The Photography Junkie Podcast Episode 22: Exploring the World of Photography with Jake Hicks: A Journey Through Colors and Education

A short while ago Jay from The Photography Junkie reached out and kindly invited me onto his show to discuss a huge variety of topics spanning my entire career.

We spoke about my beginnings in the film era and how I failed to initially transition into digital. From here we discussed how although I had initially begun my career as a freelancer, the industry had changed so significantly around me thanks to the rise of digital cameras, that I failed to adapt accordingly. From here I took a break from photography and only got back into it as I worked long hours in a busy studio.

This was ironically the catalyst of the bright, bold and colourful style we see today as I fought against the somewhat traditional and boring high-key white background photography that was popular at the time.

As well as my career, we also spoke about my many other topics, including how I feel about more traditional education and its value over the ‘self-taught’ YouTube education many use today. Plus I spoke on the value of still using film in today's digital world, my process, my cameras and film stocks, as well as why I still love it.

To hear the full episode, head over to The Photography Junkie website and choose your delivery method as that contains all the popular Podcast options as well as a YouTube link to the chat too.

The Photography Junkie Podcast: Episode 22

Godox Spotlight - It's in my top 5 best lighting modifiers of all time!

Salacious article title aside, this lighting modifier from Godox is amazing and yes, it really is in my top 5 (maybe top 3) best lighting modifiers of all time… but why?

I’ve been shooting in the studio for over 20 years and during that time, I’d like to think I’ve worked with a huge range of modifiers. No, my opinions on certain modifiers don’t always align with everybody else’s, but I do like to give strong reasoning as to why I love or hate certain light shapers and as I discuss the Godox Spotlight here, I aim to do just that, as although this is arguably one of the best modifiers I’ve ever used, that does come with some very strong caveats.

First off, what is the Godoox Spotlight?

In simplistic terms, the Godox Spotlight very tightly controls your light into a focused beam. This beam is similar to a spotlight you may find on stage or at a theatre for example and the modifiers one very distinctive feature is the large glass lens at the front that is responsible for focusing that beam.

*The Godox Spotlight Attachment is a modifier with a very large glass lens mounted on the front. The light that attaches to it now seems small by comparison.*

*It’s worth noting that it’s the modifier itself that you mount to the light stand, hence why the light attached behind is seemingly free-floating*

There are of course some very obvious benefits to this controlled beam, namely the use of GOBOs (go-betweens) to project shapes and patterns into your scene or onto the subject.

These Gobos have been used for many, many years in cinema and theatre as I mentioned, but they should be used sparingly and in conjunction with other lights for best effects. Whenever you see a gobo being used on set, it’s always coming from one of these very hard-light modifiers.

*Gobos are useful to add shaped shadows to your scenes and subjects and they come in a wide variety of patterns.*

The Spotlight can also sculpt the light without gobos and due to their very hard and focused light, it’s even possible to create simple slits or slices of light too.

*Due to the very controlled nature of the light exiting the spotlights, it’s very easy to shape that light. Here we can see some very precise slices of light as an example.*

As I mentioned, the control of light that these spotlight modifiers have is due to that lens on the front of them and that’s ultimately what makes these modifiers so unique.

*Check out my article where I discuss the properties of hard light in my* *Optical Snoot Review*

Déjà vu - The Optical Snoots

Several years ago, I wrote a very popular article that discussed some of the creative uses that were possible via modifiers called ‘Optical Snoots’. From here we saw a wave of these modifiers being used, abused, adapted and rebranded, but the look that these optical snoots produce seems very similar to what’s possible with this new Godox Spotlight. So what’s the difference?

If you’re new to photography or even just new to creative lighting and missed the optical snoot boat all those years ago, take a look at my updated article from back then that showcased what was possible. This article is good foundational reading too, as with this current Godox Spotlight review, I’ll skip over certain fundamental elements of hard lighting that are discussed in more detail in my Optical Snoot article here.

Baby Spotlight AKA The Optical Snoot

As I mentioned, the Optical Snoot can do a lot that the Spotlight can do, so why do we even need this Spotlight? I think many photographers forget or simply aren’t aware that the Spotlight has been around far, far longer than the Optical Snoot. Remember that these Spotlights have been used in theatres for generations. Comparatively, the Optical Snoot is a relatively modern adaptation of the Spotlight and that happened primarily due to cost and making that type of hard light accessible to photographers with studio strobes. For example, you can get a usable Optical Snoot for around £100, but the Spotlights are often upwards of £400. Sure, there are always exceptions to this and there are bizarrely rebranded Optical Snoots out there that somehow cost more than a £400 Spotlight!!!! But in general, Optical Snoots are typically cheaper.

