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Watching the movie Joker, I felt repeatedly that I was watching a film that Greg Heisler could have lit. The use of color was unique, sophisticated and fearless — almost a character unto itself.
In this outstanding 15-minute short produced by Vanity Fair, Joker cinematographer Larry Sher dissects his own use of light and color in the movie.
Lighting 101 is the core foundation of Strobist. It is a free, start-from-zero tutorial that will teach you the basics of lighting and minimalist lighting gear. Lighting 101 will have you up and running in no time—and at minimal expense.
Lighting 102 is the sequel to Lighting 101. Where L101 was about gear and basic concepts, L102 will teach you how to further understand and control the qualities of your light to make it do your bidding.
Lighting 103 is a deep dive into color. It explores the intersection of light and color to help you give your photos more nuance, realism and depth.
Strobist Lighting Cookbook, currently in progress, combines the concepts learned in L101-103 to give you more understanding and fluidity with your lighting. We'll also look at some of the shoots from a 360-degree/ecosystem perspective.
On Assignment features full walk-throughs of over 170 real-world assignments, complete with discussions ranging from lighting to concept to execution—and even some screw-ups.
It largely follows my path as a newspaper shooter and beyond, progressing from simple speedlights to more complex studio flashes. Occasionally, OA also features the work of other photographers.
Sad fact: There are a lot of companies that make some pretty crappy lighting gear, but are still happy to take your money. The Strobist Gear Guide is designed to help you avoid making many of the costly rookie mistakes I made over the first few years of my career.
This is the gear that works for me, day in and day out. It is solid, reliable and will get the job done without destroying your wallet.
Books are gear for your brain. Chosen wisely, they represent some of the best value for dollar you can spend as a learning photographer.
Featured on the Strobist Bookshelf are my current favorites, winnowed from hundreds of books read over the course of my career. It is a relatively short list, but there are solid selections for nearly any lighting photographer. The Bookshelf is updated regularly.
We are all born with more time than money, and die with more money than time. Strobist has a strong tradition in DIY lighting projects, which will help you to expand your lighting palette for little or no cash. (Pictured above: the $10 Macro Studio.)
Being visually oriented, most photographers embrace the concept of monkey-see, monkey-do. If that sounds like you, the links in the video vault will point you to the best 100 videos of the past nine years.
From the straight tutorial to the strange, it's all here. (Pictured above, Joe McNally's .)
Over the last few years we have had occasion to interview not only interesting photographers but also a few artists. And occasionally we'll turn the mic over to another photographer, for a change in perspective.
And for the record, we occasionally interview dead people. Because no one else is doing it...
Books, lights, mods, grip—and I am not even ruling out BBQ sauce in the future. If it is worth your time I will talk about it here. If it not worth your time, I'm probably not gonna talk about it.
Unless it is spectacularly bad, in which case who can resist?
Just what it says: simple explainer posts on how to do something cool. Or repurpose a common item for a photographic use. Or whatev. This one's pretty loose...
The Return of a Classic?
*****IMPORTANT UPDATE***** Alas, the reissued Vivitar 285HV is a Vivitar in name only. (They have also morphed into the "Cactus KF36". Same flash.) This article, originally written in 2007, has been updated to reflect that the reissued version has turned out to be famously unreliable. Such a shame. PLEASE read the appended sections below for more info.
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To say that the Vivitar 283 and 285 flashes were regarded as workhorses would be rather like calling the VW bug just another popular small car in the 70's.
Consider this little factoid:
Vivitar introduced the 283 in 1972. By 1976, they had already produced their 3,000,000th unit. It's actually a ceremonial flash, made of gold, and it sits in the office of Jim Wellington, who is a Big Cheese at the company.
Jim has been with Vivitar since portable flash was a small pile of magnesium powder. Okay, maybe not quite that long, but Jim has been around the block a few times.
I spoke with Jim last week to get the skinny on the reintroduction of the 285HV. The 285HV is basically a pimped-out 283 that also offers a zoom head and full manual control - just the way we like it. 285HV's are also safe for your digicam, with a ~6v trigger voltage.
PLEASE NOTE that older 285's which are NOT designated as "HV" are NOT voltage safe and can fry your digital baby. Be warned.
