Heck, by the time they walked in with their shoot on Thursday morning, many were almost looking a little cocky.

With practice, you also get more comfortable stretching your comfort zone. Do it again and again until you are so familiar with the balancing light that it is almost subconscious.

The majority of the fifteen people that showed up one week ago on an chilly Monday morning were amateurs who could best be described as "tentative" in their approach to lighting. We had some nice stuff in the opening images, of course. But most everyone there had more desire to learn than experience at that point.

By the end of the week the problems were far more granular, which is to say that the big stuff was being solved easily. And there was a comfort level that belied where they were just a five days ago. People were taking chances, engaging their subjects and lighting almost intuitively. Almost.


Don't Forget to Make a Picture

Lots of rookie lighting photogs crash here. They spend so much energy working out the light that they neglect the most important part of the process. Save your subjects' attention spans for when you are done with the lighting tweaks away and ready to start making photos.

Engage your subjects. Work through a steady stream of conversation. Don't stick them up there like a mannequin and bore them silly by shooting a frame and disappearing into chimping mode. Seriously, I see this a lot and it is a really bad thing.

That brings us back to muscle memory concept. It is just like doing math. The better your algebra is, the more comfy you will be with the trig. When lighting, if your technical stuff is effortless, you are free to engage the subject with all of your attention. That pays off with great photos -- that happen to be beautifully lit.


Collaborate

The dynamic of team learning is hard to beat. Go to a meetup. Find another local shooter and practice some together. They understand you way better than your poor spouse does. Another lighting photographer will be a VAL (voice-activated light stand) or VAB (same, but a boom) for you until their arms fall off, simply because they want to see what the light can do from way up there, too.

Collaborate with other photogs to gain confidence, then collaborate with subjects toward the goal of making interesting photos. Everyone wins, and you get better fast.


Seventeen Shooters, Eighteen Flashes

For our quickie group shot seen up top (it took us about ten minutes, soup to nuts) we decided to light entirely by flash. This was done by shooting at a 250th of a sec at a decent aperture -- way above the ambient. We had a PW'd Canon speedlight on a stand in a shoot-thru right next to the camera. Almost a ring light look, if you will.

We exposed for the umbrella fill and then closed down the aperture about two stops. At that point, all that was left was for everyone to light themselves with either an SU-4'd SB-800 or an LP120. (Tim, close to the middle, had a Canon speedlight with an off-board slave, I think.)

The contrast range was courtesy the ratio between the facelights and the umbrella fill; key light courtesy the subjects.


About the Photos on This Page

The images seen here were done by (mostly) amateur and transitional pro shooters, and for the most part without my involvement. We lectured hard on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, then shot each other on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday and Thursday we got access to models and two very different locations.

For Friday's assignment, we turned up the pressure several notches. (I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise unless we do it again, and if you tip anyone in the comments you won't be published.) But suffice to say I could have called in sick on Friday and these guys still would have knocked the cover off of the ball.

Credits, in order from top: Everyone in the group photo (it was a self-timer shot), Steven Nguyen, William Yu, Tim Bosma, Sam Graham, Sean Rolsen, Richard Clary and Victory Tischler-Blue.
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SPECIAL NOTE TO THE PRW STUDENTS: Whittling down the selects list was a bear, and very sorry to not have something from all 15 shooters. If you would like your credit to link someplace, shoot me an email from the address used in the Paso Robles group email list and let me know where to link it. I will do so ASAP-est.

Thanks much for for such an awesome week. It was a total pleasure to work with you guys.

Phottix Mitros [Nikon] Review: The Real Deal

Big changes continue to ripple through the high-quality, 3rd-party flash industry this month. To wit: I've been testing a new $299 Phottix Mitros [Nikon] flash for several weeks now.

Here's the five-word short version: "Nikon, you should be very afraid."

Why? Because this solid, Manual/TTL/CLS/HSS flash delivers all of the punch and practically all of the functionality of your flagsship Nikon SB-910 for about half the price. With twice the warranty.

Put differently: as soon as word gets out, the days of the high profit margin OEM speedlights are numbered.

(More words, getting out, below…)

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SLC-2L-06: How to Light Indoor Sports

Today in Lighting Cookbook, some multi-budget solutions for lighting winter indoor sports—specifically in high school gymnasiums.

Lighting indoor sports opens up a whole new world as compared to trying to shoot available light. You can both freeze action and define the quality of the light in a much better way than the spotty existing overheads.

And for the sake of argument, let's assume only one rule: no on-camera direct flash. Because that looks horrible. Other than that, any lighting scheme is fair game for exploitation. Also, I don't have access to all of my sports archives at the papers so we'll be sticking to cookbook-type lighting diagrams to visualize placement and coverage.

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Today's Special: Gourmet Speedlights Al Fresco

UPDATE: Nick was kind enough to drop by and answer some of your questions in comments. (Thanks, Nick!)

I love letting the new submissions to the Strobist Flickr Pool build up for a few days, so I can spend a few hours looking through the thousand or so photos that have dropped in since the last edit.

