Here’s the transcripts from the video Joe and I did called Digital Photography Split Lighting Using Flash And Fast Shutter
SCOTT: Hey, folks! Scott Voelker here. I’m here with my good buddy, Joe Marshall. Joe, how’s it going?
JOE: Okay. We’re ready to talk about some excellent work by some of our students in our Ez Flash Workshop.
SCOTT: Oh, yeah. This is a good one here. And I’ve seen it; you’ve seen it. And you went a little goo-goo on it. You really just loved it and you commented on it. I mean, it’s an awesome shot, and Derrick great job. We’re going to tip our hat to you because you did a great job.
Thanks for sharing it, and I’m hoping that we can show this to other people and other people can try this. And again, this is a whole nother concept, a whole different idea.
People usually think that you have to take an image and fully expose it, every shadow has to be filled in. And this is a just a perfect example of the mood. Now looking at this too though, Joe, you would think that the room was dark, but it really wasn’t was it?
JOE: Now these are all the things. If you know your camera and you know the things that we’ve been discussing, you know in your mind’s eye what you want to accomplish. Then all you do is you look at your camera and you say, “Oh, I know what all these controls do.
I know what the ISO does. I know what the shutter speed does. I know what the F-stop does. And when you truly know that and you know what your picture is going to look like in your mind’s eye, it’s simple to just make your camera do these kind of tricks.
SCOTT: Yeah, no, this is perfect light. It’s like you said too. It almost looks like one of those images that you’d see on TV where they make the kids look kind of like sad and the donations. I don’t mean to laugh at it, but I’m just saying it brings you into that mood.
I mean, I know when I watch them and I see the pictures that they have of these kids with the flies around them and all this, I’m the first one to reach into my wallet because they just grab my inner emotions. And that’s exactly what it does here. It makes you feel just like you’re drawn into that mood. And that’s what you say.
You’re painting to create moods.
JOE: Well, this is a very commercial shot and what you want to do is—I like to say a picture tells a story. And this one you get in your mind an idea that you want to convey, and this just might be his beautiful child, and it’s just a pensive look on his face.
But the commercial world eats this stuff up. This is like you said, Scott already put his hand in his pocket to give to this. This could be any organization that wants to use this shot.
I mean, Derrick really, enter this in contests. Let people get to see this. I mean, you’ve got black above it for copy. Anybody can use it. Donate here or Red Cross or any of this kind of stuff after a hurricane or a flood victim. I mean, this just has so many possibilities. This has to get into stock. I’m falling all over myself, Scott.
SCOTT: I know you are. All right, calm down. Calm down, Joe.
JOE: But so early into our course for me to see this on our Facebook, and that’s what was so good. I’m still working with people with one light, bouncing their flash. And here Derrick Jones just overwhelms us here.
SCOTT: Yeah. And let’s just break it down real quick too. He writes in that it was shot with a SB-600 Flash with a wireless remote, shot in a well-lit room. Did you hear that? It was shot in a well-lit room. And the flash was on the edge of the couch.
So it was off the camera. And the shutter speed was a 320, so it was 3/20 of a second. Then it was 5.6, ISO 200, and the focal length was 55mm. And the flash was set at an eighth power with a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce. And do you want to just talk a little bit about those settings, Joe?
JOE: All right. I mean, this is not expensive equipment. It’s one of the smaller flashes from Nikon. There are six. They have an eight and a nine. He just bounced it. There’s a clear cap that comes with these. It’s a diffuser cap.
And he just tilted his flash up, dialed down to an eighth of a power because at the close setting he didn’t want to get an F11, F22. So he made sure that he got just a 5.6. And if that meant dialing down the power, so be it. He did it. And he left it at ISO 200, which gives us a clean non-grainy. Really good because like I said, if those goes to a commercial, this could be on a billboard or on a truck.
So it’s really big. Now the well-lit room. Yes, to his eye, he saw a well-lit room. But you have to be able to use flash. I know people like to use continuous light because they like to say, “What I see is what I get.” But if you use flash enough, you also become adept at doing that too.
And he knew that if he put it on the side he would just skim the side of the face. And he knew it had what we call “split lighting.” One side of the face lit, the other side dark.
Didn’t use a reflector. Didn’t want to bring up that fill side [05:14]. We wanted the strong impact of this. And here’s the thing, folks. F-stop gave him 5.6 but the darkness is because of the shutter he used. And I’ve said shutter can be anything.
It’s the F-stop is the distance the flash is to the subject, and he dialed it down to get his F-stop. But the shutter speed, he could have said, “What do I do? I’ve got a bright room.” Well, he went to the highest shutter speed his camera would allow.
Now I use a Nikon and I’ve gotten a 320. Most of the Nikons say 200 or 250. I know the D90 is 200 and the others are 250. But I know that mine is 320 because I did it by accident and it worked. And he did it.
Now what that does is the high shutter speeds darkens down the ambient conditions you’re in. Now he said the room was bright. If he went down to a sixtieth shutter or thirtieth, he would have seen all that brightness projected in his picture. But by cutting down the light in his shutter, he made the room go black.
And that’s all I want you to know. Your shutter speed can be anything, but if you know you want a high shutter speed to cut out the room light or do I want to let it open up. Do I want a thirtieth or a fifteenth? Do I want to get candles on a Christmas tree lit up in the background?
Maybe I’ve got to go down on a lower shutter speed so that the candles show back there. So that’s important for you to know just what the shutter does because your meter already told you what F-stop. Now you’ve got to figure out what to do with the shutter.
SCOTT: That’s great. And I think right there everyone listening to this you should really understand that because it makes perfect sense. And a lot of times people think that the F-stop is all about the lighting and getting the proper exposure.
And in a sense it is, but it really is more about your depth of field. And I mean, so much more goes into the shutter. I’ve even learned that just by going through the course with Joe. I mean, I never realized it as much as I do now. I knew it, but I didn’t really realize it was that powerful. And this picture right here proves that it is.
So again, Derrick, thanks for sharing this. Joe, again, I think it’s a great shot. I know you do. And I may even send this out to our subscribers just to let them see this and, again, show that you don’t have to have all of this equipment to get shots like this.
JOE: This is a moneymaker for you, Derrick.
SCOTT: Yeah. Go with it and let us know on the contest that you enter too because you’ll have some fun with it. And who knows? You might win; you might not. But you know what? It’s a lot of fun. And keep posting your stuff because we do really enjoy this.
And anybody else that is in our workshops, post pictures. And even if you’re not in our workshops, send us pictures. E-mail them to us. Send us links to them so we can see them. We’d love to see them. And if we see something that we want to talk about, maybe we’ll include it in our podcast.
So that’s it. That’s going to wrap up this little short video. Again, great job, Derrick. And anyone else out there that has anything that they want to post, please do so. And we may just comment on it.
JOE: Let me just say, Derrick, get a model release. If he’s your kid, obviously you can do that, but you’ll need that if you’re ever going to sell this picture.
SCOTT: Yeah. Another great tip. Thanks Joe. Okay, so that’s going to wrap it up. So again, go out there, keep shooting, have fun, experiment, and we’ll see you in the next video. Talk to you later. Bye.