Wireless Flash Techniques for PlacesWelcome| 00:00 | Hi! I'm photographer Jim Sugar.
| | 00:03 | Thanks for joining me at this
look at wireless flash in action.
| | 00:07 | In this series, I show how I use
artificial wireless strobe units and other
| | 00:13 | accessories in a variety of different scenarios.
| | 00:17 | In the first installment of this
series we did a product shot of a bicycle,
| | 00:22 | a photo that could be used in a
catalog, a magazine, or a website.
| | 00:27 | In the second installment we shot
a portrait of a woman in an exotic
| | 00:32 | Scottish warrior costume.
| | 00:34 | We use different lighting accessories
and gels and we even employed a smoke
| | 00:38 | machine to get a photo that could run
in a travel or educational magazine.
| | 00:45 | In this installment, we're going
to take on what I think is the most
| | 00:48 | challenging scenario.
| | 00:50 | We're going to go outside and
photograph on location during the twilight hour,
| | 00:55 | the magic hour as it's often called.
| | 00:58 | Our location is Tony's Pizzaria,
a charming little pizza joint in
| | 01:03 | Ventura, California.
| | 01:05 | It's a classic Americana kind of place.
| | 01:09 | Now a few things make this
kind of shot challenging.
| | 01:12 | I want to position the lights and
adjust my exposure so that all the light in
| | 01:17 | the photo is balanced.
| | 01:18 | The sky, the lights on the building, and
the light in the interior of the pizzaria.
| | 01:24 | It's a beautiful day in Southern
California. It's not raining inside the pizzeria.
| | 01:29 | I need to plan the shot and set up
everything long before twilight arrives and
| | 01:34 | when the light is just right,
I want to add the human element.
| | 01:39 | Because a photo of Tony's Pizzaria isn't
complete if it doesn't have Tony in it.
| | 01:45 | Now a shoot like this is always a challenge.
| | 01:48 | You're outside, you're in a public place,
in this case a restaurant that's open
| | 01:53 | for business, with customers coming and
going, and you're working against the
| | 01:58 | clock to get the shot before it gets dark.
| | 02:00 | There is a lot of setup and a lot
of fine-tuning involved and you'll see
| | 02:05 | that in the course.
| | 02:07 | So if you're hungry for pizza,
let's hit the road and get started.
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| Setting the stage| 00:00 | So now we're here at Tony's Pizzaria,
a classic small pizza restaurant in
| | 00:06 | Ventura, California, in Southern
California, and we're going to take an image,
| | 00:14 | where we're going to take elements of
taking an image and making an image, and
| | 00:19 | we're going to put it together into one shot.
| | 00:21 | And we're going to take advantage of
the ambient light in the sky, as the light
| | 00:27 | goes down after twilight, and we're
going to combine that with highlights that
| | 00:31 | we provide with the strobe, and if we
do it properly, everything is going to be
| | 00:37 | balanced and it's going to be evenly lit.
| | 00:42 | If you look at the final image and I've
done it correctly, it's going to be so
| | 00:48 | seamless that it's going to
look like we didn't do anything.
| | 00:51 | The zen of it is to do it so well that
it appears that nothing has been done and
| | 00:57 | that it was done completely naturally.
| | 00:59 | Now in fact, we're going to have about
five strobes in this picture and we're
| | 01:04 | going to balance it with the setting sun.
| | 01:07 | So we've got some things that we can control
and we've got some things that are variable.
| | 01:13 | One of the things that happens when we
shoot at sunset, and in this case, we're
| | 01:18 | shooting just after sunset.
| | 01:20 | So we know that we're doing this
photo in the middle of February.
| | 01:24 | We know that the sunset tonight is
going to set between 5:15 and 5:20 p.m.
| | 01:31 | We also know that based on the latitude
of Ventura and this time of year, that
| | 01:37 | we've got about 20, at the most 30
minutes between the time the sun goes below
| | 01:43 | the horizon and total darkness.
| | 01:46 | So the light is constantly falling,
means the light in the sky is falling, and
| | 01:51 | as that light falls the light in the
pizzaria is going to become more prevalent.
| | 01:58 | It's going to be appear to
be brighter in the picture.
| | 02:00 | And to that we're going to add five
strobes and we've already locations scouted
| | 02:05 | this place, and we know where we want
to put the strobes and how we want to use them,
| | 02:10 | and there is going to be about a
10 or 15 minute window in there where
| | 02:15 | everything is going to be in balance.
| | 02:17 | The light from the strobes is going to
balance with the lights of the signs on
| | 02:22 | the front of the pizzaria and the
light of the sky as it goes darker.
| | 02:27 | And because we don't know the exact
moment when everything is in balance,
| | 02:32 | we shoot all the way through that process.
| | 02:36 | So we start right at about 5:15 and we
start taking pictures and we've already
| | 02:42 | arranged with Tony, the owner of
Tony's Pizzaria who has informed us that he
| | 02:47 | and his dad have been here for 51
years since they moved out here from
| | 02:51 | Brooklyn, New York.
| | 02:53 | And so Tony has graciously allowed us
to use his beautiful shop right here and
| | 02:59 | to that we're going to add these
lights and we've got a really nice day.
| | 03:03 | The weather is really great in
Southern California today, and so the sky is
| | 03:07 | going to get darker, darker, darker, darker,
and eventually it's going to become black.
| | 03:11 | In the meantime, the light in the shop
from the fluorescent lights, the neon
| | 03:16 | lights, they are going to be a constant,
and the lights from these strobes are
| | 03:20 | going to be a constant.
