Archive for category Video

Ben Sant’s Protrait Tutorials

Dec 3

Posted by Samuel M. in Portrait Photography, Sites&Articles, Video | 3 Comments

Hey, I wanted to share with you a very talented photographer, Ben Sant, based in the USA.

Ben has on his blog some very useful behind the scene tutorials for portrait and fashion photography using small of camera flashes, like we all love to use.

I include here two of his videos, one covering some tips on one of his winter fashion shots. en has a very unique way to explain stuff and a fresh approach to photography, so I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy this.

On the winter set he mainly uses only one flash, trigger and a 43 inch studio umbrella (and a boom stand), this type of studio equipment is very affordable and I’m pretty sure most of you reads own this combination.

This video covers two basic concepts:

1. Underexposing the background about 1 stop for getting black and contrasted shadows.It is very important to under expose the background when photographing snow. Snow is one of the trickiest modes the camera’s light meter can face , so Ben tips us to check the images histogram while shooting so we don’t over expose the snow.

2.Lighting up the model with the main flash. Ben uses a Nikon SB-800 and a 43inch fordable umbrella on a book lightstand pointing the model from above.

Bottom line-

I really like Ben’s work and I’m pretty sure I’ll post about him in he future as he has another couple of great videos both outdoor location and indoor.

You can keep track with Ben’s work on his video channels and blog (I’m listed to all three!)

Blog

Vimeo

YouTube

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5 Basic studio lighting setups

Apr 20

Posted by Samuel M. in Portrait Photography, Video | 4 Comments

Hey, wondering the web I found this nice site (I don’t remember how I got there, probably from one of the forums). It has some great content and very nice video tutorials (although they start with some annoying commercials, but I guess we have to make your living somehow…). One of those great video tutorials is about a subject that we all like – portrait photography setups. In this one you will get 5 setups to learn from and you may see how the pros (video taken by Nick Carter- photographer and Kamara Innis – model ) are doing their work.

The Video: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: studio lighting

Light Painting

Mar 30

Posted by Samuel M. in DIY projects, Video | No Comments

Hey

Just wanted to share with you guys another Flickr gallery. This technique is generally based on really long exposure time (mainly using bulb mode for over 30secs exposure) and some colorful light objects like flash lights with color gels, small sparkerls or any other light source that you might thinnk of. mxing✪m’s flickr photostream includes some stunning images and two simple to understand vidoes on how to take those very special effects. So feel free to visit his gellery and thank him for his videos, cause this type of phootgraphy art is what keeps as motivated and with fresh ideas. Here are his two videos:

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High Speed Photography Using Multiple flashes

Feb 23

Posted by Samuel M. in Sites&Articles, Video | No Comments

Hey, haven’t been writing for the last couple of weeks as we have a new baby girl in our family, thats Naama who keeps as busy !!!

For a while I want to build myself a portable multiple flash holder, it isn’t a very hard project to do, and after the videos you’ll below I must say that you’ll do one too…

Why you need to use more that one flash?

In case you are shooting in daylight and the back of your scene is very bright (relatively to your photographed subject) you’ll need some flash power to correctly expose the front subject while getting the desired background. Another reason why to use multiple flashes is, to get faster recycle times.
If you one flash at full power’ you’ll get a slow recycle time, but if you use two flash at 1/2 power you’ll get the same flash power but significantly shorter recycle times.

So why I’m writing about that? Well I know a website for a long time, thats Dave Black’s site, Dave is a very known sports photographer and he show on his site how to use speedlights for this kind of shooting. But while I was surfing on YouTube I found out about some videos he published. I must say I was very sceptical with the first video i saw, the surfers video, he uses a gigantic 8 speedlight holder(!!!) and photographs surfers as the flash combo is placed about 100 feet away from the surfers, I said to my self ”hey that’s never gonna work”… but he shows some results of his this shootout for cases where the flashes fired and when he didn’t use the flash, so I can’t argue with those ;-) …The results are nothing but amazing!!!

Then I continued watching his other films (the motorcycles).You must watch those videos!!!
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Comic Photoshop CS5 movie

Apr 18

Posted by Samuel M. in Video | No Comments

Hey

After youtube got filled with the “promotional” movies about the upcoming Photoshop CS5, Its my time to make a funny movie about it.

As you already know there are some new brilliant features to the CS5, not kidding, some of the stuff is stunning and might look some of science fiction, if I had not seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it:

Content aware fill-brilliant!
Better edge detection-amazing!
Path match-great.
Puppet wrap- animation magic!

But here is diyphotographystuff.info contribution to the CS5 madness : Adobes photoshop’s CS5 Prediction tool.

Just open a picture or print screen a web page, fill in the time you want to predict click Enter and Adobe will predict the future for you!!!

See it:

Send this URL to your friends

New amazing features with photoshop CS5

Apr 12

Posted by Samuel M. in Sites&Articles, Video | 5 Comments

I must say that some of the promotional video published on YouTube regarding the soon new arrival of the Photoshop CS5 , looks to me as if its science fiction! As if those movies are some video effects and not real image retouching capabilities!

You must see this one (or any other movie just search YouTube for photoshop CS5), its really amazing work, done in a couple of seconds. Yes probably with a super duper,state of the art computer, but yet its amazing technology that I’m eager to test!!!

You are going to enjoy this one, that I promise!

Tags: cs5, Photoshop

DIY grid for small flashes with diy grid materials

Apr 10

Posted by Samuel M. in DIY projects, Video | No Comments

As I mentioned a couple of posts before, one of the most common ways to build a DIY grid for small flashes is to use the “glue it straws” way. “The glue it straws” way was cover in this post DIY grid , basically you cut some straws into small tubes and arrange them in a box and glue them together into a box shape, about the size of your flash head, very simple .

There are a couple of advantages to that method –

It is very cheap to make this diy grid, it will cost you less than a dollar to make one.
The materials are very handy, a piece of carton and some straws from the local store and you are of to go.

There are some disadvantages too –

Its a hard task to get those straws pieces the same length and to glue them all in a fixed and aligned together in the same position/direction.
You are very much fixed to narrow angle grids and if you want a wide one (40 degrees and more), you’ll find it extremely difficult to do, as you’ll need to cut the straws very short.

As I was looking through Ebay for some gel filter holder solution, I entered this store called the strobist corner (visit link at the bottom), among some good value gel filter kits, there was this diy grid material! simple and good stuff. I got the basic kit , it includes 3 different grid material pieces for different effects 15,25 and 45 degrees, it all costs about 10$ (Honl will cost about 30$ for just one piece…). Thats all, you don’t have to cut straws any more. The basic kit comes without grid flash holders, so in the video below you’ll the most easy way to “connect” it to your flash head using handy sticky Velcro .

I’ll also post about my first impressions and photography examples using this kit, as I have an impression its a great way to use grids!!!

diy grid flash holder (youtube video)

strobist corner

Tags: DIY Grid, small flash grid

Photoshop CS5 new Content-Aware Fill

Mar 29

Posted by Samuel M. in Video | No Comments

Take a look into the new content aware fill option with the new photoshop cs5.Things that took me lots of time to do with older versions of photoshop, are now built-in with the CS5 soon to come .

See that youtube movie to bealive it!