That's a lot of images to look at in one sitting. But every now and then a photo really jumps out and grabs you. Such was the case with UK-based photographer Nick Turpin's series of portraits of thriller writers, shot for Arena Magazine.

They are sophisticated, stylish and bathed in pools restricted light. And they were done entirely with a few SB-800s and voice-activated light stands.

More, including Nick's video and links, after the jump.
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I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I did -- I probably watched it half a dozen times. Take a look, and then keep reading for some of the thought process behind street shooting with multiple SB's as light sources.




Nick says that began as a pure street photographer, and then started evolving his look to include small flashes. The street has since become his impromptu studio, and he is free to choose his settings on a moment's notice. He is now shooting magazine work and advertising campaigns, using gear that would be right at home at a Strobist meetup.

My guess is that he often is able to work without location permits because he is not setting up stands or tripods. And from the look of this video, this series was shot over the course of a single day.


When shooting outdoors in the daytime and using small flashes, there are three things to consider: Ambient level, balance and lighting direction(s).

It is helpful, though not mandatory, to work in shade. This keeps the ambient light at a manageable level. Still you'll want to start out at you highest normal sync speed speed, to give yourself a reasonable aperture.

Take a "properly exposed" photo and look at your frame. It will probably look okay. But likely a little boring, too.

Next, keep your shutter speed where it is, and start to underexpose your ambient light by dialing down your aperture and chimping the back of the camera. This will set the mood and contrast range of your photo. What you are doing is basically setting an ambient "floor" on your overall exposure via your chosen aperture.

How far down should you go? One stop? Two stops? Five stops? That is entirely up to you and depends on the look you are trying to achieve.

Now, bring in your lights. You will have to dial them up to a power level sufficient to properly expose your subject at the aperture you have chosen in the last step. Nick is using multiple SB-800's, snooted and aimed (via the VAL's) to create multi-directional pools of light on his subjects.

This is where it gets more difficult. Nick's eye for narrative (and humor, if you look at some of his other work) is what defines where he places his subjects and his lights. Sometimes he motivates the light with objects on the set (i.e., the lamp post) and sometimes he goes for pure, seemingly random whimsy. Your photos probably will not look like Nick's because you will bring an entirely different eye to your settings, body attitude and light placement.

But however you do it, cool things start to happen when you balance multiple hard lights against soft fill. It is as if your subject wandered into an area of interesting, mixed light. Texture happens. Depth happens. Interestingness happens. Sure, the light from the strobes is hard, but the shadows are only as deep as you set them with your baseline ambient exposure. So it is all under control.

What are your thoughts? Were you as surprised as I was to find the photos were done with speedlights and VALs? I found myself thinking back to Gregory Crewdson, mostly because of the sense of place defined by those pools of light.

Pretty amazing, when you think of the comparative amounts of gear being brought to bear on the shoots.

I love that VAL street lamp boom. To be honest, I love all of the photos in this series. It's amazing how he can be at once both sophisticated and mobile.

You can the whole series of portraits of thriller writers at Turpin's website. (More projects, and another video, here.)

POTW 2/25/07

Another strong week in the favorites folder on Flickr, where it is getting harder and harder to pick which photos will go out front each week.

This flaming martini shot, by Justin Lucarelli, jumped out immediately.

This is way cool. And as I have to shoot a near-weekly illustration on alcoholic drinks for The Sun, I am so gonna steal borrow this technique sometime soon.

Of course, I will feel compelled to improve upon it. But I will be hard-pressed to do so. I'll post about it when I shoot it.

As as for the idea of a flammable beverage, martinis are so high school. I prefer ethanol as my cocktail of choice, with a splash of diesel.

This backlit twilight scene, by HeNkiS da Bro, looks like it could have come right out of the movie adaptation of Sin City.

All it needs is Jessica Alba and a pole. This is awesome light. And if shot for publication, the internal contrast is such that it would repro well on almost any paper type - including the Charmin that we print on at The Sun.

Update: The above photo, it turns out, was done solely with ambient street lights. But I am going to leave it up to avoid confusion as to why it went away. (Thanks for the heads-up.)

Like the drink shot, this multi-flash-blur shot of a book, by Andy Spencer, is another technique that could come in handy for an illustrative photo on winter reading (or almost anything else to do with books.)

If you are shooting for publication, you always want to have some neat tricks in your pocket to save your bacon when you have a mundane subject that needs to be shot for a conceptual purpose.

Just don't pull them out until you really have to, and they can turn what would have been a failure into a home run.

Last but not least is this portrait by Xombi Rises, which gets double duty out of the pan-reflector background light to act as a low/cross rim light.

The effect really gives a three-dimensional effect on the (camera left) arm, the shadow side of the face and, uh, other areas.

There is a lot to like about this light, from the coolish palette to the fact that it is at once soft and still very textural. Nice.

This week I have a couple of long-form posts in the on-deck circle. One is on using speedlight flashes in a college basketball arena, where I shot along with reader Patrick Smith on Saturday afternoon.

