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video light as fill-light for wedding portraits

March 28, 2011

using video light as fill-light for the romantic wedding portraits

Having just photographed my first wedding of 2011, I’m back in the groove of things. Keeping to the recent theme of showing how video lights are used for photography, I’d like to show a small selection of images of Cherryl and Jim’s wedding where I used a video light to enhance the existing incandescent lighting at the reception venue …

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comparison: Lowel ID-light & MicroPro LED light & Dedo Ledzilla

March 25, 2011

comparative review: Lowel ID-light & Litepanels MicroPro LED light & Dedo Ledzilla

The use of video light for stills photography has become ever more popular in recent years, as high-ISO capable cameras made it possible to shoot in lower light without having to resort to flash. The immediacy of video light – the ‘wysiwyg’ nature of video light – makes it an interesting light source to play with and experiment with on a shoot. The dramatic quality of the light is also quite appealing.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of video light out there:
- the traditional Tungsten / Incandescent lamps,
- video lights with an array of LEDs providing the light.

The LED video lights have several advantages over the “proper” video lights:
- they don’t become too hot to touch,
- they run for much longer, and most use AA batteries,
- they are balanced for Daylight, and can be gelled for Incandescent,
- they are more compact.

So to see just how this all stack up in actual use, I decided to compare three video lights:
- the Lowel ID-light
- MicroPro LED video light
- Dedo Ledzilla video light

We’re going to specifically look at how bright they are and how their light spread is, and what their quality of light is like …

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wedding photography – dealing with the videographer’s light

March 15, 2011

wedding photography – how to work with the videographer’s light

With wedding receptions, we’re most often working within a very warm spectrum. There are tungsten (incandescent) lights all around. (**) There is candle light. There might be twinkling lights as decoration … and there is the videographer’s light. The videographer’s light will be Tungsten balanced, even if it is an LED video light that they are using. (***)

So while a wedding photographer might be using a lot of flash to dominate the lighting .. and settle for Cloudy or Flash WB, there is often a conflict of interest when the videographer joins in with his video light. The video light obviously has a much warmer white balance than flash. So how do we best deal with this?
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photo sessions – Shawna

March 7, 2011

photo sessions  - Shawna – using a variety of photographic lighting options

Shawna is the delightful model I used while I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. She helped us out during the mini-workshops I offered, as well as some photos of my own.  I’ve posted a few photos from these already, but thought it might be interesting to show a further selection of images and discuss them …

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video light vs bounce flash

February 23, 2011

video light vs bounce flash

It’s easy enough getting nice clean open light with a single on-camera speedlight when shooting indoors. By bouncing your flash with the idea of getting directional light from your flash, you can effortlessly get portraits like this. As usual, I used the black foamie thing to flag my flash and get more light on the one side of my subject’s face. In this case, more subtly so than some other examples on this site.

We were working in the same location here as shown in the previous article where I photographed Shawna using only the available light. However, for certain photographs I had in mind, it quickly became obvious that a more contained light source than bounce flash would work better. When compared to a light source like a video light, bounce flash tends to flood an indoor location with light, even if directional when you look at your subject. A hand-held video light gave me the type of lighting I wanted …

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direction of the light … any light

February 22, 2011

photography: direction and quality of light

While in Las Vegas for a few days, I had the opportunity again of working with one of my favorite models – Shawna. This striking photo of Shawna illustrates something that I want to underline: at some level, our consideration of the light that we’re using remains the same, whether we’re using available light, or flash, or video light or some other continuous light source.

We need to consider the direction and quality of the light we have or are creating.

We then either need to adapt our lighting, or adapt our way of shooting our subject, to complement our subject.  So let’s look closer at the light / lighting used for this photo …

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Film Noir style portrait using video light

January 23, 2011

Film Noir style portrait using video light

Last week I attended the Digital Wedding Forum convention in San Antonio, where I also did a presentation. Great fun meeting up with old friends and making new ones. Since this was the 7th DWF Convention, there are a few traditions that have been established by now. One of these regular unofficial events at the Convention is the Avatar Shoot. Stephanie Zettl, who has featured on a few guest posts here on Tangents, arranges this shoot at the convention. The idea is to shoot new portraits to be used as avatars.

The theme this year was Film Noir. Using just one (or sometimes two) video lights, she created moody portraits of every innocent bystander attendee hanging out at the hotel bar the one evening. The video light is perfect for lighting for a Film Noir look to the photos. With the dramatic drop-off in light to the edges, the area around your subject will usually fall into darkness rapidly. This creates a kind of a spotlight effect. Perfect lighting for this!

The photo at the top is my portrait. I just pulled up my collar and sank back against the wall. Working so close to the wall was useful in allowing a shadow to appear … and Stephanie very effectively used the negative space there to add more drama. Just to keep the momentum of the photography process a little off-balance here .. the moment she took the first shot, I stepped away and told her we are done. Just the one shot. And it worked. It had to.

A little more about the specific video light used here:

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boudoir photography and the 50mm lens

January 19, 2011

boudoir photography and the 50mm lens

With working space often times so tight for boudoir photo sessions, there is the temptation to use a 50mm lens for tighter headshots. (On a full-frame D-SLR.) Instead of stepping back a bit and using an 85mm lens or longer, a bit of visual laziness comes into play, and we rely on the 50mm lens too much. It really is too short a focal length for a tight portrait. I think many photographers are even too in love with their 50mm lenses, and use it without thought of how this would distort someone’s face when used too close to their subjects.

I totally understand the need for compromise. Quite often the angle we need to shoot from – whether because of the shape of the room, or the direction of the light – dictates a shorter-than-ideal focal length. This still doesn’t make the 50mm a default lens to work with, and still doesn’t mean the images we’re getting couldn’t have looked better with a longer focal length.
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lighting ideas for romantic wedding portraits

November 29, 2010

lighting the romantic portraits of the bride & groom

Scouting around the location during dinner time, I peered over the edge of this spiraling staircase and thought it would be a good idea to get some light on the couple, seated on the couch. I posed Melissa so that  she lounged back with her head on Dennis’ lap. There is no way to get light on them from my position with on-camera bounce flash, and definitely not if my intention is to get light only on them. It needed off-camera flash.

To add some variety,  I also thought of a few other things to try with the lighting, using the same set-up and pose.
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photo shoot: haunted fashion (using video lights)

October 13, 2010

photo shoot: haunted fashion (using video lights)

The previous time I photographed Anna was at a pin-up photo session. I had the opportunity again to photograph her and other models again last night … but in a completely different style and setting this time. The Valley Hudson Click group arranged a Haunted Fashion theme for this photo session.

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