| | 03:21 | Now we have the ability to adjust
the strobe maybe a little lighter or a
| | 03:26 | little brighter, and so we're going to
use these lights to create kickers or
| | 03:32 | highlights or detail, things that will
bring out aspects of detail in the shot,
| | 03:39 | and in Tony who is going to be working
behind the counter, and we've already
| | 03:42 | arranged all of this.
| | 03:44 | So we're taking aspects of taking a
picture and we're adding to it the things
| | 03:50 | that we can do to make a picture as a
photographer, and we're going to try to
| | 03:54 | put it all together so that in the
final image it's going to look like we
| | 03:59 | haven't done anything.
| | 04:00 | And that's the zen of it, to make it
appear that nothing at all has been done to
| | 04:06 | this photo to make it all work out.
| | 04:09 | So that's the drill. That's
what we're going to try to do.
| | 04:12 | Now in fact, we've spent some time
scouting the location, figuring it out
| | 04:18 | where to put the lights.
| | 04:19 | But what we didn't do is we didn't
just sort of come here in the middle of
| | 04:22 | the day at high noon when the sun
was coming straight down and go click,
| | 04:27 | click, click and walk out.
| | 04:29 | That wouldn't have worked at all.
| | 04:30 | One of the reasons that wouldn't have
worked out is because we wouldn't have
| | 04:34 | been able to see inside the shop
through the plate glass windows.
| | 04:38 | So if we do this properly-- and we will--
we're going to be able to see Tony
| | 04:43 | himself working in his own shop and
we're going to light the shop in such a
| | 04:48 | way that the light from the shop and the
light from the sky are going to be in balance.
| | 04:54 | And yet, again, if you do it
properly it's going to look like we haven't done anything.
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| The shoot: part 1| 00:00 | So we came here about three hours ago
and we got the permission of the owner of
| | 00:05 | the pizzaria and we also scouted the
location and tried to determine where we
| | 00:10 | wanted to put the lights.
| | 00:12 | And we decided that we want to put five
lights in place and balance them in such
| | 00:17 | a way that it appears that there are no
lights at all in the photo. That's the drill.
| | 00:23 | So we're going to put two lights in the
inside and three lights on the outside.
| | 00:29 | And what we have here is we have a
Nikon D3S camera and to fire these strobes,
| | 00:35 | these five strobes, we are
using a Nikon SU-800 Trigger.
| | 00:40 | It's equivalent to a PocketWizard.
| | 00:42 | It's also equivalent to
the ST-E2 on a Canon system.
| | 00:46 | The camera is almost
incidental to what we are doing.
| | 00:50 | The drill here, the important detail,
is the light and so we are trying to add
| | 00:55 | light and we are controlling it for
distance and for quality and if we can
| | 01:01 | control for those two things we
can make it appear to be invisible,
| | 01:05 | when in fact the final
photograph is going to be highly lit.
| | 01:10 | So we've got five Nikon strobes.
| | 01:14 | We just put fresh batteries in them so
that we know that once we get started
| | 01:18 | that the strobes are going to continue to fire.
| | 01:20 | We are using three Nikon SB-800
strobes, two Nikon SB-900 strobes, and this
| | 01:30 | triggering device, which is called an
SU-800, and this is going to fire all of
| | 01:37 | these strobes simultaneously.
| | 01:39 | And we've got the strobe set
up in channels and modes A1.
| | 01:46 | So they are all going to fire
at the same time, hopefully.
| | 01:50 | And I've figured out where I want to
put them and how I want to set them and
| | 01:55 | how I want to gel them.
| | 01:57 | So by controlling for distance and
also the power of the strobes, we are
| | 02:02 | controlling the quality of the image.
| | 02:05 | So come along with me right now.
| | 02:07 | We are going to put all five of these
strobes in place and you can see what we are up to.
| | 02:11 | So we are going to put our first light
in place inside the pizzaria and I am
| | 02:18 | going to use a small umbrella.
| | 02:20 | And it's a beautiful day in Southern
California. It's not raining inside the
| | 02:23 | pizzaria but we are going
to shoot into this umbrella.
| | 02:28 | And we are going to take a very small
light source at the head of the strobe and
| | 02:32 | we are going to diffuse it over
a much larger area, an umbrella.
| | 02:35 | And by doing that, we are going to
affect the quality of the light tremendously.
| | 02:41 | So we are going to put it in the corner
and we already know that it's going to
| | 02:45 | fit there and we are going to put it behind
the door with the legs of the tripod closed.
| | 02:57 | If you think of the head of the strobe is
being the origin of the light, which it is,
| | 03:02 | what we want to do is we want to take
that really small strobe head and diffuse
| | 03:07 | it over a very large area and by making
the area as large as we possibly can,
| | 03:13 | we make the light, the quality of the light softer.
| | 03:18 | In other words, the range from the
highlight to the shadow becomes less and by
| | 03:24 | putting it in the corner like this
we create a very soft light source.
| | 03:29 | So here we have another light and we are
going to balance this on the other side
| | 03:36 | of the light that went into an umbrella
and we figured out that we can take this
| | 03:40 | light and this time we are going to
attach it using a device called an adjusting
| | 03:43 | clamp and we can mount it like this.
| | 03:51 | We've made this light balanced with
that one over there by setting the two
| | 03:56 | strobes up the same and this has been
attached to an adjusting clamp and we've
| | 04:01 | attached to the front of it a Gary
Fong diffuser, and that will make the two
| | 04:08 | lights - and the two lights are in balance.
| | 04:10 | Now this one is a little bit closer,
but again we've taken a very small source,
| | 04:13 | the head of the strobe, and we've
diffused it over a larger area like this right here.
| | 04:21 | One of the ways that I can control the
quality of the image is by controlling
| | 04:25 | the color of the light.
| | 04:27 | So if I take a small gel like this,
and this is called the CTO Gel, Color
| | 04:31 | Temperature Orange, by taking a small
CTO, an orange gel, and putting it on the
| | 04:37 | front like this and then putting that
underneath this Gary Fong diffuser, I am
| | 04:42 | going to make this light orange.
| | 04:44 | So that light in the corner that we just
put on a second ago, that's a white light.
| | 04:48 | This light is an orange light.
| | 04:50 | So that's going to give us
dimensionality in the photo, from left to right.
| | 04:54 | So again we are controlling the
softness of the light and the color of the
| | 04:59 | light, and also the intensity of the
light by the way that we set the strobes up.
| | 05:04 | So we are doing everything that we
possibly can to make this picture as
| | 05:09 | beautiful as we can make and at the
same time as natural looking as we can make it.
