Number 1

Lighting Setup: The Corona

Even though this article in only weeks old, it quickly stormed to the number 1 spot. My new ‘Chroma’ lighting setup has certainly proved popular with many, and for good reason. This lighting technique shows you that you can produce engaging and dynamic lighting on a subject with minimal effort, space and equipment… No wonder this article saw such success.

Lighting Setup: The Corona

Number 2

Emulating Dappled Light in the Studio

Ever seen some beautiful light pouring through tree branches on a warm summers day and thought, ‘I wish I could recreate that in the studio’. Hard sunlight is tricky at best to recreate in the studio, but couple that with some beautiful dappled shadows and it becomes nearly impossible. Thankfully, I finally found a solution and it’s actually not to tricky to do, it just uses a clever little hack to make to it work. Take a look at this dappled lighting in the studio setup and see what put this article in this years number 2 spot.

Emulating Dappled Light in the Studio

Number 3

Optical Snoot Review

As luck would have it, number 3 here follows on nicely from the previous article. As I mentioned above, creating very hard, directional light in the studio can be tricky. Sure there are lighting modifiers that can make it happen, but they tend to be a little pricey. Our third most popular article of 2019 goes over and reviews an alternative, the optical snoot. So if you’re after a way to create some very hard light in the studio that wont cost more than a family holiday to the riviera, check this out.

Optical Snoot Review

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Number 4

Imitating Hazy Backgrounds with Diffusion Gels

Coming in at number 4 is a hefty article on how to imitate a foggy, hazy background behind your subject. Ever wanted to fire up the smoke machine but space and fire alarms have prevented you from pulling the trigger? Maybe you already have a smoke machine and love using it, but would really like to only limit the smoke effect behind the subject and not all over the front of them. This article on how to imitate hazy backgrounds has you covered. Side note: This was actually one of my favourite discoveries in the studio for 2019. I can’t wait to use it again sometime soon.

Imitating Hazy Backgrounds with Diffusion Gels

Number 5

DIY Mottled Backdrop

Last but certainly not least, here’s a clever hack to make those fancy mottled backdrops for next to nothing. Mottled backgrounds are making a comeback and thanks to big budget editorials in the likes of Vogue and Harpers Bazaar, those terrifyingly cheesy cloudy backdrops from your school photo, can actually look good. So although the best of these unique canvas backgrounds can cost many hundreds of dollars to buy, we can also make a version that is pretty effective for less than $20! Intrigued? Check the article to learn more.

DIY Mottled Backdrop

So there you have it, the top 5 articles from the Jake Hicks Photography archives of 2019. I hope you all found something useful in there and I hope you all learned a tip or two. Big thanks to all of you who stuck around during 2019 to check these out as they were published and if you missed any of them at the time, I hope this was handy refresher of the best of the best.

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Creating Separation Between Model and Background in Photoshop

Every Monday I ask my FB Page community to participate in my -Share-a-Shoot- post whereupon they share a recent shot they’ve taken in exchange for some feedback from myself. I’ve been doing this every week for what feels like years now, and each and every week I am often mentioning the same things in my responses. Often it’s the subject being lit from below, badly placed hair lights, awkward posing and so on. But the one area that I probably talk about the most is ensuring you have a clear separation between subject and background.

Even in extreme cases where you’re photographing black on black, you still have to ensure you show separation between subject and foreground.

Having a clearly defined subject set apart from a background is key to making a pleasing image.

Our eyes are always seeking to understand the world via shape and form, so if our subject is blending into their surroundings in a confusing way, this is not only quite often unflattering, but it also makes for a visually confusing image.

This subject-to-background separation is nearly always present in daylight photos thanks to the abundance of easy to use light, but when we light a subject with studio strobes, we often forget to light our backgrounds properly. The out of focus area behind our subjects needs a little light as well if we are to avoid that jet-black void behind them. This lack of separation or blending between subject and background is especially noticeable on shots that contain dark styling against a dark background so even more attention to that separation is required here.

Thankfully though, even if we do forget or we simply run out of lights to light our background as well as our subject, we can cheat the effect a little in post-production and that’s what I’m going to cover here.

Step 1 - Cut that out

Screenshot 2019-12-03 at 15.51.23 copy.jpg

It’s up to you how you do this and there are many ways to select a subject. I personally use the Magic Wand Tool as well as the Quick Selection Tool.

Spend the time to cut the subject out properly as rushing this or cutting corners here will ruin the effect extremely quickly. Once I’ve got my basic selection of the subject then I often pop into the ‘Refine Edge…’ menu to make any minor adjustments to the styling or hair. This menu can be found in a variety of places dependant on your version of Photoshop but my preferred version of Refine Edge is found at the top of the screen when you have a selection tool active.

Note: I use an older version of Photoshop (even though I have access to the newest version via CC) mainly because of the power of this refine edge menu. Subsequent versions were a major step backwards in my opinion… but that’s a topic for another day.

Step 2 - Using our Mask

The hard part is now done. With our mask still active, create a new layer: Layer -> New Layer … (Shift+Command+N).

With the new layer simply create a Mask on it with the selection you’ve made. Layer -> Layer Mask.. -> Reveal Selection … (Or simply click the ‘Add Layer Mask’ button at the bottom of the layers palette.

