Two Speedlight Grid Spot Systems: Flashpoint and Rogue

If you need to create a tight beam of light, it's as easy as wrapping a little cardboard around your flash head. Bam -- instant cheapo snoot, to go.

But what you'll find with a snoot is that the edges of the beam can be a little abrupt. If you want a nice, feathered transition to that edge, you'll want a grid.

I have long been a user of the Honl grids. But there are a couple of other interesting grids floating around that deserve consideration, depending on your particular needs.

Inside, a quick look at speedlight grids from Flashpoint and Rogue. Read more »

DIY Softbox Grid for Under $10.00

Long-time readers of Strobist will know that I am not a big fan of softboxes.

Maybe it is because of all of the light they suck out of my small flashes. (Umbrellas are more efficient.)

Maybe it is their cost, by the time you get them hooked up to a stand and an SB speedlight. (You have to get the box and then go doohickey shopping to connect it to a shoe unit.)

Or maybe it is just that I pretty much used them to death in the 80's and 90's.

But a softbox does offer a good balance of diffusion and control. And I will admit to still owning one.

About two weeks ago, I got an assignment that required reasonably soft light and total spill light control. I was going to photograph two elderly ladies in front of a (DLP) projected historical photo for a play they were doing about Baltimore's famous Cone sisters.

For this, I would need a source that could light them, yet completely avoid light spilling on a white background that was 10-12 feet away. (That wall would be for my continuous light projection surface.)

Sure, I could have used a hard light with a gridspot. But using that hard quality of light is not a real cool thing do to someone of that age.

So I dug into my closet and (literally) dusted off my old softbox I used to use ad nauseum with my trusty old White Lightning 600 monobloc. It is a Photoflex model from the '80's, and is about 24 x 30 inches - with some tweaks.

First, it has velcro on the front corners to take either of two, full-sized gels - a window green and a warming gel.

Second, it has black gaffer's tape dividing the front panel into six sections, like the panes of a window. (That makes for much nicer, more natural eye reflections.)

But the softbox needed more spill control, so I went shopping for one of those neat, fabric grid spots.

I am reminded at this point of the old joke wherein a guy gets revenge from a girl by having someone sit next to her for a few minutes at a bar. Then, without warning, they stand up and loudly say, "A hundred a fifty DOLLARS???" Then, they get up and walk away from her.

The implication, of course, being that (a) she is "for sale," and (b) she is quite overpriced at $150.

Well, that's pretty much how I felt about the (very nice looking) fabric grid spots.

So I decided to take some inspiration from my scissors-happy five-year-old and make one myself.

Now, before I go on, I will say that the two items are not exactly equal. Mine is heavier, and designed for not-too-frequent usage. And it is made out of cardboard and tape.

But it cost about 5% of the price of the spiffy store-bought one, and for an infrequent softboxer like myself, it fit the bill.

Put differently, I could almost get another off-camera light, stand, umbrella, etc., for what I saved. No brainer.


How to Make a DIY Softbox Gridspot

What you'll need:

• For a medium-sized softbox, five or six pieces of thin, black poster board. I barely did it in 5. Get 6 to be safe. Mine were $0.89 each. The board should be at about the size of your softbox.

• Black duct tape. (You won't be removing this, so no need to use more costly gaffer's tape. You can get it for about $3.00 at a craft store, along with the poster board.)

• Silver sharpie (or a white crayon) to mark on the poster. Likely hanging around the house already.

• A straight edge, like a yard (or meter) stick. Will also be used for measuring.

• Scissors (or a razor knife and safe cutting surface.)

• Some 4th-grade math skills.


First, find a common factor for the dimensions of your softbox grid. Aim for something in the area of 4-6 inches.

You will want to make the grid a little smaller than the box, to use a friction mounting system. My box was 24 x 30, so my grid was 22 x 28. I went with a common factor of 5.5 inches. (5.5 x 4 is 22, and 5.5 x 5 is 27.5) I cut my poster board to be this size. (I had to trim 1/2 inch off of one side.)

Next, draw a 5.5 x 5.5 (my chosen common factor) grid on each sheet as shown, using solid lines. Then bisect that grid with a 2.25 x 2.25 (half the common factor) set of dashed lines, as shown.

Split the boards into two groups of three sheets each.

Cut one group on the vertical (5.5") lines and one group on the horizontal (5.5"). These will be your strips.

Tape two vertical and two horizontal strips together on edge - with the drawn lines on the inside - to make the perimeter of the gridspot.



Now, cut notches along the 2.25 lines (all of them, including the 5.5 multiples) on one long side of all of the rest of the strips. You will cut to the half-way line on each, that line having been provided by your (dashed) grid drawings, as shown.

