Shooting it: Lighting the tunnel with gels

This is a set of shots for which I’m using color filters to paint the background in some interesting way! Playing with lighting filters is I may say one of my signature techniques since not that many people are doing it around where I’m shooting, and it helps me make some interesting and different results! Very soon I’m planning to upload an album with photos all created by using colored filters! 

Strobist Setup

As a main light for the model I’m using a 80×60 softbox with a Canon 580EXII flash in it! Behind for the background I’m using basically the flashes I had at that time, a few Nikon SB-26 units and a Sigma EF430 flash which is not so powerful but still did some job helping me to lit the tunnel! All those flashes have optical slave unit which is letting me trigger them without using any transmitter just by the light of the other flashes! Still I had the issue that the distance in the tunnel was quite big, so I had to relay them to be able to fire all of them, which took some time testing inside the dark!

ライティング解説

メインライトとしては80x60cmのソフトボックスを使っています。ボックスにはキャノンの580EXIIストロボ使用。カラーフィルターを使ってトンネルの中の色を変えています。後ろにあるストロボはすべてスレーブモードが付いてるため、ラジオトランスミッターなどは要らないです。だから、よくニコンの古いSB-26などをよく使っています。メインのストロボだけはPocket Wizard II Plusで光らしています。

 

2011-09-14 - AkinkoTunnelSETUP

Gear

At that time I was still shooting with the Canon 50D, a great camera that I used for more than 2 years before I switch to full size. I have been using 2 lenses for the shoot – the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM and the Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8. I wanted to compress the background to I can have the tunnel on the whole frame, and these 2 lenses did good job for that with my crop-sensor camera! When I was shooting with 50D I was doing whatever I can to keep my ISO as low as I can, and I rarely used higher ISO than 200, mainly I was between 100 – 200 which was giving good quality! Seriously going above that was not good idea! After switching to Full size things became much more flexible! 

The light modifier I’m using is a 80×60 cm gridded softbox, I’m mainly using it when I want some more concentrated light on the model, and I’m trying to go for some cool image! It is a cheap softbox I got online, and is doing a really good job! For painting the background I’m using a bunch of color filters, all of them with different color. At that time I have been using LEE filters, with all the 256 colors, recently I’m using more the Rogue Flash Gels, quite easy to mount on the flash and also having some good variety of colors! 

機材

その撮影ではキャノンの50Dを使っています。レンズはキャノン EF 85mm f/1.8 USMとタムロン70-200mm f/2.8です。APSCカメラ使ってたときはなるべく感度を低くして撮影していました。ほとんど200を超えることがなく、100~200のぐらいでした。メインライトのアクセサリーは80×60センチのソフトボックスです。ライトがちょっと硬くてかっこいいので、よく使っています。後ろの色はLEEフィルターでやってましたが、最近はローグのフィルター使うのが多いです、ぜひ見てください: ROGUE GEL キット

 

 

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Here is how the background looks of I leave only one of the lights on. And on the other shot below is with all the lights! What I like about this location is that I can actually get there some pretty clean and nice black background, so I’m often using it for some other shoots too! 

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And some other images too…

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In the end

Next article I will be writing is about a location I have been shooting pretty often recently, and how you can get different images at the same place! The place is the abandoned Maya hotel, which I guess many people who are following my work are aware of!

And now, I am preparing a series of new articles on some general topics, let me know which one of them you want to see first, so I get it ready earlier! Also other ideas are welcome too! Here are some of them:

Portraits at night / Lens article (I guess 135/2) / Portraits in the rain / Use of gels / Using backlight / One light setups / Shoots with just one umbrella / General shooting portraits / Can cheap lenses make good photos / Swing the camera shots / Using snoots / Shaped bokeh / … or any other idea welcome, post it in the comments, and I will see if I am able to write about it!

 

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