So yes, you can usually save a bunch of money by buying an Optical Snoot over a Spotlight, so what do we lose to save that money?

Defining Quality of Light

We’re going to get into the weeds of defining light here for a bit, so I apologise in advance, but I do think this should be fundamental knowledge when it comes to understanding why your images may be stuck looking good when you really want to know how to make them look great.

At the start of this article, I mentioned that my thoughts on lighting modifiers don’t always align with others. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll likely know this already, but it’s no secret that I detest softboxes. I know, crazy right? Jake’s surely being a contrarian for the ‘clicks’, but no, I haven’t painted my nails matte-black just yet and there is actually a very important reason as to why I do everything in my power to never use a softbox, and that’s simply down to ‘quality of light’.

Below is an image of a light being shone through a standard softbox and onto a white wall. Next to it, that same light is instead being shone through a standard beauty dish. I’d urge you to look at the resulting light from each of those modifiers as I hope that goes some way in explaining why softboxes are better suited as ashtrays over lighting modifiers.

*Due to their design, softboxes will always produce hotspots when used close to the subject, compared to beauty dishes that almost entirely eliminate it.*

If you’re still unsure of what you’re supposed to be looking at, it’s the significant hotspot present from the softbox on the left compared to a far cleaner and more even spread of light from the beauty dish on the right.

Of course, if you’re happy using your softbox, that’s absolutely fine and in their defence, this hotspot diminishes when we move it further away to enlarge that centre bright spot. But the example still stands in that I’m trying to show you what I’m personally looking to avoid. As I said at the start, we want to be looking at taking our shots from good to great and managing elements like hotspots from our lights is one way to do that.

Quality of Light and Spotlights

So now that we know what we’re looking for and after seeing some examples of it relating to soft light, how does that affect the hard lights? Below I’ll show you some similar examples of how some hard light modifiers, including the Godox Spotlight, compare.

*Click to enlarge: Comparing hard lights and their quality of light.*

On the left, we can see the Godox Spotlight and the resulting light it produces. In the middle we have the Optical Snoot we may already be familiar with and lastly on the right, we have a regular reflector dish with a honeycomb/grid inserted. For reference, these lights are positioned roughly 2 metres from the white-ish wall.

Immediately we can see just how controlled the Godox Spotlight is, as that circle spot is razor sharp with no light going anywhere apart from where it’s supposed to. More importantly, we can see that it’s an extremely even light from edge to edge with no bright centre at all. In contrast to that, we can see the other two modifiers producing a far more gradual pool of light, that seemingly immediately dims from the centre, AKA hot-spotting.

It’s worth noting here that the optical snoot relies on you using a camera lens on the front of it to focus the light, Consequently, the vignetting or hot spotting you see is very dependent on the type of lens you use. Here I’m using a fairly old Nikon 50mm lens that likely vignettes naturally anyway.

Sidebar: You may be looking at the optical snoot versus the regular grid above and be wondering why you’d use the optical snoot over it, after all, they seemingly produce a similar vignette. Remember that the optical snoot is focussing the light with that lens and this results in sharper shadows. This test doesn’t show this aspect particularly well, but if you open up that image and look at the shadows cast on the wall from the stand, you’ll see that the reflector and grid are fuzzy, whereas the optical snoot ones are razor-sharp.

So again, we’re looking for this beautifully ‘clean light’ and this Spotlight does an extremely good job of achieving it. Even from the limited tests I’ve shown you so far, it’s clear that the Spotlight produces some of the hardest-looking light possible, but with this extra knowledge of how clean it is edge-to-edge, this extremely hard-light modifier is far more versatile than you may think.

It’s just a hard light!

As soon as I saw how clean and even the light from this spot was from edge to edge, my brain was immediately struck by how controllable and in turn how versatile this modifier could be. Surely it can do more than shine slices of light and Venetian blind effects across my model.

If you’re curious as to just how diverse this modifier can be, take a look at some of the shots below where I’ve used this Godox Spotlight as either the sole light on set or as a supplemental within a setup.

Click on any of the images below to fit them to your screen.

