Working with one light source……and some Rogue magic.

Friday it was time for the small flash workshop with Nadine as my model.

During the small flash workshop the main thing I teach the students is how to work with both E-TTL and full manual mode. The thing I focus up at the start of the workshop is that E-TTL can be easily “fooled” or in other words is not perfect. By explaining this and also explaining how to solve it (and throwing in manual mode with a light-meter) the students are beginning to recognize the problems in a scene and most importantly learn how to counteract the problems.

The fun thing is that you will see that after the first setup most students already pick this up with the next setup.
And to be honest it’s not difficult, but you have to see it to understand it 🙂

I always start very simple with some nice softlight.
In this case a Canon 580EX behind a standard translucent reflector which in essence makes the light nice and soft. By moving the model close to the light source (reflector) you can control the light fall off.

For the next setup it was time to experiment with different setups and possibilities with one strobe. I choose a tricky background. This background does reflect a bit and has a “difficult” tone for the E-TTL system, so the students had to figure out how to use the FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) to solve the setup.

The first setup was done with the standard strobe without any modifier.

For the next setup I added the (awesome) Rogue flashbender this is really an ingenious modifier. You can bend it almost any way you want and “steer” the light. In this case I used it to bounce light towards the model but also take away the light from the background, the flashbender is really great for this and when you shoot small flash get one !

Because I wanted to show some different ways to light the same situation with different modifiers and positions it was now time to test another cool modifier from Rogue, the Rogue grid.

As you can see in the image this is a small grid for your small flash system, it’s very easy to add to the strobe and you can add two different size grids, or add both if you need it. The result you get with it is a very focussed light beam which is great for work where you really need to make the model stand out.

And finally I removed the grid and shot this last image with the “bare” strobe.

Every workshop I try to do something “new” and “fresh”.
In other words something I did not yet do before, of course I wrote “try” because it’s not always possible seeing the fact that I teach the workshops twice a week, but to keep everything fresh and creative (and this goes for everyone) we always are adding walls, structures etc. to our studio. In this case we added the wall you have seen in the previous images, this wall is a real challenge for E-TTL as explained before and fits the workshop perfectly. This way I keep the workshops also interested for people to visit a second/third etc. time and it also motivates myself to shoot some new images 😀

If you have any questions, feel free to ask and spread the link.

If you like what we do here, and want to support the blog please buy from our affiliate companies by following the links or the links below.