Modifiers

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This is an image I took a while ago at the Krohn. It's really great to have such a large wonderful place so close that we can go anytime of the year to take photographs. No matter what the temperature outside, it's beautiful in there. Today I want to talk about the different modifiers available for the speedlights, and what they do. So lets get to it.

A light modifier is anything that controls the direction of the light, and where it falls. The best examples of ones made for small speedlights are the products made by Honl Photo. Here is a picture of some of their stuff, which is a clickable image. Click on the photo and it will take you directly to his site for purchase of any of these products.







The First and most basic type of modifier is a bounce card. The bounce card is anything attached to the top of the flash that will bounce the light towards the subject when the flash is pointed strait up. The SB800 has a small bounce card built into it, but not really as useful as even a 3 1/2 by 5 inch index card. as you can see from the image above, there isn't a whole lot to it. The best resource I have found on the net is from
A Better Bounce Card . There are some really great video tutorials on there on how to make a flash card. I usually just rubber band an index card around my flash and call it a day.



This is a grid. The basic job of a grid is to narrow the beams of light which produces a small circle of light on the subject. If you take a grid apart it looks like a set of honeycombs. This produces a dramatic effect on the subject. It is a very useful way of limiting the amount of light that spills outside of the intended area. The best units I have found are the ones made by Honl listed above.



Last but not least is the snoot. The snoot is basically a tube that directs light to a specific point. It makes your flash act almost like a spot light. It will put a very concentrated beam of light where you direct it. This is useful when doing dramatic lighting. Tomorrow I am going to do a step by step tutorial on how to do a homemade snoot. See you then. Jason Read more on this article...

White Snow, and Black Cats

Tweet In light of the wonderful white stuff we have all over the ground outside, I thought I would talk about How to get proper exposure when photographing things that are solid white(like snow) and things that are solid black(like black cats).

Digital SLR's have this need to set a neutral point. This need to set a neutral point isn't usually a big deal, because like we talked about yesterday they have thousands of images loaded into their software to which they compare your scene and attempt to adjust the exposure to compensate. Here's where it gets tricky. If you are shooting at something pure white(like snow) the camera has no way of setting a neutral point in the scene. What you end up with is a muddy grayish looking snow. The same thing applies when it comes to black cats. The camera doesn't know where to put the neutral point, so it just looks muddy grey instead of black. The way to fix this, is by using that awesome $5 grey card. When you're confronted with a scene that you know is going to cause a problem like this, you're going to want to shoot in manual mode. Then place your grey card in the scene where you want to take the photograph. Zoom in and spot meter off of the grey card to set your exposure. This will give you the proper exposure for the scene instead of the muddy grey. Another trick I have found that works well if you're trying to shoot a scene like this on the fly without a grey card or in manual mode. If you are shooting the scene with an all white object, you will want to use your exposure compensation and put it to the +2 side. This may not be the perfect exposure but it'll get you pretty close. For the second subject, you want to do just the opposite. Dial the exposure compensation down to -2. Again this might not be perfect, but it will get you pretty close and you can tweak it if you need to. Read more on this article...