Tag Archive for: rogue

Cheap can be more fun than you think

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I hear it all the time

“my lens is cheap”, “I have an old camera”, “I only have one strobe” etc.
In all honesty, of course gear is important but you can create awesome art/photos etc. with your phone nowadays. My moto over the year has been “if people look at the quality of the pixels the image is not strong enough” that doesn’t mean you can just “wing” it and don’t care about your gear, but it shouldn’t be the main focus.

The same goes for sets.
When people look at my portfolio a lot of people don’t realize that most of the shots are done during the workshops or events. And as you will understand we don’t have a lot of time to create sets, and of course we love to stay in budget, and that’s what’s todays blogpost is about.

Fun and cheap

With photography it helps when we don’t focus on light but on shadows, this is something you probably heard from day 1. The shadows tell you almost everything about the lightsource used, the angle, distance etc. but one step further is to realize we don’t really work with light but with reflections.
This is also explains why we can use black reflectors to take out the shine on someone’s head for example.

And don’t we just love it when something get’s a beautiful “glow” in a shot?
Reflections can be a problem but also something really cool you can use in your image.
Today we take a look at some very cheap material you can buy in most party shops. It’s called (well at least this one) holographic material and we used it to build a nice background for one of the sets during a workshop. You can even get it in different kinds of color.

A good technique is to use your phone and shine over material, this will show you how the material reflects and should give you a good idea how to use in your shoot.

When I use my phone to shine over this material it immediately started top glow, so for this setup I knew we could hit the background with some harsh light for some extra contrast and “oomph” in the shot. If you shoot this with a soft box it can work fine too, but it will be a lot less extreme. So on the model I’m using the Nanlite Fresnel spot (this is one of my favorite modifiers for a great classic high contrast look). The nice thing about a Fresnel is that you focus your light and even when you use it on the extreme settings it still has a wonderful effect on the skin of the model.

To make sure the material also shines and to get some nice color effects I’ve placed two Geekoto GT200’s with the Rogue magnetic system with a red gel on one side and a blue gel on the other.

Together they created a very nice blend of color and light on the model, plus the material gave a wonderful glow, especially when our model leaned forward.
So let’s take a look at the results from this setup, and in the next blogpost I show the behind the scenes video.

During the workshops we always try to do 3-4 totally different sets and this is just one 😀
Also want to visit a workshop?
visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more information, the workshops are in Dutch but if you let us know a few weeks in advance we can switch to English.
Don’t want to travel?
It’s also possible to book a full day 1:1 online workshop, see here for more info.

Using the optical snoot for a great window effect

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Gobo projectors are great for special effects

I love using the Lindsay Adler optical snoot from Westcott as my main lightsource as you have seen many times, but it’s also great for the more subtle effects.
Today in the blog I take you behind the scenes during a workshop where I use the optical snoot for a very subtle but great effect on our model/set.

Using old lenses is awesome

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Old glas is awesome

When we buy lenses we often try to get the latest technology, the best quality etc.
But did you know there are loads of great lenses out there that you can buy for next to nothing that will give you awesome results?

Today a quick behind the scenes tips video on using those great vintage lenses in a live setup

Because old glass is so incredibly beautiful

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Lenses can be a money trap

There will always be something new, better and cooler.
And lenses are no exception. But is it always necessary to upgrade your lens?
Well sometimes yes, if a lens is a lot faster or has a longer/wider range that you need.

But before you run to the store for the latest and greatest also thing about this alternative.

Old glass is awesome

One of the great things I love about the Sony cameras is that a few years ago I was able to use my vintage M42, Leica R, Minolta etc. lenses on my modern camera as autofocus lenses. And although it won’t break any speed records it actually works great. Those convertors are available from FotoDiox and TechArt but if you want to use something a bit more modern I can highly advise Sony owns convertor like the LA-E5

With a convertor like this you can use older Minolta lenses and A mount Sony lenses on your modern E mount camera.
And the fun thing.
You can get some great deals on vintage Minolta lenses and they are absolutely awesome.

The great Minolta 85mm

For these shots with our model Janaika I’m using the Minolta 85mm F1.4.
Ofcourse with a lens like this you want to shoot close to, or wide open for that very shallow depth of field.
Make sure you also shoot under a slight angle to get that nice smooth silky transfer, when you shoot under a straight angle you will miss that effect for a large part. And for me it just makes the difference. And of course try some from a low angle but portraits like this can also look great from a higher perspective.

But let’s add some depth

To create some extra depth to the image I’m now adding a side/accent light.
My favourite light shaper for this is a nice small striplight with a grid. And thanks to the Geekoto system I can now use gels behind the softbox meaning I can now gel a whole softbox with one gel from our Rogue magnetic system. But in this case I’m not using a gel.

The Geekoto system also makes it possible for me to shoot wide open, the strobes can be set to a very low output, which in this case makes shooting wide open very easy without the need for ND filters.

Also want to visit a workshop?
visit www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the agenda and more information.