If done correctly, your selection should disappear and your new blank layer should not have a black silhouette of your subject in the mask next to it.

Step 3 - Adding a base coat

Even though we may have an even background already, I like to add a base coat to this layer so that we don’t highlight any marks back there when we lighten it up later on.

First select the Gradient tool. This can be found in the tools palette or simply hit the G key.

With the base layer selected, hit the gradient palette at the top of the screen so that the Gradient Editor opens up. Now make a gradient by selecting one point at the top of your background and one at the bottom of your background. Mine here is almost identical from top to bottom, but yours might not be. Once you’ve done that hit ok.

With our new gradient we can now paint it across our new layer. Select the new layer, make sure you have the Linear Gradient selected at the top, then simply click and drag a new gradient from the top to bottom of your empty layer.

Step 4 - Keep it real!

At present, we have a pure pixel gradient that will likely have some amount of colour banding within it. We do not want that anywhere near our shot and although it might not be very visible now, it will be very noticeable once we lighten it later.

First we need to add some noise to eliminate that banding. With the new layer selected, go to Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise…

Once in here, select a noise amount of around 2-5 dependant on your shot.

Next we need to soften that noise as it’s looking too digital at the moment.

With the new layer selected, go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur…

Once in the Gaussian Blur menu, select a low blur that will just take the sharp edges off of the noise.

Usually an amount of 1 - 2 is enough.

Lastly, I often choose to knock back the background a little to bed it into the original background. I will lower the opacity to around 50 -70% to help achieve this.

Step 5 - Lighten up

Next we need to brighten up that background so as to give us that separation we’re after. With your mask layer selected, add a curves adjustment layer. Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Curves… Or simply hit the little Curves icon on the Adjustments Palette.

With our new curves layer selected, simply double click it and then drag a point up from the centre of the curve to lighten up the whole image.

Clearly this is not the look we’re after and we need to isolate the effect to the background only.

With the Curves layer selected, go to Layer -> Create Clipping Mask (Option+Command+G). If done correctly, you should now see an arrow pointing down from your curves layer to the mask layer.

Step 6 - Vignette it

We are nearly there and now that we have a brighter background, we just need to make it look a little more natural and less dominating over the subject.

With your curves layer selected, create another mask for it. Go to Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All.

With our new mask selected, we are going to add a vignette. To do this, simply select the Gradient Tool (G) again. Make sure you have the ‘Radial Gradient’ checked in the top left, select a white-to-black gradient and then simply click and drag a large gradient from the centre of your shot.

If all of this is done correctly, your curves layer mask should now have a little vignette in the thumbnail. You can now reduce the opacity of this to your tastes, but otherwise you’re done.

Final Before & After

Closing Comments

This is one of those techniques that is far from flashy or dramatic, but more about adding a subtle yet effective result. In fact, post-production is often about adding many, many subtle effects that all add up to a big impact and this technique is a good example of this.

Final tips

Masking: Take your time on the mask. Failing to do so, will result in you not being able to lighten the background as much as you may like. If you’ve rushed the portion around the hair for example, you may end up with an odd looking halo effect which will be distracting.

Keep it subtle: This is probably the most important factor out of everything. We are not adding this glow behind the subject to emulate a light back there. Remember, we are ONLY adding this to add separation between subject and background. When people view the image for the first time, they should NOT notice you’ve added this effect.

Lastly…

If you are interested in learning more about my creative process in post-pro, why not join us on December 14th for an entire day of post production. To learn more about what topics in Lightroom and Photoshop I’ll be covering, check out the link Jake Hicks Photography - Post-Pro Workshop

THANK YOU

Thank you as always for checking out my article and spending a little bit of your day with me here. If you have any questions about this one, then feel free to let me know in the comments below. I can’t promise to have all the answers, but I’ll certainly do my best to answer what I can. Thanks again for stopping by.

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Lighting Setup: The Corona

I’m just gonna come clean here and say that I just made up the name ‘corona’ for this lighting setup. In fact the word corona is a commonly used term with solar eclipses. During an eclipse, we can often see the moon silhouetted against a ring of light and the word corona is often used to describe that halo of light we see around the moon.

As we explain this lighting, my reasoning for calling this setup ‘corona’, should start to make a bit more sense because we are actually trying to achieve a similar lighting eclipse look by adding a ring of light around our subject.

Humble Beginnings

Confused? I promise you wont be, in fact this setup is actually a scaled up version of a simple still life setup I was playing with over 20 years ago. The basic premise involves a large light source behind the subject, but instead of a pure white light behind them, we actually introduce a large flag (black card) behind them. This flag is specifically made slightly smaller than the light source it is covering so that when it’s placed between the subject and light source, a small amount of light is allowed to creep around it thus just lighting the edges of the object.

Here are my Ilford award winning images from back in 1998 using the simple lighting technique to light the edges of these cans.

But wait, the setup gets even easier than that! I often have to shoot some product shots to go with an article or interview etc. Instead of me going into the studio and setting all of the lights up, I’ve often just turned the TV on and put a black piece of card behind my object like you can see below. I choose a white image on the TV and then the television itself becomes my light source as the white light creeps around the black card to perfectly light the edges of my product.

