What do you do when you’re faced with a really dark space to shoot in? One of the problems with cranking up the ISO of your camera is that you lose contrast and the sense of depth that directional and controlled lighting can bring to an image. You don’t always have to use multiple flashes – working with the natural light and supplementing it can give you the equivalent of a 3-light setup. Sometimes you have to build up and create the lighting from scratch, layer by layer. There are some examples below with notes as to how they were shot – usually in dark murky corners with the light put back in. If you would like to learn more about lighting or camera skills the next training workshop is is on June 2nd.

In the last week or so there were two shoots that were typical examples of lighting on location.

For the University of Kent is was a magazine cover and poster image to be created at the end of a press call with ITV where I has about 20 minutes. It was raining so I found an undercover option but then at the last minute the sun came out. Editorial type pictures tend to require a bit more punch/contrast/ depth so I tends to use flash mixed with a slightly underexposed background. The wet weather / covered shots taken in an underpass required a Bowens 500 and portable battery pack to light a larger space. ISo 200 f11 @ 1/200, Canon 5diii (best of luck to Professor Sam Marcora as he travels a 13,000 mile trek from England to China as part of a research study with the University of Kent. http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/story/2013-04-27/motorcyclists-trek-for-research/).

For the National Trust the pictures were used by the BBC and Guardian to illustrate an exhibition of dresses owned by Vita Sackville-West and on a dull day at about 4pm I had a very dark room and a brief to create some atmosphere. The room in the tower is amazing but our eyes adjust for light in ways the cameras do not. 4 stops different from the window and everything else potentially in darkness. To keep the directional work of the window creating highlights from one side, I added to it a second window in the guise of an octabox with a 500w Bowens head, powered down so as not to blast light everywhere. ISO 1000, f/11 at 1/3 second  and f4 @ 1/160; Canon 5diii. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/29/sackville-west-lost-poem-lover-trefusis  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-22358641

Here’s a few fun images for a recent spread for Whitefriars magazine. Whitefriars is the largest retail development in Canterbury and each year they run a “Face Of Whitefriars” competition with the winners having a photoshoot.

This is a post about photography and lighting on location so you’ve been warned! I’ll get around to some posts about the Canon 5Diii at some point but one of things that I’ve noticed with some super high ISO shots I’ve seen is that whilst they’re recording a sharp image in very low light the subject itself looks flat because the lighting is flat. When the light simply isn’t there to create the contrast you need to have to fake it or make it with artificial light. Here’s a few examples with lighting diagrams for the first two.

Paul Hendy & Emily Wood – the room was very dark when exposed correctly for the window, so add a fake window (a medium softbox, quite high and angled down). The softbox stops the light  bouncing all over the place and a small flash gun on the floor lights the dark corner. The second shot of Paul uses the window light as a kicker whilst a softbox balances the shadow side of the face.

Children in a school corridor. The corridor was very dark and the window light weak. A backlight fills the corridor whilst a softbox fills in to the opposite side of the window. A high ISO shot would not work as the difference between the shadows and highlights would be too much.

Couple on the beach in Whitstable. End of day sunshine? No. It was murky and flat and horrible. There’s a flash gun with an orange Honl gel sending light from behind and to the side of the beach huts. Flash guns with a gel are great for simulating sunshine if the ambient light is weak.

Office shots – all except the last one are from one flash gun. Firstly on the floor, bounced off the ceiling in the background to light a wall and create a kick to the background; then to the side to create a kicker to the face where the window light was too weak; then a softbox very close to the subject to create rapid fall off and a dark background.

Finally light against a bed and pillows – a softbox plays such a useful role as a portable window light.

I’m really pleased that one of my recent wedding pictures as been used for the cover of A Kentish Ceremony magazine. The dress is by Pronovias courtesy of those wonderful people at Teokath, Canterbury.

Sunday June 2nd, in the lovely surroundings of Charlton Park (Canterbury, Kent), a private country house, you’ll spend the morning going back to basics to learn how to get the most out of your camera and get off the auto setting. In the afternoon you’ll learn how to photograph people, working with natural and reflected light and flash.

