Glamour : Light of the old masters

Flags introduction

Flag are one of Franks favorite modifiers in the world. They are very Important for proper light control. So why don’t you see them a lot in studios?
Probably because working with them seems difficult, and in all honesty it can be tricky, but don’t worry, Frank talks about professional flags or self-made and explains in very easy to follow examples how to use this awesome modifier.

In essence the flag is used to block the light on your model. But it also lets you control the edge transfer or shadow transfer, which determines the way the shadows flow into the lighter areas.

Important is the distance between the flag and the light. Frank first show what a flag does in front of a wall, you can easily see the shadow transfer gets harder when moving the flag closer to the wall. Practice (without your model) to master this technique. Use a tight beam, like a Fresnel or a reflector with grid, as long as it’s a bundled light beam that works best, you might call this harsh light, we prefer “interesting” or “Moody”.

Frank also shows how to create a real eye-catching image by highlighting a line of light with 2 flags, and how to create a softer edge transfer. Move the flags more to your wall and you get a harsher edge transfer. Closer to the light source is a softer edge transfer.

2b Flags live shoot

This can be a tricky setup. Some call it glamour portrait lighting, others Harcourt lighting., we just say it’s fricking awesome.

In this setup we use Flags to get a slight line of light on the models face to really make it jump out. And although we use several lights to get a wraparound and accent effect on the model. It is still going to be a very contrasty look.

Tip put your model on a chair, so she doesn’t move too much.

Let’s run you through the light setup.

The main light is the snoot, aimed at the model, we will use 2 flags to steer the light.

The distance of the flags is important for the edge transfer. In this setup Frank wants a slice of light, so the flags are close together. Experiment and aim at the models face, you can do a lot with this setup, but do make sure the model can’t move around too much, this is really a tricky setup.

For background separation one light is aimed at the backdrop, you could even create an effect with a plant or anything else between that light and the background, we call this our background light.

The others are mostly accent lights (depending on how many use).

In our setup we also use one of the accent lights as a double function light creating lens flare. This one light is feathered away from the model because we don’t want all the light on the hair of the model, this will create a too harsh light making the hairs jump out way too much. By feathering the light (aiming it away from the model towards the lens) it actually creates an accent light on our model, or it can double as a lens flare when you increase the output.

The last light we also discuss in this clip is the strip light with a tight Lightools grid to narrow the light beam even more. We mainly use this light to open up the shadows and adding to the mood created with the flags.

We start with building up the set and show what every light does, and you will see that when everything is in action it actually works. That is the main problem with these setups, you really need to know what you want and how to control it, and this video helps you to set this up and build confidence.

2c flags and mounting

Flags are expensive, so why would you spent a lot of money on professional flags?
The main thing is position of the flags, you really need to pinpoint the angle and the position.

We use the Avenger Grip head (D200) to get the perfect angle, plus with these mounts the flag won’t move, and that’s one of the most frustrating part of cheap mounts, you tighten the mount, let go, and the flag moves a bit. This might look like a small deal but trust me, when you want to set everything up perfectly, a better mount really helps.

Vintage lenses

In this chapter frank talks about vintage lenses. The difference between modern and vintage ones and what the benefits are of old/used/vintage lenses. He shows some examples of lenses and how to find them easily and cheap, and with a converter they fit almost every camera

Nowadays most cameras have an EVF (electronic viewfinder), with peaking so you can easily check your focus, which is essential for a manual focus lens.

With an extra adapter, like the one from Fotodiox or techart (more brands are coming) you can even make your manual lens perform autofocus. And although it’s not sport fast It’s fast enough for portraiture and even some street photography.

Most of the vintage lenses have imperfections, like vignetting and lens flare. It’s like an instant unique/cool filter in camera. And you know Franks motto, right? “Why Fake it When You Can Create it”. This means he always tries to get as close as possible to the end result in camera, so he doesn’t have to retouch a lot.

In the outside part Frank is shooting with the Auto Takumar lens 55mm, 1.8 (you can recognize it immediately because of its white zebra stripes), but he also uses a Helios lens with a swirly bouquet that has become incredibly popular over the last few years.

In between he also gives you some tips for shooting outside in the sunlight, and of course you also see the results.

Also take not that some old lenses have aperture locking, that is a little weird at first, but you will get used to it, Frank points this out during the video and can prevent a lot of trouble.

Frank loves vintage lenses, not only because they are cheap, have unique looks and are often extremely sensitive for lens flare giving it really a look of their own. And if you don’t want to buy older vintage lenses, also take a look at the brand Lensbaby (which we also discuss in another chapter).

In the last minutes of this chapter, you’ll see a slideshow with pictures Frank made with vintage lenses.

4 blinds

Storytelling is always important, especially in this chapter. Think about a “film noir” set with a damsel in distress or a detective looking through the blinds.

It is that iconic look we all think about when thinking about film noir detective movies. It’s almost embedded in our brains.

So how do you create that look and mood in your studio?

We want the harsh lights on the model trough the blinds, and of course get those nice lines from the blinds on our model.

So how do you get this look with those iconic shadows on the model?
In the early days there was no Photoshop (although the darkroom came close for some artists), and especially when shooting film, there was not second chance.

