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Lingerie photo session in the studio – Lighting, light & textures

February 5, 2015 Neil vN 7 Comments

lingerie photo session in the studio – light, lighting & textures

Lingerie photo session in the studio - lighting, light & textures

This photograph of Melanie, one of my favorite models, is one of a sequence where we played with different lights and lighting styles in the studio. I wanted lighting that was both soft and dramatic. Both feminine and bold. The lighting is the same idea - using a big gridded strip-box / soft-box - as I used in a previous photo session with another model, Anita DeBauch. The final image above, is the result of adding texture layers in Photoshop. I wanted to retain her shadow and other detail in the wall, while  Read more inside...

review: Bolt VB-22 bare-bulb flash

January 27, 2015 Neil vN 92 Comments

review: Bolt VB-22 bare-bulb flash

review: Bolt VB-22 barebulb flash

These are good times for photographers who love using off-camera flash. There are more and more options coming out for us to choose from and use. B&H has rebranded their own version of a popular series of flashguns. The Bolt VB-22 bare-bulb flash (B&H) looks like the Cheetah Light CL-360, and the Godox Witstro AD360, and the Neewer AD-360. They all seem to have similar spec. So if you've been browsing for any of those options, B&H has the Bolt VB-22 flash at a competitive price. For the photo at the top, I had my camera set  Read more inside...

High-speed flash sync (HSS) with the Profoto B1 flash

January 25, 2015 Neil vN 35 Comments

High-speed flash sync (HSS) with the Profoto B1 flash

The already impressive Profoto B1 flash (B&H / Amazon) became even more awesome in Dec 2014 when high-speed flash sync (HSS) capability was added through a firmware update. The photo above was taken at 1/2000 @ f/1.4 @ 100 ISO. I wanted that super-shallow depth-of-field, and I wanted the light to be more flattering than you'd get from a bare speedlight. In this case, I used a Profoto RFi 1'×3' softbox (affiliate), with the Profoto B1. (I kept both baffles on the softbox.) The summary: it  Read more inside...

review: High-ISO performance – Nikon D750 / D4S / D4 / D810 / D610

November 20, 2014 Neil vN 27 Comments

review: High-ISO performance – Nikon D750 / D4S / D4 / D810 / D610

With the initial quick test of the Nikon D750 high-ISO noise performance, I was quite impressed. But it really is only in comparison to other cameras that we can see how good it is. With that, I took 5 of the current full-frame Nikon DSLRs to compare them against each other to see their high-ISO noise. Nikon D750 Nikon D4s Nikon D4 Nikon D810 Nikon D610 The Nikon D4s (affiliate) is currently the high-ISO king, so it was specifically interesting to see how the 24 megapixel Nikon  Read more inside...

Comparing output: Studio lights vs. speedlites / speedlights

October 14, 2014 Neil vN 35 Comments

Comparing power: Studio lights vs. speedlites / speed lights

Speedlights pack a huge amount of light for the size. Very portable, and loaded with sophisticated features, owning a speedlight is a must. A simple choice. Studio lights and the larger portable flashes such as the Profoto B1 TTL flash (B&H / Amazon) , offer a lot more power than speedlights. Exactly how much more powerful, isn't all that easy to gauge. There's very little available as direct comparison. Even the specs aren't directly comparable. Speedlights' power is given as a Guide Number (GN), and studio  Read more inside...

Gelling your flash, and post-processing for deep blue skies

July 30, 2014 Neil vN 10 Comments

Gelling your flash, and post-processing for deep blue skies

The warm light from the nearly-setting sun, accentuated with gelled flash. Towards the end of the recent photography workshop, we were shooting on the rooftop - the warm tone of the sunlight contrasting beautifully with the blue sky. To punch it even more, we added gelled flash via an off-camera speedlight in a softbox. We had to gel the speedlight of course, to make sure the blue color balance of the flash didn't kill the natural light. We used a 1/2 CTS gel here which brought the flash's WB down to around 3700K. (This  Read more inside...

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