Here you can see I have my product in front of my TV with a black card between them. A simple setup, but a very effective result.

But is it scalable?

No, I’m not referencing your bank manager questioning your new business loan, I am in fact talking about scaling up this lighting setup.

One issue we have with this setup is the fact that the light behind the object needs to be considerably larger than it is. This is fine when we’re lighting a lens or wine bottle, but when the object is now a person, we struggle to find a light source large enough to cover it.

Of course one option here is to find a giant window to stand in front of…. if you have that, then you’re done. For those of us not living in Georgian townhouses with floor to ceiling windows, we need to find another option. And let’s not forget that we also need a giant black flag to put behind our subject too. Thankfully that’s pretty easy so let’s start there.

No idea what a ‘crab clamp’ is? Click on the image above to learn more.

Giant Black Flag

If you’ve been following my tips and techniques for any period of time then I know you know what I’m about to say next. That’s right, it’s time to get out your big sheets of black velvet!

I’m always preaching about how vital these large sheets of black velvet are and once again they will be vital to the success of this shot. If you’re not familiar, I use these large sheets of black velvet all the time as flags and they are especially useful on location when you don’t have access to large studio polyboards to block and manage the light.

I like to carry at least two sheets of 1m x 2m black velvet with me and if I need to set them up, I simply attach a crossbar to the top of a light stand via a ‘crab clamp’, then clip the back velvet to that to create a large wall of darkness to block any unwanted light bounce.

If you’re shooting on location then these large sheets of black velvet are vital to block any unwanted light on set.

Giant Light…

Perfect. We have our giant black flag, now we just need a giant light source. This is probably where you think you can’t continue, right? Sure you can pick up a sheet of black velvet for a few quid, but a giant light?! Probably a little out of your budget, right? Well thankfully that’s where you’re wrong, because if we’re clever with our light, we don’t actually need a huge light at all. …but you will need a couple of white walls.

This next step is actually a bit tricky to explain with text alone, so now let’s look at the lighting setup in situ and hopefully that will do a better job explaining how this is going to work.

Screenshot 2019-11-15 at 17.49.19 copy.jpg

In the image above we have our large sheet of black velvet behind our subject (shown here as a black board). Behind that we have a strobe with an open reflector dish firing away from the velvet and into a white wall. The resulting light from this is bouncing around and going everywhere, in fact it’s actually starting to creep around the edges of our black velvet and falling onto the model. Now you should start to see how this setup is starting to work.

Adding Some Colour

But now let’s add our coloured front light. Take a look at the diagram below to see where everything is placed.

Screenshot 2019-11-15 at 17.54.07 copy.jpg

In the above shot you’ll see that I’ve just added a large soft box to the set and that’s positioned behind me and shining straight onto the model. This large softbox is also equipped with a blue gel, but don’t panic you don’t need a giant gel to do that, you simply need to open the softbox up and place the gel over the flash tube.

Gelling a large softbox is easier than you might think. No, you don’t have patchwork small gels to the front of it, nor do you have to buy giant rolls of gels. Simply open up your softbox and place your over the flash tube. Note: Be wary of your mod… — Gelling a large softbox is easier than you might think. No, you don’t have patchwork small gels to the front of it, nor do you have to buy giant rolls of gels. Simply open up your softbox and place your over the flash tube. Note: Be wary of your modelling bulb getting too hot. Either remove it, or turn it off.

What Should it Look Like?

As you might have guessed, this is not your regular ‘10:01 YouTube lighting setup’! This setup is a little unorthodox in its approach as we’ll be throwing a lot of light around a room to get this to work. On top of that, we’re also shining colour directly onto our subject and the only white light in the shot is really only hitting the edges of our subject.

So how do we set this up? What ‘should’ it look like? Below I’m going to share a couple of raw images from the setting up process as I turned one of the two lights on at a time and took a shot to get an idea of what’s actually going on.

In this image we can see what the shot looks like with just the white light behind the model on.

In this shot we’ve turned off the back light and no we just have the blue front light on instead.

In the above images you should start to see how the shot is coming together. In the image of the white light on only, you should see how the edges are brighter, yet the front of the subject is far darker. It is in these darker shadow areas that we can add a coloured gel.

In the image of the blue light only, you should now see that the light falls off so as to make the edges of the subject fairly dark. With both of these lights combined you start to get the both the colour on the front, yet the edges have a subtle light glow to them. When you’re setting this up, I recommend turning on each of these lights individually and try to get a similar look to mine from each of them.

Final Results

With our setup in place and the lights correctly adjusted, here’s what some of the resulting images looked like.

Clicking on any of the above shots will enlarge them

So no questions then?

I’m pretty sure that if I listen carefully, I can hear you screaming, ‘BUT HOW DID YOU GET FROM THAT TO THAT?!’

This is the point at which I remind you that you’re following the work of a photographer (AKA an artist). A photographer that has very little regards for the ‘rules’ of image making. I mention this as I know many will want to know exactly what I did to get to these results I’ve shown above, but be warned, I took certain liberties when taking these shots as well as when I processed them.