The Vivitar 285HV, and its less-versatile sibling, the 283, have been a staple of off-camera lighting for more than a generation. But newer model flashes have gotten more computerized, with TTL functions and wireless IR capability. But they have also gotten price tags to match, heading north of $300 each.
Which is why last year when I started the site, I recommended scrounging for old Nikon SB's. They offer reliable, (and variable) manual flash with a PC jack without the $300 price tag. And at the time of my writing, you could snag them for less than $50.
Alas, the notion of off-camera manual flash gained a tad in popularity over the last year. Those same flashes now regularly go well north of USD $100 - if you can find them. As a side note, I recently picked up a couple of used SB-26's on eBay and you chowderheads bid me past the three-digit mark. Serves me right, I guess.
But now, Vivitar has also noticed the resurgence in off-camera manual flash and has reintroduced the classic workhorse Vivitar 285HV. Actually, some company you never heard of bought the rights to this name from Vivitar and started reproducing the flash. Badly.
BOTTOM LINE: Don't Buy This Flash
I hate to see this -- a company buying the name of a formerly great piece of gear, and then cranking out poor quality versions on the cheap. That's why you can now get a flash that looks just like a V285, but is also labeled a "Cactus" flash.
They are total crap. Don't let the reputation fool you. And sadly, when buying used it is hard to tell whether you are being offered the newer crap version, the mid-aged good version which has a safe sync voltage, or an older version which can kill our camera with very high sync voltages.
Fortunately, there are very good alternatives. Used Nikon flashes (SB-24, -25, -26 and -80 in particular) are great value models from which to choose. Unlike the new crap versions of the once-venerable 285's, they are well made.
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But there are great new alternatives, too. Deserving special consideration is the LumoPro LP160 (much more info here) which has full manual control, a killer slaves and syncs four different ways. (Hot shoe, slave, standard PC and miniphone jacks.)
Plus, it has an unheard of two-year warranty. So unlike the new 285/KF36, there is little to no risk involved.
In short: Please, PLEASE do not be fooled by the great reputation of the Vivitar name. Many, many people made this mistake when the flash was first reintroduced in 2007. Don't get taken.
Sadly, until we found out the the new 285 was in fact a dysfunctional sheep in wolf's clothing, I was responsible for introducing many readers to this dressed-up dog. Which is why I have taken the extraordinary step of completely rewriting an archive post.
I'm new to all this and I dug up my dad's Vivitar 285HV. I just got some Phottix radio triggers. Is it okay to connect them to the old Vivitar? Im scared of frying them!
Ah, the trusty old Vivitar 285. The older ones are great flashes, but with one potentially fatal flaw. You don't want to go sticking that flash on just any camera or remote… Read more »
Step right up, all you DIY-ers. Today's post will point to a few fun projects for those of you with more brains than money.
First off, is this cool Vivitar 283 homebrew varipower hack, courtesy Metropolicity. Turns out the formerly $20 now $35 Varipower VP-1, which makes a Vivitar 283 an infinitely controllable manual flash (over a 5-stop range) is just a plain 'ol 100k linear pot in disguise. Click above to find out how to ape one for just a few bucks.
Speaking of 283's, a Big Honcho at Vivitar just told me how to tell the "digicam-safe older 283's" from the "not safe older 283's" that will smoke your expensive little baby. The following 283's are safe, with a low trigger voltage (~6v):
• Ones marked "made in Korea." • Ones marked "Made in China." • Ones with a red dot in the battery compartment.
According to Vivitar, the above flashes are safe.
Not so the following:
• Any Vivitar 283 marked as "Made in Japan."
These have a synch voltage of 300 volts. Do not, repeat DO NOT, connect it directly to your digicam via hot shoe or PC cord. Or lick it when it is charged up.
Next up is a little space-saving hack for the umbrella flash bracket. Literally. (He just took a hacksaw to his bracket and played with some bolts and epoxy.)
Click through to see how to tighten up on space and weight the next time you are schlepping your lights up the Andes or something.
And lastly, a neat little project that popped up in a cryptic photo posted in the discussion group. Check out this tutorial on how to build a slave for next to nuthin'.
Here's what I am thinking: With this thingie and the single AA-powered flash from a disposable camera, you could make a little slaved, manual miniflash for accent lights or whatever. You could use the neutral density gels from the free sample packs to control the output, too.