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| The shoot: part 2| 00:00 | So now we're going to take two more
strobes and we are going to attach them one
| | 00:04 | to each corner of this awning.
| | 00:08 | And my friend Josh is here, he
has given me this chair. Thank you!
| | 00:13 | And I have noticed that there are pipes
on the inside of this wonderful awning.
| | 00:18 | So now if I take this adjusting clamp
and attach it to the pipe and then move
| | 00:26 | the strobe just a little bit and
rotate it and move it, I can light the front
| | 00:32 | of the pizzaria and I am going to put one
here and I am going to put one more over there.
| | 00:38 | And the other thing I have done is
I have lowered-- these strobes have a
| | 00:42 | diffuser built into them.
| | 00:43 | Let me show you what that looks like.
| | 00:45 | There is a diffuser here and I can just
pull it out and put it in and that again
| | 00:50 | will diffuse the light
and make it slightly softer.
| | 00:53 | Now I am lighting a relatively large
area at the front of this building, so it
| | 00:57 | doesn't have to be soft. And I
lose a little bit of light with that.
| | 01:01 | If it's not right in a second I will get
rid of the diffuser and make this light
| | 01:06 | about a half a stop to a stop stronger.
| | 01:08 | But for the time being we will just put
this light on this adjusting clamp and
| | 01:13 | we will use it to light the front.
| | 01:14 | So we are going to have two lights
on the front, we are going to have two
| | 01:18 | lights inside, we are going to have a
third light or actually a fifth light on
| | 01:22 | the ground to light up this painting,
and we are going to balance all of that
| | 01:26 | with the ambient light.
| | 01:28 | And as I am watching now the sun is
about to set, which means the sky is
| | 01:32 | going to get darker.
| | 01:34 | As the sky goes darker the
strobes are going to get brighter in
| | 01:37 | relative comparison.
| | 01:39 | We are balancing all these elements together.
| | 01:43 | So we've taken the strobe, we've put it
on adjusting clamp, and we are going to
| | 01:47 | attach it to the bracket on this awning one
more time and let's see if we can do this.
| | 01:58 | So there it goes.
| | 02:00 | We've got it attached and now we are
going to aim it down and it's going to be
| | 02:04 | at a 45-degree angle, lighting up the
front of the restaurant, the pizzaria.
| | 02:10 | So we've got a light here, we've got a
light there, we've got the light into an
| | 02:14 | umbrella inside, we've got a light over
in the corner on the chef, Tony, firing
| | 02:20 | into that that Gary Farm Diffuser and
now if I've got them all set up properly,
| | 02:25 | when I go click they are all going
to fire simultaneously without a wire.
| | 02:30 | Let's see if it all works.
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| The shoot: part 3| 00:00 | Okay, I've taken this camera.
| | 00:02 | This is again a Nikon D3S.
| | 00:05 | We have on the top an SU-800 trigger.
| | 00:09 | The PocketWizard is very, very similar.
| | 00:11 | There is a Canon device, an SDE 2,
which again is very, very similar.
| | 00:16 | And what this is going to do is put
out a signal when I press the shutter
| | 00:20 | release and it's going to fire all these
strobes simultaneously if we've done it properly.
| | 00:26 | So the first thing I'm going to do here
is I'm just going to do a test and see
| | 00:31 | if the strobes fire.
| | 00:33 | Now what I need to do is double-check
and make sure that the lights inside the
| | 00:38 | restaurant are also going off.
| | 00:41 | The strobes have been placed in such a
way that these strobes have a sensor in
| | 00:46 | them and it will see the signal put out
by this SU-800, the two strobes inside
| | 00:53 | the restaurant will see the lights,
because these are aimed at 45 degree angles,
| | 00:57 | they are crossing to each other.
| | 00:58 | We're talking about the
technology of making all this fire.
| | 01:02 | So the strobes inside
should see the strobes outside.
| | 01:07 | If I can just make one of these fire,
and in fact, I can make two of them fire,
| | 01:10 | then I can make all four of them fire.
| | 01:12 | That one is going off, and
that one should be going off.
| | 01:17 | There are a couple things going on right here.
| | 01:22 | When the sun hits the horizon, most
people think that they are going to shoot a
| | 01:26 | sunset picture, they are going to shoot
a silhouette and when the sun hits the
| | 01:30 | horizon, they are finished.
| | 01:35 | In my world when the sun hits the
horizon, that's my time to go to work.
| | 01:40 | If any of you remember the movie
Beetlejuice with Michael Keaton, there was a
| | 01:46 | great scene in that movie
where he said, "Show time!"
| | 01:48 | So this is my show time right now.
| | 01:51 | So when that sun hits the horizon that's
when I get really, really busy, because
| | 01:56 | I know that the sky is going to go
darker and I know that the light in the
| | 02:00 | front of the restaurant is going to get
relatively brighter and I know that my
| | 02:05 | strobes are going to get relatively brighter.
