Off camera lighting tutorials

SloYerRoll

Starting a blog for three purposes.
1. It will drive me to learn more, faster.
2. As an attempt to take the fear out of starting out w/ lighting gear for new photogs.
3. Once a few months/years have passed. there will be an easy to search archive of photo knoweldge for all the fellow dgrinners and others.

These tutorials are are designed for the person that knows NOTHING about off camera flash and wants to learn.

This blog will travel from the most basic of principals to intermediate lighting techniques then to who knows where. I'll probably toss some random Photoshop coolness in there every now and then.

Hope you enjoy. I know I am since I'm learning more and more every day. Feel free to post in this thread comments or critiques as well. (I'd prefer they go on the blog for others to see though)

Here is the main link and the first three posts:

http://jbrittphoto.blogspot.com/ (this link will always take you to the most current post)

1. So you want to start using an off camera flash...

2. You bought these flash sync items. Now what?

3. Setting up your lights on your hardware

I will publish a new post about once aweek so hook this up to your RSS if you like it!

All the best,

-Jon
aka. Slo

Disclaimer: While I have a minimal ammount of recomendations for vendors in this blog. I in no way shape or form am afiliated w/ any of them. I am just a happy customer that is sharing the expercience.
I have cleared this thread w/ the mod of this forum. If any mods see anyting inappropriate please contact me right away and I'll make it right.

pyrtek

How is this different to Strobist.com? Is it supplemental to it, or is it a different
approach, or something else entirely?

Rhuarc

This seems a little more straigt forward to me. Aimed at someone who has ZERO knowledge about off camera flash. A lot of strobist in my experience assumes you at least know a little.

Great work so far! Looking forward to furher installments!

SloYerRoll

pyrtek wrote:

How is this different to Strobist.com? Is it supplemental to it, or is it a different

approach, or something else entirely?

Rhuarc pretty much answered it.
Please refer to my first post if your confused why I'm doing this. I was quite clear as to my reasoning and goals.

I'll be combining the whole "beginner" photographer package. Once I cover lighting, I'll go into work-flows, post techniques etc.. Then I'll separate it into different drop down menus so anyone can easily go to it and reference the info.
This is not designed to tell photogs how to take shots or work digitally. It's designed to try and get people to work smarter and not harder. Do I have everything nailed down? No. But I am learning a phenomenal amount of info and want to share it w/ others.

In the information age, a person that doesn't share his knowledge is a bottom feeder IMO.

-Jon

schmoo

Personally I think having both this and Strobist is great. Why not get as many opinions/exercises as you can? Thanks for putting this together - it looks spot-on exactly what someone like me needs.

RSS feed here we come....

pyrtek

SloYerRoll wrote:

Rhuarc pretty much answered it. Please refer to my first
post if your confused why I'm doing this.

I was replying to your first post, so I don't see how referring me to it helps.
And no, I'm not confused as to why you're doing this. My question was not
about why you are doing this. I'm sorry I confused you. My question was how
your blog about off-camera lighting relates to David Hobby's blog about
off-camera lighting. Since I read his regularly, I wanted to know if you would
be adding anything of interest to the subject. You seem to be offended by the
question, which I find mildly surprising.

SloYerRoll wrote:

I was quite clear as to my reasoning and goals.

Which is why I didn't ask about those things.

SloYerRoll

I thought I was answering your questions Pyrtek. No offence was taken, I just thought my initial post covered your questions. So I answered accordingly.

This blog is designed initially as a supplimental to DH's blog for the less advanced. I'll go into more detail than strobist w/ visual examples of everything from start to finish. Then it will branch off into the whole digital photography arena than DH is going.

I will be going over some of the processes he blogged on since these topics are so fundamental to lighting and photography though.

-Jon

pyrtek

SloYerRoll wrote:

I thought I was answering your questions Pyrtek. No offence was taken, I just thought my initial post covered your questions. So I answered accordingly.

You seemed very defensive, which is what surprised me. If it was just my
imagination, then sorry.