That’s pretty crazy, right?! Never before have I had a modifier so diverse and adaptable! And we’re not talking about ‘oh, but my softbox can be used with and without a grid to produce different looks’, that’s the sort of weak-sauce marketing tag-lines we’re used to seeing, but this Spotlight can genuinely produce incredibly diverse looks, and bizarrely, it can simultaneously produce some of the hardest light available as well as some of the softest light available! So how is this even possible?

How to think creatively with the Godox Spotlight

Below I will share some of the breakdowns of these setups. I won’t cover them all as this article is already massive enough as is, but I will share a few of the more dramatically different looks we can achieve with this Spotlight.

Keeping it Simple: The Slice of Light

This is the classic and most popular use for a projector/snoot/spotlight that you’ve likely all seen a million times by now, but although a little dated, it’s tough to argue with the results when they look this cool.

*The Spotlight has 4 blades that can be adjusted independently to achieve clean slices of light.*

Just 2 lights, one of which is the Spotlight and that’s casting that slice of light we see on the model and background. One nice little feature of the Godox Spotlight is the internal blades that you can adjust to create these slices of light. I’m not actually using a Gobo here and instead, I’m simply pushing the external blades together until I get the exact slice I’m happy with.

The second light here is a large softbox and inside that is a coloured gel over the flash tube. - Yes I know I said I hate softboxes and that you shouldn’t use them, but as fill-lights, they do a reasonable job if positioned far enough away, plus I actually didn’t use a softbox here, I used my Rotolight AEOS 2 PRO LED light. I appreciate that not all people have access to larger LED panels like this, hence my showing you a large softbox as an alternative just to keep this simple setup as achievable as possible.

One Light Wonder: L.A. Shadow-Light

I’ve joked for many years about the L.A. ‘shadow-light’ as you’ll often see the City of Angels photographers take a subject to the shadow-side of a building to take a portrait. The incredibly bright and harsh sunlight in L.A. doesn’t make for great portraits on its own, but if you bounce that very hard sunlight off of the prolific mid-grey concrete surrounding you, you can get a very beautiful shot. You’re simply turning an incredibly hard light into an incredibly soft light, and that’s exactly what this setup replicates here with the Spotlight.

Simply place the Godox Spotlight directly behind and above your model and point it straight back at you. Then you position 2 large poly-boards or white V-flats on either side of your camera and let that very hard light bounce off of the large pale surfaces next to you, which will then bounce onto the model.

It quite literally doesn’t get any simpler than a one-light setup, but this is a great look and is flattering on anybody due to the unreliably soft light you’re producing with this bounced technique. Yes, you need to be very mindful of flare into the lens, but if you have space to put the spotlight higher up behind your model, this quickly becomes far less of an issue.

Finally, a good Softbox: Spotlight Softbox

My grumblings surrounding softboxes are never based on build quality, size or even that they’re a pain in the ass to setup, my moaning is purely based on the hotspots of light they produce due to the fact the flash is positioned so close to the diffusion in front, there’s simply no way to avoid that hotspot without modifying that direct light in some way. You saw me show you the beauty dish alternative earlier and that all but eliminates the hotspot by bouncing the flash into a diffusion cone first. With this next simple Spotlight setup, we’ll be modifying the light first via the Spotlight lens, but this setup gives us infinitely more options over the one-size beauty dish.

*You can see here that I’ve adjusted the Spotlight blades to make this very clean and crisp square of light on my large scrim.*

This is very simple in practice, but all I’m doing is placing a large scrim in front of my model and then shining the Spotlight through it. I’ve adjusted the Spotlight blades to get the size of square that I want, but this is now simply a softbox. More importantly, it’s a beautifully clean and even light coming from that softbox.

Without the flash being mere inches from the diffusion like regular softboxes and the Spotlight lens doing such an incredible job of spreading the light evenly without a hotspot, we’re left with the ability to make any size softbox (up to the size of your scrim or diffusion material - which is not expensive) and no matter the size, we get clean, even lighting edge to edge!

Toplight Anywhere: Bounced Toplight

A very popular lighting technique, especially in cinema, is to have a large soft light directly above your subject. This can be more focused for a dramatic look, but more often than not, the light above is super-soft and is simply bathes the subject beneath in beautifully soft light. That sounds fantastic in principle, but the reality is often very, very different, after all, not everybody has access to 30ft ceilings and cherrypickers to suspend your softboxes. But, once again, the Godox Spotlight offers us an alternative.