| | 02:07 | So I've got one set of lights coming
down and I've got another set of lights
| | 02:12 | that are constant, but they are
going to appear to get brighter.
| | 02:15 | In fact, the light on the strobe,
while I can modify them a little bit,
| | 02:19 | the light on the strobe doesn't change,
but it's going to appear to change,
| | 02:23 | because the ratios between the sky and
the strobes and the signs on the front of
| | 02:30 | the restaurant are going
to change, in relative terms.
| | 02:34 | Let's see if we've got it right.
| | 02:36 | So now I'm trying to take a classic
picture of this pizzaria, and so I'm
| | 02:44 | aligning the photograph up pretty straight.
| | 02:46 | I'm trying to keep my own reflection
out of this window here, so I've got the
| | 02:51 | camera and myself right
behind a brace in the window.
| | 02:56 | So I know that my reflection is
not going to be in the window.
| | 03:00 | So we've got everything lined up real straight.
| | 03:02 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
just to see that everything is firing and
| | 03:06 | that it all looks good.
| | 03:07 | So I align the camera up and
this is a Nikon D3S camera.
| | 03:13 | It's got a 24-70 millimeter lens on it.
| | 03:16 | A medium focal length zoom and right
now I'm at about 26 or 27 millimeters.
| | 03:23 | One other detail that we've done is
we're backed up on the sidewalk here in
| | 03:28 | Ventura in such a way that we're out
of traffic, because getting hit by a car
| | 03:32 | would just absolutely ruin the whole thing.
| | 03:34 | So we've chosen the lens very
carefully to be able to shoot from the sidewalk
| | 03:40 | and to move the camera in as close as
we can to the pizzeria and make it all work,
| | 03:48 | and it's a
relatively straight composition.
| | 03:51 | At the same time, we checked things out.
| | 03:53 | We know that the lights on the top of
the restaurant they are solar-powered.
| | 03:57 | They are going to come on in just a couple
of minutes, which is going to be terrific.
| | 04:02 | They are going to light up the pizzaria sign.
| | 04:05 | So we're anticipating that that light is
going to come on in just a few minutes.
| | 04:09 | And again, we're trying to get
everything in balance, so that it all looks like
| | 04:15 | it's just a completely natural straight shot.
| | 04:18 | In fact, we've massaged it very carefully.
| | 04:20 | We have some elements of taking a
picture, we have some elements of making a
| | 04:24 | picture, and that's what
the drill is for right now.
| | 04:27 | So let's just see if it all works.
| | 04:35 | Fantastic!
| | 04:41 | Okay, so now I'm shooting the
camera in Manual mode, M. By shooting the
| | 04:50 | camera in Manual I can separate the
aperture part of the photo from the
| | 04:56 | shutter speed part of the photo.
| | 04:59 | The aperture part of the photo 5, 6,
8, 11, 16, that is going to control
| | 05:06 | the amount of light that the strobe puts
out in what's called TTL or Through-The-Lens.
| | 05:10 | The manual part of the photo, the
shutter speed part, controls the sky.
| | 05:19 | So if I want to take the sky down in
terms of exposure, I dial in and I go to a
| | 05:25 | faster shutter speed.
| | 05:27 | So it's this interplay of shutter
speed and f-stop, and I can make the sky
| | 05:33 | go relatively darker.
| | 05:35 | In other words, I'm controlling the
ratio between what the strobes are putting
| | 05:39 | out and what the lens is
recording on the shutter speed side.
| | 05:44 | So as I go through the viewfinder, I
can see these two sets of exposures.
| | 05:49 | I could also do the same thing by
setting the camera in Aperture mode, A. And
| | 05:54 | it's called A on both Nikons and Canons.
| | 05:58 | So on the Canon it's called AV,
but in both cases it's Aperture mode.
| | 06:03 | So I can use that as a way of
checking these two types of exposures.
| | 06:10 | So let me try it again.
| | 06:15 | And I can see that this light is a
little bit too bright, I need to move it
| | 06:19 | over just a little.
| | 06:20 | So I'm going to make a
couple of small adjustments.
| | 06:23 | I'm going to turn that light down just
a little, and I want to move it up under
| | 06:27 | the awning so it's not showing quite
so much, and I'm going to aim it in this
| | 06:31 | direction just a little bit more.
| | 06:33 | And I'm going to do the
same with that one over there.
| | 06:35 | There is a beautiful bicycle over
here. We're going to take the bike
| | 06:39 | because it's a great prop.
| | 06:41 | I want to take the bike and move
it into the front of the pizzaria.
| | 06:44 | So I need to make about three or four
changes. It takes me a couple of minutes.
| | 06:47 | This is completely normal when you get
to this part of the process, because you
| | 06:52 | get the basic pieces in place, the
strobes in place, the lens, the shutter
| | 06:59 | speed, the f-stop, and then inevitably
when you look at the LCD on the back of
| | 07:04 | the camera you can see that there is a
few details that need some fine-tuning.
| | 07:08 | So right now we're going
to fine-tune those details.
| | 07:11 | Okay, come with me. I'll
show you what I'm doing.