The Vivitar 285HV is a decent option for people looking for a new, inexpensive, manual-capable flash with an external PC jack. But one minor annoyance is the proprietary sync jack.
(C'mon, Vivitar folks. Get a clue already.)
Strobist reader Nathan Kerr has posted a tutorial on how to swap out the weird sync jack for a 3.5mm mono female minijack. This means that you can easily connect a Pocket Wizard, for instance, with a $3.99 mono audio patch cord from Radio Shack.
Much better than being held hostage by the Vivitar Sync Cord Mafia.
I am a big fan of cheap, elegant solutions to problems like this. And the soldering is really pretty straightforward if you are comfy with an iron.
As always, beware the electrical guts of an electronic flash. And don't go licking any capacitors.
UPDATED March 22, 2009, to add latest user feedback on LP120 and YN460. See below. __________
At long last, there are finally a few lower-priced alternatives to cruising eBay for a used Nikon speedlight or forking over a few hundred bucks for a new flagship off-camera flash.
Hit the jump for all the deets on the new LumoPro 120, the Yong Nuo YN460 and the Cactus KF36. __________
Totally In Sync: The LumoPro LP120
So, what if someone came to us and asked what we should include -- and exclude -- on a hot-shoe flash designed for photographers who light?
That's exactly what happened with the new LumoPro LP120, which was commissioned by Midwest Photo in response to the vintage speedlight availability (or lack thereof) and recent Vivitar quality issues.
The LumoPro LP120 was designed specifically for off-camera lighting in the manual mode. The idea was for it to have everything you want -- and nothing you do not want to needlessly pay for.
Major props to Moishe at MPEX for taking on this project. None of the big manufacturers were willing to step up to the plate, so he did it himself.
Features:
• Standard bounce and 180/90 swivel.
• Manual zoom head (non-motorized -- similar in function to the 285.)
• Full manual adjustment down to 1/32 power, with no "missing" levels like the 285.
• Important: There is no auto or TTL capability on this flash.
• Power is said to be equivalent to a 285 -- GN 80 in the normal zoom position. (I have not tested this first hand yet.) It's juiced in the tele position, of course, at the expense of beam width. This number can be greatly affected by the flash's zoom setting and is an easy way to fudge the number. Always go apples to apples.
• Shoe is strong plastic and it is able to be replaced if it breaks.
• Two-year warranty.
• Now, the biggie: Four-way sync. It has a hot shoe, an external PC jack, a 1/8" jack and a built-in optical slave. I did get to test the slave and it rocks. A little directional, but that is good as it gives it added sensitivity. The flash head rotates independently of the slave, so you can aim to your best advantage. __________
The combination of slave and 2-way external sync jack make this one darn near universal. You only have to hard-sync one flash in a multi-flash setting (within reasonable distances) and that one flash can be synched with a hot-shoe based remote, a PC cord or a 1/8" cord. The slave worked just fine around corners indoors in my testing.
This is how I work almost all of the time with my SB-800's, now that I am usually the only photographer in the area when I am shooting. (In multi-photographer settings, you would still want to hardwire or PW everything.)
Price is $129.95, thanks to leaving off the auto and the TTL stuff. The first batch is shipping now from MPEX. Note that the various MPEX kits will henceforth include LP120's instead of Vivitar 285s. (You may be able to swap into a 285 -- I dunno. Don't know why anyone would want to, tho..)
Still unknown: Flash duration at various settings. Factory specs do not list it, and MPEX is looking for someone who can test it. If you are that person, check in on the discussion thread linked below.
UPDATE: Exactly as you would expect, full power flash duration is 1/1000th of a sec and goes down to 1/20,000th of a sec at 1/32nd power.
QnA, discussion and results from early adopters are already being thrown around on this dedicated Flickr thread.
(UPDATE) LP120 Feedback Coming In
The Lumopro LP120s seem to be generaly well-received but there are some reports coming back about switches and WA panels not lining up properly.
The flashes themselves are working fine, but the fit and finish reports are enough to where MPEX is inspecting every flash before it is shipped in a bid to spot any quality issues before they go out.
