Here you can find the webinars and instructional videos I posted on the blog.

Using colortubes to spice up your shot

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It’s no secret that I love to take my images a few steps further than just a portrait, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with standard portraits, but for me the real challenge is more into creating something more surreal, and one of the things I love to do is combine coloured gels with a bit of smoke and maybe throw in some lens flares here and there.

During a recent live stream we decided to use the led tubes as my main light source and play with the different options, and today I’ll show you some of the results.

Our model during the live stream was Lois.
I’m using two small Nanlite led tubes and one large Nanlite led tube.
The nice thing about these tubes is that they not only are able to show almost every color imaginable but also output more than enough light to actually use them in professional photography. I absolutely love those tubes.

But enough talk, let’s take a look at the setup I was using.
I do have to add that the glow is achieved by using the amazing Black Mist filter from K&F concept, I can’t tell you guys enough how much I love using that filter, in fact you can now even buy it from our webshop at frankdoorhof.com/shop

Here you can clearly see the two lights on the side and the large tube Lois is holding. With this setup I just started to experiment during the live stream and came up with the following results.

But you don’t have to use all the lights at once of course.
So whenever you do a photoshoot, always try to experiment with different ways of lighting your model, move around your model and of course turn off certain light sources, you will be surprised how many different options you get from your lighting setups if you just dare to move around and move your lights a bit more than you normally do.

Now loads of images will fail, but always remember, there are no fails/mistakes, you only fail when you stop. So all the things that not work (and will drive you nuts) are just steps towards understanding and learning to visualise your setups.

For the next images I played mostly with the larger led tube and asked Lois to keep it really close to her face. When you are shooting on aperture priority mode or any other auto setting, you will have to adjust your exposure compensation because otherwise the face will blow out due to the fact that the metering of your camera will be thrown off by the large dynamic range in shots like this. It can help if you use spot metering in your camera as meting mode, but even than… I strongly advise to shoot things like this on full manual mode and use the EVF or Live View of your camera to check lighting. Plus of course when you shoot tethered (which I also highly advise as you all know) you can check the final results on a large screen and already do some tweaking in your RAW convertor (Lightroom, C1, Luminar etc.)

Playing with led tubes is very challenging but a boat load of fun, but do beware… it’s incredibly addictive, but also a great way to learn and understand your lighting.

You can see the whole live stream for free on our YouTube channel (we would love a subscribe).
Digital classroom mixing strobes and leds

Working with strobes on location

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In todays episode it’s all about photographing models on location. Now you might think “great and beautiful locations” but in this workshop it’s about using less ideal locations to get awesome results. You see the whole setup, the results and I explain in depth different ways to work with ambient light and strobes together.

How to turn on lights in Photoshop on the iPad

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I love to mix continuous light with strobes, but this sometimes also means that the beautiful light from for example an old tube radio doesn’t shine as nicely as I would have liked it, and I don’t want to raise the ISO more. Well in those cases there is a pretty easy fix in Photoshop.

I do have to add that it’s vital to plan a shoot like this carefully. You don’t want any light hitting your object, or maybe just a little bit, this way the effect looks a lot more realistic, seeing in real life very faint light also wouldn’t register that much, so to get the mood… well you have to create the mood.

Using ND filters with strobes…

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Working with strobes on location is without any doubt awesome. Especially when you (like me) love the day to night look, where the model literally jumps of the screen and you can create awesome moody shots with just a little bit of tinting……love it.

Now there are some things we have to take into account when shooting outside when combining strobes with the sun.
First of all, the sun is (mostly) really, REALLY powerful compared to a strobe.
This means you need to bring some serious power, and the proper modifier.
For example a 400W strobe with a strip light and grid on 2 mtrs distance from the model won’t really do anything that you will notice on the final result. However a 1100W Hensel porty with a 14″ reflector on 3 mtrs distance on full power will probably burn the retinas from your model and give you more than a day to night shot… probably totally black background.

So choose your gear wisely I would like to add.

With this in your pocket there is something else.

Shutterspeed
When we shoot in the studio we mostly use a 1/125 shutter speed. And in essence it doesn’t really matter because the strobes will freeze the model anyway, so unless you have a lot of available light in your studio you can probably shoot also on for example 1/20 without getting blurry shots.

So lower is no problem, what about higher?
Well we can go a bit higher on some cameras/systems but most of the times it will become problematic above 1/250 even with speedlights. You probably at one time saw a black bar in your image when you shot too fast with strobes. That’s actually your second shutter curtain and is 100% normal 😀

Now don’t worry, this can be solved.
With some strobes (and most speedlights) you probably already know about the option HSS (high speed sync) instead of firing one very powerful pulse the strobe fires a lot of smaller pulses which makes it possible to light the whole sensor without any problems…. well, no problems….. the battery runs down a lot faster, the output is a lot lower and recycling is a lot longer… but it works.

There are also other solutions like HS or Hyper Sync but for this article let’s say it can be done with some “magic”. The advantage of HSS is that you can use very fast shutter speeds, sometimes all the way up to 1/8000 without losing the use of your strobe.

Because available light is controlled by the shutter speed it now means that you can shoot with a shutter speed of for example 1/2000 so you don’t have to shoot on f22 anymore to lower the available light, this also means automatically that you can now open up your aperture setting a lot creating less Depth Of Field which in my opinion can create a very nice and more surreal/moody look than the “everything is sharp” f22.

Now if your strobes don’t support HSS/HS etc. there is also another solution.

Using a ND filter
If you shoot landscapes you probably know ND filters.
Neutral Density filters are used to take away light from hitting the sensor/film. This means that you can for example shoot with insanely long shutter speeds to get that nice silky smooth water shots we all saw at least once. But you can also use this with strobes of course to cut down the available light resulting in day to night shots with a shutterspeed of 1/125 (or lower) and wide open aperture…..

Now before you stop reading and run outside to buy one….
ND filters are available in so called stops, and as you probably guessed these tell you how much light the filter takes away. So now the question of course is… “which one to buy?” well I really don’t know to be honest. Sometimes you need 3 stops, sometimes 10 stops. So wouldn’t it be cool if there was one filter that could do all..?

In todays video I show you exactly that kind of filter.
Now I’m always honest with you guys and you have to realise that using a filter like this is awesome but also comes with A LOT of problems, which can be problems or also can be hardly an annoyance depending on your camera.

I’m using a Sony A7Riv which has a awesome Auto Focus system and even when I use the filter on the max setting my AF still works, although it really becomes a bit slower, so it really depends on the camera if you can use your autofocus. But don’t worry if you can’t, you can always focus with the filter wide open and hold the shutter button, close the filter to the desired setting and press the button (or use back button focus).

Also using a light meter can be problematic because you never really know if it’s 5 stops or 5.5 or maybe 5.2 so I will use the light meter to get a ballpark reading and shoot the scene and adjust with the shutter speed, if you’re starting out I would recommend to start out by setting everything up the way you want it without any filters, now add the filter and just open up the aperture and increase the shutter speed at the same time and you should be ok.

Ok, let’s take a look at the video.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.