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| The shoot: part 4| 00:00 | So we've got this great speeder bike, a cruiser.
| | 00:05 | And we're going to -- we've got the
owner's permission and we're going to put it
| | 00:08 | on the front of the Pizzaria because we can.
| | 00:12 | And it's an absolutely terrific iconic
American bicycle and it just makes it
| | 00:18 | really great prop for the front of the store.
| | 00:20 | So now we've got that in place,
I want to do a couple more things.
| | 00:24 | I want to move this light just a little
bit and I want to move that light a little.
| | 00:28 | Now one of the things I can see
is that the inside of the awning or
| | 00:34 | this overhang is white.
| | 00:37 | So I can do the same thing with this
right now that I just did with the umbrella.
| | 00:41 | Rather than shining it directly on the subject,
I can bounce this light into the overhang.
| | 00:49 | And by doing that, I take the origin of
the light, the strobehead, and I bounce it
| | 00:54 | into this white reflecting material, and the
entire awning will become source of the light.
| | 01:01 | So that's going to create a very large
diffused wraparound light source on the
| | 01:07 | front of Tony's Pizzaria.
| | 01:08 | And you take a tiny area and you make it bigger.
| | 01:13 | When I looked at the LED on the back
of the camera, I could see from the
| | 01:16 | Histogram that the basic exposure was good.
| | 01:18 | So I know that my basic exposure is proper.
| | 01:22 | But this side of the restaurant was too bright.
| | 01:25 | By taking it and moving it up into this
awning or overhang, I not only take it
| | 01:30 | down a little because it's not going to
be as bright, but I'm also diffusing it.
| | 01:35 | So in making just by doing this one move,
I'm making a tremendous change in the
| | 01:40 | quality of the image.
| | 01:41 | And the quality of the image is
the softness or wraparound quality.
| | 01:47 | And because we just put this bicycle here,
now we have really soft light on the bike.
| | 01:54 | So we've got Tony there and he is
working like crazy, and we've got lights in
| | 02:00 | place and we get real, real close.
| | 02:03 | Let's do the same thing for the other side.
| | 02:12 | Okay, so we've got this beautiful bike
in front of the pizzaria and we've just
| | 02:20 | bounced light into this overhang.
| | 02:22 | But if I can put another light right
down here just slightly out of the picture,
| | 02:27 | and Nikon gives you this really cute
plastic foot, I can just put it on
| | 02:32 | the ground right here.
| | 02:34 | So every time I can add another element,
another strobe, it gives the picture
| | 02:39 | an extra dimension.
| | 02:41 | So here we've put this particular
strobe from Nikon, comes with an orange gel.
| | 02:46 | Again, it's a CTO Gel (Color
Temperature Orange), and it's on a little foot,
| | 02:51 | it's right there, and this will be just
out of the picture because the edge of
| | 02:56 | the building is the edge of the frame.
| | 02:58 | So if I put it here and I aim it at a
real severe angle and aim it at that wheel,
| | 03:03 | I know that it's going to give me
some definition on the front of the bike.
| | 03:09 | It's just going to define it just a little bit.
| | 03:11 | It's going to give it a texture.
| | 03:12 | It's just a tiny little detail.
| | 03:14 | But that's what this kind of
photography is all about, is paying attention to
| | 03:18 | the details and making it all work.
| | 03:21 | Okay, let's see if it works.
| | 03:24 | So we've got a couple of things happening now.
| | 03:27 | Just by making a few very small
changes, we've got all the lights firing.
| | 03:33 | But now the light up on
the top has just come on.
| | 03:37 | It's hooked to a solar detector.
| | 03:39 | So in a second, I'm going to have
the light of the pizzaria, the sign get
| | 03:45 | brighter because that light just came on.
| | 03:46 | So now I'm going to
bracket the photograph a little.
| | 03:55 | I've got the camera set on Manual and I
can bracket the shutter speed, which is
| | 04:00 | going to make the sky
relatively lighter and darker.
| | 04:03 | And by adjusting the f-stop or the
aperture, the camera should be putting out a
| | 04:09 | constant light source in TTL.
| | 04:11 | But I can change the ratios
between these two sources.
| | 04:15 | Let's see if this works. Tony!
| | 04:18 | So the one setting on the camera,it's
really important that I see is the Histogram.
| | 04:30 | And the Histogram will tell me
that I've got a good exposure.
| | 04:33 | And because I know I'm going to take
this image and pass it through a computer
| | 04:37 | and adjust it in Photoshop, if I'm
getting a good Histogram right here, which I am.
| | 04:43 | The image is going all the way
across the gradient here and it's going to
| | 04:47 | give me a good exposure.
| | 04:52 | At this point, we're making
lots of little adjustments.
| | 04:55 | We're tweaking the image, we're dialing
things down or up, we're moving strobes
| | 05:00 | a little bit to the left or to the
right, and this is really normal.
| | 05:04 | We've taken this camera and we've
organized everything, cleaned up all the
| | 05:10 | details in front of the pizzaria, including
adding this bike because it's a great prop.
| | 05:16 | And we've added five strobes in the photo,
| | 05:19 | two in these awnings, in this overhang,
| | 05:21 | one on the side of the pizzaria, which we
later moved inside to light Tony brighter.
| | 05:28 | Another one, we took a strobe and
bounced it into an umbrella, which took a tiny
| | 05:33 | little source and made it bigger,
so we've done that multiple times.
| | 05:37 | And we took one more light and we
aimed it at the doorway right here.
| | 05:42 | None of these lights are straight on.
| | 05:44 | Every light is directional.
| | 05:46 | And almost every light has a diffusion
element in it of some fashion which makes
| | 05:51 | the light softer and more diffused
and more pleasing and more pleasant.
| | 05:57 | And the one thing that's happening
right now and as I look at the sky, the sky
| | 06:01 | is almost completely black, but
we've shot all the way through it.
| | 06:05 | And by shooting all the way through it,
as the sky goes darker, darker, darker,
| | 06:09 | darker, darker, the sun is probably now
about 20 degrees below the horizon and
| | 06:14 | the sky is almost completely black.
| | 06:16 | The lights of the building and the
lights of the strobe in relative terms have
| | 06:21 | become brighter into the photograph.
| | 06:24 | And as we get these elements together
and we adjust that by putting the camera
| | 06:30 | in Manual mode and adjusting the
shutter speed and moving the shutter speed up
| | 06:37 | and down which gives us a little more or
a little less light in the sky and the
| | 06:42 | exposure from the strobes is
controlled by the aperture part of the picture.
| | 06:47 | And that's giving us a constant output
because of the TTL or Through-The-Lens
| | 06:52 | quality of these images.
| | 06:53 | And we've done all of it
without a single wire in the picture.
| | 06:57 | It's been wireless TTL, and
it's been relatively seamless.
| | 07:01 | And that's been the drill of taking
all these elements and bringing them all together.
