Getting Ready for The Lighting Workshop

It was a busy day today getting ready for the Lighting Workshop we're having on the 20th of July. We're polishing up our Power Point presentation and getting our goodie folders together. Spent some of the day testing out the equipment making sure that it's all operational. We have two models lined up for the workshop and both of them are great fun to work with. We should have a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to putting this on.

Playing Around With Light

Here is is the "Peppers" picture and the lighting diagram for the images. The only difference from the Bread and Peppers to the Tuning Forks is I used a diffused back-lit background with a gridded light and a gelled speedlight and a gridded Main light. The tuning forks were also placed on a piece of quarter inch glass raised up from the table about 8 inches so light would fill in from underneath.

Playing Around With Light

With the Lighting Workshop coming up I thought it would be good to practice some lighting techniques so I pulled out my lights last night and some stuff that I had sitting around and set up a shoot in my kitchen. I've been wanting to do this for a couple of months now and I finally made some time to do it. I didn't get done til about 3:30 this morning and fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up at around 9:00 am and put everything away. I really need to get a studio setup where I can just leave it all up.

Here are two of the finished shots, "Bread" and "Tuning Forks".

I also shot some "Peppers" and a weird child toy called a squish which is wooden tubes and balls held together with strings. I'll post these later as well as the lighting diagrams.

Lighting Workshop Update

I've been working on the lesson plan for the lighting workshop next month and am getting really excited about putting it on. I'm looking forward to getting together with other photographers and talking about my favorite subject... Lighting. I can't wait to exchange ideas and techniques to help everyone get the best out of their lighting and improve their photography. It should be a fun time.

Sunny 16 Rule

Here are some of the images that I shot the other day using the Sunny 16 Rule, All shots were taken at ISO 200 @ 1/200th @ f/16.

Remember you don't have to stay at 1/200 @ f/16, you can adjust your exposure. So if you wanted to shoot at a faster shutter speed all you have to do is open your aperture for an equivalent exposure. So if you wanted say 1/400 of a second you'd have to open your aperture to f/8. I just kept it on 1/200th @ f/16 just to see what I could get at a single shutter speed and aperture. Another thing that you might try is to bracket your exposures a stop open and a stop closed to help ensure that you get a good exposure. A good exposure is not unnecessarily a proper one. For instance the building in the first image above, I would have liked to see one a stop open to open up the shadows in the building a little bit.
Just a small note: none of these images were processed. these are straight out of the camera to show you the results you might expect using this rule.

Sunny 16 Rule

Went for a walk yesterday and took one of my Nikon D90 Cameras with me. I put my 50mm 1.8 AF D lens on it and set it up for ISO 200 with a shutter speed of 1/200 @ f/16. I did this to test out the Sunny 16 rule. I totally disregarded what my meter was saying and just went by feel When I hit a bit of shade I opened up a couple of stops. I took an initial look at the images and they look pretty decent. I'll post a few of them once I have some time to really look at them and do some processing to them.

For those of you who don't know what the Sunny 16 Rule is it states that your exposure on a Sunny day is 1/ISO @ f/16. So if your ISO is set to 200 your shutter speed will be 1/200 @ f/16. You can compensate for shade and cloudy weather by opening up a stop, for darker clouds or shade open up 2 stops. Give it a try sometime you'd be surprised at how well it works.

Lighting Workshop

Are you...

An experienced Photographer looking to refresh your lighting skills?

An intermediate Photographer looking to step up your game?

A photographer who has your camera skills down but would like to step up to the next level and learn about lighting?

But...

Can't afford those expensive all day lighting workshops?

Don't know where to start?

Start Here...

We're putting on a lighting workshop on July 20, 2013 at the Deer Creek Apartment Clubhouse at 1600 Clubhouse Dr, Xenia, OH 45385 from 4:00pm to 9:00pm
Phone: (937) 768-9848 or Email: robertgainor@hotmail.com with any questions.
Cost of the Workshop is $50.00 (split into $20.00 registration fee and $30.00 due at the door).
We'll be covering the following Topics:

• Ambient Exposure
• Flash Exposure
• Exposure Balancing
  • Indoor / Outdoor
  • Fill Flash
• Inverse Square Law (and how to use it to your advantage)
• Using modifiers
  • Umbrellas
  • Softboxes
  • Diffusion Panels
  • The 5 in 1 Reflector
  • Bounce Cards
  • Gobos
  • Grids
  • Gels
• Lighting Setups
  • Single Light Setup
  • Two Light Setup
  • More Lights
• Creative Lighting
  • Light placement
  • Intensity
  • Bringing In Some of the Ambient Light
  • Adding Motion to Your Images
• Equipment
  • Getting the best out of what you have
  • Inexpensive alternatives to get you started

Busy Week

This has been a very busy week. I've been editing pictures from Jonathan and Anna's wedding, and working on another project that's been taking up a great deal of time. Hoping to post more in the next coming week.

June Quick Tip: Splitting the Difference

This month's quick tip covers dealing with different lighting in the same image and you don't have a flash to balance the exposures. For example: your out shooting in the woods and you see a flower in the shade but you want to frame it with trees and use the sky as a backdrop. You have the exposure at the flower and the exposure of the sky. One thing you can do is get the exposure of the sky then get the exposure of the flower. Now split the difference between the two. You'll be slightly under exposed on the sky and slightly over exposed for the flower.

The quickest way to do this is set your camera meter to spot, point it at the flower and zero out your meter. You then point it at the sky and zero it out but make sure you count the number of stops as you change them. You can then go back the other way but you will only go half the way. For example you zero out the flower then you count as you zero out the sky. Say there are 6 stops between them. You would then adjust back 3 stops frame your shot then shoot. The example I used here is not the greatest photo but it demonstrates the technique rather well. The photos are of some stuff in my bedroom window and the pillows on my bed with the window for the background. I did not do any post production on the images. The first shot is exposed for the inside stuff. The second for outside and the third is exposed in between the two. I know you can use an HDR Program to get a good image but if you don't have access to one this technique will work in a pinch.

All images were shot at ISO 1250 and an aperture of f/16.

Shutter Speed of 1/40

Shutter Speed of 1/1250

Shutter Speed of 1/320

The difference between the exposure here is very extreme, almost 6 stops difference between the two areas and I lost some details on the jars and the darker colored items, but the closer the difference the better your results will be. From here you can fine tune your exposure as well to get a better balance between the two.