Free Online 3 day workshop by Zack Arias.

oshead

This looks very good for those looking to learn how to light in a studio.
Photography workshop by Zack Arias on Friday through to Sunday starting each day @ 9:30 pm GMT.
Heres a link to the email I got. You can register there if you like.
Here's the schedule.

Looks like fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_77pN3-rnE

WheresMyCamera?

oshead wrote: »

This looks very good for those looking to learn how to light in a studio.
Photography workshop by Zack Arias on Friday through to Sunday starting each day @ 9:30 pm GMT.

I've been keeping my eye on this now for ages, really looking forward to it. And wouldn't you know it I just happen to be busy those days :rolleyes::(
Typical eh? You'll have to let me know what it's like.

oshead

Yeah Adrian.... I think you can download it when finished. <snip>

WheresMyCamera?

oshead wrote: »

Yeah Adrian.... I think you can download it when finished. <snip>.

<snip>. I have his OneLight Workshop DVD and it's great. Don't know if you have that already, if not I'm sure I can sort something out fo ya. Also have you downloaded his podcasts where he critiques photographers websites and work? It's also worth a look.

ttcomet

I was just coming on to pimp this too. I am looking forward to it tonight. I found his show with Chase Jarvis the other night quite interesting.

Btw it is 9:30 tonight and then 6 on Saturday and Sunday.

oshead

Reminder for anyone who might forget. This is starting in 15 mins.

daycent

Christ, they're really dragging the arse out of it.... Get on with it!! Feckin yanks...

challengemaster

oshead wrote: »

Yeah Adrian.... I think you can download it when finished. <snip>.

<snip> I'm up at the GF's where the internet is...well, as close to 56k as you can get these days. So things aren't really loading too great! either video lag of about 2 minutes or blank screens with voices...

ttcomet

What do you think of it so far? Personally I am finding it very basic. I am hoping it gets better tomorrow and Sunday.

eas

yes, basic but still interesting as a refresher.
he kinda said at the start that tonight would be basic with pace picking up tomorrow & Sunday

I'm enjoying it anyhow.

oshead

Basic alright, but Zack is easy to listen to. I'm enjoying it too. Seems like a lot of the content off the Onelight DVD.

AnCatDubh

the schedule is here

anyone know are they -8hrs GMT? so hence tomorrows session should start at 18:00GMT? (10:00am local time)

oshead

AnCatDubh wrote: »

the schedule is here

anyone know are they -8hrs GMT? so hence tomorrows session should start at 18:00GMT? (10:00am local time)

That's correct. Here's a localized calendar from creative live to confirm the times.

ttcomet

The show is being reapeated at the moment for those that missed it last night. Although he is a couple of hours into it at this stage.

oshead

Bump, another reminder for this, day two of studio lighting with Zack Arias. It's starting at 6:30pm.

ttcomet

I want that 7 foot octabox!

eas

i was thinking last night - who would pay for this when they can watch it live?

Now I'm thinking of just coughing up the $80 and watching it in my own time.

Ricky91t

Why the stupid questions?! I've never used a flash/studio before and even I can figure this out..

ttcomet

This free course may end up being very expensive as I keep seeing things and going "oh I want one of those".

I am enjoying tonights show a lot more then last night, I think the overall level of the training is very high.

Ricky91t

Woah I thought this was only 3 hours?!

Buzz Lightyear

Have to say this is quite interesting. Simple things like velcroing your pw/ebay trigger to the flash, the multi-grip to abuse a monopod & the backloght baffles have made it worth while so far. Even the model poses with the hands makes life so much easier.

Thanks for the heads-up Dave

oshead

I agree. Very interesting, and there's about 20 hours start to finish. It's filled with lots of tips that you wouldn't know unless you did this for a living.

oshead

OK, another friendly reminder for this. It's been very good so far. Day 3 is starting in 15mins. creativelive.com/live

.Longshanks.

Great workshop but I really want one of those tall narrow gridded softboxes now:o

oshead

What? Just one? I want a pair.

.Longshanks.

oshead wrote: »

What? Just one? I want a pair.

I could max a credit card or 4 on stuff after watching those videos
He had a softbox bigger that my kitchen

want

Buzz Lightyear

Count me in for a octo as well. The light was amazing from this. As for the tall grid. Oooh yea.:D

I was in be and decieded to turn off the computer at the lst break - you remember after the ballerina in the Redneck Sittingroom. Then twitter went mad. There was Zack shooting a woman in a fish tank. Class. What a way to go out.

I learned a lot at the weekend. Once again Dave well spotted and thanks for the heads up.