Do not just cut a slice. Cut a shallow "V", to allow the grid to go together much more easily. This is important.

Once you have your vertical and horizontal strips notched, tape your center (or close to center if using an even number) vertical strip into the frame, notches up.

Working on alternate sides, tape the other horizontal strips in, notches up. Your drawn lines will tell you where to tape them for perfect spacing. You do not have to go nuts on the tape, either, You'll be using a lot in total.

Now, work your way through the verticals in the same way - but notches down. If you did not take the time to cut "V notches" your joints will be all squishy and bendy. Go back and cut "V" notches like I suggested.

If you made little "V's," your grid spot will quickly and easily start to come together, causing an almost uncontrollable urge to hit the "make a donation" button on the sidebar of this site.

(Hey, I'm just saying. It happened to me.)

Using small pieces of tape, fasten the edges of the strips to the insides of the frame. You do not have to tape each intersection - just the border areas. You'll finish up pretty quickly from here. I did mine in about 90 minutes total, but I was figuring out how to do it as I went.

Reinforce the corner edges with tape. Reserve any extra poster board to make a light-sealing "skirt" around the edges if you like. You will want it on at least one edge.

The grid will be heavier than you expected. But it should still hold OK by bending the softbox ribs and wedging them into the four (tape reinforced) corners of the grid spot. It will weigh your box down a little, so adjust the tilt angle of the strobe to compensate.


So, How Does it Work?

Pretty darn good, actually.

As you can see from this photo, compared to the top one, the light falloff is absolute as you move a little bit away from the front of the box.

This is not a tiny gadget, and not the kind of thing you would travel all of the time with. But it works great to come out of the closet for that infrequent time you might need some serious light spill control. It will collapse on the diagonal an then you can loosely fold it in half.

Next: An On Assignment post detailing the photo that the grid was designed for.

Hacking the Grid

Regular readers of this site will know I am a big fan of the Honl 1/8-inch grid. It is built like a tank, and designed to fit onto nearly any speedlight made.

The first day it arrived at my house (one of the first production samples in the country, as I would later find out) Dave Honl asked to me to test it out and see if it was tough enough.

So I ran over it with my car… Read more »

SLC-2L-04: Use a Tight Grid to Create Color

Normally, you might think of a grid spot for what it creates: a tight zone of light. But it also can be helpful to think of it in terms of the inverse: a grid also prohibits light from reaching everywhere else.

And the "everywhere else" part—that relative blackness you can create with a gridded key—is what can help you to amp the color palette in even a small room with light-toned walls.


Read more »

Hack Your Grid II

Here is a quick-but-cool little hack inspired by the permanent way I altered my Honl grids a little earlier.

Using a piece of elastic and two hooks (tiny bungee cord, hair band and two paper clips, etc.) you can mount any grid to any smaller sized flash. I use them to mount my old Paul Buff grids to speedlights.

Why? Because if you are mixing speedlights and big lights, your gridded accents can usually be handled with low-power flashes. And many people have full sets of grids in varying beams for their big lights but not their speedlights.

Works on big modifiers, too. Using two larger straps in "X" formation allows me to mount the relatively inexpensive grid from my AlienBees dish onto my slightly smaller Profoto dish -- thus deferring the need to purchase the brand-specific beauty grid.

In short, as long as the grid is bigger than the target light/reflector, you can mount any grid to any light. Use two straps for more control and/or tension as needed, and you're good to go.

They take up almost no space -- just keep a few of the elastic hook sets (at your needed lengths) tucked away in your light bag. Like me, you're probably gonna find more uses for them on location, too.

-30-

SaxonPC Grids: Straddling Store-bought and DIY

Like McNally says, if you want to make something more interesting, don't light all of it. To that end, I use grid spots a lot. In fact, probably just as often as I use umbrellas.

My workhorse speedlight grid has long been the HonlPhoto 1/8". But for those looking for a lower entry point (or more extreme beam widths) SaxonPC grids offer a second choice.

They are both designed to be used on speedlights, but take very different approaches from there. Today, a head-to-head comparison to help you decide which best suits your needs. Read more »

HonlPhoto Speed Grids: Controlling Contrast

While hanging out with the Western Kentucky photojournalism students this weekend, I got a chance to play around with David Honl's new speed grids for a bit. Long story short, I like his better than my DIY versions -- for several reasons.

I have been spending a lot of time lately reverse engineering the light of a few photographers whose work I really admire. What I am seeing is that it is not the light that calls attention to itself so much as the light's ability to draw you into an image in a specific way. I love the idea of subtly -- or not so subtly -- highlighting a portion of an image to draw the eye in.