Also, I am going to start a new feature called, "Pimp my Light," where I'll take an already very good reader photo in the pool and look at ways it could have been amped up just a little bit more for that "little something extra."

So, look for those in the next couple of days.

RadioPoppers Jr. Product Killed Recast; Updates to P1s Coming

RadioPopper has announced that the upcoming RP Jr. project has been killed redesigned(?) in a way that will integrate it into a bigger system. And there is apparently a big update coming to the current P1 design. All very cryptic at this point. Original blog post here.

Syl Arena has seen the new units, (much likee) and is dishing with at least a little detail.
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UPDATE: Lots of yakking on this in the Flickr group. RP's Kevin King stopped by to set the record straight and add some detail, too.

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DIY Ball-Bungee Speedlight Soft Box Mount

I don't use my soft boxes very often, as a shoot-through umbrella is a more efficient diffuser, cheaper and more portable. But a soft box does give a nice, rectangular specular highlight, without the visible ribs of an umbrella.

(If there are any ribs visible in my vicinity, I prefer them slow-cooked, and smothered with a Carolina-style, mustard-and-vinegar BBQ sauce...)

But for headshots, a speedlight/soft box combo has plenty of power to work in close -- remember that power/distance relationship. And it gives you those cool, window-like highlights in the eyes.

Quick tip: You can accentuate the window-like specular from a soft box by putting little gaffer's tape dividers on the front panel.

Be sure to take them off when you are done, as the tape will leave permanent residue if you let it stay on and dry out. And do not use duct tape, as it will mar the surface instantly. You can use black masking tape, though.

(I leave mine on, because I like the effect and generally use the soft box or nothing but people.)

Here is her eye up close in that previous frame. She is not really catching the vertical divider, mind you. I was just playing around with a quick and dirty CLS setup here, and not shooting to show the effect. But you can still see the horizontal divider working.

(Did he say CLS? Yes. I am trying to learn more about it to see when it makes sense to use it and explore its limitations.)

Anyhow, back to the ball bungee soft box thing.

As much as I would like to take credit for this idea, I got it from Pat Murphy-Racey, who was on my Purple Team at the Eddie Adams workshop in 1989. Pat used to have a business (and cool website) that sold turn-key arena lighting systems, which is where I found out about what he calls "The Cheater."

He used those thick blue rubber bands you get what you buy broccoli. But I don't like broccoli. So I use ball bungees. The longer models work best (mine are about 8" long, unstretched.) The shorter ones are a very tight fit. If you are using rubber bands, you need four broccoli rubber bands (better get eatin') or maybe those "Live Strong" style rubber band bracelets.

Don't leave them stretched for days on end, though. They'll weaken and snap.

So, here we are, speedring on stand, via the typical umbrella adapter. This will allow you to mount the soft box on a stand and tilt it.

Note that my speedring (that is what the little thing that connects a soft box to a normal flash head is called) has a 1/4x20 female thread in the bottom. I think this is pretty common, but yours may not have it. If not, this system is still good for hand-holding a speedlight and softbox (or for having someone else hold it) for a quickie portrait.

Stretch one band/bungee around as shown. Put the ball on the edge for a firm hold.

If you are using rubber bands, you'll use two in each direction. You could also use a wad of normal rubber bands in place of a single big one, I suppose. But the ball bungees turn out to be very secure, so I recommend those.

By the way, if you can't get ball bungees in your country, you can get them at Amazon for $10 for a pack of 25. They are very useful things to have around the house.

Then you place the other band/bungee across in the other direction. This creates an "H-shape" elastic suspension across the opening of your speedring.

It probably seems pretty obvious by now, but all you do is to wedge your flash into the middle of the bungees. The hold is surprisingly strong.

Remember that you'll want to turn your flash in the appropriate direction to make your beam of light best cover the soft box panel. I like to set my flash to its widest beam spread, and I get good coverage.

Here it is, all assembled and ready for the soft box to be mounted to the speedring. It is very secure. I would have no problem suspending this thing over water, for example.

You can dial your flash way down and take a photo of the front panel of the box to get an idea of how smooth your coverage is. (I.e., do you have a hot spot in the middle of you panel.) You can always use a Sto-Fen or Tupperware as a diffuser to smooth it out. But that eats light, and is really not necessary, IMO.

Remember to swivel the base of your flash independently to expose your infrared sensor if you are triggering via CLS or eTTL. For close-in headshots, the wireless TTL mode will pretty much get you dead-on exposures, as the main subject area will be lit by the flash.

But manual is always available and offers more control and precision, whether you trigger with CLS/eTTL, by PC cord, or by radio remotes.

So, that's one way to mount a speedlight in a softbox. What are your little tricks/gear/hacks for doing this? Share 'em in the comments.

How To...

The below are a collection of explainer posts on a variety of subjects—some specific, some general. But all, hopefully, helpful.

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On Assignment: Speedlighting a College Gym

Saturday, I shot the Towson/Drexel men's college basketball game for The Sun. I knew Strobist reader Patrick Smith would be there, and I knew he would be using the school's house strobes.

(Patrick is a photographer for Towson U's newspaper, The Towerlight, specializing in shooting sports and beer.)