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| Tips to remember for location shots| 00:00 | As you can see, combining wireless flash
with natural light gives you incredible
| | 00:05 | creative control, especially during that
time after sunset and just before dark.
| | 00:11 | Let's look at some tips that will help
you get the best results when you are
| | 00:16 | shooting in a situation like this.
| | 00:19 | First tip: plan your shot.
| | 00:21 | Arrive at the site well in advance of
when you want to begin shooting so that
| | 00:25 | you can scout the location.
| | 00:28 | What will the light be
like after the sun goes down?
| | 00:31 | How much space is there around the location?
| | 00:34 | Will you be able to capture the
entire scene without having to stand in the
| | 00:39 | middle of a busy street?
| | 00:41 | And what kind of lens will you need?
| | 00:44 | In scouting Tony's Pizzaria, I
determined that the restaurant faces west.
| | 00:49 | So the twilight would be
beautiful behind the building.
| | 00:53 | Now Tony's Pizza is on a very busy
street, but fortunately, the sidewalk was
| | 00:59 | wide enough so that I was
able to set up a tripod.
| | 01:02 | But even so, I had to use a fairly wide
angle lens on my zoom lens, about 26 millimeters.
| | 01:10 | Each of these decisions takes time
and you don't want to have to make them
| | 01:14 | during that brief period
when the light is just right.
| | 01:17 | So get there early and
plan your shot. Next tip:
| | 01:22 | give yourself time to set up
your strobes and your camera.
| | 01:26 | Start by determining when the
magic hour occurs at your location.
| | 01:30 | Then estimate how much time you'll
need to set up the shot based on how many
| | 01:35 | lights you brought and what
kind of lighting you want.
| | 01:39 | Then work backwards to figure out
when you need to start setting up.
| | 01:43 | For the end of the shot of Tony's
Pizzaria, we determined that sunset would
| | 01:48 | occur at 6:30 p.m. and the total darkness
would occur at 7:15 p.m., about 45 minutes later.
| | 01:56 | Armed with that knowledge, we
decided where to place the lights.
| | 02:01 | For this shoot, I brought five strobes
and five clamps and three light stands.
| | 02:07 | I estimated that I need at least
two hours to put everything in place.
| | 02:12 | We began setting up the shot at 4 p.m.
and I needed every minute of that time.
| | 02:18 | Now remember that the magic hour
isn't necessarily one-hour long.
| | 02:22 | In fact, its length depends on the season
of the year and the latitude of the location.
| | 02:28 | When you're working near the equator,
the sun sets at about 6 p.m. all year long.
| | 02:34 | Twilight is only about 20 minutes long,
and total darkness occurs very quickly.
| | 02:40 | By comparison at northern latitudes
during the summer, both the days and
| | 02:45 | the twilight are long.
| | 02:47 | If you're shooting in Alaska or
Scandinavia in the summer, the twilight can last
| | 02:52 | 90 minutes or more, giving you more time
to adjust your camera and your lights.
| | 02:59 | By the way, there are twilight
calculators on the Web that let you determine the
| | 03:02 | exact duration of twilight for your location.
| | 03:06 | You can even get smartphone apps that
will do the job when you're in the field.
| | 03:11 | Just do a web search for the phrase
twilight calculator and you'll find them.
| | 03:17 | So that's how you plan for the natural light.
| | 03:19 | Now let's talk about the
artificial light in our next tip.
| | 03:23 | Learn how to balance your strobes
with the existing artificial light.
| | 03:28 | As I've said before, part of the
secret of making a photo like this one is
| | 03:33 | to balance the light sources so that it
doesn't look like you've used multiple strobes.
| | 03:39 | Now the existing light at your
location, the incandescent bulbs and the
| | 03:43 | fluorescent lamps, put out a constant
amount of light that you can't easily change.
| | 03:50 | On the other hand you can increase or
decrease the strobes' output. Simply
| | 03:55 | adjust the menus of the camera
body and the buttons on the strobes.
| | 04:00 | You can also change the aim of the
strobes, as we did at Tony's when I aimed the
| | 04:05 | strobes into the awning
instead of directly at the building.
| | 04:10 | That not only diffused the light. It reduced it.
| | 04:14 | And don't forget that you can also
change the quantity and quality of the strobe
| | 04:18 | light by using diffusers and color gels.
| | 04:22 | We did both of those
things at Tony's Pizzaria too.
| | 04:26 | Okay, so you've done your scouting and
your planning and you've set up your strobes.
| | 04:32 | The sun is down and
you're ready to start shooting.
| | 04:35 | That brings us to the next tip.
| | 04:37 | Put your camera in Manual Mode.
| | 04:40 | Shooting in Manual Mode gives you more
control over the exposure because you can
| | 04:45 | independently adjust the aperture and
the shutter speed to balance the strobe
| | 04:50 | light and the ambient light.
| | 04:53 | I mentioned that during the shoot,
but let's go over it again right now.
| | 04:57 | Your f-stop controls the exposure
you're getting from the strobes.
