Comments on: Photography Changes, Lighting Doesn’t

By: Mark Fore

Mark Fore — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:40:41 +0000

@Carlo Parducho – f64= aperture setting only available on large format cameras, the highest I’ve seen a dSLR go up to is f22. No body actually shoots at f64 (Not even the famous f64 group) because you will actually get better definition with your middle of the road fstop.

By: Stefan

Stefan — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:23:50 +0000

Dean Collins is the standard of lighting education and lighting technique. He took a bunch of techniques people were using with different vocabulary and made a standard language with which we as photographers could communicate.

By: khappucino

khappucino — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:39:52 +0000

So I just went through about a dozen of Dean Collins videos on youtube. This guy’s ability to deliver extremely technical info in a very clear way is amazing. I rather liked the video where he did the CEO’s at the airport and the 3d contrast videos.

great links guys. keep it up

By: James

James — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:07:36 +0000

The king of colour gels…. Dean Collins!

By: James

James — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:06:25 +0000

Dean Collins is the man, I have see a few of his videos on lighting. He has a level of technical knowledge that some will only dream about! Where is the rest of the video giving the formula?

gotta love the mustache.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:50:42 +0000

Software cinema doesn’t seem to be selling the Live at Brooks Institute DVD any longer. Anybody got an idea of where I can get hold of a copy? It looks like dynamite!

By: isaninja

isaninja — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 10:06:02 +0000

What, no 720p? :D

By: Jeremy Countryman

Jeremy Countryman — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:05:25 +0000

I watched some of the older Dean Collins videos and all I can say is WOW.. This guy thinks about light and photography on a whole different level…

By: Chris Riccio

Chris Riccio — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:24:04 +0000

To Jay, the colour is added to the background by using gels in front of the strobes. The background should be looked on as a solid tone for a colour to be added to. Think of it as holding up coloured glass sheet in front of a plain white background.
the colour would be really vivid as a result. Now hold the same glass sheet in front of an 18% grey background and the colour would be a lot less vivid. I work to light the background thinking in terms of greys, think of it along the same lines as Ansel Adams Zone system. The gel just changes the colour but the amount of light changes tonality. Hope that makes sense?

By: Eric Duminil

Eric Duminil — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 10:32:05 +0000

@Jay

I’ll try to explain, but you can find much more info about it on strobist.com or the excellent Dean Collins DVD’s (http://www.deancollins.com/)

* First, let’s assume you only have the background in your frame. That is, you don’t have to consider the exposure of any other subject.

* Whichever the shade of gray your background is (black, white or in between), your goal is to turn it to black on your camera.

* To do so, first set your shutter speed to your camera flash sync speed (probably between 1/60s & 1/500s).

* If you take a picture of the background with this shutter speed and a given aperture, the resulting picture will be somewhere between black and white.

* If the background is too light, just dial your aperture down till you get a black background without detail.

* If the background is already black, you can leave your aperture as is. However, it might be a good idea to see how far you can open up your aperture while leaving the background without detail.

* You’re almost there. Just bring some flash with a color filter (http://www.rosco.com/us/video/strobist.cfm) on it, and throw it at the background. The gel you use will affect the hue which appears on the background, while the relative power of the flash will affect the brightness and saturation.

* To achieve the strong colors you see in the video, you might want to double the filter or use relatively low flash power on a perfectly black background in order to increase saturation.

* Finally, if you want to use this background with a subject, you lose one degree of freedom. You’ll want to play on the ratio (distance flash->subject)/(distance flash->background) in order to set the shade of gray you’ll want your background to be (see http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/06/lighting-102-12-position-distance.html). If the main flash is too close to the background, using a gobo might prevent light from spilling to your background.

Hope it helps,

Eric