For the record, we have the rights to use the university's house lights, too. In fact, as the local metro daily shooter, I am pretty sure the fine folks at Towson University's sports info department would let me (a) bump Patrick off of the lights, and (b) order him to be wash my car in the parking lot while I am shooting the game. (Don't tell him I said so.)

So I decided to use two Nikon SB flashes to augment the house sodium vapor lights in the gym. This also makes for a good time to compare what you can do with a couple of hot-shoe flashes, vs a few thousand watt-seconds (and dollars) of AC-powered, permanent strobes.

Before we get into specifics, let's look at the advantages of the two different systems:


Big, Honker Studio Strobes:

• Tons of light. Even bounced off of the ceiling (the Towson coach nixed the direct lights) they give you a solid 2.8 at ~ASA 400, everywhere on the court.

• Soft, pretty light (from the bounce)

• You can disregard the ambient light color temp, as the strobes totally trump the sodium vapes.


Little, Dinky SB Strobes:

• You can move them from venue to venue. (The biggies are pretty much permanent. Only SI trots them around regularly.)

• Recycle time: With Lumy turbo batts, I can fire my flashes eight times (on 1/4 power) while Big Lights Guy is counting, "one thousand... two one thousand...," after each shot. Even with Ni-MH AA's, I could get four 1/4 power shots off in a second.

• Oh, yeah: A couple thousand dollars cheaper.

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Don't get me wrong. The big lights are great if they are (a) aimed well and (b) you can justify the money for installing them in an arena. Smart photogs work out agreements with arenas and then rent out the lights (when they do not need them) to help cover the up-front costs.

But this article is about how to use the little flashes. So we'll set the Duke Nuke'em flashes aside for the moment.

What I am doing is different than the way I usually shoot hoops. Instead of using the strobes as the main light and the ambient as fill, I am gonna use the ambient as main and the strobes as fill.

Do not be biased for one method over the other. Go with what is presented to you. In this case, my flashes were not powerful enough to nuke the ambient, so I decided to enhance the ambient a little.

When I arrived, the ambient lights were better than I had remembered. Seems TU had been getting more TV coverage, so they shelled out for more sodium vapes.

(Universal truth: There is nothing a college will not do to facilitate more TV coverage. Ditto politicians.)

Actually, I could have shot available light with little problem. But where's the fun in that? Besides, there is a second floor walkway with a railing about 25 feet behind each basket that was just begging for SB's. So here's how (one way at least) to do it.

First things first: Assess the ambient light color. This is easier than it sounds. I shot an available light shot from the 2nd-floor walk with the camera set to daylight balance and chimped the result. Looked greenish - reasonably close to fluorescent.

"Close enough for government work" is all you are gonna get here, so I set the camera to fluorescent and shot another. Not too far off. So I greened a couple of SB's and clamped them to the railing.

I use the cheapo, lime-green Home Depot clamps - just 99 cents each. The orange ones are the same size, but cost $3.99. (I assume the green ones are not ripe yet, and thus 1/4 the price.) I modded them by adding another 37 cents worth of 1/4 x 20 bolt and a couple of nuts. Then I attached the spare 3/8" stud that comes on the Dot Line umbrella brackets I bought from MPEX. A little gaffer's tape to strengthen the clamp even more and you are out the door for well under $2.00.

Now, the umbrella brackets mount right on the clamps. Cool, huh?

Yep, in the big leagues no expense is spared in the mounting of lights. Even more impressive is that I paid for the clamps, bolts and nuts in cash, baby. Need secure lights to a railing? Just whip out your good friend, "Abraham Lincoln," and see if he can persuade the guy in the orange apron to hook you up with the parts for a remote mounting system.

Back to the ambient, it's not that it is all that bad in this gym. But it is coming from a bad direction (top down) if you are on the hardwood under the basket shooting up. So augmenting the light from slightly above and behind the basket is going to help it out a lot.

Flashes greened, another test pop shows that I am pretty balanced at 1/4 power with a 50mm beam spread (at ASA 640 at a 250th of a sec.) One very important thing to note is that I am not pointing the flashes down at the players so much as skimming them at head height.

This is to feather the light. I do not want it to be too bright under the basket and too dim at the top of the key. Aiming them up a tad evens things out, as the closer the players are, the more they are at the edge of the beam.

As an added bennie, the lights can reach far out into the court (example below.) Amazingly, they will be adding some nice fill even at the other end. This even surprised me. Flashes balanced and tested, I head down to shoot the game.

I have not shot a lot of hoops this year. Truth be told, I am a little rusty. So as insurance I went up into the stands to shoot the first five minutes of the game with a 80-200 up in the stands, straight across the sidelines from the rim, at rim height.

I do this as insurance. First, it is very easy to get something from here, as the angle is straight across to the basket. You can just pre-focus and let the players come to you. Also, if the beeper goes off three minutes into the game to send me somewhere else on spot news, I know I will have a couple of good shots. Further, this will give me a different looking "B" or "C" photo than the baseline action stuff.