It's worth noting that MPEX is eating their own cooking on this one, as the flash does come with a 2-year warranty. And any feedback from users is appreciated and will be passed along to the manufacturers for the next run. It is worth the effort to get a standard flash that is both reliable and available.
The discussion thread is here. Please post your questions and/or observations, good or bad. The information is valuable in both cases. __________
The Cheap Date: Yong Nuo YN460
Second, and looking for all the world like an generic SB-800, is the Yong Nuo YN460. It is just coming into the retail pipeline and I got a chance to play with one last week at PMA.
It is small, and has a very slick-looking manual adjustment on the back -- just tap the button to add or subtract a stop of power, down to 1/64th power. It also has a built-in optical slave, which seems to be housed in the flash tube area. This is pretty dumb, IMO, as you cannot orient the slave in a different direction from the head.
The LP120, above, has the slave in the front so you can swivel the flash to catch another flash better -- independent of the direction the head is pointing.
But the YN460 is popping up for under $50 in some of the direct-to-retail Hong Kong shops, too, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Other things that irk me a little:
It looks like an SB-800 or maybe an SB-600 (and appears to take identical head-mounted accessories) but it is two stops less powerful than the SB-800, at least according to some early testing. Also a bummer -- no zoom for the head and no external sync. But if you use hot-shoe-based remotes, that last one is no biggie.
And I could live with that package if I were looking for a rock bottom manual flash. But more worrisome is the reported inconsistency in the output at the low ranges. Not my findings -- that was from an early adopter on the thread linked below. But at less than $50, you'll have to make that call for yourself.
Lotsa pix here, and a discussion thread (with retail sources) here.
(UPDATE) YN460 Feedback
The Yong Nuo YN460 seems to be experiencing rather more variability in build quality. Some people are getting good copies, and some people, like Dan Wang, are getting copies that they have dubbed, "The Demon Flash from Hell":
The YN460 thread is here. Please sound off with your experiences, good or bad. We wanna know. __________
Déjà vu All Over Again: The Cactus KF36
Waitaminnit. This one looks a little familar...
The Vivitar 285HV, once the go-to flash for off-camera manual enthusiasts, died a slow and painful death in the quality-control department. And in the end, Vivitar was bought by Sakar, leaving the (once) venerable flash's future in limbo. It has been revived by the same people who make the Cactus remotes, and rebranded as the Cactus KF36.
Same specs as the old Vivitar, but anybody's guess as to the build quality. Main specs: Bounce/zoom head (non-rotating) partial manual control (1/1, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/16 power -- no 1/8 for some insane reason. GN is 120, but that's in the 85mm zoom mode. (See above.)
It has an "auto" mode which can actually be very useful when hi-speed synching with a G9, etc. In the mixed-blessing dept., it has a proprietary (arrrrrrrrgh) sync jack.
For Pete's sake, people, put a PC or 1/8" mono jack in there. Seriously, the world is not going to come to you on this one. Sony Betamax -- white courtesy phone, please...
Again, quality is yet to be determined. Is it the old (really good) build quality from way back? It is the recent (bad) build quality from more recent times? Is it worse?
We will not know until real-world reports start to come in. If you decide to take one for the team, please report back in here, on the Flickr discussion thread.
The biggest thing going for the Cactus KF36 is the anywhere-friendly slippery-customs shipping policy of Gadget Infinity straight out of Hong Kong.
I'll give them this: They can get anything anywhere in the world pretty quickly, for way cheap.
My favorite "feature" listed on the KF36 product page, and I swear I am not making this up:
Vivitar 285HV's aren't perfect. In fact, the new ones' synch voltage is so low (good for your camera) that it sometimes gets hinky with certain slaves and remotes.
But then, you can get them for less than $100 and they do have manual adjustment and a synch port. But that synch port is a proprietary one, which means $pecial $ynch cords.
No fear. One of the good things about V285's is that they are quite hackable. And if you know a little basic soldering, you can make that synch outlet pretty much whatever you want.
More info, and links, after the jump.
Neil Creek has a detailed how-to post on how to do just that. (We talked about this briefly in the T-Nut post during HD week.)
Couple of important things to remember:
1. Only the new ones are fer-sure safe with your digicams if you hook them up directly. Old ones can fry your camera with a three-digit synch voltage.