| | 05:01 | That's because the strobes
pop for just a split second.
| | 05:04 | So the wider the aperture, the more of
the strobe's light reaches your camera
| | 05:09 | sensor during that split second.
| | 05:11 | On the other hand, your shutter
speed controls the ambient light.
| | 05:15 | With a fast shutter speed, less
ambient light reaches your camera sensor.
| | 05:20 | And that tips the
brightness in favor of the strobes.
| | 05:24 | With a slow shutter speed, more
ambient light reaches the sensor.
| | 05:29 | And that has the effect of making the strobes
appear dimmer in relation to the ambient light.
| | 05:36 | We saw this in action during the shoot.
| | 05:39 | I set the aperture to f/8.
| | 05:41 | But as the sky got darker, I used
slower and slower shutter speeds to keep the
| | 05:46 | sky in balance with the strobes
and the other lights in the pizzaria.
| | 05:51 | At the end of the shoot as the twilight
was fading, my exposure time was a full
| | 05:57 | two seconds, which brings us to our next tip.
| | 06:01 | Use your camera's histogram
display to help you judge exposure.
| | 06:06 | You want a histogram that has a
broad distribution from left to right.
| | 06:11 | That's what tells you that you have a
good range of blacks, midtones, whites,
| | 06:17 | and everything in between.
| | 06:19 | As I photographed Tony's Pizzaria, I
reviewed the shots and looked at the
| | 06:24 | Histogram on the back of my camera.
| | 06:26 | As long as the histogram was well
distributed, I knew that I had a
| | 06:30 | properly exposed photo.
| | 06:33 | So as you can see, a shot like this
requires planning and setup and lots of
| | 06:38 | fine-tuning, not to mention coming
to terms with some tricky concepts.
| | 06:43 | All of that gets easier with
practice and with experience.
| | 06:47 | But there's one more thing that makes a shot
like this one successful and it's our last tip.
| | 06:53 | Don't forget the human element.
| | 06:56 | If you're shooting an outdoor location where
people gather, have some people in the shot.
| | 07:01 | At Tony's, I wanted the photo to show the
cook at work and I wanted to show Tony himself.
| | 07:07 | That's what this place is all about.
| | 07:09 | To light the cook, I clamped one of my
strobes to a window frame and aimed it
| | 07:14 | inside the restaurant.
| | 07:16 | To help light Tony, I put another
strobe on a chair aimed towards the door of
| | 07:21 | the Pizzaria and then as the sky
darkened and a fresh pizza came out of the oven,
| | 07:28 | I asked Tony, who is now 74
years young by the way, to stand in the
| | 07:34 | doorway and hold a pose
while also holding the pizza.
| | 07:38 | My window of opportunity
was about five minutes long.
| | 07:42 | The light in the sky was in balance
with the restaurant's lights, which were in
| | 07:46 | balance with my strobes.
| | 07:48 | Tony was anxious to get back to work and
a customer was anxious to get his pizza.
| | 07:54 | He got his pizza and we got the shot.
| | 07:57 | A shot like this tests nearly
everything I know about light, about lighting,
| | 08:02 | and about photography.
| | 08:04 | It's different every time and I
get consumed by it every time.
| | 08:09 | But for me, it's one of the
great joys of being a photographer.
| | 08:13 | So now it's your turn.
| | 08:15 | Pick a location, do your homework and
your planning, then set up your gear,
| | 08:21 | balance all your light
sources, and make a photo.
| | 08:24 | Make a photo that looks like
you didn't do anything at all.
| | 08:28 | Thanks so much for watching!
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About the AuthorAn interview with Jim Sugar| 00:01 | Photography was something that from
an early age it felt right to me, and more
| | 00:06 | importantly it made me happy.
| | 00:08 | And one of the very, very earliest
pictures that I shot got published in the New
| | 00:13 | York Times Sunday Book Review, and the
Times paid me the princely sum of $25,
| | 00:18 | which at that time was a fortune,
and that was a great experience.
| | 00:22 | And I also had a chance to photograph
William Manchester, who at that time was
| | 00:27 | writing Death of a President about
John F. Kennedy who had been assassinated
| | 00:33 | about two years earlier, and
those pictures got published.
| | 00:37 | So I learned very early on, A, that I
was good at photography and I shot nice
| | 00:42 | pictures and that there was a
market to do the kind of work that I did.
| | 00:46 | Even though I was living in a relatively
small place like Middletown, but it was
| | 00:50 | halfway between Boston and New York.
| | 00:52 | And so I made a lot of weekend trips
back and forth between Boston and New York.
| | 00:56 | Fairly early on during a geographic
story I had a chance to meet the man who I
| | 01:02 | consider to be the smartest human
being I've ever met, the absolutely great
| | 01:07 | Burt Rutan, the brilliant airplane
designer who up until about a month ago
| | 01:12 | lived in Mojave, California.
| | 01:15 | His most famous project was the X-
Prize where he actually built two aircraft,
| | 01:21 | the White Knight One and SpaceShipOne,
and it went up to 100,000 feet and came
| | 01:28 |
| | 01:28 | back down again, SpaceShipOne did, and landed.
| | 01:32 | And then that same aircraft had to be
refueled and flown again less than 10 days
| | 01:37 | later in order to win 10 million
bucks, and Burt designed these airplanes.
| | 01:44 | I was lucky enough with Burt that at a
time when his company was producing a
| | 01:51 | huge number of aircraft, sometimes they would
be working on multiple designs at any one time.
| | 01:58 | Because my connections within the
aviation industry were pretty good, sometimes
| | 02:03 | I'd be able to do a story for
Popular Mechanics on one of Rutan's planes,
| | 02:07 | sometimes I would do -- I had a lot
of Rutan's airplanes in the Geographic,
| | 02:12 | sometimes it's just a single picture
in a bigger story or story in a book.