SloYerRoll wrote:

This blog is designed initially as a supplimental to DH's blog for the less advanced. I'll go into more detail than strobist w/ visual examples of everything from start to finish. Then it will branch off into the whole digital photography arena than DH is going.

Thanks. I think it's a good idea that you'll be adding more visual information.
Strobist can sometimes use a bit more of that.

SloYerRoll

pyrtek wrote:

You seemed very defensive, which is what surprised me. If it was just my
imagination, then sorry.

No worries. If my words seemed that way, it was unintentional.
Lifes to short for grudges anyway.

All the best,
-Jon

zacker

Im too am a strobist member and I think youre doing a great job... why not? theres enough bandwidth to go around, so far, what you have on your page is very well thought out and clear, straight to the point no muss no fuss! I like it.

Antonio Correia

Let me add this link that may be as useful as the others.

http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/

saurora

Great write-ups John. The visuals really are helpful and you are very patient and exact in your wording. Too many sites just leave out the baby steps which (when covered) can make learning lighting not nearly so intimidating. I think you will achieve your goal!

SloYerRoll

Thanks for the kind words everybody.
I'm working w/ some ppl to make a readily accessable archive for the different aspects that I cover in this blog as well.
I have also learned some fantastic design techniques from some amazing ppl over the years. I look forward to sharing them. The only problem is I would love to mentally upload them to blogger. But that technology is still burried in a govt. bunker somewhere...

Hook up to my RSS if you like what you saw so far. I promise it will get even better w/ more valuable content. these first few weeks are just to get everyone up to speed that isn't. I definately still have so much to learn, but I'll have a good time learning it w/ anyone that wants to learn w/ me!

-Jon

dmmattix

Another site that is very straightforward is ...
Chuck Gardner's site (http://super.nova.org/DPR/#Index). He fully illustrates the type of lighting he is using and provides examples of the results. Seemed pretty basic to me (which was what I needed). He is pretty opinionated about what works for him and why (nobody is like that around here, huh?) but explains it pretty clearly .

Take a look and see.

Regards,

Mike

SloYerRoll

dmmattix wrote:

Regards,

Mike

Thanks Mike,

I'm going to focus my efforts on making this blog a little more easy to find items instead of folowing a link to a page, then finding another dozen links.

I'm also going to stay focused on (major) current events in technology vs. just the photogaphy aspect of this. This will help to satisy the constant desire for knowledge of the RSS readers that (hopefully) feed to this blog. There's onlyso much you can show a reader about photography. At some point it's up to them to adopt their own style.

To be honest, my goal isn't to tell ppl how to do something my way. It's giving ppl an option to look at how someone who is constantly learning new techniques does things. If it's better their current method and they adopt it.. Cool! If not, they now know their way is better than others. Hopefully they will share w/ me how their process works so I can learn from them.

Thanks for the link though. I'm sure I'll be able to glean knowledge off this site when studying for new posts.

All the best,

-Jon

SloYerRoll

Using an umbrella
Here's the latest installment.
If you would like to RSS to this blog. Here's the main blog page.

4. Using an Umbrella

3. Setting up your lights on your hardware

2. You bought these flash sync items. Now what?

1. So you want to start using an off camera flash...

The following post will be on snoots.

-Jon

SandyG

SloYerRoll wrote:

Starting a blog for three purposes.
1. It will drive me to learn more, faster.
2. As an attempt to take the fear out of starting out w/ lighting gear for new photogs.
3. Once a few months/years have passed. there will be an easy to search archive of photo knoweldge for all the fellow dgrinners and others.

These tutorials are are designed for the person that knows NOTHING about off camera flash and wants to learn.

This blog will travel from the most basic of principals to intermediate lighting techniques then to who knows where. I'll probably toss some random Photoshop coolness in there every now and then.