2. PLEASE do not mess around with the inside of a flash unless you are comfy with capacitors and how to bleed the potentially widow-making 300 volts out of them.
Reader Keith Taylor photographed the owner of a very large camera repair facility for the Business Outlook issue of Gwinnett Magazine. It's a clean, two-light setup that has a lot going for it.
Take a moment to reverse engineer it (it's an easy one) to exercise your lighting muscles.
Then, for a closer look at what works in the lighting -- and a couple ideas on how to tweak it -- hit the jump. ___________
First off, you may remember Keith from his fireman shoot, which was profiled here earlier. Back then, he was using Vivitar 283's. But he has since moved up to AlienBees 400's.
Since Keith is comfy using his speedlights in manual mode, moving to the big flashes is a piece of cake. Everything you learn with a manual speedlight easily translates to the more powerful flashes.
This shot is lit in a similar manner as his fireman shot, except that the front light is coming from pretty much directly over the camera rather than off to camera left. Said front light is a small Westcott softbox. We know it is directly above camera from the way the nose shadow falls. Easy tell.
The backlight comes in at a lowish angle, hard and blue. It's obviously behind the guy, but we also know it is low from the fact that it is lighting the bottoms of the middle-row boxes.
Think for a sec what this establishes for the boxes, lighting-wise. They are pretty close to being exactly cross-lit: High front vs low back.
Also, they are cross-lit with different colors of light. This makes for a very 3-d effect on the boxes and really maps out the texture of the environment in an interesting way.
He went for broke on the blue gel intensity, which is a totally subjective choice. (Think Spinal Tap, at #11 on the voume scale.) One reason I like the blue family of gels is that they include the CTB, or "color temperature blue" group. They correspond to the opposite, CTO (color temperature orange) gels, which turn daylight into tungsten. Which means that you can get both of them in full strength, half, 1/4, 1/8, etc.
You can get a controllable tonal contrast by, say, lighting your subject from the front with a 1/4 CTO and the background with a 1/4 CTB gel, and the warm-vs-cool thing offsets in a neat way. Plus, you can make it subtle, bang them over the head with color, or anything in between.
Keith has the front-back contrast thing working for him. He also has nice internal tonal separation everywhere except for one place: The guy's head.
His head has a little hint of blue going up the left side. But Keith had better cross his fingers and toes if he wants Camera Guy's dark hair to separate from that dark background in the final product.
There are a couple of ways to go after this. The easiest would be to simply raise the backlight some and nuke Mr. Camera Guy to give him an unearthly blue ring around his head. That'd separate that black-on-black tone, fer sure. But it would also look a little weird.
Remembering Keith has a Vivitar 283 kicking around somewhere in his kit, my preference would be to take care of the black-on-black problem by raising that far background tone up a little. Wouldn't take much, either. You could bring it up to two stops below medium grey and it would separate nicely from Camera Guy's dark hair. If you gelled it to the same color as backlight number one, you'd create a full blue area in the center top that would make the first blue backlight look more natural.
You could stick the 283 right behind the backlight, pointing towards the back of the room. Or, depending on the room itself, you could stick it somewhere low in the back of the room and just wash some blue light up on the wall to make his hair separate from the blackness.
But I'm cheating now, right? Just pulling an assumed third flash out of Keith's bag, as if we all had endless light sources to work with.
There is a way he could use his backlight to do everything: Lose the reflector and point the bare bulb straight up.
Downside is, he'll have to make a little blue gel condom for the AB400 flash tube. But once he gets it gelled, that thing sends blue light out in all directions. Then, all you have to do is gobo it where you do not want light.
I would probably gobo it on the sides, and maybe a little on the top as well. I really like what the directional backlight is doing (at least, in the areas where it is happening.) Gobo'ing the top and sides would accomplish a lot. It would keep the directional light coming from the back. It would keep the blue from getting too hot on the sides close to the light. And it would send some blue light towards that back area to separate the guy's head.
See the online version of the Gwinnett Magazine Business Outlook story here, and more of Keith's editorial portraits here:
One difference in the way good lighting photographers think (as compared to the rest of us) is that they think of light as a means of solving a problem. Other shooters just think of light as a way to create a look. And that look can sometimes grow into a starring role in the photo.
I know this because I am as guilty in this department as the next guy. More than most, to be honest.