In the past, I would go on the assumption of the quality of the fill light somehow being less important than the quality of the main light. I'd pay less attention to the feel of the fill light, as it was just there to keep the main light from leaving the wrong kind of shadows.

But recently, I have been paying more attention to my fill light -- even creating it first -- and then laying main light down on top of that. For those of you who do not use a flash meter (as I don't) this can be a very helpful approach to creating exactly the lighting ratios you want.


Take this portrait of (WKU PJ student) Emily, for example. In the photo at left, I sat her in front of a metal case in the WKU photo studio and shot her with a shoot-thru umbrella straight on.

I did this purposefully, to create a specular highlight that I would then have to control. Basically, I wanted to give myself some excessive contrast to then knock down.

Looks fine, except for the line going right through her head. But this wasn't going to be my final photo -- or even my main light. I wanted the straight-on umbrella to be my fill light. But I created my fill with the same level of attention as my main would get.

Then I dropped my flash's power level down two stops. Now I have a darkish photo, lit only by my fill light. But the fill light has the same attention given to it as a main light, and I know that it is filling exactly two stops down.


Now, I bring a second SB-800 at camera left, with a warming gel, and fire it through one of Honl's grids. I used the 1/8 grid, which throws a tighter beam than the 1/4.

As I bring the gridded light up on her face and choose my power setting to get the best exposure, my grid becomes my main light and my umbrella becomes my fill. And the fill is exactly the quality and the quantity that I want.

As far as the grid itself, I really liked the smooth falloff at the edges of the beam much better than my DIY versions. The light was more uniform and the pattern was a little looser, too.

Not to poo-poo my DIY grids, because they have served me well. But the store-bought grids are also smaller (cubic inches are always at a premium in my case) and had a very rugged build. You could probably run over them with a car and they'd be fine.

But back to the light, this is something I will definitely be experimenting with over the next few weeks. I am putting together a portrait series as a long-term project. And I think that hard light, coupled with the right kind of fill, will be a good fit.

These production sample grid spots are going to get a lot of use over the next few months. (So, sorry, Dave. These are not coming back.)
_______

Related links:

Gear used: Nikon D300 | Tamron 17-50/2.8 | Nikon SB-800 | Honl Speed Grid
First Look: Honl Speed Grids
DIY Grid How-To's: Cardboard | Straws | Coroplast
WKU Photojournalism Program

On Bathroom Detail All Week

We're remodeling two bathrooms, and as part of a barter deal with the contractor I am doing a series of before and after photos. I'll post more about that later, but I just wanted to drop something in quickly about the lighting on the detail shots I was doing today.

It's a quick-and-dirty, two-light setup and the effect is almost like a charcoal drawing—sort of 2-D and 3-D at the same time. And try as I might, it's pretty hard to mess this up.

Read more »

Lighting 102: 4.1 - Restricting Light

Soft light is... nice.

Soft light is safe. It is flattering. It is, well, expected, for lack of a better word.

And don't get me wrong -- nice, safe, flattering and expected are good things. They put bread on the table every single day for pro shooters around the world. But the people who are doing edgy, risk-taking stuff -- fun stuff -- tend to not be the typical, umbrella-toting photographers.

Hard light -- especially hard light that has been restricted in some way or another -- can really get you out of a rut if you are looking for a way to amp your photos. Remember, using light balancing techniques, you can still control the ratio of the lit-to-unlit sections of a photo. This is true whether you are transitioning from a strobe-lit area to an ambient-lit one, or from an area lit by one strobe to an area lit by another strobe.

So, while apparent light size controls the abruptness of the transition to shadow, your various light balance levels will control how far you fall into the shadow. These two variables, used in tandem, give a wide range of control.

But the beam of the light source itself -- usually a hard light source in this context -- can be controlled via various light restricting devices. More after the jump.
_______________________

Gobos

A gobo is basically any type of a light shield. "Gobo" is a slang abbreviation for "go between." It can be either attached to the side of the light, or placed between the light and any place you do not want the light to reach.

This can be to solve a flare problem with a light that is aimed back toward the camera, or to shield light from falling onto the background, or any number of things. Gobos are extremely useful items that do not take up much room in a lighting kit. You should always have a few around.

For example, here is a group shot at one of the London seminars, in which we had just placed a warmed-up separation light in the background, aimed directly the group. As you can see, the light is also spilling onto the ceiling pretty badly.

We can solve that problem by placing a gobo on top of the flash, blocking the light from heading straight up.

The light now does what we want it to do, but not what we don't want it to do.