*Here you can see that the Spotlight is perfectly illuminating the bounce-board overhead and again, that’s thanks to the adjustable blades.*

The setup itself is simple; position the Spotlight on the floor and angle it directly up to the bounce board above the model. Adjust the blades so that the Spotlight square of light is only hitting the board and then add a fill light if needed. In this image I’m using a folded white V-flat and supporting it above the model with C-stands. This board is now my light source, but look again at how clean and even that bounced light is above the model. Again I’ll say it, but we have no hotspot on that board and again this results in beautifully clean and even light from directly above the model without the need to actually get a light plus modifier suspended above her. In the BTS above you can see the white V-flat to the edge of frame on camera-left, this is for the fill-light to be bounced into it and this helps to open up some of the heavy shadows caused by the very directional top-light.

Lastly, I’m using the large bounce-board here, but you could just as easily use the white ceiling above if it’s low enough and I’ve already done that on several shoots to great effect. The bounce board here just allows you to get a larger square of light directly above thereby making it appear even softer and with a shorter drop-off.

And it doesn’t stop there….

I know I showed you a bunch of example shots at the start of this article, but I’ll leave the lighting setup explanations there for now to keep this article a manageable size. The ones I’ve shown above quickly showcase just how easily this Spotlight can be manipulated to get some very unique looks, but there are so many other creative ways to use this modifier so if anyone is interested, I’m happy to explain some of the other setups in a future article, just let me know.

Here comes the ‘but’

If you’re still here and have read everything I’ve had to say so far, then it should be clear I’m a huge fan of this modifier. But before you all throw money at the screen, there is one very important caveat to all of this that I need to make you aware of, as it wasn’t something I noticed until I’d used it a few times.

Compatibility

This modifier is touted as an S-fit modifier, or to my more mature readers, a Bowens fit. This is great, right? S-fit has long been by far the most popular lighting mount for decades, so to have this modifier available as an S-fit is great for most of you…. or is it?

As many of you know, in the last couple of years I’ve been transitioning from flash to LED. In fact the vast majority of all my shoots this year have all been shot with LED lights alone. This has largely been possible due to the Rotolight lights that are able to still flash if needed, plus they can do so in any of the 16+ million colours available. LEDs are simply bright enough now that I can comfortably shoot with them in most situations. Sure, there are times when I need to shoot at ISO 200 or 400 (I know, crazy right?!), but the huge number of benefits to shooting with LEDs today, far outstrips the minimal concern of shooting at any ISO above 100.

My point?

I’m getting there, but essentially using the Rotolight panels is all buttercups-and-rainbows right up until I need a hard-light. Panels produce some gorgeous-looking soft light, but no matter how much you try, you aren’t going to get a snoot attachment for them anytime soon. So to combat this problem, I also own a Godox SZ150R. This light is perfect for all my hard-light needs as it also has the complete RGB spectrum as well as the full Kelvin range and all at the twist of a dial. Sadly, this doesn’t flash and although I’d love a little more juice than the base 150 version, it does a very respectable job. Most importantly though, it’s an S-fit light, meaning all of my old Bowens and S-fit modifiers simply slot on the front. The SZ150R coupled with my Rotolight panels, and I can do everything I used to do with my flashes, just now it’s a lot faster and more convenient.

Now that my LED sermon is out of the way, what’s the issue?

Use any S-fit you like… just as long as it’s this one!

When I received my Godox Spotlight, I simply used it on my Godox SZ150R and of course, everything was fine. It wasn’t until I started to use it on a livestream where I was testing out other S-fit heads that I found out it wasn’t compatible with any of them. Here’s why.

Simply put, the magnifying lens at the back of the Godox Spotlight doesn’t leave a lot of room for the bulb from the light you’re attaching to it. It fits beautifully with the Godox S150R and likely all of their other S-fit LED heads, but I’ve yet to find any other flash heads with a small enough bulb that will also fit.

*Click to enlarge - Multiple flash head bulb heights versus the Godox SZ150R bulb height.*

As you can see, it’s close on a lot of these lights, but due to the nature of the glass flash tube cage on most of them, none will actually allow the Spotlight to be affixed. On one of my older strobes (Lumi 200), I was able to use it without the modelling bulb, but without that, it becomes very tricky to use due to the lens at the front of the Spotlight needing to be focused and without any light to do so, it becomes very difficult to use effectively.