First off, I deliberately underexposed these images at point of capture. The main reason for that was due to the edge light. It’s deceptively bright at the edges and even though I underexposed them, I’m still losing detail in the fur on the edges. Next, I wanted to lean into one special property that I’ve not yet discussed; the styling.

Fluorescent colours have a will of their own and no matter what colour you actually shine onto them, they pretty much ignore it and maintain their original colour.

Consider your Styling

In these images, styling is minimal, but what we do have is still very important. I mentioned my thought process with the fur and my concerns with not clipping the highlights on the fur, but we also have this lingerie to consider. The outfit is made from fluorescent fabric and fluorescent fabric has some very unique properties we need to be mindful of, especially with regards to colour lighting.

Fluorescence

Fluorescent fabric bounces light in a very unique way, in fact many of us immediately know when something is ‘fluorescent’, but what are its properties that we are immediately recognising? Think back to any fluorescent product and consider for example, what’s different about a piece of fluorescent green paper compared to normal green paper? Well the fluorescent green one appears just brighter right? Same with orange, pink or yellow and so on. There are very scientific reasons for this, including how much heat energy they’re bouncing and why that’s happening etc. etc. But for now, I’ll just say that fluorescents bounce back a huge amount of light and that light is incredibly consistent resulting in it not having many shadow areas and more importantly, it does an extremely good job of maintaining its own colour, regardless of what colour is actually being shone onto it. This is why fluorescent objects appear so bright to us, they simply bounce huge amounts of light and they do so whilst maintaining their colour. Think of a hi-vis jacket, no mater what colour light we shine onto, it alway returns that brilliant white light.

So back to the image. Here I am shining blue light onto the orange fluorescent fabric, but it doesn’t care. The models skin is now blue, but the fluorescent fabric carries on just being orange. As a result, this fabric appears to almost leap off of the the page in contrast, especially when we chose to shine darker coloured lights like blue onto them. It’s with this knowledge that we can now start to manipulate a shot with a little more intent.

Post-Production

This article has gone on long enough, so I wont bore you further with the post-pro process, but I will touch on a few key decisions I made. Firstly, I mentioned that I wanted to lean into the fluorescent colour look, so in post I decided to push the whole image to that pinky, orange colour. I actually did this by adding a lot of magenta to the ‘tint’ via the white balance. Remember, that the only white light in this shot is the edge lights. By me pushing the tint in this way, the image now looks like it was shot with pink edge lights, yet our highlights are still white.

JakeHicksPhotography (1 of 2) set raw lr ps.jpg

In the images above you can see the process I went through from raw, to Lightroom and finally Photoshop. From this you should firstly see just how strong that fluorescent colour is in the raw, especially when you consider how there is really only blue light lighting it. Secondly you can see just much I’ve pushed the white balance so as to really accentuate that orange outfit.

Yes, there is a lot that has gone here, but the basic principle is simple skin retouching and colour toning. That’s it. It looks like a big change, but in reality that’s all that’s happened here. Yes I could have taken the time to go in to my camera and create a custom white balance that pushed the magenta tint, but I knew I was shooting in raw and I was content to make that change later on.

Closing Comments

This is a VERY simple setup.

It’s only two lights for a start. Plus it doesn’t require any expensive or fancy modifiers. The beauty of this setup comes from the fact that we are shooting with intent from the beginning. We are purposefully underexposing to watch those highlights and we’re doing that with the knowledge that our camera can cope with that. Secondly, we’re also heavily leaning into our knowledge of fluorescent fabrics and how they react with coloured light. Lastly we are then combining all of that with some creative decisions in post production that tie them all together. We are lightening the shadows without blowing the highlights (too much) and then we’re pushing the colour tint to bring the whole image together. Simple, but incredibly effective when done well.

Guess the Lighting…

Occasionally I ask my Facebook community to guess the lighting in one of my shots and last week was one of those times with these images. Nearly every comment mentioned upwards of 3, 4, 5 and even 6 lights to achieve this. Many people also assumed I’d used UV lights to pop the colours and most assumed that those lights were pink or orange. These were all very sensible suggestions and in all honesty, if I’d been asked the same question, maybe I would have made the same suggestions too based on what I was seeing.

Feel free to join in with discussion next time by joining us over here at my Jake Hicks Photography Facebook Page.

But I hope this setup is a good example of how to exploit your knowledge and thinking through a potential setup with the end goal in mind. Yes I love to get as much done in-camera as I can. But I never shy away from using LR and PS to achieve something that is otherwise almost impossible any other way. These are creative decisions and they are unique to me and I hope that if you give this setup a try that you explore a variety of ways to push this look in multiple directions. After all, it’s super simple to try so give it a go and let me know how you get on.

Lastly…

If you are interested in learning more about my creative process in post-pro, why not join us on December 14th for my entire day of post production. To learn more about what topics in Lightroom and Photoshop I’ll be covering, check out the link Jake Hicks Photography - Post-Pro Workshop

THANK YOU

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Review - Lumee LED Light - RGB & Bi-Colour

Technique Tuesday flash duration 2019 Lumee LED Light Review.jpg

I guess it’s a sign of the times, but I get sent far more LED lights to test than any other light…. even though I never personally use LEDs.