Easy, and good variety when compared to the baseline stuff. Works for me. Five minutes into the game I move down to the baseline to shoot along with everyone else. But if I had to, I could have left at that point with good action.

Now's a good point to show the effects of the flash vs pure ambient.

Here are the refs, with no flash. This is the baseline exposure which takes into account the ambient light without having to over expose the ceiling because the light is really coming from the wrong direction.

Here they are, same exposure, with the flashes turned back on. Honestly, the fact that they are lit is not even that obvious if you had not seen the other pic. Remember, we are not nuking the ambient so much as fleshing it out. The flashes, coming from the top/front of the direction the action is going to be facing, are basically filling the shadows and compressing the tonal range of the photos.

Here is what the light looks like from the baseline at my end of the court. It has a lit-but-not-overpowered look that I like, given how little hardware I am using to do the job.

I also like that I can just set my motors to run at a max of 4 FPS and not worry about recycle times unless I fire more than eight shots in a continuous burst. (four shots at a time if using just AA's.) In both ways, this lighting style is a hybrid between available light and nuked gym.

Here is a shot from the same position of action at other end of the court, (with an 80-200.) I am clearly getting some fill from the flash even at this distance. In other frames, I can even see the shadow of the backboard on the far wall.

This gives clean, fast-sequence-shooting light. If the news of the game happened at the opposite end, I'd have it. At ASA 640 or 800, I can crop it in without too much grain. Not so at 1250 or 1600.

As an aside, we have big house lights in Comcast Arena for the Maryland Terps. But honestly, the shooting speed stops me from using them most of the time.

So, if you cannot afford the big lights, you can get most of the way there with creative use of your small strobes. They will be there when you need them, and you can easily fit the whole two-light kit in a small camera bag, clamps and all.

Next: Special Q&A: Speedlighting a Gym

Ray Flash vs. Orbis vs. AlienBees ABR800 Review, Pt. 2

Last week, we looked at the Orbis and Ray Flash, which pretty much compete head-to-head in the ring flash adapter arena.

This week, we take a closer look at the AlienBees ABR800. Although it is a ringlight with a self-contained studio monobloc flash, it is priced in the neighbor of the other two units -- especially when you consider a standalone flash is not needed to make it work.
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The AlienBees ABR-800

For the sake of (relative) brevity, I am going to assume you have already read both last week's post and seen the comparison video at SportsShooter. (Again, they talk about the "Zeus" ring flash, which is a pack-and-head model. But for quality-of-light purposes, the two are identical.)

The ABR800 ($400, here) is a monobloc housed within a ring flash unit. At 320 watt-seconds, it is powerful enough to blast into the sun at typical portrait distances. And it has enough juice to work as appropriate fill in full sun at much greater distances.

If you are shooting in open sun a lot, this is reason enough alone to consider the ABR over the speedlight modifiers. Sadly, Paul Buff (the ABR manufacturer) does not sell worldwide. But as of a few days ago he has just opened up an Australian/Asian distribution point.

Alas, for people who live outside of the US or AU/Asia, there are not any current choices at this power level in this price range. (Hint, hint, flash manufacturers.)

At $400, it is a screaming bargain compared to its studio flash competition. Like most Paul Buff units, it is not excessively heavy duty. I have used mine for the better part of a year, and have had no build quality issues. But neither will the high-impact plastic housing and mount inspire lots of confidence for some.

The ABR comes with a bracket to allow mounting on a light stand, a tripod or just married to the camera for hand-held use. I generally use it on a light stand, and walk it around as my shooting angle changes. As a single unit, mounted to the camera, it is pretty useable hand-held. But it will take a little getting used to, and will make you pine for the day when you thought the Ray Flash setup was unwieldy. (Wuss.)

The unit is an AC/mains power only unit. But Paul Buff does, for $300, sell a Vagabond II battery pack which is powerful and robust enough for extended shooting without AC power. Before jumping on that, consider the less expensive alternative of a couple hundred feet of extension cord for $30 or so at Home Depot.


If the Vagabond could be considered an optional accessory, the 30-inch "Moon Unit" light modifier is a no-brainer and you should just buy it when you get the ABR800. The $60 Moon Unit, which shares it's name with the daughter of singer Frank Zappa, turns your ABR into a gorgeous ring light/soft box.

This combo is really sweet, as you'll see below. But it also means that the ABR can be used as a particularly nice, self-contained beauty dish-style light on it's own. Just stick it on a stand and go to town.

That said, as much as I love the Moon Unit, it could also be classified as a medieval torture device the first few times you assemble it. So much so, in fact, that I was loathe to let a subject watch me assemble it during a shoot. (There is usually some cursing involved.)

I am reminded of a novice VW Beetle driver who pulls up a little too far in front of the gas pump. Rather than try to wrestle it into reverse, he says, "I'll be right back!" and takes a lap around the block.

Don't let it bug you too much. You'll get it. All of the work is worth it. And it is totally worth the $60.