There is also the issue of diffusion and how this Spotlight does such a great job of spreading the light edge-to-edge across its beam with almost no hot-spotting. Yes, the huge purpose-built lens on the front plays a large part in this, but so does the SZ150R diffusion dome. Take a look below to see what I mean.

*Click to enlarge - on the left, we have the SZ150R and on the right, we have a traditional torus flash tube*

On the left we have the regular SZ150R as the light source on the Godox Spotlight and on the right, I’m using my old strobe with the modelling bulb removed. So yes, that is flash on the right and ambient on the left, but you can clearly see the dip in light quality thanks to the flash tube shape and lack of diffusion. Using flash would be possible, but the trade-off in light quality across the spot wouldn’t be worth it for me.

I’ve spoken at length to several people online as we tried a variety of ideas to make it work, but ultimately, as it stands right now, using this Spotlight with flash simply isn’t viable in my opinion.

In a pinch, I could manage without a modelling bulb and yes I even purchased mini screw-fit LED bulbs, but they were still too big. In reality though, even if those mini-bulbs did work, I think they would have blocked too much light from the flash as it’s a very tight space at the back of that Spotlight. There were also suggestions to use diffusion gels over the flash tube to soften the light, but I am never okay with having anything sat against or that close to the flash tube like that. Ultimately, this Spotlight was NOT designed for flash. These spotlights have been designed for film and theatre, they are designed for ambient lights like the Godox SZ150R. Remember, we as flash users adapted the Spotlight to make the Optical Snoot all those years ago, so although it is technically possible to use a flash with this, I personally won’t be doing so. I didn’t even feel comfortable firing too many flashes with it attached as it was. Flashes can get notoriously hot if kept in a sealed unit like that and that heat often translates to dark scorch spots on glass which is something I desperately wanted to avoid on the big magnifier in the back of my Spotlight.

Again, this Godox Spotlight was not designed for flash. Yes, it states S-fit on the sales page, but Godox is referring to their ever-growing lineup of S-fit LED heads. This quite literally means it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to S-fit anymore and we need to be more aware of the differences between these LED modifiers as we move forward.

In fact, I think we as photographers will begin seeing more and more of this crossover in the coming years as LEDs become bright enough and in turn, more viable for commercial high-end photography. This was an interesting lesson to learn and as much as I tried to make it work with flash, this Spotlight won’t be doing so to the same quality as the LED head for me.

Spotlight Sizes

If you’re an Optical Snoot owner, you’re likely used to changing the size of your spot by simply changing the lens on the front of your snoot. The Godox Spotlight works in a similar way in that you can swap out the lenses, but they are expensive, purpose-built lenses, so it’s best to choose the right lens for your work when initially purchasing your Spotlight.

The initial choices are 36°, 26° and 19°. I was using the 36° and for me, it was an easy choice.

*This image shows the relative sizes of the 3 available lens choices. The outer ring is my 36° lens and that is placed 2m from the wall.*

The choice was a simple one for me as the 36° lens casts the biggest spot. That is important to me for a number of reasons, but mainly a larger spot allows me to do more with it in small shooting spaces. If you are planning on using this in small studios or even home studios, the larger spot will simply allow you to cast a larger light without having to move the light too far away.

Of course, the opposite is also true. If you’re planning on using this in a theatre or suspending it from the ceiling of a large studio, the smaller spot may be more controllable for you.

Also, even if you choose a larger lens, you could also reduce the size of the spot via the internal blades anyway, so again, the larger one may give you more flexibility.

Are there any downsides to the 36° option?

The only minor downside that I found on the larger lens, was some slight distortions towards the edges of the projected light. This larger lens likely comes with slightly more hot-spotting than the tighter lenses, plus those tighter lenses will also have less noticeable distortions at the edges.

*Click to enlarge - The 36° lens creates the largest spot, but it also has some slight bowing at the corners that would be lessened with the alternate lenses.*

Plus, this huge lens has an extremely shallow depth of field and consequently, along with the slight bowing, the edges will also be slightly softer if you’ve focused on the centre. You can see in the image above that the corners are slightly blurred compared to the sharp centre.

All of this is extremely minor in my opinion as it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever have the Spotlight perfectly parallel to a perfectly flat surface in front of it, nor will I be focusing my camera on the actual projected light either. On top of that, I also rarely use very geometric shapes as you see here, so even if all of the above did happen, you’d likely never see any of it due to the type of light you were projecting. Yes, it’s good to know where the limitations lie, but the larger 36° lens was an easy pick for me.

