Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
In this short video, Damien Lovegrove explains how to take low light portraits and retain good exposure and tonal range.
In the first shot, Damien uses a tripod and dials in manual exposure compensation to get the tonal range spot on. In the second shot, Damien uses a monopod and multiple light sources, including a rim light to add depth and separation.
Check out this video from Karl Taylor as he walks through the setup of a stroboscopic sports shot using the Broncolor Scoro packs.
Aside from the lighting setup and programming the intervals into the power packs, the notion of moving the camera during the exposure in order to separate the exposures from the strobes is a very cool technique. As Karl notes, it prevents the strobe exposure from stacking up in areas of the subject that don’t move as much and it also does justice to the composition by separating the subject across the four exposures.
If you’ve never tried stroboscopic or multi-strobe flash photography before, you don’t necessarily need the $10k+ Broncolor Scoro packs. Many system speedlights (e.g., Canon & Nikon) offer a “Multi” mode that will allow you select multiple flash firings during one exposure, along with a frequency rate and power level. Obviously, they are going to be less powerful than the Scoros but can still produce solid stroboscopic results with proper planning.
Check out your flash manual to see if it is compatible.
Check out this short video that highlights 10 composition tips with example photos to make your photography more intentional and interesting.
Yesterday, I shared a video from Profoto that discussed the benefits of high speed sync when shooting in high ambient light outdoors. In this video from Profoto, we get another look at the differences between shooting with ambient light only and adding layers of light using TTL lighting outdoors mixed with available ambient lighting.
Again, the video highlight’s Profoto’s high end AirTTL system using B2 and B1 lights but the same high speed sync can be achieved with smaller and more affordable speedlights from the likes of Canon and Nikon, or even cheaper third-party speedlights.
This short video from Profoto shows how shooting with high-speed sync flashes in daylight can help bring back details in the sky. The advantage of high-speed sync is that you can shoot at much higher shutter speeds than the x-sync rating of your camera. Most systems allow you to go up to 1/8000s, which means you can bring ambient light down without needing a ton of light from your flash.
In this case, they used a single B2 head in a softbox to balance the flash and ambient light. While the Profoto kits can be very expensive, the same effect can be achieved using smaller and more affordable speedlights. If name brand speedlight kits are still too expensive, third-party speedlights are available with the high-speed sync feature for less than $100.
The flow and opacity settings for the brush tools in Photoshop can be a little confusion. Watch this video (tip: content starts 2 minutes in) from Aaron Nace at Phlearn for a great visual explanation of how the flow and opacity settings work.
The basic idea is that the Flow setting allows you to build up ink over and over again, while Opacity gives you a single value of ink on your brush. These settings come in very handy for dodging and burning on images as the above video demonstrates.
I’ve been using the new DaVinci Resolve 12 beta for the past week since its release. Not really for mission critical stuff, but duplicating projects when I have extra time and learning the work flow. I’ve said before that the new Resolve is what Final Cut Pro X should have been and I’m thinking more and more like that today.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much in terms of training or forum conversations regarding the little features that matter to my workflow. I was ready to kick Resolve 12 to the curb because there didn’t appear to be a way to add audio effects to an entire track via the Track Mixer.
It’s a little different than other NLEs but it’s not too hard to do. [Read more…]
In this video from Phlearn, Aaron Nace walks us through how to select and change colors in Photoshop using Hue/Saturation adjustment layers and layer masks.
As you can see in the video, it’s a pretty simple task. Additionally, you see just how much power there is in using layer masks for you selections so that you can tweak exactly which parts of the image are affected in the final image.
In this video from Aaron Nace at Phlearn, you’ll see how you can use Photoshop to remove tattoos from your subjects.
He covers three main sections in the process, which are the basic removal, then painting the skin back in to remove the odd, blotchy look from the removal and, finally, he shows us how to add skin texture back to the tattoo removal area.
Here’s another great Photoshop tutorial video from Plearn with Aaron Nace. In the tutorial, he shows us how to use the liquify tool to shape hair, the clone stamp tool to clean up messy areas of the hair and then fill in areas using layer masks to style the hair.