The ABR's Split Personality

One of my favorite things about the ABR is its versatility right out of the box. It comes with a very efficient, 10-inch reflector and a donut diffuser. (Mmmm-hmm-hmm… donut diffuuuuuuser…)

These combos basically give you four different looks and/or beam spreads to the light -- bare, donut, reflector or both.


(Please note that all of these pictures were done in the same conditions and time as the photos from last week, so if you want to compare apples to apples, that should help.)



Bare ABR

Without any modifiers, the ABR is very harsh. It is classic, in-your-face, garish ring flash. I have yet to use it this way, but if you shoot for one of those weekly CityPaper-type publications, it might be right up your alley.

In addition to being harsh, it is relatively inefficient when compared to use with the 10" reflector, as there is little to push that light forward for you.

I haven't given it much use this way yet (ain't my thang) but I think it could look kinda cool in B&W if you blew out the exposure a little. Very over-the-top, brash paparazzi kind of thing maybe.


ABR w/Donut

Snap on the diffuser donut, and ring diameter stays pretty much the same. The wall shadow intensity and glare lessen slightly, but not much. This will also cost you some power.

The diffuser has the effect of sending the light out more evenly in a 180 degree sphere, though, So if you are shooting wide -- whether using the ABR as main or fill -- this will probably be your best configuration.


ABR w/Reflector

If you are going for sheer sun-nuking power, this is your best bet.

With the reflector, the bare tube's power is all sent forward, giving you the absolute most lumens possible. And the diameter of the light is bigger, which gives you a different background shadow and light quality. This is how I use the ABR when filling outside in full sun. (But usually not nuking the sun with the ring as key -- usually, as fill in combo with a separate key light.)


ABR w/Reflector and Donut

In this setup, the ABR-800 most closely resembles the classic, studio ring flash -- smooth, even small light going into a high-efficiency reflector.

For me, this is most commonly used indoors when I want a standard ring look, for key or fill. Even with the donut, this is a very efficient combo.

And again, more often than not this is going to be used as fill for another lighting scheme.


Outside, the ABR separates itself from speedlight-based models. This shot, a promo still for a short film, was done in the shade.

But we still had power to burn in full daylight if we wanted -- we were powered way down on the ABR. This this cranks.

We used the reflector-with-donut setup mentioned above and found some smooth shade. Then we underexposed the shade by about two stops and brought the ring up to full exposure.

We then took that combo down a further stop-and-a-half and used VAL'd SB-800s as key lights. You can see the setup here, courtesy Rehan, who was helping that day.


ABR w/30" Moon Unit

The combo of an ABR with a 30" Moon Unit is far-and-away my favorite look for ring flash -- especially on those occasions when I use it by itself as an on-axis light.

It is a combination ring flash and soft box, and produces a light like nothing I have seen. It wraps and rings, at the same time.

There are caveats, though. First, you will lose some photog/subject interaction, as you are pretty much gonna be hidden behind the light source. It's big.

Also, you cannot get too close with it, to it gets too soft -- just flattish and blah. And the on-axis highlights in the eyes start getting really big. As in, people start looking like aliens. (Hmm, or AlienBees?) But from a working portrait distance, it is sweet.


It also makes a good modifier for a ring-as-fill, too. It does the job in a smooth way, without leaving its own signature. In the BW example at left, I used a 30" Moon Unit as fill and a gridded SB-800 speedlight as a key, from high camera right.

If you have an ABR and have not gotten a Moon Unit, do yourself a favor. It's cheap and it totally transforms the light. And its secondary usefulness as a beauty dish is a great bonus. Just be ready to feel like an idiot the first dozen times you assemble it.
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Bored of the Rings

So, there you have it -- a full, direct comparison of three of the most reasonable ring light solutions around. Had enough yet? I'll bet yes.

Even if you do not go for the up-against-the-wall standard ring stuff (not a big fan, either) I hope you will consider one as a way of filling some of your edgier forms of key lighting. They make a lot of things possible that otherwise would not look very good.

And even if you can't spring for one you can always sit down with a movie, some cardboard and some foil tape and roll your own. That's a whole new variable to add to your lighting kit for less than $5, which is pretty hard to beat.

Birthdays, Heresies and Watt-Seconds

Strobist turned two this weekend. And while I will admit that it is not yet completely potty trained, now is as good a time as any to announce some upcoming changes.

What to expect in the coming year, after the jump.
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Looking Forward

In upcoming weeks you will no doubt notice some changes. They will be welcomed by some, and poo-poo'd others.

This site started out in 2006 as a small trail of bread crumbs for photojournalism students and young pros on how to use their shoe-mount flashes a little bit better. It was designed to fill the gap between what they taught us about light in PJ school, and what we needed to know in the real world.

But over the last two years it grew into something way bigger than that. It became a place where people gather to learn about light. And believe me, I have learned more in that time than any of you have.

Given that we have spent two years digging very deeply into what kind be done with a small kit of speedlights, there is a growing danger that the site will just become a circular, self-derivative discussion. And since excessive inbreeding (especially the intellectual kind) never did anyone much good, it is time to shake things up a little.