You’ll need a Digital SLR camera with optional manual controls to attend this workshop. Ideally you’ll have a flash gun that works both on and off your camera but you can still learn valuable techniques without this. Book both sessions and save £25.00! BOOK HERE

One of the things I do a lot of is take studio lighting out on location, which is no surprise as most of the commercial photography I supply across Kent & London tends to be editorial, or print publications of one sort or another. Most of the time I use a small portable kit (small lightweight flash guns) but sometimes you need the extra power and variety of larger lights (I currently use Bowens) and modifiers (things that shape and change the quality of light). The images below are 1-2 lights using a softbox, gridded spot and a beauty dish – different modifiers for different purposes. The softbox is a great window light mimic, whereas the beauty dish and gridded spots are useful for more contrast and direction. If you would like to learn more about lighting on location do please get in touch.

I posted a while back that I wanted to do a quick (and well overdue) review of the Canon 5diii.

I was one of those rare types that had the 5D Mk 1 “Classic” and skipped getting the 5D Mk ii. I had good reasons, in fact one – the autofocus was the same in both cameras and was woefully inaccurate. Not only were the outer focus points few and scattered around the middle of the frame, they frequently did not lock on. Most of the time the 5D was focused and recomposed from a central point or put into manual focus. The group shot below with Michael Praed is the last one I took on the 5DMk1 and at ISO 1000 I was nudging it as far as it would go. It was/is however one of the best cameras I have owned in terms of colour rendering, IQ, contrast and warmth. It’s just a shame that I always had to carry a 1d series camera too to deal with anything tricky. It feels more ergonomic and resistant than the previous models. Better weather sealing. Better balanced.

So, enter the 5d Mkiii. It’s 1 1d series focus system in a 5D body. It is quirky and fun to use. The images are warmer than you’d expect from a Canon, the operation smooth (even silent if you select the shutter mode). The focus points are better placed spread out in multiple cross-metered zones which can be expanded with a few clicks. It even remembers where you placed the focus points when you switch from portrait to landscape.

The ISO capabilities are almost insane. Capturing production stills at 8000 ISO is like shooting at 800-1600 in the past. It doesn’t remove the need to find the light or create it when you need to (to avoid pancake flat, lifeless low contrast images) but it responds well to small amounts of light.  It’s a camera to grow into but it’s all things (and more) that the 5dMkii should have been. For bargain hunters wanting to go full frame and without the need to fast focus, used 5D Mk i bodies are worth a look.

1. ISO 400 1/200 f6.3. Mkiii balances highlights and shadows well and retains the creaminess of previous models.

2.ISO 3200 to bring the ambient in and the file quality is like ISO 400. The means less power required from off camera flash too or the need for a tripod in low light to drag the shutter.

3. ISO 8000, 1/25 at f4. Acceptable grain. Nuts.

4. ISO 1000 on the 5d classic, 1/30 f.5 to pull in the ambient and balance with the octobox off-camera. One of the downsides at shooting at higher ISOs is that your flash heads even at low power can be very powerful, so your shallow depth of field might suffer as you push to f11 or higher.

5. ISo 400 with quality of ISo 100.

6, 7 and 8 – ISo 1000-2000. Off camera flash creating an extra “window” but the mid-tones are captured well at the higher ISO. Contrast needs a boost as you go over ISO 3200.

As the snow finally melted after the winter weather on the Kent coast, I paid a final visit to the Abbey Chapel development in Faversham to photograph the 3-bedroom house there ( http://abbeychapel.com/the-house/).

At the back of the Chapel is a three bedroom house with a large studio/office . The house replicates the old Sunday school building but inside it has a totally contemporary design. From the front door, the entrance lobby leads into the kitchen, dining room and double height living room.  Fully glazed, folding doors open onto the secluded courtyard garden. Plenty of light meant that I made selective use of my travel kit (Bowens heads and battery pack) to add contrast and definition to some of the corners.

You’ve heard me sing the praises before of low winter light levels for photography and how it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s not. Honestly. It’s not a matter of cranking up the ISO and getting on with it. Sometimes either the contrast is simply lacking (things cal look a bit washed out of flat) or the differences in light levels between the bright bits and the dark bits is too wide (in the past this was the ratios we banged on about). Do you expose for the bright or dark bits?

At the school shoot below I had to light every single shot. Where possible I used bounce flash (using white walls into nice large diffused light sources) but where the walls were coloured (and so bounced light would have picked up wall colour with it) I had to use directional light in place of a where a window might be. Directional light helps with contrast too. If you need help with your lighting, do please get in touch.