When I say I don’t use LED lights, it’s not because I have a dislike for them, but for me, they have limitations that I struggle to deal with when I shoot what I shoot. If you’re after some affordable continuous light for video work that looks natural and emulates everyday lighting, then LEDs are your first and smartest choice. But for what I do, which is often very controlled and saturated colour work that is anything but natural, I’m going to stick to the control and power of flash for now.

I mention this as I received these Lumee LED lights a few weeks ago and I couldnt really think how I could use them in my work. As a result they sat in my lighting kit as a sort of ‘just in case’ situation. After all, they take up almost zero room and weigh practically nothing so why not have them with me. But recently it dawned on me that they may have additional uses that I’d previously overlooked.

Full disclosure: I was sent these LED lights to play with by Spiffy gear. I have no affiliation with them and I am not being paid to review or endorse these products, nor will I get any commission from future sales of this product.

What are they?

So before we get into any impressions, let’s quickly look at what they are. After all, there are a trillion and one LED lights already on the market, what’s different about these?

Firstly, (as I previously mentioned), they are very lightweight and slim so can be brought almost anywhere. Once out of the box you’ll see that they are about 9 inches long and 1 inch wide. Running along the centre of them we have the LED strip and at one end we have some buttons.

Colours

I was sent both the ‘RGB Light’ and the ‘Bi-Colour Light’. They look the same, but the RGB is able to produce 15 colours ranging from reds, blues, greens, oranges, purples etc. The Bi-Colour model is able to produce 8 tones along the Kelvin scale ranging from 2700K up to 6000K.

Take a look below at the colour options available from each of these lights via the mini-manual provided.

Controls

At the base of each of the lights are the controls. They each have three buttons and they turn the LED strips on, change colour, cycle the effects etc.

Take a look at the example shots below that shows the LED buttons and the controls via the mini-instructions.

Features

One of the other key features these LED lights have is their ability to wrap into a bracelet shape so they can be attached to poles and bars without the need for additional support. Of course you could also wear these if were looking something in the dark and needed your hands free too.

Lastly, these are incredibly lightweight and this is in part due to the fact that they are powered by a small onboard battery. These micro batteries can power the LED bracelets at max power for one hour before they need recharging. This can be done via a USB cable adapter that they come supplied with.

Charging both of these from flat to full via my laptop took less than an hour.

Both of these bracelets also have magnets in the ends of them (as well as a hole to hook on to things). This is useful if you just want to magnet them to a metal surfaces. These magnets are not so strong as to be a worry around other electronic kit, but strong enough to easily hold them in place on vertical flat surfaces. Each pack also contains several metal discs that you can use in conjunction with the magnets to stick them to any surface if required.

First Impressions

First impression were very good. The product is well packaged and easily understood via the simple instructions. The material feels robust, well made and I expect they will last a long time before needing to be replaced.

My next statement is difficult to quantify, but the LED light themselves produce a very clean and crisp light. All of the colours look great and on the Bi-Colour the Kelvin colours look legit and not simply ‘blue’ and ‘orange’ LEDs. The RGB colours are also very clean and even the mid-colours like yellow and purple look vibrant and not simply watered down versions of red or blue respectively. Like I said this is hard to justify with my words alone, but the Spiffy website quotes these LEDs as having a 95 CRI. If you’re not aware, CRI stands for Colour Rendering Index. Essentially the closer the CRI of the LED light to 100, the closer the light is ‘true’ colour. I’m a little hesitant on this index as I have no idea how the lighting industry works out what the ‘true’ colour of something is… but I digress.

Essentially these LEDs have an industry rating of 95 (out of 100) which goes a long way to explain why the light looks so clean and crisp. I’d have zero qualms about using these in any of my images alongside any other light.

Lighting Effects

One thing that will make these little LED lights stand out from some other cheaper models is their lighting features or ‘effects’. All of these effects can accessed by simply holding a button and closing through to the effect you want easily and quickly.

Both the Bi-Colour and the RGB versions have LED effects and they range from:

Breathing
Candle
Explosion
Red Carpet
Stroboscopic

on the Bi-Colour and the RGB includes:

Breathing
Police
Fire
TV
Fireworks

Take a look at the video below as I cycle through effects on both the Bi-Colour LED and RGB LED.

The video above shows the Lumee Bi-Colour LED cycling through its various colours, powers and effect modes.

The video above shows the Lumee RGB LED cycling through its various colours, powers and effect modes.

Practicality

Okay so we’ve established this is a well made product that has the ability to produce some very clean light, but what are they for? Well first and foremost they are for video. Place these almost anywhere to add a kick of light. It’s as simple as that. The brightness of these little things is deceptive and although the brightness of the RGB version will vary dependant on the colour used, the Bi-Colour LED provided a reading of f2.8, 1/60th at ISO 400 from 12 inches away. As I mentioned, this light will operate at that max brightness for an hour too.

The size and shape of them is also ideal for placing on set too. Light the keys of a piano, curled up and placed in a lamp housing to replicate candle light, above characters whilst they are in a car. These LED bracelets are really going to work well in those super-awkward spots where literally no other light can operate.