Starting in year three, we will be expanding our coverage area into all kinds of off-camera flashes to see what we can learn form the photographers who use them.


(What the...?)

Why? Three reasons:

First and foremost, the beauty of learning to use your speedlights in manual mode means that every single skill you acquire is translatable to the larger strobes. That's such a cool thing, not to having to learn a whole new skill set just because you are moving to a larger powered light. And many of you are making (or have already made) that leap.

(That alone is reason to expand your speedlight abilities beyond TTL systems such as CLS and eTTL.)

Second, the vast majority of what is being done with big strobes today is translatable down to speedlights. And easily so, since you understand the 1/1-, 1/2-, 1/4-power thing. And as such, it is crazy nuts not to take a close look at those guys and see what we can learn from them.

Third, if you want to improve your game in any arena you really need to learn to look beyond the genre in which you are operating.

Here's how I thought while I was at The Sun shooting with light for a newspaper:

Say for the sake of argument that I was operating on a theoretical level of, oh, 20 on a scale of 1-100. Say the hot shots at the bigger papers were shooting in the 40's on the same scale. If I merely looked at what the other newspaper guys were doing, tried to learn from them, and partially succeeded, I might end up in the 30's. If I were lucky.

But if I looked at the very best people in the photo world, the 90th-percentile guys, learned from them and still failed to totally get it, I might end up in the 50s' or 60's. Kinda weird, granted. But that is the way I always thought.

So from here on out, I am going to make a concerted effort to expose you to some of the hot shots in the business in the form of reverse engineering exercises and "guest" On Assignments.

I don't care if they are using speedlights, Profotos or magnesium powder. Light is light. And we may as well be learning from the folks who are working at the highest levels.

If you have any particular favorites, leave me a URL in the comments. I cannot promise I can get them, but I can promise to look into each suggestion.

I will be translating the big lights down to speedlight-speak wherever possible. Because that is where most of us are working. Look for the first one in that series to appear later this week.

Speaking of shooting and "On Assignments," that is what you most requested on the last reader feedback post, so that is going to be given a higher priority. I want this site to be the place for the next-gen folks to learn about light that us older farts never had.

If you are a high-end pro and you are reading this site, I will very likely be hitting you up for a chance to pay your early mentors back. Or, more accurately, pay them forward. I cannot promise you riches. But I can promise you some serious, industry-wide traffic to your site. And I can also teach you what I have learned about search engine optimization for shooters.

And, as I have officially gotten bored silly with not being a regular shooter after eight months, I am back in the saddle. I will be shooting some jobs for The Sun (call me, Chuck) and would be very happy to be in the rolodex of any of you dear readers' various publications.

To that end, I have put some photos into my Zenfolio page, with appropriate contact info for possible location people jobs in the Baltimore, MD, area.

So if you are reading this from your scanning station (or, better yet, at the picture desk) of an editorial publication, I would be much obliged if you would take a moment to enter me into your system of stringers as Your Man in Baltimore. Of leave a note on the appropriate colleague's desk.

Having been a kept, in-house shooter for 20 years, this photographic dating stuff will be new to me at first. So I am going to be jotting down my "lessons learned" in the occasional OT post in the hopes that it might be helpful to some of you in similar positions.

I also have started work on what I think is a very special self-generated project. There will be more on that, soon. So between those two shooting venues, my OA's will be coming back, too.

And speaking of OA's, remember the Old Masters post from late last year? We are gonna be using those guys as a way to sharpen our reverse-engineering skills while we get our culture on. After all, they were the first quality reverse engineers of light. In short, look forward to some interviews with some dead guys in the mix. They have good stuff to teach us.

If that's not enough, we still have two sections of Lighting 102 to finish up. And then we'll be doing regular, real-world assignments as a group. I might be able up the ante a little to make it more interesting. I have a few ideas.
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And finally, for those of you who are interested, some stats from the year that was:

Over the past year ending April 5th, 2008, there were 503 posts, which received a total of 14,540,459 page views from 1,493,505 different readers from 208 different countries/territories. Heck, we even had one visitor from Antartica who read 8 posts over a span of 21 minutes.

Thanks for a wonderful year, and I am very much looking forward to learning along with you during the next.



Thanks,
David
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(Handy flash photo at top by Ecatoncheires)

Variations on a Two-Light Theme, Pt. 3

Finishing up our quick series on two-light headshot ideas, we finally come around to something a little more mainstream looking. Today, two different spins on umbrella key used with on-axis fill.

More, inside.
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For the first two, we used a gridded flash and a gobo'd SB-III, respectively. Today we are going for a little more of a classic look, then putting a twist into it.

Steven, above, was lit entirely by flash -- no ambient contribution in the exposure. The key was an SB-800 in a shoot-thru umbrella, positioned right over the top of the camera. You can see the setup shot here:


(Setup shots courtesy Syl Arena / Paso Robles Workshops. Click on any pic for bigger.)

We used a white wall as a background, but dropped the wall to dark grey by moving everything away from the background to underexpose it. (All about the relative distance.)

We could have easily gone to black by moving further away. The point is that you can get any tone you want by depriving the wall of light -- or adding light to it.