There is no reason you could not put a gobo on the bottom, too, for instance. In fact, you can have just about any beam pattern you want through the use of gobos, snoots, and/or grid spots. (You can see a full On Assignment write-up on this photo here.)

Any good mechanic will tell you that it is important that your car be able to go, but it is more important that your car be able to stop. This is also how I feel about light. Put the light where you want it, and keep it from going where you don't.

For instance, I could have a hard light that travels as a vertical strip by placing a gobo on each side of the flash.


Snoots

A snoot is essentially a four-sided gobo -- just a tunnel for your flash to restrict the light to a tight beam. The longer the snoot, the tighter the beam. Simple as that. But there are more controls to be had with a snoot.

You'll get fast fall-off on the edge of your beam if the inside of your snoot is black. This is because there is very little light bouncing around the inside of the snoot, contaminating the edges of the beam. You'll get softer edges to the beam if the insides are light grey, or white. And softer yet edges if the inside is silver.

You can see more on snoots and gobos in the original L101 post. I am a cardboard snoot and gobo kinda guy, but you can get ready-made (i.e., non cheapskate-looking) versions if you do not want your clients to catch a cereal box vibe from your gear.

A good example of problem-solving (including the why and the how-to) with a snoot is in this biz portrait On Assignment post.

You can also make snoots out of black foil to have teeny-tiny openings, as in this example. This gives exception light beam control, which is especially helpful with light painting.

Even with close-up photography, the ability to direct strobe light right where you want it can give you the control to light on complete different planes, even if the two planes are literally inches away from each other.


Grid Spots

Grid spots are essentially a patterned group of snoot built into one device. They offer much more beam control over the light. I have grids that will throw about an eight- by six-inch pattern at six feet. That's tight.

The longer the grid is (and the smaller the individual channels) the tighter the beam. The best two ways to make grid spots are out of black straws or coroplast, (a plastic version of corrugated cardboard.)

As an example of the level of light control with a grip spot, I bounced a light around the inside of a missing slice of cake in this photo. The light does not hit the white icing right next door. That's control. That's a grid spot.


Cookies

In addition to simple objects that are designed to block the light, you can shoot through complex objects to partially block the light, or to create a neat pattern of interest in your photos. Typically, these are colled "cookies," if they are 2-D and man-made, which is short for "cookaloris." It's an old movie lighting term.

They are usually a sheet of black cardboard, with a seemingly random pattern of holes. But my preference is to use found objects, such as potted plants, to create patterns as in the photo at left, which is explained in detail here. I cannot tell you how many times this technique has helped to elevate an otherwise boring photo.


Time to Play

So, those are my Four Horsemen of light restricting. But you'll never get feel for using them if you just read about them. So, for this session's exercise, we'll be making some light restrictors and test-driving them.

This is easy, sit-around-and-digest-the-Thanksgiving-turkey stuff. Your exercise is to make some various light restrictors and shoot some consistent photos, swapping out and/or moving the light mods.

For example, you might do something as simple as make a couple of gobo's and a few snoots of dfferent lengths and set a flash on a stand and shoot pic of the wall. By placing the different light mods on your flash, you should gain a good understanding of what it is that they do.

You'll want to be putting together a grid spot, too. It's a tad more complicated to build than the gobo and snoot, but it turns your flash's output into an amazing little beam of light. We are gonna play with that more later.

Tag your exercises as:

Strobist
Lighting102
exercise
restrict

You can view the completed exercises of others, here. There is a discussion thread set up for this post here.

NEXT: Restricting Light / Film Noir Assignment

Free and So Easy: DIY Grid Spots for Your Flash

This is so cool.

I would love to take credit for this idea, but the props go to Strobist reader Gut Mann, who posted a note in the Flickr Strobist threads a ways back.

It sat on my list of (about 20,000) things to do until I saw a piece of thick, corrugated cardboard yesterday. Making these little grid spots really could not be easier. (Heck, the top picture pretty much explains it.) And can be done with things you are likely to already have around the house.

I made a few grid spots for my speedlights. Here's what I used:

• Some corrugated cardboard - the thicker the internal cavity the better, and you won't need much. Just keep your eye out for a biggish box designed to hold something heavy. That tends to be the thick stuff.

• A ruler.

• A box cutter or razor knife.

• Some glue

• A rubber band.

First a little theory.

The grids will give you a very tight spot of light - tighter than a snoot - with nice edge gradients.

The beam width is a function of the thickness of the grid vs the size of the internal spaces of the corrugation. I made a half-inch and a one-inch thick grid for each of my flashes, and they work great.

There are two things you should know about these grids.

One, they will eat some light. But that is not an issue, since they are used with direct flash and generally in pretty close quarters.