But you don’t shoot video Jake?

Click to enlarge - Image captured in a single frame with flash and light-painting tools. — *Click to enlarge* - Image captured in a single frame with flash and light-painting tools.

This is very true and this is also the reason I’ve been sat on these for weeks and not used them. But these LED lights could also serve as very creative light-painting tools…

For those unaware, I like to shoot long exposure portrait images and during those long exposure shots I will often wave about a constant light source to get some very cool and interesting in-camera effects. If you’re interested in seeing some of the light painting tools I’ve used in the past to create these looks then take a look here 5 Professional and DIY Light Painting Tools For You to Try.

By using some of those constant light sources in conjunction with flash, you are able to flash the subject to get a crisp image, but with the shutter still open you are then able to ‘paint’ around the model in real time to create some truly unique effects.

You should start to see how these long exposure shots take form by looking at the image of the model included here. This is actually a 10 second exposure in a dark room. The flash illuminates the subject and then we paint around the subject.

Example shots

So from those light painting images and techniques I’ve shared, you should now start to see how these Lumee LED wands have huge potential for long exposure shots.

Here’s some example images of how some of the Lumee coloured light effects turned out.

All of the image below were taken with a 6-10 second exposure at f11 and ISO 100.

Click to enlarge - Lumee Bi-Colour set to ‘breathing’ effect — *Click to enlarge -* Lumee Bi-Colour set to ‘breathing’ effect

Click to enlarge - Lumee Bi-Colour set to ‘Red Carpet’ effect — *Click to enlarge -* Lumee Bi-Colour set to ‘Red Carpet’ effect

Click to enlarge - Lumee RGB set to ‘Breathing’ effect — *Click to enlarge -* Lumee RGB set to ‘Breathing’ effect

Click to enlarge - Lumee RGB set to ‘TV’ effect — *Click to enlarge -* Lumee RGB set to ‘TV’ effect

Click to enlarge - RGB set to ‘Police’ effect — *Click to enlarge -* RGB set to ‘Police’ effect

In these images you can see the LED lighting effects and how they look during the period of 6-10 seconds in a single frame. Many of RGB effects that cycled through its colours over time looks incredible and I love just how smooth it appears. Many inferior LEDs will blink very rapidly. This is indiscernible by the naked eye normally, but when you use them in long exposure images the stuttering of the light is very noticeable and rarely looks good.

In the images you can also see the individual LEDs as they appear like lines. I knew this would happen and I initially thought I wouldn’t like the effect, but as it turns out, I actually really like it. If you wanted to remove that look of the individual lines, simply use a ‘diffusion gel’ over the LED wand itself and it will blur the individual colours into one. Take a look at the shots below to see what I mean.

Click to enlarge - This image shows the RGB Lumee ‘Breathing’ effect but with a diffusion gel over the wand to blur the individual LEDs. — *Click to enlarge -* This image shows the RGB Lumee ‘Breathing’ effect but with a diffusion gel over the wand to blur the individual LEDs.

Click to enlarge - This image shows the RGB Lumee ‘Police’ effect but with a diffusion gel over the wand to blur the individual LEDs. — *Click to enlarge -* This image shows the RGB Lumee ‘Police’ effect but with a diffusion gel over the wand to blur the individual LEDs.

Closing thoughts

Overall this is a well made product that produces superior results. If you shoot a lot of video and have to shoot in awkward or small locations, these deserve some serious consideration. Like I said, the quality of the light being produced by these LEDs is not to be dismissed and their light could easily be used to augment or accent other high quality LED devices too.

Another use for them is of course long exposure photography and light painting like I’ve shown you above. I was very impressed by how bright these were for light painting as I like to add flash to my long exposure portraits and having a very bright light painting tool gives me so many more option when it comes to constructing my shot. I am certainly looking forward to playing with these further to try and add something a little more unique than a single colour.

The only downsides to these are to be expected given their size, but charging them can be a pain. Leave them charged and united in your bag, and they will lose their charge over time. This is normal of course and this will apply to any charged product. But when it comes to using them, the only option you now have is to plug them into a USB device and wait an hour. Sadly, this could lead to them not being ready when you most need them.

My only other ‘want’ for these LED lights would be to have the option to adjust the brightness of the ‘effects’. As it stands, the effects only play at the brightest power which in some situations was too powerful for what I was using them for. To be fair, I simply wrapped a Neutral Density gel around the light and it was fine, but it’s worth knowing it can’t be adjusted via the light itself.

These LED lights aren’t cheap at $45 a pop, but then the brightness, the beautifully clean and crisp colours and colour effect features is what sets these Lumee LED lights apart from its cheaper counterparts.

For more info, check the website over at Spiffy Gear here LUMEE

THANK YOU

Thank you as always for checking out my article and spending a little bit of your day with me here. If you have any questions about this one then feel free to let me know in the comments below. I can’t promise to have all the answers, but I’ll certainly do my best to answer what I can. Thanks again for stopping by.

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What's the Best Projector to Buy for my Next Photoshoot?

This image was all captured in-camera in a single frame thanks to the power of using a projector on set.