The answer is: distance and use your eyes to see what’s happening.
(See the previous chapter about flags and edge transfer, this is what we are going to show you in practice in this scene)

We have our blinds mounted on a background system, by lens choice (or zoom) you can narrow or widen your field of view making everything fit within the frame, so you don’t need huge blinds (although it can make it easier, but we also use a smaller version). Color doesn’t really matter when you shoot it in BW, however do remember that in BW red shows up different than for example green, and when you also want to use them in color images, make sure you get the color you like, for us…. It’s red (as usual).

The wall behind the model is a simple wooden plate with wallpaper and wheels so we can move them around our studio.

As extra added challenge we also included a nice lamp. We get a lot of questions about how to combine ambient light and strobes and this is the perfect setup to give you some tips about this. Make sure it has enough light output on your continuous light, you need every extra power you can get for that light, because in essence you must compete with your strobes. This is also where lower powered strobes or with more range are perfect. A 1200 Watt strobe with 5 stops range with a huge reflector….. no go ?

For this setup 2 settings in your camera are very important (let’s forget ISO for now): shutter speed and aperture.

In the studio we try to shoot at a lower iso, and the shutter speed is often fixed at 1/125 (X-sync). In this case we want to go lower to let in more of the available light.

To get something like this to work it’s important to remember that the aperture is fixed (this is the strobe setting) but by varying the shutter speed you let in more of the available light and in essence turn up or lower the power of the lamp.

Special effect lenses

This chapter is about being creative with lighting and lenses. In all kinds of photography, you must think about dept of field and focus plane, these in essence create the look you want.

Frank starts by explaining how a lens works in cooperation with the sensor. When you take a wall as example, straight angles results in an image that is in focus everywhere, however when you start shooting under an angle you will quickly see that only one slice is in focus. Why?

It is because of the focus plane, and this is vital for this video.

Let us take it one step further.

For example, let’s take a look at architectural photography. Often you want the buildings to be straight, although you shoot under an angle. And that is when you use a so called “tilt and shift” lens. Which changes the angle of the lens and this way influences the focus plane (and more)

When you look at photos taken with the older more “technical” cameras, for example like glass negatives, 6x4, and the really big film sizes, you see a lot of images with a very cool dept of field effect. Because of the larger film size these cameras had to use smaller apertures but this also gave them more creativity to create stunning shallow depth of field shots (you remember that first 1.4 lens you bought… yep that effect but better) also because those cameras often had the option to tilt the lens they had a tremendous treasure chest of looks and options.

Today luckily we have great substitutes which mimic those tilt and shift lenses for a smaller budget (you can of course still buy real tilt and shift lenses, but in all honesty for fashion/portraiture or street photography you spend a lot of money on a lens that is not as easy to use as the alternative, for this kind of shots).

So what is this magical alternative you might ask?
The Lensbaby Composer.
Frank shows it on his camera and loves this lens, it’s great for really creative shots, the lens is manual focus and very sharp when you don’t use it in “special” effect mode.

The nice thing about the composer is that you can move it around within the holder, and it’s very easy to tighten it when you have the perfect look. You can literally play with your focus plane, without fixing it in postprocessing (which always looks fake when you use several layers/objects in your image. This lens gives you a proper manipulated dept of field. And to complete the story you can easily change the lens elements within the composer making it an awesome solution to travel with.

Another advantage is you can easily change the lens to a macro lens!

5b lens baby omni

Frank introduces the lensbaby OMNI system

It’s a ring to put on your lens, and because it is magnetic you can add all kinds of magnetic wands to your lens. There is even an adapter to extend the wands. You can move the wands to all directions to get a different effect. Lensbaby also has color filters, diffusion, translucent filters and glass, like crystals in all sizes and forms. Light travels through these wands and create unique and awesome looks.

When shooting models, you don’t capture the light, but the reflection of the light on your subject. The light travels through the wands in different ways. Especially in backlit scenes the wand creates some beautiful effects. But be careful when shooting for the first time. it’s like shooting animals in cages in the ZOO, you don’t want to see the fence, so stand as close as possible and shoot with a wide aperture and zoom in. The fence will disappear because it is so much out of focus. So don’t use F11 or F8 or even F5.6 because you’ll see the wand and it will be a huge dissapointment.

For the live shoot we go back into the studio, and only using modelling lights of the strobes.

This is a different way of using strobes and making it possible to shoot with apertures like 1.4, 1.8, 2.0, 2.8 (wide open). This is a trick a lot of people don’t realize they can use, strobes are of course used for their high output, but nobody tells you you can’t take photos by just using the modelling lights.

Frank explains the tools he uses ranging from lenses to attachements but also talks about using a light meter in the more creative setups and to seriously speed up your workflow.

Another tool is the color checker passport.
Why use it when you shoot a session mostly in BW?
Frank shoots in color and because he uses the colorchecker he can get the exact same results from presets in postprocessing. Because although it’s a BW end result, all color, hue and luminance values are still locked in to your BW image, so when you don’t do a proper color balance or profiling even your BW presets will give you inconsistent results shoot from shoot.