Morrisseeee

I didn't think I'd find it interesting, as I don't do portraits, use lighting etc, but........I'm finding it interesting. I like his attitude, ie. he's not a greedy person, and he likes to help out people/businesses, fair play. Also interesting to find out that he can't afford a medium format camera (mentions some kind of RZ camera) !

.Longshanks.

I've tried this kind of setup before but I always ended up (what I now realise) underexposing the subject in an attempt to kill all ambient light. After watching the workshop something clicked and i'm really happy with the lighting.

....This shot is almost straight out of camera too


Larger on flickr

oshead

Yeah, Get the light diffusion really close to the subject, expose for that and watch the light just fall off to black really quickly.

PaulieC

oshead wrote: »

Yeah, Get the light diffusion really close to the subject, expose for that and watch the light just fall off to black really quickly.

care to explain a bit more? please ?

oshead

cambo_gueno wrote: »

care to explain a bit more? please ?

LOL, not easy to explain without going into the inverse square law. Easily put, to Quote David Hobby, light falls off by one stop as it travels approx 60% further from the last point of measurement.

So by getting the light source close to the subject and exposing your subject for that. A few meters behind the subject will drop by a few stops and go black.

ttcomet

Zack's interview/chat with Chase Jarvis is now available on Chase's site.
It's about 2 hours long and talks alot about insipration and the non camera part/behind the scenes/real life of a photographer.

AnCatDubh

Maybe I fell asleep in the wee hours but I've been trying to get Zack's approach to blacking out the background which is kinda getting there for me but not quite and i'm wondering did i miss a step or something.

Setup as follows;

Camera - ISO 100, Shutter 1/180 (Sync of the camera I believe), Aperture starting at f5.6 (well you gotta start somewhere eh? yes, I was paying attention) but ended up at about f11

Lens - 50mm

Single Flash/Strobe off camera mounted on tripod with shoot through umbrella. Power - well i've tried all the power settings from full 1/1 to 1/32. Triggered wirelessly/optical with camera being told to ignore the on-board flash.

Location - was back garden tonight but last night my locations included indoor - the results in terms of where i'm having problems were pretty similar to be honest. Subject to background was probably 25ft or so thus plenty of distance to allow the light fall off.

Results:

Interesting for me as i've tried this before and I didn't get on terribly well (achieved the end result but in post processing rather than in camera and with a plain black background).

I was trying desperately working to see those "blinkies" around my subject which Zack talked about and demonstrated, indicating blown out blacks everywhere apart from my subject but gah, after some effort i've given up for the moment while I think about it. I did get some of the image to blink but wasn't able to get it all to do.

Here's a small shrub taken from the shoot (ok, a hoover would have just looked weird ). Flash/Strobe above and firing downward. I'm ok with the light directly beneath to the back of the tree/shrub, and am happy that I could reduce it if desired, but it's the background that is giving me trouble in getting darker / blacker.



My guess is that the ambient light of the scene (background) is too strong for my shooting conditions. My subject gets lit reasonably and independently from the background (subject reasonably exposed / background underexposed but not entirely).

I've gone to the minimum aperture f22 on the particular lens but while it helps a little, it doesn't blow the background to black as maybe expected and I need to bump up the strobe/bring closer to the subject to compensate.

So, does it sound like i've missed something here folks? Suggestions?

.Longshanks.

Dave is the man to sort this one out....but in my limited experience your shoot through umbrella is sending light everywhere (including your background). If you had of used a reflective umbrella or a softbox (i've never used one yet) then there would have been less light spill. This might have isolated the subject better

Zack said referred to a partially collapsed reflective umbrella as the "poor mans softbox", which is what I used in the pic on the previous page

challengemaster

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

If you get the light source as close as possible to the subject, isn't that meant to give a blackened background? Something to do with the inverse laws involved

oshead

Tommy
I'd say the lads are correct. I think you need directional light and bring the source as close as you can to the subject.

This was taken using a closed down umbrella just out of the cameras angle of view. The grey background was no more than 5 or 6 feet behind her.


I'd suggest finding out, using shutter speed of 180th the aperture you need to make the scene go black. Then introduce the flash with a bit of directional light to try and get the exposure right on the bush by adjusting the power of the flash. No matter what, you'll have some spill on the ground.

AnCatDubh

kev_Longshanks100 and oshead -

quick question regarding the images which you posted (both brilliant by the way).

did you set up a particular background (cloth / paper?) for your shots or in other words, what was actually in the background that you were able to eliminate?

Had a brief go again tonight.

My efforts were a little better than last nights. I got nearer to pure black but I think my problem is definitely ambient light, as shooting the background (garden or room inside the house at iso 100, f22 and 1/180 shutter doesn't appear to give me complete black (blinkies) in the background (this shooting without flash). Nothing recognisable yes, and almost completely underexposed but I can see at a technical data level that there is something captured on the photograph.