Hope you enjoy. I know I am since I'm learning more and more every day. Feel free to post in this thread comments or critiques as well. (I'd prefer they go on the blog for others to see though)

Here is the main link and the first three posts:

http://jbrittphoto.blogspot.com/ (this link will always take you to the most current post)

1. So you want to start using an off camera flash...

2. You bought these flash sync items. Now what?

3. Setting up your lights on your hardware

I will publish a new post about once aweek so hook this up to your RSS if you like it!

All the best,

-Jon
aka. Slo

Disclaimer: While I have a minimal ammount of recomendations for vendors in this blog. I in no way shape or form am afiliated w/ any of them. I am just a happy customer that is sharing the expercience.
I have cleared this thread w/ the mod of this forum. If any mods see anyting inappropriate please contact me right away and I'll make it right.

Looking forward to your future posts. Thanks for doing this!

SloYerRoll

Here's the latest installment.
If you would like to RSS to this blog. Here's the main blog page.

5. Snoots

4. Using an Umbrella

3. Setting up your lights on your hardware

2. You bought these flash sync items. Now what?

1. So you want to start using an off camera flash...

SloYerRoll

Are you gellin?
Here's the next installment.

I'd like to present a very warm thank you to Lynne Hulbert (AKA Urbanaries) for helping in the final editing of this blog. She was fundamental it making it flow the way it does and it would have definatlely been much harder to read if she wasn't on board!

6. Gells

5. Snoots

4. Using an Umbrella

3. Setting up your lights on your hardware

2. You bought these flash sync items. Now what?

1. So you want to start using an off camera flash...

jeffreaux2

Gels
I had a set of senior portraits to do this week and chose to gel my flash. Following the tips, I brought along a 1/2 and 3/4CT (blue) Lee gels. All went well, and I had very little color work to do in lightroom. The forground and subject color balance and temp very nearly matched the background. Keep up the blog Jon.

BTW here is a link to a few of the photos.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=75403

Also, for lack of anything more convenient, I used two business cards....taped together on one short side and one long side.....to make an easy to get into envelope for the gels. Worked like a charm and utilizes ZERO space in the camera bag.

Shane422

When I first saw your post, I was thinking "I already read the strobist". But after browsning it a bit, it does fill a nice gap. I'll be reading it often.

I did see that you are going to be discussing wireless options. When you do, take a peak at my Elinchrom Skyport review. They make a great alternative to pocket Wizards, and seem to allow a faster sync. I had the Gadget Infinity triggers as well, but I have gotten to the point where I needed a bit more versatility. They worked great on my SB600, but could not reliably fire my Alienbee. The Skyports do both well.

Also, Shutterbug did a nice review of many wireless systems this month.

SloYerRoll

Thanks for the comments Jeff.

Shane422 wrote:

I did see that you are going to be discussing wireless options. When you do, take a peak at my Elinchrom Skyport review.

Thanks Shane!
I've used the "ebay specials" and PW's. Didn't have a first hand review of the Elinchrom Rx series till now. If it's OK w/ you, I'll use some of the info you posted. Linking it back to you of course.

Cheers,
-Jon

Shane422

Go right ahead. That's exactly why I put it out there.

leaforte

Thanks for Lighting 101. Exactly what I needed to get started with off camera lighting. I have a 580EX and am ready to put it to good use. You answered many of the basic questions, that were so basic, I was almost embarrased to ask. I can't wait to order, or build myself, the componants I can use to start experimenting with my flash. I'll be watching for more of your posts. They are right up my alley, so to speak.

SloYerRoll

leaforte wrote:

Thanks for Lighting 101. Exactly what I needed to get started with off camera lighting. I have a 580EX and am ready to put it to good use. You answered many of the basic questions, that were so basic, I was almost embarrased to ask. I can't wait to order, or build myself, the componants I can use to start experimenting with my flash. I'll be watching for more of your posts. They are right up my alley, so to speak.

Thanks for the comments!

PLEASE let me know what you'd like to know about. I'll be happy to post. With other side projects I have going, it's easy to put this on the back burner. If I have an actual request. It's allot tougher for me to put it off!

-Jon