Since we did not need to use the second light for the backdrop, that left us free to use it as fill. Our second light was an SB-800 in an Orbis ring flash adapter.

This two-light combo now gives us complete control over subject key, fill and background levels. The fill, obviously, being determined by the power level on the ring flash.

We can place the umbrella wherever we want, to shape Steven's face however we want. We don't have to worry about the shadows so much, because we are erasing them to whatever extent we want with on-axis fill.

And because we have control over the fill level, we can ease that key over into a more dramatic position. Just by moving the key around a little, we can give this same setup a little more attitude.


Enter, "Tokyo" Bill. (We had an extra Bill in the class, and we had to tell them apart somehow.)

With Bill, we can really rack that key light around to far camera left and work that Obi-Wan thing with his hoodie. Bill was damn-near ready to whip out a light sabre before we finished.

(That, of course, would not have fit into our two-light limit. But it would have looked friggin' cool.)

We can move the key around to sculpt his face and work the edge of his hood because we are not at all worried about the fill light in the deep, dark recesses under there at camera right. This is where on-axis fill shines, as it can worm its way into just about anything.

If you can see it from the lens axis, you can light it. As much or as little as you want. Here's the setup:



When using two lights like this, I find it very simple to think in terms of, "one for shape, and one for detail." You control the form with the key, and control the depth of the form with the fill.

That fill can be an off-axis strobe, or an Orbis (or Ray Flash, or ABR-800) or it can be ambient. All have advantages and disadvantages.

But working that shape-vs. detail balance can allow you to get many different looks with just a couple of speedlights.

First, Riaz, then Brett, now Steven and Bill. So Just a few quick and dirty, all-flash two-light headshot looks that you can whip out anywhere the ambient is controllable.

Which you may find very useful, starting next week.

Variations on a Two-Light Theme, Pt. 2

Last in this series we looked at Riaz, lit entirely by flash against a darkish wooden wall. At left is Brett, who was lit right where he sat in a classroom chair in an unfinished commercial building with a primed drywall background.

This time around: High-axis key light with just enough strobe on the background to separate it from black. More inside.
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Start With the Key

I'll give you one guess as to what I used for a key light. It is really my go-to light mod for close-in speedlight portraiture now. Broken record, I know. But the not-hard / not-soft look, plus total control, in a small package is too much to resist for me.

If we come in high and in front of Brett, we create a shaft of "third-degree" -type light that you might see in an interrogation scene in a movie. The shaft is hard (-ish) and pointed straight down. Actually, it is even pointed a tad away from him and back toward me. Even so -- and even with the control you get with the SB-III -- his hair was still a little hot.

So we gobo'd the edge closest to Brett with two strips of gaffer's tape to make a quickie barn door. This gave the shaft of downlight a more defined edge. Which, in turn, created a more coming-into-a-shaft-of-light look. That's why the light gets darker as a crawls up Brett's head.

It is a crisp, 3-D look, IMO. Not nearly as out-there as what Peter Yang did earlier, but definitely on the same branch of the family tree.



Here is the setup shot, courtesy Syl Arena. The "boom" holding up the SB-800 / SB-III keylight is the flash arm off of a CSB Micro Mini. (I end up using that outfit chopped into separate parts just as often as I use it together.)

You really need some sort of boom on this -- gotta get that light right out front, and you do not want it moving. In that close, inches matter a lot.

So, our key is relatively powerful because it is in very close. Even dialed way down we will get plenty of aperture to hold focus through the face. Another bennie is that we have the ability to take that nearby white wall to black. This is all because of key-to-subject distance.

Now our white wall is totally black, which means we can make it anything with a second strobe. I chose to aim the second flash at the back wall, using a dome diffuser. This takes the flash pattern out of play and makes the tone of the wall a pure distance thing -- with a smooth gradient. If I want a fast-falling gradient, I put the light in close. If I bring the light away from the wall, the gradient gets less dramatic.

I can control the gradient's actual tone with the power setting on the flash, so the two variables can be adjusted independent of each other. I could make a barely separating grey wall by moving Brett and the light closer to the background wall, but I would lose this gradient control.


Variations on a Variation

And besides, I can do a lot with the rest of that key beam if I want. Remember, Brett is on the feathered edge of the beam, which means that we have a lot of lighting power being wasted out in the space in front of him.

I can catch that with a big reflector in low and fill those shadows if I want. Of I can put that reflector in front, just out of the frame and angled toward Brett's face for fill light very similar to that we used on Riaz. I can make the reflected light as bright or dim as I want by including or excluding the full force of the beam from the key light.

If I have Brett on the edge of the key beam, the reflected light could actually end up being brighter than where Brett is in the key. Lots of possibilities -- even maybe that pillow trick, à la John Keatley.

Long story short, the nose and chin shadows depths could be placed at any density you want. But the hard, toplight is also what gives the photo it's look. So you don't wanna rush in there willy-nilly and "fix" everything.

Just understand that you have complete choice in the tonal range of the photo -- even if you are just using two strobes and no ambient.