Hot Light Photography

FilmRiot has been quietly working on a series of educational behind the scenes videos over the last few months, and I think this one is definitely worth a mention (avoid the random skydiving tangent at 6:00). Aimed at beginner and intermediate videographers, this short video will walk us through some techniques for lighting people as they move through multiple rooms.

Everyone knows Peter Hurley uses fairly expensive Kino Flo lights to give his clients nice soft beauty lighting. Fstoppers reader Tristan Penner decided to build a portable and inexpensive alternative to Peter's setup using standard Fluorescent lights. The setup might not improve too much on the portability but the quality of light does look really nice. What's really cool is Tristan is able to travel to people's homes with this setup bypassing the

Ready to drop your jaw? Richard Kendall doesn't really care if you're ready or not, and he's decided that it's going to drop. This is seriously cool. He took the bullet-camera idea from The Matrix/X-Games (think the whole "40 cameras in a ring shooting simultaneously" thing that we've all seen a hundred times),

Now this is pretty interesting. Recently at the 2012 SHOT show (tradeshow for outdoors and hunting), Foursevens revealed their new lithium powered LED light. Unlike typical LED lights, the XM18 produces an unprecedented 15,000 lumens of light. According to my simple calculations, the XM18 might be more powerful than your low to mid level Arri HMI lights!

Well it's Christmas Eve here in the US and many of you are about to have a blast opening up some cool photography gadgets (or I hope so at least). But in the meantime, Eve Hazelton created a really thorough video on how to light an interview or one person scene easily and effectively.

Who needs a clunky camera these days when you've got a 12 megapixel camera in your pocket. Shot using a Nokia N8, the guys over at Aardman (producers of Wallace & Gromit) broke the world record when they produced this short animation. The final video is only 1 minute and 31 seconds but it took them 5 days on the beach to shoot all the images.

Hey guys, my name is Lauren and I'm the newest addition to the Fstoppers team. Having lived in Charleston for a while, I have many friends who are huge surfers. This campaign video is super creative and it has really sparked my imagination. Even if you're not the least bit interested in surfing, the use of these portable neon lights can be used for all sorts of photo projects.

Most of the readers here at Fstoppers are photographers but we also have a lot of videographers as well. Most of us photographers are completely out of the loop when it comes to the tools videographers use day in and day out, and some of them are pretty cool. Mitch Gross demonstrates some of the features found in the new ARRI L7 LED Fresnel Lights and they look pretty awesome.

The videos keep coming in for our 2011 Fstoppers Behind The Scenes Contest as we enter the final month of submissions. Most photographers use either strobe, fluorescent, or incandescent light to mold and sculpt their subjects.

Yesterday we got an interesting email from our friend Pye Jirsa over at SLRLounge.com. Pye recently helped film a video campaign for a friend's Kickstarter product launch called One and he decided to film a quick behind the scenes video on how he lit and filmed the different scenes. Pye is a big DIY guy and many of the lights he used on this production can be found for super cheap.

As we have said many times before, we are huge fans of the crew at StillMotion for their wedding work. In this video, the team steps outside of their standard job to shoot for Shedd Aquarium. They decided to film most of the project on the new Red Epic so that they could shoot at variable frame rates up to 300fps.

If you were approached by a big client and asked to only shoot with one light, would you freak out or would you make the most of the situation? In Nike's latest basketball commercial Basketball Never Stops, they only used one single hard light to tell the story how the game and fans go on even after the court lights turn off.

The amount of effort that went into Sony's 3D commercial Two Worlds is pretty unbelievable. I've watched this video twice now and still don't know if I know what I'm seeing. The creative team filmed the actors at 2500 FPS which required more than half a million watts of lighting and some of the largest fabric grids I've ever seen.

Eric Curry is a photographer who specializes in painting with light. Unlike using strobes to exposure your photos, painting with light requires you to use long exposures and constant light sources to effectively "paint" over your subject and capture it on your sensor.

A green screen, also known as a chromakey, can make life really easy if you are doing a lot of video work and want a simple solution for dropping in different backgrounds. David Dugdale created a great tutorial for green screen which shows how to effectively light a chromakey background and key it out in Premiere.