There are quite literally hundreds, if not thousands of different projectors out there to buy right now. They can range from £10 to over £10,000, but which projector should you invest in for your next photoshoot?

If you’ve ended up here, then I’m assuming you’re using your new projector as a light source in your next photoshoot. If on the other hand, you’re after advice on what projector to buy to watch the footy on (that’s soccer to the less informed ;) ), you’re in the wrong place.

The reason I make this distinction is because we as photographers need to use these projectors for a purpose they weren’t necessarily designed for. Consequently we need to be looking at specific factors that apply to us as photographers, not us as viewers.

For the purposes of this article, I’ve broken down the 5 key factors we should be considering before purchasing a projector for our next photoshoot. They are as follows:

Luminance
Throw Distance
Contrast Ratio
Resolutions
Connectivity

Art of Projection

Full disclosure; I’m writing this article as I’ve recently announced my new ‘Art of Projection’ workshop and as a result I’ve been sharing a bunch of images that were taken with a projector. As a result of this, I’ve been inundated with messages and questions about what projector I use and what I recommend. For my Art of Projection workshop, I’ve written a jumbo PDF of notes and at nearly 50 pages it covers everything you could possibly want to know about using a projector in your photoshoot. This article peeks at a few of those pages from that workshop PDF and it’ll help give you the basic knowledge on what to look for before purchasing a projector specifically for photography.

Want to learn more about using projectors? Check out my workshop dedicated exclusively to just that Art of Projection — *Want to learn more about using projectors? Check out my workshop dedicated exclusively to just that* ***Art of Projection***

5 Projector Features to Consider

1. Luminance

For photography, brightness is going to be a key factor and in the projector world, brightness is measured in Lumens. Again the projector industry has a colossal range of choices, and lumens in a projector can vary from 50 lumens for one of those crappy iPhone projectors, all the way up to cinema stye projectors with a whopping 25,000 lumen output!

But let’s talk photography here for a moment, what does luminance translate to for us as photographers? Take a look at a page from my PDF below as it shows two photos, both of which were taken at 1/60th second, f.4, ISO 100.

The Art of Projection II luminance eg small.jpg

In the side-by-side images above, we can clearly see the dramatic difference between two projectors. On the left we have a cheap LED projector with a ‘supposed’ luminance of 1800, and on the right we have a 3000 lumens projector. The difference is quite literally like night and day.

From my point of view, luminance is the key driving factor when deciding on what projector to purchase. For example If everything else was perfect on the projector, but it had a low luminance output, I’d abandon it immediately. My personal recommendation is to look for a projector touting a minimum 3000 lumens. As you can see from the shots above, having 3000 lumens allows us to capture a projected image at 1/60th of a second at f4 and ISO 100. These are usable settings on our cameras that aren’t making compromises with higher ISO noise or blurred shots with slower shutter speeds.

2. Throw Distance

Throw distance is another term that is fairly unique to projectors as we don’t apply this same way of thinking when comparing lighting modifiers in photography. Basically throw distance quantifies the size of the projected image based on how far away the specific projector is placed from the wall. For example, let’s assume you have a small living room that is only 3m long. You wanted to buy a new projector to watch some movies on but the one you like will only produce a 1m sized image when placed 3m away from the wall. Chances are this wouldn’t be ideal, so Instead you’d be looking to purchase a ‘short throw’ projector that could project a 3m sized image when placed 3m away from the wall. A much bigger image size for the space you have.

This sounds more complicated than it is, but then again the projector world tries to complicate it further by using their universal system of ‘throw ratios’ to supposedly help their customers decide.

The projectors throw distance is often displayed as two numbers separated by a colon. For example 1.5:1.

The first number represents the projector being 1.5 feet from the screen and the second number represents 1 foot of screen length.

…exciting so far right?! So for every foot of screen length you wanted, you’d have to move your projector 1.5 feet away. As a guide; the smaller the first number, the smaller the room you can project a larger image in.

And yes, the projector world works in feet not metres to measure this metric.

Don’t worry though, I understand that there are a few of you out there that have still not passed your Differential Geometry PHD and for some unfathomable reason you still can’t pre-visualise simple shape and size in 3 dimensional space from a basic 3 digit ratio alone!!!! ….Not just me then?!

Thankfully, Mr. Hicks has run the numbers and has dialled in a few ratios and built a 3D space to help visualise some of these ratios for you. In the images below I’ve built a 6m x 5m room and placed the projector 2m from the wall in each of them. The resulting red rectangle on the wall in front is the size of image you’d get from the ratios displayed.

The Art of Projection II throw distance eg small.jpg

I’m hoping the example ratios above will give you an idea of what to look for but as a general guide; the smaller the first number, the smaller the room you can project a larger image in. So the 1.2:1 throw distance above, produces a far larger image than the 1.7:1 projector for example.

3. Contrast Ratio

Woohoo! More new ratios to learn! Thankfully contrast ratios are far easier to explain than throw ratios though. Essentially the contrast ratio is the difference between the darkest black point and the lightest white point in the image and they are displayed like this as an example; 3000:1.

A contrast ratio of 3000:1 means the brightest part of an image will be three thousand times brighter than the darkest part.