Two, they will warm the light up somewhat. This is actually a bennie as far as I am concerned, as they tend to get used to light people and the warm light on skin is quite pleasing.

That said, they are, uh, free, which compares favorably to the ridiculously expensive extruded aluminum models.


Time to Make the Grids

The instructions are to make one grid of each size (1/2 inch an one inch) for a speedlight. Adjust to your needs accordingly.

1) Cut a 1/2-inch wide strip of cardboard about 16 inches long. Cut longer if your cardboard is not the thick, corrugated type.

2) Your strip should be cut so when you look at the long side, you look through the little corrugation tunnels. Be careful not to crush the tunnels when you cut. Use a sharp knife, and not on a surface you can damage.

3) Repeat, making a one-inch wide strip in the same fashion.



4) Cut the long strips into sections a tad wider than your flash head.

5) Stack them without glue to make sure they are wide enough to cover the flash head when stacked.


6) Apply glue to them as shown. The last section will not need to have glue applied, as it will be held by the glue on the next-to-last section.

7) Spread the glue with a finger or piece of paper to get complete coverage on one side of each piece. You do not need to use a ton of glue.


8) Assemble them as shown.

9) While the glue is still wet, align them with a flat surface so they will rest properly on your flash. As long as one side of the stack is straight and even, they will work fine.

10) Let them dry. You can "clamp" them with a rubber band as they dry if you wish. Be careful not to crush the layers.


Attaching And Using Them

You're good to go. Attach to your flash as shown in the top photo. Use a neutral or warm-colored rubber band. You can get fancier with the mount, but this way works fine.

They will give a very tight beam spread. Mine grids approximate about a 300mm lens.


The fall-off is quite smooth, with a nice, hot-spot in the center.

You can put a nice cardboard border on them, like Gut Mann did. But it really isn't necessary to get the job done.

And there is no law saying you need to use cardboard, either. You could use corrugated plastic. But you'll want to use a dark, neutral color (black would be ideal) to keep the light from bleeding out of the edges.

White is going to have a very soft - maybe too soft - gradient at the edges. And a colored version, say red, is going to change the color temperature of the light. The cardboard works in this case because the color shoft is actually beneficial for skin.

I am planning to use these for some assignments soon and will post the results as an On Assignment piece or two. The effect will be similar to that of a snoot, but tighter and with more control. They will also take up less space in your gear bag. Both tools have their own uses, and give slightly different looks.

I wanted to show you what I was playing with so you could try it out for yourself in the interim.

Give it a try. We'll compare results later.

And if you just stumbled onto this place from Makezine or another blog, you see what we are all about here.

50 DIY Projects for Lighting Photographers

Do you have more time than money? Time to get your MacGuyver on with this collection of DIY projects. From the ridiculous to the sublime, it's all here. Most of these have been submitted by Strobist readers with more ingenuity than cash. That said, no matter how flush you are it is always better to save your cash for things you can't make yourself.

Links are coded to open in new tabs, for easier multi-project browsing. Pictured above: $10 DIY Macro Studio

Read more »

Hands-on With the Speedlight Pro Kit

We blurbed these when they came out a ways back, but I just got a chance to play with them last month in Paso Robles.

Inside, more on the Speedlight Pro Kit, a video showing just how specialized the internet has become, and what's in it for you.
__________


Combining aspects of both the Lumiquest and Honl stuff, the Speedlight Pro Kit hits a lot of high points.

For about $125.00, you get a combo that allows you to make a double-paneled diffusor, a large grid, a large bare reflector, two snoots and two grids. They share parts from each other, but can be used together to create four different mods at once, as shown in this example.

I got a chance to play with them last month, and they are well (and uniquely) designed. In fact, I liked them enough to immediately start tweaking them.

For starters, you'll definitely want to use a StoFen-type diffuser (either yours or theirs, sold separately) along with the big reflector or big grid. You want to spread that light out to make use of the full size of the source. Otherwise, what's the point?

Additionally, my immediate thought was to mod the big grid with a thin sheet of tissue paper on the back side, to provide diffusion right behind the grid. This effectively gets the light soft(ish) and gridded at the same time. This would make a big difference for close in gridded portraits. Without the tissue, the light would be hard and gridded. You could split the difference with a StoFen (or similar small diffuser) and the internal light from the reflector.

The grids themselves are spartan, if strong. They are hand-cut-and-stacked Coroplast (corrugated plastic) with rectangular channels. These channels are what determines the aspect ratio of the beam, so expect a soft rectangle shape to the beam. (If you want a pure circular beam, go with straws for channels.)

Overall, they are well-made, and very versatile. The only potential problem we saw was possible light leakage around the (double) diffusor. This is a super easy fix, with a little tab of gaffer's tape. Nothing to be concerned about at all.