But the hotshots tend to think of light as a tool -- one of many -- in the final photo. And to them, light is simply a means to an end rather than an end-all.
After you create your light -- but before you start making your final frames -- take a moment to anticipate the problems you'll see later which can be solved with a little tweak. It'll pay off big in your final photos.
And most important, once the light is nailed down, focus all of your attention on photo/subject interaction. This way you'll stand a good chance at grabbing some (well-illuminated) moments. When the light is good and the photog and subject are clicking together, that's a high-odds recipe for success.
Quick, what color is the tile that this Turkish candy is sitting on?
If you said green, you should probably hit the jump to learn about how lighting on two planes gives you more control over your photos.
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First things first: The tile that the candy on is actually black.
Second, let's walk through the light reader Nionyn used for the shot and see what's what.
The main light is a gridded Vivitar 283, coming in from front camera left. The second light is another Vivitar 283 from back camera right. The third light is yet another 283, gelled green, aimed at the wall which is out of the frame behind the candy sitting on the black tile.
So, what you are seeing in the foreground is the (gelled green) lit wall being reflected in the black tile that the candy is on. In other words, in this shot, the black tile is essentially a mirror.
Since the front tile is black, the green wall is not being contaminated with any pre-existing tone or color from the tile in the photo's foreground. And since the candy is being lit by two gridded 283's, the light hitting the candy is not spilling onto the back wall. Thus, the smooth, intense color around the candy.
The two items (candy and wall) are being lit on two completely discrete planes. And the fact that the tile is reflecting the back wall (because of the camera position) is what brings it all together.
Monster Flash Garage: 285HV Goes to 1/1024th Power
We think the venerable Vivitar 285HV rocks right out of the box. But it is also a favorite of the mod squad because it's cheap, rugged, and begging to be tweaked.
This version, created by Jonathan Kau is one of the best I have seen yet. And the ten-stop range is only the beginning. Hit the Flickr discussion thread for the full list of capabilities and the how-to steps for you solder jockeys. __________________________________
In producing a series of portraits for Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville, GA, Strobist reader Keith Taylor chose to use a two-light-zone setup, including gelled backgrounds, to create visual continuity over a series of photos.
The series is a good example of how lighting design can create a unifying theme for portraits shot at different times, with different subjects, and/or in different locations. I want to take a look at his fireman trainee portrait as an example, but you can see his entire Gwinnett Tech set as a slideshow here.
(More on making the fireman shot after the jump.)
Not Scared of the Dark
Here's the setting, a place that would make many newer, available light-oriented photographers cringe. And Lord help you if you are only sporting on-camera flash. But someone who is comfy with lighting -- especially working background flash against foreground flash -- will quickly see how to make good use of the dark environment.
A dark room is a very efficient canvas on which to add light, because you can do a lot with a little. The reason is that you do not have to overcome high, pre-existing light levels to get the effect that you want. In fact, one of the first things I will do when planning light for a room is to see if I can turn the ambient light off.
Not to say that Keith wanted to ignore the ambient light -- far from it. He chose his aperture/shutter combo to correctly expose the ambient coming in on the floor at bottom right. This will help to separate the camera right hand and camera right leg from the background.
The first light he adds is a Vivitar 283, aimed right back at the camera and gelled with twoCTOs to get a super-warm look to the background.
(Cue the Beavis voice: "Heh-heh.. Heh-heh... Fire.. Heh-heh...)
With one flash and two gels, he has taken a long, dark hallway and connoted fire. Why two CTO's? Because one would not be enough for the look he wanted, which was vibrant, off-the-scale warm. You can stack them, you know.
The light is flaring back into the camera, but that's okay. Because Mr. Firefighter Trainee is going to block it in a moment.
Keith already has a working aperture (whatever it happens to be is pretty arbtrary) pulled from the no-flash available light exposure needed to make the continuous-lit floor section correctly exposed. Let's stop here for a moment and see how he could control his flash without leaving the camera.
A Thinking Photographer's Remote Control
Say the flash is a stop too hot and Keith needed to dial it back down one stop for the effect that he wants. Let's also say, for the sake of discussion, that his chosen ambient exposure is 1/15th at f/4. What could he do to only adjust the exposure of the background flash without leaving the camera?