*Godox Spotlight used as a bounced top-light.*

In Conclusion

This Spotlight genuinely is one of the best modifiers I’ve ever used and yes, it really is in my top 5 if not top 3 modifiers of all time. Its near-flawless edge-to-edge illumination with almost no hotspot is extremely powerful for me and my work. With this incredibly clean light I’m able to not only use it as a regular hard-light, but I’m also able to turn it into one of the softest light sources I own and due to how I achieve that via the bounced light, I’m able to achieve that beautifully soft light in extremely small spaces.

The downside is not insignificant though, as if you don’t already own an S-fit LED light, this Spotlight likely won't fit your current S-fit light. The receiver depth is only ~50mm so check how high your bulb sits first, but again, not many will be shallow enough for this and again I’ll say it, but this modifier was not designed for flash.

If you already have an S-fit LED head that will fit this, the choice is a no-brainer for me as I can’t see how you won't be using it on nearly every shoot. We’ve all spent a few hundred quid on an off-meta focal length lens before that we barely use, this Spotlight certainly won’t be one of those purchases I assure you. I’m still finding new ways to use this Spotlight that I’ve not had chance to share here yet and with so many lighting possibilities, I can’t go back to not having one now.

If you don’t already have a head that would fit this, but you’re already shooting with LED panels like I am, I’d highly recommend you look at getting at least one S-fit LED head as I have for hard-light modifiers like this. I think we’ll start seeing more and more LED modifier crossovers in the coming years as LEDs are getting brighter and brighter every few months. The LED lighting solutions are just so convenient that it's all but inevitable at this point.

PROS

Extremely versatile
Adaptable to many lighting looks
Very clean and even light edge-to-edge
Useful for creating soft light in small spaces
Internal blades allow you to finely define areas of light down to a pinprick of light if needed

CONS

Can only be used effectively with S-fit Godox LEDs
The wider lenses show some distortion on geometric shapes at the edges
Larger lenses have a very shallow depth of field that can result is slightly soft corners
The thing weights a ton! With the 36° lens, it’s about 5.5KG, then you need to hang your light off the back and then you need to attach the entire thing to a light stand. C-Stands are a must for this beast!

A big thank you to Webb Stacy for his tolerance of my obsession with these Spotlights and for providing workarounds and solutions to potential problems. Same goes to Dale for taking the time to offer up varying ideas to make the flash option a reality.

Big thanks as well to the featured model Basia Panecka, as I tested and played with many of these ideas with her for the first time.

Lastly, I promise…

I appreciate I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, but can anyone explain to me why that when attaching the Godox light to the Godox modifier, that they aren’t aligned? See in the shot that no matter how I attach the S-fit at the back, the light is never level at the back and you can see the buttons and dials are skewed as a result. Not a big deal, but I’m obviously missing something as there’s no way it was designed like that…. right?😅

Products Used

Please note that I’ve included affiliate links below for PixaPro and I will benefit (albeit minimally) from the sales of any of these products should you purchase them. To that end, please feel free to use my discount code ‘HICK5-OFF’ at Essential Photo to receive a discount on any purchase via their site.

Godox Spotlight

S-fit spotlight that can be very finely controlled via inbuilt blades or via a range of Gobos. Due to the large lens at the front, this modifier can also produce some of the hardest-looking light available.

Godox Spotlight Link

Godox SZ150R

Essentially this is an LED studio strobe. You can use it with any S-Fit modifiers like beauty dish and softbox you already own, plus you can also change this to any colour and any Kelvin you’d like. It’s only 150 watts though, so you will want to use this in a controlled studio environment.

Godox SZ150R Link

Thank You

As always, thanks for checking out this article and spending a little bit of your day with me here. I hope you found it useful and if you left with a little more knowledge than when you arrived, it’s been worth it.

If you have any questions or comments, or if something doesn’t make sense, by all means, fire away in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer what I can. Thanks again and I’ll see you in the next one.

Don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter to be sent all of these photo tips and techniques articles every month in case you miss one.

JHP Livestreams…

If you give this setup a go, I’d love to see how the shots turn out, so feel free to share them my way. One way to do that is via my Livestream. I Livestream every other Tuesday night via my FB Page and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. JHP Facebook Page

Missed the Livestreams? Check the VODS!