There's Niche, and There's Niche ...

How specialized is the internet?

Specialized enough to where you can now watch a walk-thru video of a kit of third-party modifiers designed only for speedlights -- and homegrown from Malaysia.

I am so glad to be alive in 2009.

Herewith, everything you need to know about the Speedlight Pro Kit, complete with a soundtrack of genuine, authentic Malaysian bluegrass music.



And why am I telling you about these today? Because the Speedlight Pro Kit is part of the prize pack from the first assignment from Boot Camp II.

Which starts tomorrow.
__________


Available here:

:: Speedlight Pro Kit (USA retailer) ::
:: Speedlight Pro Kit :: (HQ -- Malaysia and UK retailers)
:: Behind-the-Scenes Shoot Video ::
:: Don Giannatti Review ::

On Assignment: HCAC Dancer

I am working on several projects this summer, the most enjoyable of which being a series of portraits for the Howard County Arts Council.

I photographed Kassi, a dancer, for this series and got a chance to play with one of the two-light techniques we talked about earlier. This was also the first chance I got to use a new boom setup that is a little heavier duty than the one featured earlier this week.
__________


Riaz Redux

I normally like to play around with new lighting styles before trying them out on an assignment. In this case, I used the small-flash lighting class in Dubai earlier this year as the guinea pig for this shoot. You might recognize the top photo as being lit similarly to that of Riaz, the first example in the two-light portrait series.

There are a couple of differences, but the grid key / umbrella fill was a common denominator for both. In shooting Riaz, I had the umbrella squished right up under the lens. With Kassi, I put the umbrella on the floor with a flash mounted to it but with no stand.

I used an umbrella swivel adapter to attach an SB-800, and stuck the assembly on the ground. The umbrella rests at about the correct angle for uplighting a low-to-the-ground subject by itself.

Ratios were done without a meter and without regard to any absolute settings, as usual. I positioned the fill light first and altered my flash power and/or aperture until I saw a nice baseline exposure for the frame.

Generally, I like to get it to a full exposure, and then drop my power level on the flash or close down the aperture until I get a nice looking floor to the fill light. The idea is to use the fill as a sort of safety net, to lift the shadows that will be formed by the key light, lest they get too dark and contrasty. If you are coming from off axis with the fill, you'll also introduce a second angle to the overall light.

I really liked the look of the low-in fill, as it gave its own shape to the subject -- much more so that would an on-axis fill. But as much as I liked the shape of the fill, I was going back and forth on the shadow that it threw over Kassi's head and shoulders.

In the end, I wanted the direction of the light, but not the shadow. So I toned the latter way down in post. There is definitely a procedural learning curve for me, even two full years after leaving the tightly controlled Photoshop environment of The Sun.

I have to remember to loosen up, as my default is typically to "do it the newspaper way." But then I remember if I were personally doing everything the newspaper way today, I would be drowning in debt and arbitrarily lopping off perfectly good body parts in a misguided attempt to get a "good return on investment."


Oh well. Back to the light.

The key, as you can see, is a gridded SB-800. We have already locked in the fill level and shooting aperture, so the key level is set by altering the flash's power level. (We can also move the flash closer or further away, but that would change the look of the light.)

Unlike the grid on Riaz, I wanted to catch Kassi's face and body with the key but mostly miss the wall on the leading edge. This way I could control the tone in the white wall, even though she was leaning against it. To do that, I didn't aim the grid at her face, but rather out in front of her face a little bit. So her face is nearer to the edge of the beam than in the center of it.

A grid on a speedlight is a very small light source and thus produces very hard shadows at this distance. But I know they won't fall too far off of the table because I built my fill light first. The combination is soft vs. hard, high vs. low and tight light vs. everywhere light brings a lot of different contrast layers into play. If I wanted, I could have used a 1/2 CTB on the fill and a 1/2 CTO on the key to add a neat color contrast in there, too.


A Bigger Boom

For another look, we wanted to do Kassi dancing. She is very athletic, and incorporates that into her routines. So we set up to light a photo of her leaping.

I knew she would be looking back over her shoulder at me, and wanted to light her face from a flattering angle. To do that, you have to find the position of her face and then get the light wherever it need to be to hit that angle.

In Kassi's case, to three-quarter light her, we'd have to be above, behind and camera-right of her face when she looked over her shoulder. So we were going to need to get the key up pretty high -- especially considering we'd be going through an umbrella, too.

For that I used a bigger, heavier-duty boom than the Interfit model we talked about earlier this week. I used a Paul Buff counter-weighted boom arm attachment on a 13-foot light stand. I got this to be able to get my bigger flash heads up high. And while it is not super heavy duty, it is sufficient for that kind of work.