3 Other differences when shooting tonight which concurs with the theories posed previously;

(a) it was later in the evening so the ambient light was less than last night, and

(b) i used the manual zoom function on the flash which if i understand correctly will narrow the beam of light that the flash outputs when fired and

(c) I collapsed the umbrella which I had done in part last night, but tonight it was for the entire shoot.

This broadly concurs with what was suggested previously but i'm about 95% happy with what i'm doing.

So hence, i'm wondering was there something general in your backgrounds or did you use paper / cloth background - if so what type?

Thanks guys

.Longshanks.

This is my studio


The above was the set up for this


Similar set up for the latest shot (on previous page) - except I've since got some lightstands, extra flash and umbrellas. Camera was probably 3- 4 feet further back in the latest shot as i was using the 85mm instead of the 18-55mm

The latest shot was

Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO Speed: 160
Strobist:
-430EZ speedlite high camera left in front of subject into partially collapsed reflective umbrella. 1/4 power and 50mm. 1m from subject
-430EX speedlite camera right slightly behind subject into through shot through umbrella (hidden in kitchen to right of set-up shot). 1/4 power and 50mm. 4m from subject

and was taken at about 11pm with the TV and lights from the kitchen on. There are two street lights spilling in through the rear window too. It was by no means dark but the 1/160 & f/9.0 combination killed all the ambient light


Edit
See pics #9 & 10 by Zack from last weekend here http://www.zarias.com/creativelive-images/#more-915

Both taken under same ambient light against the same seamless white background

AnCatDubh

Well, i've thought about it for a few days and got back to experimentation tonight. Results below - these are straight out of camera no processing other than raw conversion and image scaling to post here.

I don't think they are perfect but i'm a bit more pleased that i've dropped most (not all of the background). I'm not viewing on a calibrated monitor but I suspect that the "model"/subject needs to pop a little more.

The shoot tonight indoors - ambient light greatly reduced.

Did a little DIY and in about 7 minutes flat I made a softbox. Reasonably small but i think it controlled the light way better than previous attempts with the shoot through umbrella.

Flash/Strobe mounted on tripod generally above subject with the DIY softbox to diffuse the light - and generally the source was quite close to the subject ~ 2ft - though I have to say that I didn't expect but a little movement of the flash/strobe meant a lot of loss of light.

Flash strobe on manual. Power varied from full to 1/2 to 1/4 but i didn't go any lower and settled more on 1/2 power in general.

The strobe/softbox scenario was triggered wirelessly (via optical).

Subject distance to background was somewhat constrained/limited as my makeshift studio space was a relatively small room with sofa and a drum kit in it (actual distance from model/subject to background was probably about 3/4ft at most).

The results: (Model: Alfie)


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The quality of the light from the DIY softbox probably isn't the best - it involved a shoe box, a stanley blade, and the lid of an ice cream tub (of the 2 litre variety..... I didn't know DIY could be so yummmy...:)) but then again not having a 'proper' branded softbox and I don't really know what I should expect.

The ambient light is still puzzling me a little at 1/180 f5.6 and ISO 100 - the sensor appears to be still picking up fragments until the ambient light gets brought down. So i'd guess that presently I would be able to do the turn day into night thing. It appears that I need to push the aperture somewhat - maybe f11 and smaller to get really blown black backgrounds - in doing that I have found that i need to be poking a significant amount of light out of the strobe to compensate.

So as I say, not perfect (far from it) but I think i'm getting there - or at least getting closer.

Any comments / critique of images or setup welcome.

(attached images are posted inline)

challengemaster

AnCatDubh wrote: »

It appears that I need to push the aperture somewhat - maybe f11 and smaller to get really blown black backgrounds - in doing that I have found that i need to be poking a significant amount of light out of the strobe to compensate.

So as I say, not perfect (far from it) but I think i'm getting there - or at least getting closer.

That's the beauty of off camera lighting though, you can always compensate one way or another to get the results you want... If you want to balance ambient with flash, you can, or if you want you can kill the ambient and work only with flash...

Was doing some research and thinking of getting the Cactus V4's after watching OneLight, apart from that awful banding issue with the 5D.... In trying to find a workaround, I stumbled across Flashwave2's, which seem to be essentially PocketWizards with less range... only better.

Transmitter - hotshoe mount, 2.5mm socket
Reciever: PC sync socket, built in hotshoe, 3.5mm socket, also has thread mounting for tripods.

Apart from that - 10 channels, status lights, range of 70m (100m in perfect conditions) and for a hell of a lot less than pocketwizards. Got them about 2 days after ordering too... Can't wait to get to use them now