This year I’ve also been uploading my Facebook livestreams to my YouTube channel for those that missed them… or never want to touch Facebook again.

Watch my livestream VODs here: Jake Hicks Photography YouTube

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Budget Studio Flag/Reflector Clamps (Platypus Clamp)

We all know there is a seemingly limitless amount of gear we can get for the studio and clamps seemingly make up a large part of that. We have the crab, duck bill, platypus, Quaker, super, mini… the list goes on and on, and although these clamps all do different things, they all have one thing in common - they can be pricey!

So to save a few quid, here’s an easy-to-find alternative to the somewhat pricey Platypus clamp. All you need look out for is a ‘locking pliers metal clamp’. As to be expected, these have a ton of various names such as ‘vice-grips’, ‘mole-grips’, ‘self-grips’ and more, so if you’re looking for them, be sure to try those key words as well to find the one you’re after.

The ‘metal clamp’ portion isn't to signify you’re looking for one made out of metal, but instead it refers to the nose on these pliers which is designed to hold metal sheets for welding.

Granted, these metal sheet holding clamps don’t have the same size jaws as a true platypus clamp, but if you don’t need to hold large poly-boards on set, these far-cheaper alternatives should have you covered.

What are these clamps for?

What can we use these budget platypus clamps for? Really, anything flat that requires being held in place. For example black-flags on set, reflectors, mirrors and even the product itself if you’re shooting still life.

*These wide-mouthed and flat clamps are great for holding black-flags and reflectors as well as many other flat items on set.*

Why not use a regular clamp instead?

The huge benefit of these particular clamps is the locking capability of the jaws themselves, as you can adjust the width at which they clamp down on something and this the reason these pliers are favoured over simply using a regular clamp. Ordinarily a clamp would grip something by applying pressure to the two very small contact points on either side of the object. The locking pliers are designed to spread that pressure over the surface of its jaws which makes them ideal for holding large flat objects without you crushing them in the clamp or them slipping or falling out, which is usually what would happen with regular clamps.

Grip-Heads

The only other thing we need to make these work on set is a ‘grip-head’. These grip-heads are often found on your C-stands and are extremely common and usually plentiful in all studios, but if you need some, you can buy them separately. Personally though, I’d recommend saving a bit more money and getting a full-blown C-stand that usually comes with 2 of these as well as boom included.

To make the clamp work with your grip-head, simply slot the perfectly shaped and sized handle of the clamp in the boom slot of the grip-head. Job done. This actually works surprisingly well as the clamps tightening screw results in a rounded handle on one side and its this somewhat cylindrical handle that fits perfectly and snuggly in the grip-head.

From here you can then attach that grip-head to any light-stand you have, but for best results and the most flexibility in terms of movement, a C-stand and boom is the best option.

*You can use the pliers and grip-head combo on any lightstand, but the C-stand and boom will give the most precise control*

As I started to light bigger sets and light on location, I’ve been using this budget clamp combo for years and as I mentioned at the top, as long as you dont need to hold huge polyboards up high on set, this little DIY clamp will cover most things flat and is likely a must for many still-life shooters that need to clamp backgrounds or reflectors etc.

It’s certainly not a big investment, so it may well be worth grabbing one or more to have around, especially if you already have the c-stands and grip-heads, this is a no-brainer!

*I’ve been using one of these budget mini-platypus clamps for a while and they are always handy to have on set.*

Purchasing options…

Disclaimer: I know people can be sensitive to me recommending things, so before anyone starts grumbling, there are no affiliate links, codes, vouchers or signups. No sponsorships or promotional content, please choose to either purchase this or not of your free will. I promise you, I do not profit in any way from sharing this information with you for free😂

There are of course lots of places you can purchase these from, here are a couple after I did a quick Google. At the very least it’ll give you an idea for what you should be searching for.

eBay: Welding Clamps Locking Grips C Clamps Locking U Clamp Sheet Metal Fasteners

Price: £10.00

Link: Here

Zoro - 255mm/10" Sheet Metal Locking Clamp

Price: £5.99

Link: Here

Amazon: Welding Clamp Flat Blade Type Quick Release Locking Holder Clasp 10" (255mm)

Price: £10.00

Link: Here

P.S. pls try use to anybody but Amazon

Grip Head

If you don’t have a grip-head, you can get them here at Essential Photo which is where I get all my photo-gear in the U.K.