You buy it in two pieces -- the stand and the boom arm. The stand is a heavy-duty, 13-foot stand, which is also a great thing to have kicking around when you need it. The boom assembly includes a two-section extension pole, a multi-angle clamp and comes with an 11-pound, slide-able counterweight. They total up to $160.

Needless to say, this is rock solid for a speedlight, and I also have been happy with it in a supporting role for both my SB's and my WL's.


So, here's the setup. The key light is above/behind/camera right, through an umbrella. There is a back/separation light (an SB-800) hiding way back at camera right on a compact, 5-section stand.

The key light location was trial and error, done as Kassi worked through a few practice leaps. In the end, it was a perfectly logical location, given the position of her face. Kassi's leap put her about two feet in front of, and to camera left, of the umbrella.

The fill was a bigger problem, as we could not just open the shutter to let if build up the ambient. By balancing that way, we would have lost the shutter needed to freeze the leap. So it would all have to come from flash.

It had to be soft, come from close to on-axis and reach back to light the back wall, too. So I needed a physically big light source, coming from the camera's direction and pretty far back. Fortunately, our room was a neutral, light color, so the wall 15 feet or so behind me became my modifier.


I fired a WL 600 into that wall, building a nice, soft, directionless fill that would be far enough back to reach back to the background wall without losing too much oomph. My shooting position was about three feet in front of the light.

If you are in a neutral room, always consider your walls as possible huge bounce surfaces that you can employ as everything from a soft key to a humongous soft ring-like fill. But you'll need some power if you are going to use it over a large area.

This is one of many examples of a way in which you can use a monobloc with smaller flashes. Ironically, the SB is my key and the WL 600 is the fill. This doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you consider how much more efficient a close-in, umbrella'd light is than another light bounced way back off of a wall and having to carry another 30-40 feet after that.

Having a big light in your back allows you wallpaper fill light over a large area while accenting with speedlights.
__________


Read More: On Assignment

On Assignment: Working With the DIY Softbox Grid Spot

Here is the photo that I built the DIY softbox grid spot to create. The key to this photo is total control on the "white" background.

The photo was done to illustrate a story about two sisters. One had written a play about the surviving Cone sister (major historical benefactors of the Baltimore Museum of Art) and the other was playing the lead role. I wanted to connect them to the actual sisters by joining them with a historical photo.

The light setup is pretty straightforward, with a couple of curveballs.

The softbox was from camera right - and far enough away so that it was out of the frame. I needed compositional area to the right to include the background photo.

The (camera left) back/rim light was a in a normal reflector through a grid spot. I was in the studio with a softbox, so I gave my White lightning Ultra 600's their semi-annual airing out.

The digital projector for the historical photo was behind the softbox, projecting towards the center of the background.

I could have done this with SB speedlights, but I would have needed a flash bracket for the softbox, which I did not have.

Remember, I am using continuous light on the (DLP-projected) historical photo on the background, so that was the only continuous light in the darkened room. No modeling lights allowed on the flash.

The thought process is like this:

1) You have to get your main light(s) positioned and controlled such that no light will spill onto the white background. You want that tone to be absolutely black before the continuous light source adds the background photo to it. (The starting tone, if not black, will be the darkest possible tone in the background.)

2.) Check your strobe light (only) to ensure that you have no background contamination. Dial in your flash's power to give you just enough aperture to hold the background to the focus level that you need. Overdoing this will unnecessarily lengthen the exposure needed to "burn in" the continuous portion of your exposure, leading to motion-ghosting problems with your subject.

3) Now, set your camera to that aperture, and turn on the projector. Adjust your shutter speed for best background exposure.

4) Bring in your subject and turn on the modeling lights for focus. With everything adjusted and locked down on a tripod, kill the modeling lights.

5) Shoot away, and monitor your pix on the back to fix any problems.

Can this be done in Photoshop? Sure.

But I always default to doing something "in-camera" if I can. I think it is better craft.

As for the DIY softbox grid spot, cardboard and tape once again defeats the photo gear mafia. And I save a few hard-earned clams.

Next: Medical Illustrator

Friday Night Lights

Happily, I am shooting high school football again this fall. Meaning I have come full circle from where I started nearly thirty years ago, except this time I am not shooting on deadline for a newspaper.

Which means I am free to shoot some of the facets I normally would have had to pass up, and to experiment with different ways of using flash. This past weekend, that meant a single speedlight, an OCF cord and a grid spot… Read more »

On Assignment: Earth Treks, Pt. 3

Honestly, I never have really enjoyed shooting models.