Well, the flash cares about the aperture, and it is one stop too hot (in our little hypothetical scenario) at f/4. So, to knock it down a stop, all you have to do is to expose the scene at f/5.6, right? But moving to 1/15th at f/5.6 is gonna drop your ambient floor tones down a stop, too. So, to compensate for the fact that we have bumped the aperture from f/4 to f/5.6 to knock the flash down, we also change the shutter from 1/15th to 1/8th of a sec.
Now, with a quick settings change, the floor is getting exactly the same exposure (1/15th @ f/4 = 1/8th @ f/5.6) but the flash's exposure has been lessened by one stop. Neat, huh?
I'm telling you: You do not get a physique like mine by unnecessarily walking all the way down that hall to adjust a flash. I'll dial the front flash up or down as my final exposure tweak. It's only a few steps away.
(Now, where are those donuts we got to fuel the day's shoots?)
Remember, to check your background flash light level to see if it even needs adjusting, you would simply turn your hand into a stand-in for the firefighter and hold it between you and the background flash. (I use the hand model thing a lot.) This way you see how the light will look wrapping around a gobo/subject, as it will be in the final image.
(You know you did it, Keith. Where's that photo!)
Now, Light the Front
Next, you add your firefighter and adjust the power output and/or distance of the foreground flash until he he is correctly exposed at your chosen shutter/aperture combo. (But all that really matters for this part is the aperture.) The foreground flash, BTW, is another Vivitar 283 shot into a 60" umbrella at camera upper left.
Here's another frame from the shoot. You can also see where he is hiding the front flash -- in the camera-left doorway. I actually like this one better than the tighter version up top. I think it has more of a "hero" connotation. (What do you guys think?)
But that is just a subjective choice. What is not subjective is the fact that that Keith clearly knows how to create and control an environment with just a couple of 283's.
Orbis is Going Away. Grab One (for Cheap) While You Can.
(UPDATE: You missed it. The close-out sale is gone. We have now moved onto the price-gouging portion of our show. Don't bite. Much better to buy used on eBay. These things are near indestructible. If it is not visibly damaged, you can feel pretty safe buying used.)
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For those of you late to the party, the Orbis Ring Flash Adpater is a passive, add-on light shaping device that turns your speedlight into a ring flash. There are others, but for a slew of reasons the Orbis has long been my favorite of the lot.
And it is about to go away forever. This post is a quick heads-up to grab one while you can—and a pointer to a fantastic deal on the last units as they are closed out.
The Orbis was developed in 2008 as a sophisticated answer to the DIY efforts of the Strobist community. After seeing what was possible with cereal boxes, aluminum foil and gaffer's tape, reader James Madelin wanted to build something better. Meaning nicer looks, better durability, more efficiency, more color correct and with a better quality of light. So that's exactly what he did.
The Orbis is surprisingly complex on the inside in the way it bends light around the donut. It strikes the balance between lighting efficiency vs. evenness (both being very important) just about as well as possible.
Interestingly, of all of the best ring flash adapters, the Orbis was the only one that was never knocked off by the shady Chinese photo gear copiers. It's not that they never thought of it. Lord knows, they put out crap versions of all the others.
My guess? They cut one open, took a look inside and said, "Eff this. Let's knock off the Ray Flash instead."
What it Will Do
The Orbis Ring Flash Adapter is not a flash. It is a passive light mod that mounts onto your existing speedlight. And you'll still need to sync your flash, just like any other off-camera light. For run-and-gun, a coiled off-camera shoe cord will do fine. For use as fill (see below) in a more typical portrait shoot, I just stick mine on a stand and shoot through it, usually triggering it via slave from the key light.
Used alone, on-axis (classic ring light position) it creates that signature glam ring light look as seen above. And because it retains any TTL functions of the speedlight crammed into it, the Orbis is very popular with club/event photographers. Stick on a wideangle lens, work two stops over the ambient in TTL mode, and the results look cool as crap.
And that's fine for event shooters. But I prefer to use mine more in a way inspired by portrait shooters like Greg Heisler and Dan Winters.
In this mode, the Orbis becomes a very sophisticated fill light. You can use it in combo with another off-camera speedlight acting as key light, and it fills in the gaps—to whatever level you choose based on how you power it.
