Photography How-to

[Battle Cock]

I'm gonna go with baking sheet.

Its a good thing I didn't offer a prize or I'd already have to give it away!

[UWone77]

Stick tried to be slick with a baking sheet last year. People figured it out pretty fast.

[Battle Cock]

Stick tried to be slick with a baking sheet last year. People figured it out pretty fast.

I didn't even know that much. This was more of an epiphany I had while reheating a burrito!

[Ride4frnt]

I didn't even know that much. This was more of an epiphany I had while reheating a burrito!

And it was a pretty good one. Made for a nice photo.

[CarbonScoring]

Another thing people might find useful is to remember you don't need a lot of lights. Even a single flash can be used.

For me, the key to using 1 light source is reflectors. The great thing about reflecting light is that it's free (or close to). You can use almost anything as a reflector, as long as it's bright enough to not absorb the light. White tag board or poster board work well, are cheap, and can be cut down to whatever size you need. You can even bounce a flash off of a wall or ceiling to get nice soft, even light. One of my favorite materials is sheet styrene. It's stiff enough that is stands up well and is much whiter and more durable than paper.

This was shot with 1 flash, camera right, and a piece of styrene, camera left.



Just put the reflecting material as close as you can without it getting in the shot. If the reflected light is too much, start pulling it away.

Also, reflectors don't have to be white. You can add a nice, colored glow with a colored reflector.

[Thompson]

Another thing people might find useful is to remember you don't need a lot of lights. Even a single flash can be used.

For me, the key to using 1 light source is reflectors. The great thing about reflecting light is that it's free (or close to). You can use almost anything as a reflector, as long as it's bright enough to not absorb the light. White tag board or poster board work well, are cheap, and can be cut down to whatever size you need. You can even bounce a flash off of a wall or ceiling to get nice soft, even light. One of my favorite materials is sheet styrene. It's stiff enough that is stands up well and is much whiter and more durable than paper.

This was shot with 1 flash, camera right, and a piece of styrene, camera left.

Just put the reflecting material as close as you can without it getting in the shot. If the reflected light is too much, start pulling it away.

Also, reflectors don't have to be white. You can add a nice, colored glow with a colored reflector.

Hey Carbon, have any good links on using reflectors/tutorials? Have always loved photography (rockin' a Nikon D5100), and have primarily been doing candid/sports photography - but would like to try a shot in the firearms world.

[CarbonScoring]

There aren't a lot of good tutorials that I could find. Most were for portraits. This one has a decent look at the set up with examples of how white and black reflectors change the look.

http://makingniceinthemidwest.com/20...photographers/

Here's another one. They talk about the store bought reflectors, but you can do the same thing with white poster board.

http://photography.tutsplus.com/arti...or--photo-3397



Also, this article seemed apropos

http://jefflynchdev.wordpress.com/20...t-photography/

[Thompson]

There aren't a lot of good tutorials that I could find. Most were for portraits. This one has a decent look at the set up with examples of how white and black reflectors change the look.

http://makingniceinthemidwest.com/20...photographers/

Here's another one. They talk about the store bought reflectors, but you can do the same thing with white poster board.

http://photography.tutsplus.com/arti...or--photo-3397



Also, this article seemed apropos

http://jefflynchdev.wordpress.com/20...t-photography/

Many thanks; I'll take a look at them when I get the chance this weekend!

[Ride4frnt]

Many thanks; I'll take a look at them when I get the chance this weekend!

I know you asked him about his equipment in the other thread, but I didnt wanna clutter it up with more photography resources. One I recently discovered is borrowlenses.com

You can rent almost any lens you want, macro, tilt shift, telephoto. Also can rent strobes and light setups and even camera bodies. Pretty convenient to try something out before you drop a bunch of coin on it. As far as lenses are concerned, if you don't have canon or nikon money to buy name brand lenses, rokinon and tokina are both well reviewed and a fraction of the cost, and you can rent those as well. I'm looking to buy me a tokina 11-16mm

[Thompson]

I know you asked him about his equipment in the other thread, but I didnt wanna clutter it up with more photography resources. One I recently discovered is borrowlenses.com

You can rent almost any lens you want, macro, tilt shift, telephoto. Also can rent strobes and light setups and even camera bodies. Pretty convenient to try something out before you drop a bunch of coin on it. As far as lenses are concerned, if you don't have canon or nikon money to buy name brand lenses, rokinon and tokina are both well reviewed and a fraction of the cost, and you can rent those as well. I'm looking to buy me a tokina 11-16mm

You Sir - deserve brownie points . Have you ever had problems with renting from that website?

I don't have much money period haha. All of it's getting dumped towards my Jack Carbine Plus now's not really the time for me to be purchasing any more camera gear; between college, Army, and shooting haha. I'll have to take a look at Rokinon and Tokina. I've never heard of those 2 before, surprisingly. Back when I did all my research into camera stuff, I've run into Sigma and Tamron - but never those 2 you mentioned.

[UWone77]

Another thing people might find useful is to remember you don't need a lot of lights. Even a single flash can be used.

For me, the key to using 1 light source is reflectors. The great thing about reflecting light is that it's free (or close to). You can use almost anything as a reflector, as long as it's bright enough to not absorb the light. White tag board or poster board work well, are cheap, and can be cut down to whatever size you need. You can even bounce a flash off of a wall or ceiling to get nice soft, even light. One of my favorite materials is sheet styrene. It's stiff enough that is stands up well and is much whiter and more durable than paper.

This was shot with 1 flash, camera right, and a piece of styrene, camera left.



Just put the reflecting material as close as you can without it getting in the shot. If the reflected light is too much, start pulling it away.

Also, reflectors don't have to be white. You can add a nice, colored glow with a colored reflector.

Great pic.

I recall Stick first showed me how to reflect lighting from just using a paper plate. It's amazing how you can get results like that with simple household items. Some people are just naturals at mastering the light. Others like me, have to take a ton of pics, and then settle for "decent"

[CarbonScoring]

Lack of equipment really does force you to get creative. I started looking at reflectors when all I had was my SB-800. I wanted a more "professional" look and couldn't think how to get it until I heard someone talking about bouncing light and it was an epiphany.

[mustangfreek]

Great pic.

I recall Stick first showed me how to reflect lighting from just using a paper plate. It's amazing how you can get results like that with simple household items. Some people are just naturals at mastering the light. Others like me, have to take a ton of pics, and then settle for "decent"

haha...you should see me when i try to take anything remotely good with the old iphone 4...lol...

Your pics are good UW....

[Thompson]

haha...you should see me when i try to take anything remotely good with the old iphone 4...lol...

Hey - give the iPhone some credit - those things can take some really decent photos; even having some features modeling DSLRs.

[MoxyDave]

Note to self: be more careful shooting on a black background. I shot the Stickman 50K rifle using a black cloth background, and I didn't get it far enough away from the background. So now either I waste a ton of time trying to mask the rifle in Photoshop to make the background disappear, or I just drop the blacks down in Lightroom which makes everything else look too dark.

In retrospect, I should have used a green background. Then I could use a chroma-key filter to remove the background in about 30 seconds. This is how it's done in film. For example your local weather forecast is all performed in front of a green screen. They just eliminate the background and put the fancy computer graphics in it's place.

Oh well, lesson learned ...