What can you do with the club’s studio lights? Tuesday April 30th, 2019

Hi Folks,

Last night Brian Worley gave a presentation on the club’s lighting which is available for use of club members. The club has two sets of lighting available. The first set is smaller and has a greater range of power controls, plus a handy radio remote trigger. Over the flash and modelling bulbs, there is a cover very similar to a flower pot, not to be mistakenly used as one lol. The big mushroom shaped bulb is  the modelling bulb, and around the base of it is the circular flash tube. To prolong the life of the flash tube Brian said to try and avoid touching the flash tube as grease from your fingers can cause the flash tube to fail earlier than expected due to the  the heat generated.

It has a brightness setting from 2.0 to 6.0 that is adjustable in 0.1 steps. Going from 2.0 to 3.0 doubles the amount of light output, so a stop more. When the flash is ready to fire it gives out a bleep which normally takes a couple of seconds so does not work with the camera in continuous shooting mode.

 

There are two tripods to attach the lamps to and one has to make sure the legs are locked as the tripod goes up high and can wobble if not secured.

 

It can be trial and error for your camera settings but Brian said, to set your camera at 1/125 seconds shooting speed as a starting point. ISO 200 and f/5.6 was the other settings.

Our model for the evening was Phillip who is a local photographer.

First of all, move the light to avoid any shadows this was a good shot as the starting point for Brian

The lighting also includes two softboxes and can be added over the lighting box to lessen the harsh light

The lighting is now coming from the right but has just enough light to lighten up his right eye (our left)

 

The soft box gives a bigger light and therefore softer. Brian explained if it was a bright sunny day with no clouds one could block out the sun with one’s finger so that is a small harsh light. However. if it was cloudy the light would be spread across the sky giving a bigger softer light.

 

Brian also gave a demonstration of how to reduce colours on backgrounds.

Brian then demonstrated on the use of two softboxes

And the  softbox with Chris holding a black card against the wall

 

Then after the break the second set of lighting was demonstrated. This set comes with a black and white umbrella which are fitted in the lighting box. The flashes in this kit have a smaller range of power adjustment, full, half and quarter power, a 2-stop range. It has a green light to indicate the flash is ready. There is no bleep on this one.

 

For this set to work a cable has to fit into the camera to fire the flash. Or you can turn on the slave function that will then trigger the flash when another light fires. This is helpful if you want to use more than one of these flashes together. Trigger one with the cable and the other will see the light and fire in sync.

 

So hope this gives member’s an idea of the equipment and their uses. These are some of the actual shots taken by Brian last night showing the different effects and moods that can be created from moving the lighting around and positioning our model Phillip in different ways.

 

Brian mainly used his aperture or f-stop settings on his camera to adjust any minor light power issues created from the various positions of the flashes in relation to Phillip.

 

and making different background colours

and using different boards

 

or curtains

 

Thank you to Brian for an informative and entertaining evening and please see Brian if any member  would like to use the equipment

 

Next week is

Competition – Club Challenge Round 5