But how does it really work with colors?
Every color has 3 coordinates x,y,Y (saturation, hue and Luminance)

These coordinates are fixed in color space. The squares on the color checker correspondent with the colors that are vital for proper colors in your images, the software reads these values and creates a profile in your computer that corrects what you shoot to what it should be, we call these profiles DNG or ICC profiles (don’t confuse these with monitor or printer ICC profiles).

You can now also use this in other raw converters since X-rite also supports ICC profiles in the new software. The grey squares Frank always uses for colorbalance.

To get the perfect BW look you work exactly like you do with color.
Get proper white balance, get the proper profile (Colorchecker) and when this is all in place you can run your favorite BW convertor and get the exact same results no matter when or where you shoot your images.

New camera’s and lenses are built to make the perfect shots, lens flares and other imperfections are reduced as much as possible. So, if you still want to add these effects you can do it in postprocessing, but you can also do it on the spot with the crystals from Lensbaby. Frank shows you how he uses this system and gives you a tip how to do it yourself without using the Lensbaby system.

But how should you meter the light?
Change the light meter from strobe to time (because you are now in continuous mode).

Choose a shutterspeed you feel comfortable with and meter the light.
For me it’s often around 1/30 of a second, you will now see the aperture you have to use. If you end up with too much light you can of course lower the ISO or raise the shutterspeed.

But where to put the crystals exactly?
Frank often uses the crystal on the same side as where the light is coming from. However, experiment with angles, and remember that your viewfinder is perfect to check the result. Be careful of reflections of the strobes that will fall over your model.

6a smoke without a machine

We love smoke effects, but sometimes it is not possible to use a smoke machine.

If you want the atmospheric effect, you can slightly mimic it, and it’s fun too!

Frank shows how he breaths on the lens. You’ll see the lens fog up, so everything will be softer. You need some nice backlighting or powerful accent lighting or even lens flare and before you know it you are creating a beautiful image with loads of atmosphere.

Don’t breathe too hard, because then the whole lens is foggy and you cannot use autofocus anymore plus it will often results in a white image totally blowing out everything, so if is this is the case, you’ll have to wait till the fog effect is a little less (again look through the viewfinder and you see what happens).

Having an assistant is the best (if he/she didn’t eat anything smelly). You hold the camera in front of your face and focus, the assistant is breathing on the lens. When you have the right amount of fog you click the shutter.

Very cool and powerful technique

6b strobe in flash

It’s cool to play with lenses, and some lenses we actually label a special effect lenses and for a good reason.

Frank mentions Lensbaby a lot, but this is not a commercial for Lensbaby. This lens system gives you a lot of creativity, especially the tilt and shift of the Composer and the crystals of the Omni system, or the beautiful soft effect from the Velvet series. They are pretty awesome to be honest.

But let’s take a look at some other ways to be creative without breaking the bank.

Frank starts with something he really loves: lens flare.
He explains how he creates them and remember with older lenses it’s easier, but if you have enough power and you pinpoint the light better it can be done with every lens (well almost every lens).

But what if you don’t have an old lens and maybe you also want some color in your shot?

Also in some cases you simply can’t place a strobe behind/next to the model to create that lensflare for example when you’re working in a small space.

This is a technique that is absolutely awesome and we are 100% sure you will love this one.
There is always room in front of the photography (for a strobe). Use a gel (or not) on your strobe and shoot “over the strobe”, works great with speedlights too. Aiming and moving the lens creates a different effect and is much easier with speedlights of course.

An extra tip is to do not clean your lens. Because when light hits the dust, you’ll get nice “rounded bubbles” in your image which a lot of people love to add in Photoshop, but “why fake it when you can create it?” right ?

6c how to make a soft glow

In the old days, glamour photographers loved to use a soft glow on their subjects.

How to do that in Photoshop? It’s a lot of work if you really want it convincing.

In essence you want a razor sharp images but covering everything with a nice glow. If you want to do this in Photoshop digitally, it just often doesn’t really look real (it can look cool, but it’s different).

So how can you do that in camera?
It was a popular look for Playboy in the 70s to get the skin nicer and smoother. Of course, you can buy soft focus filters but then you’re stuck to one look. If you want to be more creative you can use see through material, window sheer or pantyhose’s (or whatever you like to use) and put it in front of your lens.

You can create different looks with different material and different colors. The effect is subtle. But you’ll, as the photographer, will see it right away.

Closing this chapter being creative with lenses

Lensbaby, see through material, breathing, aiming with a gel. But there are more techniques. Break the rules and experiment! Open you mind, check the internet and practice. Delete the pictures if you don’t like it and you didn’t waste time but you actually learned how not to do it

7 final chapter

This video was all about being creative with your lighting, lenses with tools and of course using your imagination.

Be creative, use stuff in way you see fit, don’t feel bothered by boundaries

Do realize that when you steer you light, you have more control over you light than in postprocessing. Do it right in camera. If you know the techniques, it’s easier in camera too.

And most of all, don’t be afraid to do stuff with your gear that it was not designed for, as long as you don’t break it and it creates cool shots…. Why not.

Feel free to ask questions online, by email or on social media!