LSS004 – Natural Light Mixed with Continuous Light

Prince of Cheap here coming at ya with my first LightSource Short…

After a wild workshop, a nice relax with the family and some heavy 2008 retooling and planning, I’m back and ready to load your brain with more photographic tools and questions than ever! First, I’m celebrating my first foray into cheap crappy video! Hooray! I’ve gotten so many questions about continuous light till its just insane! I love it! It means that your brains have been jiggled! This is a good thing!

The following video will show a guerrilla session where I’m definitely using what I call my Monster Lighting Tactics. For example, instead of strobes, I used continuous light to not only light my background but also to edge my subject – without any powered main light! The primary principle was that I let the soft sunlight that filled the garage act as a main light while allowing the continuous lights to act as highlights, separating an already interesting subject. As for the lighting, simple: slow down the shutter enough to record the daylight as the main light, set the continuous lights to edge and highlight the subject from the background, use one light source to double as a background as well as an additional edge light, and use a reflector as an under-fill and lower eye catch light source.

In this video:

  • Some tips for Aggressive Male Posing
  • Visuals and a Diagram of my lighting placement for head shots
  • A useful diagram showing it all!
  • Three finished images with a hint of the post processing technique I used

The primary theme is that you can mix light. Light plus light equals more light. :) Can you take fluorescent light, halogen light, daylight, and flash and mix them together to get great results? Of course you can! Think about it… one very large light source above… then place reflectors on both sides of the subject for edge lighting, then make sure enough light spills onto the background an boom!

THE LIGHTING TOOLS

High output Britek Continuous Fluorescent Light (Pro-5000 Kit – you’ll still need a good light stand as this doesn’t come in the kit) in a 40×40 soft box

  1. Lower Cost Alternative to the Pro-5000 (PE9030 Kit – you’ll still need a good light stand as this doesn’t come in the kit )
  2. Low output Britek Continuous Fluorescent Light (PE3224) in a 7 silver reflector (PA9011)
  3. Ebay Seller 2DreamMaker to find the 42′ 5n1 Reflector (ebay link)
  4. Sony Alpha A700 (Amazon.com Link)
  5. Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 DG Lens (Amazon.com Link)
  6. Light metered with a Polaris Meter (Amazon.com link)

Now, enough of the technical stuff. Drum roll please…

ON TO THE VIDEO!


Automated Humanoid Triopod: Larry Land (See his creepy imagery at DeviantArt)
Model/Actor: London McKinney (See his growing portfolio or contact him at ModelMayhem)

Published by David Griffin

The Prince of Cheap I am a "Jesus Freak" and a DIY photography junkie! I'm also the *second* cheapest man alive... but only 'cause my Dad is the first!