TheUnderwaterRealm.com is a blog that is following the production of an independent film that will take place completely underwater. Each week the guys and gals are releasing a BTSV which shows exactly what they have been working on. If you are interested in movie production, I highly suggest checking out their website.

If you are planning a behind the scenes video for our 2011 photo contest, you probably also need to setup an interesting interview segment to explain the details of your photoshoot. Most photographers spend a lot of money on their flash equipment but often don't have much in the way of constant lights.

In the past a ring light/flash was a piece of gear that few photographers could actually afford. Today there are a few cheaper options including the Diva Ring Light that can be found on eBay. In the video below Olivia Tech does a quick review of the $200 unit. Now you may still be thinking that is a little steep but when you look at similar products, the price isn't too bad.

Have you ever wondered how to make your own breakaway glass? It's surprisingly simple and in the video below Jay P Morgan walks us through the process step by step. Jay is also currently giving away 2 bottles from Alfonso's to one of his Twitter followers so make sure you are in the running!

I just ran across an incredible ad by Nike called "Nike Chosen." The concept was to grab the best surfers, snowboarders, skaters, motocross, and BMX riders and film them doing their thing at night. The BTS footage is not as informative as I would like but if you pay attention to the details, there is a lot to be learned.

Monte Isom had one of the most populars videos on Fstoppers back in February. Well he is back with a fun stop motion video for NYC comedian Colin Kane. Monte filmed this entire video on the Nikon D3s with just a few Litepanel 1x1 bicolor constant lights. The final video was made with 14,000 still images to create the final 90 second promo.

Jay P Morgan is most known for his photography but he is also a director. In the video below Jay shows us the technical side of shooting a quick comedy short. Many of the same techniques for video also apply to stills. Check out the finished product below the BTSV.

Everyone claims that they know how to shoot subjects on pure white but many of them still struggle with the background light washing out their subject. In the video below, Olivia Speranza shows us how she created the look for a video but the same techniques apply to flash as well. The key is to light the background as evenly as possible and expose it so that it is just barely pure white.

Bruton Stroube Studios sets up a beautiful breakfast only to throw it into the air and film it in super slow motion. It's obvious that a lot of planning went into such a simple concept but it was worth all of the effort. Check out the BTS first and then the finished product below that.

Update: The DVD is now Available for purchase here. A few months ago Patrick and I flew up to NYC and filmed our first ever full length DVD (dual DVD actually) with Peter Hurley. The DVD is still being edited but we can finally see an end in sight.

Yes, it has been done to death but everyone loves to see it so we will keep posting it. Digital Rev TV has been doing a series called the "Cheap Camera Challenge" and so far they have created 3 videos with 3 different photographers shooting on 3 different cheap cameras.

Here is an example of the complete opposite; amateur photographer with a pro camera.

R. J. Kern and Amanda Tipton are both photographers from Denver Colorado. Together they setup a vintage "Mad Men" style photoshoot at the Cruise Room within the Oxford Hotel. They give a lot of useful information about how to achieve a true throw back look by using Fresnel Hot Lights, vintage clothing, and a classic 1950's style location.

I was a little on the fence whether this video was good enough for the front page of Fstoppers or not. Although there is no technical information in this video, I think the final photos by Thomas Vassort are outstanding and should inspire us all to raise the bar on our commercial style shoots.

Director Paul Clements produced a pretty amazing commercial for Cat Footwear. By using a single high frame rate video camera and a large array of DSLRs he produced something that I am having trouble describing with words. You'll just have to watch it for yourself.

Check out the BTS below and the finished product below that.

One of my favorite bands recently is The Black Keys (ironically, I like most bands with the world Black in them). They have really exploded in popularity with the release of their current album Brothers, and the latest video to come from that album is Howlin' For You.

I was going to post a video showing Rafael Nadal's latest Armani underwear shoot but figured Megan Fox might be a little easier on the eyes. Now you are probably thinking that any photoshoot with Megan Fox wearing little to nothing would probably produce strong images from any photographer and you'd be right.

When Denis Smith found himself faced with a dark depression in his life, he found motivation and purpose through his newly found photography hobby. After moving to South Australia, Denis picked up a camera and began to explore the serendipitous world of night photography.