The photo above of poet Linda Joy Burke is a good example. The key light is coming from upper left. I am working well above the ambient with my flash exposure. So Linda's shadow side would be very, very dark without the Orbis that is wrapped around my lens.
The light from the orbis reaches into the shadow side without really adding any footprint, and creates legibility. How much? Your choice. Just dial the power of the ring-fill light up or down as much as you want.
This is a common way for portrait photographers to create exactly the amount of legibility they want in the shadows. Which means you can get more creative and/or edgy with your key if you want. 'Cause the ring is gonna save your ass in the shadows.
Same here with this photo of blogger Sian Meades, done in London. I am in full shade here, and this light is completely being created with two speedlights.
The key light is at hard left, raking across Sian's face. The fill light, in an Orbis, stuck right on my lens, is creating the legibility in the shadows of the key.
The ambient component here is minimal. Without the flashes the photo would be near black. The on-axis Orbis gives me complete control of my shadow density.
(To learn more about lighting either of these two photos, click on either one.)
Now or Never
And the Orbis will soon be gone forever.
They sold over the last seven years for $200, rarely if ever discounted. But the remaining units are being closed out for $129 (w/free shipping in US.) Or you can get it with the hands-free arm for $139 (+$7.40 shipping in US.)
This is a great deal. Because not only will it work on nearly any speedlight (but not bigass Vivitar 285s, sorry) it is built to last you likely for the rest of your shooting life.
Which is a good thing, because you're not gonna be able to replace it.
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(UPDATE: The close-out sale is gone. We have now moved onto the price-gouging portion of our show. Don't bite. Much better to buy used on eBay. These things are near indestructible. If it is not visibly damaged, you can feel pretty safe buying used.)
Money is hard to come by, and easy to watch slip away. So I have always tried to do my best to guide people to the best things on which to spend their hard-earned cash. Chosen well, books or gear (or whatever) can return great value. Chosen poorly, you may as well be flushing it down the drain.
Most of these are solid items, and worth the investment. If it is bad, I usually do not waste your time or mine with it. But some things are bad enough for me to actually want to warn you off—and some are total junk.
Herewith, the collection of Strobist Reviews. New pages open in tabs, to make bulk browsing more manageable.
Short version: The LP180 is rock-solid, with a near-perfect feature set for lighting photographers for under $150. It has been our recommended starter flash since appearing four years ago, and has built a great reputation and solid track record with the off-camera lighting community.
You can easily kill an afternoon scanning the excellent work that readers upload to the site's Flickr group. Every now and then one will really stop you in your tracks, as did photographer Sergey Zaytsev's homage to Georgia's Queen Tamar, seen above. Very cool that it was done with more creativity than dollars (or lari, I should say?) and with a strong historical inspiration, to boot.
Would it surprise you to find this was done with a Nikon D300s and a few bare Cactus KF36 Vivitar 285 knockoffs? 'Cause that's what he used.
UPDATE: The Polaroid PL-135 (AKA the rebranded "Triopo TR120") has been unceremoniously pulled from the market just a week or so after it launched.
Has the venerable Sunpak 120J bare bulb flash been reincarnated? By a world-famous company, no less?
Well, no. Not exactly. It's no Sunpak 120J (doesn't have the extra stop of power) and, strictly speaking, it's not really a Polaroid flash per se. Keep reading for the bare facts (rimshot!) on the Polaroid PL-135.
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 »
Results from Assignment #2, in which you were asked to choose a local object, significant to your community to photograph.
In addition to a plethora of beer photos (quelle surprise!) some pretty cool stuff came back upstream from all over the world. I'm also guessing some of you have newfound respect for the NatGeo photographers who often have to tell the story of a place with photos of things… Read more »
Food for thought: Next time you clamp up a few speedlights on a public street, it could lead you all the way to the state Supreme Court.
Got your attention? Keep reading... __________
Earlier this week, my friend JoeyL tweeted about NYC photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and it really got me thinking.
A few years ago DiCorcia clamped strobes up under a scaffolding on a New York City sidewalk, thus turning the space into his own private public studio. He then photographed people as they passed through, making a series of beautiful portraits that were at once banal and thought-provoking.
And that's where the interesting starts… Read more »
