Lighting

On-camera flash has a bad reputation—and for good reason. In fact, many photographers are turned off to using flash altogether because they don’t like the look of pictures taken when the flash is sitting on the camera. The images look flat, dimensionless, and many subjects look “pasty” with this kind of lighting.

Photos © 2004, Jay Abend, All Rights Reserved

The look of flash photography has been a problem for photographers for decades. As we migrated from huge silver reflectors stuffed with flash bulbs to smaller and more portable electronic flash units, the look of on-camera...

30-Inch Moon Unit by Paul C. Buff: The 30-inch Moon Unit is a unique softbox-like device that attaches to the AlienBees (ABR800) ringflash unit with a quick-release rotating speedring. The camera’s lens can see through the center of the Moon Unit to achieve a unique large-source light on the camera axis. Using the ringflash with the Moon Unit produces subtle, controlled, almost indiscernible shadows and large appealing catch lights at modest camera-to-subject distances. Its minuscule depth and weight allow handholding right along with your camera, or you can use it as a conventional off-camera compact softbox. The Moon Unit is lightweight, compact and easy to assemble. It consists of a reversible gold/silver reflector surface in an octagonal shape, a removable front nylon diffuser (with a center hole), a removable black fabric mask to convert the octagonal shape to a circle, a rotating speedring, assembly rods and a special reflector that bounces the flash energy into the Moon Unit (instead of forward). The suggested retail price is $59.95.

Image noise can really ruin an otherwise nice photo with ugly artifacts that appear as random speckles of grain and unsightly variations in the brightness and colors of your shot. It's a rather common occurrence, shrouded in a common misconception, that's demystified in the tutorial below.

The impact and success of a studio portrait is often the combined result of lighting, composition, body language, lens choice, camera angle, clothing, color, texture, and even luck. With a few portrait techniques under your belt, however, your luck will improve dramatically. There are many portrait-making methods that can help you develop your own style over time and ultimately...

The field of studio lighting equipment is a large one and advanced amateur and professional photographers have many different kinds of products to choose from. There are self-powered monolights, traditional power pack and head systems, or continuous light sources that let you see in real time the lighting effect that’s produced. The kind of photographer you are and the type of images you make determines the lighting system that best fits your working style and Dynalite, Interfit, and Rime Lite are three companies that produce systems for every photographic discipline.

One of the first lighting kits I ever owned was a set of Smith-Victor Adapta-Lights that had screw-base sockets for photoflood lamps. Son of a gun, the company still offers Adapta-Lights as an entry-level solution for beginning portrait photographers who want to work with hot lights. On the other hand, if you prefer making portraits using electronic flash, Smith-Victor’s three-light FL700K Strobe Light Kit may be just what you’re looking for.

 

The FL700K Strobe Light Kit that I tested is designed for amateur photographers and aspiring pros and contains two FLC300 (320 ws) FlashLite and one 110i (110 ws) FlashLite monolights. The FLC300 monolights offer continuously variable flash power settings, a test button, a ready light, and an optical slave for wireless triggering and have an umbrella stand adapter that’s compatible with 3/8” through 5/8” light stand posts. To expand the kit’s capabilities, Smith-Victor offers more than 100 accessories and light modifiers for the FLC300 monolights, including softboxes, reflectors, snoots, grids, and barn doors. The 110i monolight has a full- or half-power setting, optical slave, small built-in reflector, and umbrella mount. When used together, all three lights give you lots of flexibility for lighting studio or on-location portraits.