I created the iPhone Fashion Shoot to attempt to prove this point. 50% of the people who saw it "got" it and the other 50% claimed that it only looked good because I used $10,000 worth of light. Well I've always said "light is light" and all those expensive light modifiers do is make the light source bigger or smaller. Don't believe me?

The other day I came across a popular video on Vimeo right now that featured an amazing new projection technique hitting large buildings across the world. The art is called 3D Projection Mapping and the effect is really cool.

If you were a film student and your professor gave you an assignment requiring you to show a series of different lighting setups, what would you do? John Note and his fellow classmates created a pretty funny video tutorial that shows 10 different lighting setups that you could use in both your films and your still images.

Scott Martin and Lance Keimig teach a night photography workshop in Texas and they created a quick BTS of the experience. The video is beautifully filmed and incredibly interesting to watch.

If you haven't checked out Mark Wallace's Adorama TV channel over at youtube you really should. He does a great job creating informative and useful videos on all sorts of digital photography and videography topics.

The holiday season is almost behind us and if you've spent any time watching college football tv then you've probably seen the new holiday Victoria's Secret commercials. The creative team at VS always makes some of the most high intensity commercials year in and year out.

Now I am not going to jump to any conclusions. Maybe these guys and gals had a VERY similar idea, and not one of them had seen the iPhone Fashion Shoot (which has been seen by about a million photographers so far). And even though this video is filmed in the exact same way and has all of the exact same information, MAYBE it is just a coincidence.

Jesse Rosten got his hands on $4500 worth of iPads and decided to do a photoshoot with them. You may be thinking that this is totally pointless and for stills I might have to agree that this is overkill but a single iPad could be used to add softlight to extremely low lit scenes; something a small strobe could never do.

Some of you may not remember this but as a very young kid with HBO in the house, I remember always being amazed watching this intro. Now I think movies on HBO just start with the parental ratings and nothing more. So next time you are thinking of making a cool intro for your business in after effects, remember how much harder it actually could be!

Remember Dentsu London? They were the guys that did the iPad video that we posted a few days ago. Well they just released their new project and I am blown away. These guys were hired by Canon to create a commercial for their Pixma printers. They decided to shoot splashing ink in ultra slomo.

Today we have something special for everyone. Back in April, superstar photographer Russell James allowed live cameras onto his set at Pier 59 Studios as he shot supermodel Adriana Lima. The concept is outstanding: Russell gives you a full all access view into the creative process and exposes all his techniques while shooting on his project Nomad Two Worlds.

I just stumbled upon this amazing skateboard video moments ago. As I was watching it I thought, "man I wish I could put this on FS but I'm sure there isn't any BTS". I was pleasantly surprised to find that the second half of the video is all BTS footage. Enjoy!

"LAKAIROMANIA" from Marc Ritzema on Vimeo.

Today we have not one but THREE behind the scenes videos for the latest Victoria's Secret television ad Incredible. The first one shows the scope of the production from the perspective of the models. You can also see how well these new bras fit and why they are so incredible.

When we launched Fstoppers back in February, we were working hard to create our own original video content to help kick off our website. After shooting this video, it got buried in my computer before I had time to edit it because we were also working to complete multiple other videos at the same time. I finally had enough free time to finish up this quick food shoot.

Cris Matthews just sent this video over to me. He did a few tests with the iPhone 4 and a ring light. He also used his iPad to review and edit the images. I have gota say, if I can easily and instantly view my shots on an iPad like they seem to be doing I will buy one tomorrow.

Want to know what goes into creating a few seconds of a Domino's Pizza commercial? How often do you screw your pizza into the table? By the way, I think their hand model may be a serial killer when she isn't pulling cheese.

A few weeks ago I did a full fashion photo shoot with my iPhone 3gs. I posted a few of the images and asked people to critique them (never exposing that they were shot on my cell phone). I couldn't help but laugh when a few of our readers claimed that these were "the best images I had ever taken." Nobody ever claimed that they were too grainy, too soft, or lacked detail.

James Karinejad has officially raised the bar on this contest. His team shot Emma Michelle's music video and he created a great BTS video to show us everything that went into making this a successful piece. View the full post to see the finished product and remember to please leave James feedback in the comments below or on his forum post here.