I asked for it….. part I

Ok I asked for it…..
In a previous post I asked for the visitors to send me ideas and questions to work out in a blog post. Well you have.
So as promised here is the first blog post based on those questions, some I will work out in longer posts in the future, but first some shorter ones.

Question 1:
Hey Frank,
That’s sure a nice gesture to your readers/followers!! If you ask me i’m dying to know when to use daylight lamps vs flash lights (small flash, quadra’s, or other). And in which cases do you use them. Most photographers use some kind of flash lights but daylight lamps are popping up everywhere. So i’m curious on this subject.
Thanks and greetzzz,
Jeroen

Answer :
In reality this will vary per person.
When I decide what to use there are of course some factors that are important, like the situation and the look/feel I want from an image. So when I know the look/feel I will see what I need. In some cases you can do the same shot with a Ranger, Quadra or small flash, and in some situations you will need more power so the small flash or even quadra will not be perfect.

You might wonder why I start with this when you asked about daylight lamps ?
Well the answer is simple.
In some situations you want to see 100% what you are doing, daylight lamps can be incredibly useful for this, the old argument that daylight lamps are too hot are over by the way, with Leds and a lot of other options daylight lamps or constant light don’t run that hot anymore, what does stay with the non led devices is the energy bill……

So in some situations you can use constant light perfectly to see what you are doing and to get a good overview of the final image, they are also perfect to add light to a scene and again see directly what you are doing….. Do I use them ?
No hardly.
I could use them in many situations but I love the small strobes and the power they give, I also like to work with more depth of field in most situations and a lower ISO than constant light can give me. I’m shooting most of my work with a MF camera and they need a few stops more light than a DSLR to get a similar DOF, and they cannot give perfect results at higher ISO’s, actually ISO100 is the best working ISO (and 50/25 of course), anything above 200 is in my opinion not ideal.

Daylight lamps/constant lights can be great, and cheap, but for me personally I won’t invest in them…… but for video….. now that’s another story, so the chance is really big that I will add some constant lights to our studio equipment.

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Question 2:
Frank, thank you for this opportunity. I have loved following you and your work. It’s so inspiring. What I would like to ask is since I am just beginning to build my portfolio gear, and I only have speedlights with the use of pocket wizards, how would I go about setting this up? Use it without any diffuser? Use it with an umbrella? I’m not sure where to start.

Answer:
This might be one of the most asked questions to any “teacher”/”photograper”.
And to be honest it’s the most difficult one to answer, in reality there is no real correct answer, everyone will do it differently I’m afraid. For example I love to use the small flash units totally bare, same with the quadras, while in the studio I use the Deep Octa, strip lights, and of course also the standard reflectors.

You do have to remember that a diffuser only works effective when the lightsource also gets bigger, placing something right on the flash will often not get the result you want, by placing the diffusion material further away you are making the lightsource bigger and get a much softer quality of light. Umbrellas do the same thing. Remember that the size and shape of a diffuser is very important for the spread of light, for example a deep octa really narrows the light while an umbrella will spread the light more out (more spill).

Hope this helps a bit, other wise just ask.

more to come in a follow up post…..