I'd much rather shoot real people, for lack of a better term. They are way more interesting, and certainly more fun to work with. You just have to remember that they are not used to being in front of a camera and lighting gear all of the time.

After the pretty lengthy shot list during our shoots at Earth Treks climbing gyms, I suggested we get all of our volunteer climbers together and do some of what I like to think of as "speed portraits." Read more »

What to Expect When You're Expecting... an eBay Beauty Dish

I'm a mod slut.

Which is not to say that I am both promiscuous and a snazzy dresser, because I am neither. But rather, I am a sucker for new and different light modifiers. Lots of 'em. Just like Imelda Marcos and shoes.

And especially when they are cheap… Read more »

Lighting Inside the Box

After 15 years of long-term planning (and saving) Susan and I finally took the plunge with a full kitchen remodel. We were really pleased with the results, and at some point I had promised the contractor a nice photo of the final product.

In a room like this you are basically illuminating the inside of a box by using hidden lights, which turned out to be an interesting exercise. And it's something I would recommend for just about any photographer. Read more »

On Assignment: Controlling Daylight, Pt. 2

A couple weeks ago, in part one of this OA post, we talked about getting a good ambient exposure and knocking it down a couple of stops to use it as fill.

This is all well and good if the ambient has the right quality of light to use as fill. But what if the ambient looks like crap?

Well, you can always establish use a second flash to establish your desired fill light before creating your key light. The process is the same, and it gives you lots of control in less-than-ideal ambient situations.

The photo above was taken in roughly the same light as the photo in the earlier post. The quality (and quantity) of the ambient fill was fine, actually. But in this case I decided not to use it, to make a point.

In the same way I can use the ambient as fill and work a couple of stops above it with flash for a main light, I can also work a couple of stops above the ambient with my fill light, and then go a couple of stops above that with my main.


This photo is lit almost entirely with one flash with a shoot-thru umbrella, just above the camera. It is very soft, forgiving and wrappy. Also a little boring, IMO. Nothing wrong with it, per se, but if I was gonna use just this light, I would move it up a little, and maybe off to one side to get some nice modeling.

But as fill, it is ideal for laying down a base exposure and controlling the depth of my shadows when it is time to add the main light.


Okay, so lets add the main light now, in the form of a speedlight equipped with a Honl 1/8" speed grid at upper camera left. The ratio is so tight (not even a stop difference from my fill light) that it is almost not noticeable. But if you look closely, you'll be able to detect a "crispness" around Jessie's face that is not evident in the fill-only photo.

Subtle, to be sure. Maybe too much so. But the point here is that you can easily control the main-to-fill ratio, and get crisp, subtle looks from lights you normally associate with being sharp and edgy.

But the beauty in laying down fill light with a second flash is not only in being able to choose the quality, but also the ratio between the fill and the main. By simply dialing down the umbrella'd flash, you can set your internal contrast level wherever you want.

You do not need nice, even ambient to do this, either. SInce you are establishing your lighting environment with a second, soft flash, this can be done anywhere you can get a couple of stops up over the ambient. This is any indoor wall, for instance.


As you can see in this setup shot, the umbrella (a Westcott double-fold shoot-thru) is establishing a splotch of soft fill light and the grid spot is coming in to highlight her face. (My shooting position was tucked up under the umbrella.)

You do not have to stop with just establishing a lighting ratio, either. You can cool the fill light and warm up the main, too. In fact, in this shot I threw a 1/4 CTO gel on the gridded flash to accent her face a little more.


Looking at the top photo again, you should easily see all of the pieces for this lighting scheme easily falling into place: Lay down a nice, soft, neutral-colored fill. Drop it a coupla stops. Add in some warmed up grid at upper camera left to spotlight the face. Done.

Jessie has a great bone structure, and can take a little bit of edge in her light. I could do the same lighting scheme with a less forgiving face, but I would probably tighten the ratio up a bit. That way, you can go with a little edge to your light and still be kind to someone's face if they need it.

The takeaway from parts one and two is to be aware of both the quality and quantity of your fill, whether it is natural ambient or something you create yourself.

By gaining control over the fill first, you create exactly the palette you want when you add the final main light.

NEXT: Night Chopper, Pt. 1

On Assignment: M4. Like the Carbine, But With More Power

About this time last Friday I was in head-scratching mode, trying to figure out my light. Here was the challenge:

Teeny-tiny stage. Twenty three insane performers. No room to change shooting positions. Complex, low-level and fast-changing ambient.

I had been looking forward to it for weeks. Because I was getting to photograph MarchFourth, my absolute favorite band in the world. Lighting, pics and video, inside… Read more »