Essentially, you want to be looking for a larger number at the front as this will mean a stronger contrast within your projected shot.

But what does that look like in reality? Below I’ve pulled another page from workshop PDF where I compare a cheaper projector with a terrible (and unknown) contrast ratio, with a more expensive projector with a 3000:1 contrast ratio.

The Art of Projection II contrast ratio small.jpg

Having these side by side comparisons are a great way to actually visualise what some of these figures really translate to. Simply saying ‘this projector has a 3000:1 contrast ratio’ means absolutely nothing to most of us. Is that good? Is it terrible? Before I started looking into this, I had no idea either so you’re not alone if this is all news to you.

The image above clearly shows a pretty dark black point and fairly bright white point from the 3000:1 projector. In comparison the crappy cheap projector displays a muddy black point and a grey-at-best white point and this will ultimately lead to very washed out results.

The cheap projector I was using as a comparison was stating that it had 3000:1 contrast ratio in it’s sales jargon. Now I’m no genius, but even I know that’s utter nonsense. I won’t get into it too deeply here, but be very wary of dodgy no-name-brands selling projectors online. If the price sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. I didn’t mention it earlier, but I saw this same crappy projector being sold as a 3000 lumens projector too. It’s simply lies and they should certainly be avoided

Back to contrast ratios though and my advice is to look for one with at least 3000:1. There are a bunch of mid-range 5000:1 projectors out there too and I would assume that they would be even better.

4. Resolutions

Finally it appears that we’re heading back into familiar territory with terms like ‘resolutions’ right? The short answer is ‘yes’, resolutions mean the same thing here in the projector world as they do in the photography world. Basically the higher the resolution, the better the quality of the projected image will be.

Below I show you what two different resolution projector images look like up close.

The Art of Projection II resolutions small.jpg

The top image above shows a 1280x800 projector and the bottom image shows an 800x480 projector (native resolutions). Now on first inspection, your photo-brain may be thinking

‘huh, that 800x480 image looks pretty sharp, I think I prefer the hand icon in the bottom image’

Ultimately, this will be down to personal preference, but hear my thoughts on this. That hand icon does ‘appear’ sharper in the bottom shot, but it’s a visual illusion really as you can also clearly see far more pixels as a result. Ask yourself; ‘do I want chunky pixels to be visible in my shot?’ I’m going to go out on a limb here and say ‘no, you don’t want those ugly-ass pixels in your shot’.

As always, we have tons of choice and options when it comes to projector resolutions and here’s a few of the more popular ones. Full HD - 1920 x 1080, HD Ready - 1280x720, WXGA - 1280 x 800, XGA - 1024 x 768, SVGA - 800 x 600 and WVGA - 800 x 480.

I’ll go into this in more detail on the course, but essentially I’d advise looking at projectors with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 800.

5. Connectivity

Guys, we are gonna finish strong with an easy one, and it’s almost as if I tacked this one on the end to make it a list of 5 and not 4. Connectivity is simply referring to how you get the image you want to project, into your projector. You may have an image on a P.C., laptop, phone, USB stick etcetera. But how do we get that image from our device and onto the wall in front of us?

Below is a diagram of some of the more common inputs associated with both new and old projectors.

The Art of Projection II connectivity small.jpg

Most projectors will have way more input ports than you could ever need, so chances are you’ll be fine with whatever you get. But I will say that many older projectors do not have a HDMI input port. I personally use the HDMI input with my setup and it’s a very simple plug and play system and I probably wouldn’t consider a projector that didn’t have one.

The reason I mention this here is because I often recommend picking up a cheap secondhand projector on eBay. eBay often has some great deals on secondhand projectors and as an item that you may not be using all of the time, it makes a lot of sense to save some money on it. But whilst you’re searching on there, keep an eye out for those projectors that don’t have HDMI as they will likely be very old and their bulb may not be particularly bright. Older bulbs will lower luminance over time as well as the contrast ratio too so be wary of that in your purchase.

Closing Comments

So there you have it, there’s my 5 tips on what to look for when purchasing a projector for your next photoshoot.

Luminance - Look for at least 3000 lumens.
Throw Distance - The lower the ratio the better, but a 1.2:1 - 1.5:1 will be fine for most rooms.
Contrast Ratio - I’d recommend looking for a ratio of around 3000:1 or higher.
Resolution - Pixels are bad, so look for a resolution of at least 1280x800.
Connectivity - This depends on what you’re using, but I recommend HDMI as essential.

If you’re looking to purchase a projector for photoshoots then I hope this helps. As a guide, I’ve personally found that I can find all of these things on secondhand projectors for around £150-£200. Which in my opinion is a bargain.

Failing all of that, if you quit photography, you still have a half decent projector to watch the footy on ;)

Want to learn more?

As I mentioned at the top, all of these snippets have been pulled from just 5 of the 50 pages from my new ‘Art of Projection’ workbook. If you’re interested in learning more about using a projector in your photoshoots, then please feel free to take a look at my new course here.

This new workshop covers all new techniques and ideas and the potential for creative options when using projectors in photography is seemingly limitless. As a result, I can’t wait to pass them along and see what you all do with them.

ART OF PROJECTION

THANK YOU