How to Use Studio Flash for Photo Shoot

Video Transcript

Hi, Rob Mitchell again for Expert Village. Well, the studio's coming along nicely. Now we're getting ready to actually go in to the studio with the strobe light. But first, let's get into just a little bit of the theory of lighting. If we have a key light, which is our main light meant to duplicate the sun, and a fill light which is a reflector. Such as it could be a wall that reflect light back on to us. It could be reflectors that we use in the studio. We're trying to mold the face. We want some shadows in it; otherwise the lighting is going to be totally flat. So if we have one light set up here and one light set up here, they are equal distance from our subjects, they're the same output, it's going to be a very flat light. There's no shading, no shadows, no definition. Not very attractive. So what we want to do is we want our key light to be our stronger light, hence key. The fill light is a softer light softening the shadows. We still want a little bit of shadow, a little bit of shading on one side because that's what's going to create the dimensional effect that we're after in doing a portrait. So, we could still use two lights, a key light and a fill light, but how do we get the fill light to be softer? Well, in a light such as this, we're fortunate. On the back, there's a switch, full power, half power which is down one stop, or quarter power which is down two stops. So without moving the light at all, we can reduce the power output. Now the other switch over on this side is your modeling light. So if we kill the power here by one stop, and our modeling light remains the same, we're not really going to see whether or not we're getting any difference in lighting. So over here we have exactly the same thing. Full modeling light, reduce it by one stop, in the middle is reduce it by two stops. This is really a good head to have, it saves you having to move your light back and forth. The other way we could do it if we don't have a switch on the back is we could physically move the light. If the light is six feet from subject and we double that distance to twelve feet, we've cut the light power in half. The amount of light falling on the subject is reduced by fifty percent. So, we have a choice. Fortunately here we have the switch which makes life an awful lot easier, but you can move the light further back. Each time you double the distance, you half the power striking your subject.

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