| | 02:17 | But when I got a chance to photograph
Burt Rutan's airplanes there were two
| | 02:21 | things that were happening;
| | 02:23 | one were air to air photos
of the airplanes in the air.
| | 02:25 | How do you take a picture
of an airplane in the air?
| | 02:28 | And you come to realize very early that
just because you're 3000 feet up in the
| | 02:32 | air you still have to think
and act like a photographer.
| | 02:35 | You've got to be able to see pictures.
| | 02:37 | You still have to tell
the story of that airplane.
| | 02:40 | But then when the airplane was down on
the ground, that same airplane whether
| | 02:44 | you did it the night before or the next
day, it was a big piece of modern art.
| | 02:50 | It was really sophisticated either
sheet metal, or carbon epoxy fiber, that had
| | 02:56 | been formed into this
thing that we call an airplane.
| | 03:00 | With Rutan airplanes each one was the
mark of a generation, and so what were the
| | 03:04 | features of that airplane that were
distinctive, and how much time would they
| | 03:08 | give you to photograph the plane, and
where on that airport can you take the
| | 03:14 | plane in order to photograph it?
| | 03:17 | And mostly we worked at twilight.
| | 03:19 | So the pictures of the airplanes on
the ramp at twilight, and each plane was
| | 03:23 | different, the thought process, the
way of working, the way of seeing that
| | 03:27 | airplane, of telling the story of that
airplane was exactly the same process as
| | 03:32 | photographing our friend Tony holding
the pizza in front of Tony's Pizzeria,
| | 03:38 | right at the magic hour in Ventura, California.
| | 03:42 | One guy happened to be in Mojave, the
other guy happened to be in Ventura, but
| | 03:46 | it was all about telling
stories and illustrating this concept.
| | 03:51 | Later I got involved with some
friends of mine at the Geographic, mostly
| | 03:55 | Rick Gore who was a great science writer at
that point, and I started to do science stories.
| | 04:01 | So as a result of doing science
stories they had a different requirement and
| | 04:05 | I learned how to light, and
learning how to light and learning how to tell
| | 04:09 | the story of complex subject.
The most difficult one was gravity.
| | 04:14 | I did a story on gravity for the
Geographic and that was really, when I got that
| | 04:18 | assignment it was really a gut shot for me.
| | 04:21 | How do you photograph something
that you can't see, smell, touch,
| | 04:27 | put your hands on, do anything to it?
But it's there all the time and you're
| | 04:30 | surrounded by it and you -- it's your
job to illustrate that. How do you that?
| | 04:35 | In order to photograph gravity I
had to show the effects of gravity or
| | 04:39 | the things that it did,
| | 04:41 | because I couldn't take a picture of
it directly. And I had a great picture
| | 04:45 | editor at the Geographic, Bill Douthitt,
who is a very close friend of mine to
| | 04:49 | this day, I'm happy to say.
| | 04:51 | And he and I decided that in order to
do gravity one of the things we needed to
| | 04:55 | show was we needed to illustrate Sir
Isaac Newton's concept of a feather and an
| | 05:01 | apple dropping at the same rate.
| | 05:04 | And that lead to doing a photo
which again to this day was the hardest
| | 05:09 | photograph I've ever done.
| | 05:11 | And I was able to find a vacuum
chamber at NASA Ames in Mountain View,
| | 05:17 | California and we build a trap door
and got a feather and an apple and I
| | 05:24 | collected them very carefully, and
then I got a special set of lights that
| | 05:30 | fired about 20 frames a second.
| | 05:33 | And I was able to figure out how to
fire these strobes, and we took all the air
| | 05:40 | out of the vacuum chamber and we put
the feather and the apple at the top.
| | 05:44 | And then when I pulled the release on
the trap door, the feather and the apple
| | 05:49 | fell in the vacuum chamber and it
took about three days to get it right.
| | 05:55 | I didn't get it right the first time,
but at that time we were shooting this on
| | 05:59 | Kodachrome and there was a Kodak
dealership right down the street where we could
| | 06:02 | get the film processed overnight.
| | 06:04 | It's not like using one of these
digital cameras where you can see that -- I
| | 06:08 | didn't know that I had the picture or not had
the picture until the next morning literally.
| | 06:13 | And the second day I still didn't
have it right, but by the third day I had
| | 06:17 | everything dialed in, and frame
after frame after frame was perfect.
| | 06:22 | There was no manipulation of the image,
the image was very, very carefully set
| | 06:26 | up, but we did it right and we did it honestly.
| | 06:29 | That was the kind of shot that
occurred at a point when I was learning
| | 06:32 | photography that I couldn't have done
that as an earlier photographer, but at
| | 06:36 | that time it was really a
breakthrough shot for me.
| | 06:39 | And so photography for
me became problem-solving.
| | 06:43 | Are you doing street people down in
South San Francisco under the freeway
| | 06:47 | somewhere next to the railroad tracks?
| | 06:49 | Okay, you can do that, but at the same
time somebody may ask you to go out the
| | 06:53 | next day and do a CEO of a corporation,
or a CEO of a company where the photo
| | 06:59 | has to be lit, or you may have to go
out and photograph a feather and an apple
| | 07:03 | dropping in a vacuum chamber, and do it
honestly, it can't be done in Photoshop.
| | 07:09 | So there were other people who were
done similar things before that, but for me
| | 07:13 | the level of complexity for that shot
gave me a lot of confidence that almost no
| | 07:19 | matter what was thrown at me
photographically I could figure it out.
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