Lighting Archives - Page 3 of 4

PocketWizard

What Is A PocketWizard PocketWizard is a brand of radio slaves that was instrumental in emergence of the “strobist” movement of off-camera flash photography. Their products became so ubiquitous that, like companies such as Hoover and Coca Cola, their brand name is often used to describe the product genre and not necessarily just the brand and their own products. Radio slaves allow a flash to be fired remotely by attaching a radio transmitter to the camera’s hot shoe, and a matching receiver to the remotely positioned flash or studio strobe. The range of a PocketWizard can be several hundred metres, …

Reflector

What Is A Reflector? When it comes to photographic lingo, a reflector actually refers to two distinct pieces of equipment. Most of the time when people refer to using a reflector, they are talking about using a piece of reflective material to bounce light in a certain direction. This piece of material usually contains a frame that keeps it taught enough to angle in a specific direction and therefore control the direction of the bounced light. It has many uses because bouncing light gives it a much softer look. That means we can bounce artificial light off a reflector to …

Rim Light

What Is Rim Light and How Is It Used in Photography? In basic terms ‘rim light’ is a lighting technique where the image subject is backlit and the image is exposed to hide the subject features in shadow. The technique gets its name from the fact that lighting a subject in this way produces a thin line or ‘rim’ of light which appears to cling to the subjects outline. using rim light lifts the subject from the background in images rendered predominantly in shadow. In more complex situations, using extremely technical lighting setups rim light can be applied to one …

Slave Mode

What is Slave Mode and How It Is Used in Lighting and Photography? When talking about photography, specifically lighting, Slave mode is mode that instructs a flash unit to monitor incoming light, and fire when it senses the light produced by another flash unit firing. Slave mode can be used to fire an off camera flash using the cameras built in flash unit, or to trigger a flash unit as part of a group when you don’t have enough flash receivers. The biggest limitation of slave mode is that it requires direct line of sight between the slave unit and …

Slow Sync

What Is Slow Sync and How Is Is Used When Taking Photographs? In photography ‘slow sync’ refers to a specific flash mode that allows slower than norman shutter speeds to be used when using flash to provide supplemental light to an image. Slow sync mode is used in low ambient light conditions where a photographer wants to capture a well lit subject against a well exposed, low lit background. In this situation the flash lights the subject in the foreground of the image, the shutter then remains open to correctly expose the low ambient light levels in the image background. …

Speedlight

What Is A Speedlight? A speedlight is another name for a hot shoe flash. For more information, please view the glossary entry for hot shoe flash. Your browser does not support iFrame. Additional Reading What Is A Hot Shoe Flash? What Is A Reflector? What Is Bounce Flash?

Strobist

What Is A Strobist? The word strobist originates from the blog of photographer, David Hobby. David’s blog, http://www.strobist.com, primarily discussed off-camera flash lighting techniques. Strobists are therefore usually characterized by their usage of hot shoe flashes (sometimes called speedlights), to light their images. The Strobist blog contains a wealth of knowledge on off-camera flash techniques and whilst it appears that it is no longer updated as often as it once was, the name ‘Strobist’ has stuck within the photography community. These days the term has also begun to broaden and include usage of other types of larger strobes, thanks in-part to …

Sync Cord

What Is a Sync Cord and How Is It Used in Photography? When taking photography that require supplemental lighting such as fill flash, a ‘sync cord’ is an electrical cable which connects a camera directly to a flash unit to allow the use of flash synchronisation. A signal is sent from the camera to the flash unit via the sync chord when the shutter button is pressed. This signal instructs the flash to fire at the exact moment required to produce the required lighting within an image. Sync cords are extremely reliable but require the camera to be directly connected …

Tungsten Light

What Is a Tungsten Light and How Does It Affect Your Photography? The term ‘tungsten light’ refers to the most common kind of incandescent lightbulb used to provide artificial light to indoor areas such as your home or office. tungsten lights feature a tungsten filament housed within an inert gas, when a current is passed through the filament, the naturally high resistance of tungsten causes the filament to glow and output an orange light. The color temperature of a tungsten light is around 3200K, failure to address this in your camera’s white balance settings will result in images with a …

Umbrella

What Is an Umbrella Used for When Taking Photographs? When taking photographs in a situation that requires supplemental lighting if you think that an umbrella is used to keep equipment and photographers dry, you would be mistaken! A photography umbrella is a key tool in a photographers kit which is used to soften and diffuse the light produced by an off camera light source such as a flash unit. White translucent umbrellas diffuse and spread harsh light, silver reflective umbrellas throw light over a 180 degree field, and Parabolic umbrellas focus flash light. When using an umbrella the off camera light …