Essential Photo: 2.5” Replacement Stainless Steel Grip Head For C-Stands

Price: £29.99

Link: Here

Thank You

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Watch my livestream VODs here: Jake Hicks Photography YouTube

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Sunny 16 Presents: The Lighting Lounge 08 Podcast - Colour with Jake Hicks

I sat down with John-Michael on his Lighting Lounge podcast recently and chatted about everything from my style, how I got started in the industry and some of my thoughts on what can take an image from good to amazing in todays market. And yes, I am aware that he spelt colour wrong on the title!

I spoke about how I first started to play with colour out of a necessity to stay sane in a busy studio and how I was able to utilise that colour knowledge to elevate my lighting knowledge in general. I mention this in the episode, but 15 years ago I thought I was already pretty good at studio lighting, it wasn’t until I started to learn coloured lighting that I realised I was actually pretty bad!

Later in the episode we get a little more technical with the principles of light and how colour affects us in imagery. Plus, John is a huge analogue film fan, so we dig into my love of the analogue film side of photography too as we discuss everything from the terrifying experience of using the ridiculously expensive peel-apart film, through to my slightly lazy approach to using film as a means to a beautiful end. Plus, you get to hear me trying to explain a film camera to an 18 year old! Trust me, it’s harder than you think.

If you’d prefer to listen to just the audio, you can do so here on Podbean too… Sunny 16 presents: The Lighting Lounge 08 Jake Hicks Colour

I hope find some useful tidbit of info to take away from this conversation with John and thank you to him and Sunny 16 for having me on the show.

Combining Flash and Ambient with the new Rotolights

We all know what long-exposure photography is right? I think we all have a rough idea, but long exposure shots can vary from half a second to show light trails from moving cars headlights, all the way to multi-hour exposures of galaxies in the night sky. But regardless of the content, the core premise of long-exposure is the camera's shutter being open for an extended period of time. But it’s this long shutter duration that often puts many photographers off.

As photographers we’re taught to keep that shutter as fast as light will allow to keep our subject sharp, failing to do this will result in a blurred subject, right? Well, not necessarily. We can have our shutter open as long as we like and still get a sharp subject, as long as we use flash to freeze them and this is where the creative possibilities of combining flash and ambient light are seemingly limitless.

*Long-exposure photography can take many forms and even if we limit it to just studio portraits there are seemingly limitless possibilities.*

As you can see from the images above, the technique of long exposure portraits in the studio can produce a multitude of looks, but there are a few rules we have to abide by to make sure that not only the subject is sharp, but also clearly visible and not obscured by the surrounding blurring.

To achieve this we need at least one light to flash, this freezes our subject, and one light to not flash. This light should be on continuously throughout the entirety of our shutter duration as it’s this light that produces the blurring effect.

As I mentioned, long-exposure portraits can take on many forms, but for this example, I want to keep it as simple as possible and provide you with a setup that only requires two lights.

The Setup

As I started writing this, I originally began with a section about why I love the ease of use that the Rotolight LED lights provide for long-exposure portraits. And although I think you may find my experiences of transitioning from regular lights to LED useful, I fully appreciate that many of you are already aware of these benefits, hence why you’re here. If you’re interested in hearing my thoughts then by all means continue reading until the end, but for now, let’s dive straight into the technique.

First off, let’s look at the setup…

What you will need

2 x AEOS 2 Pros*
1x Flash Trigger
1x Backdrop
1x Bounce-board/V-Flat/White Sheet/ Large Softbox

*The AEOS 2 Pros aren’t mandatory for this setup, but the new Pro versions will make triggering the flash a little easier. The older AEOS 2 can easily sync via an Elinchrom trigger (which is what I use on my Pros), but the new Pro versions will trigger via a Godox, Profoto, PixaPro and others.

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

Set up backdrop with model close to it.
Place light to camera left, up high and angled down to model - This light is set to flash & Ambient.
Note: Ensure that this light only hits model and not backdrop.
Place second light in front of model and either modify with a large softbox or bounce into a white sheet or V-flat.
Note: This light is set to flash only.

Camera Settings

Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - 105mm f2
Shutter Speed - 0.4 of a Second
Aperture - f2.8
ISO - 100
Kelvin - 4000K~
Focal Length - 105mm

The Results

Click to fit any of the shots below to your screen.

Featured Model: Hayley Mathews

Breaking it down

As I mentioned, this is only two lights, but its effect is certainly very eye-catching and couple that with the colour-shifts that we’re playing with and this can be a very powerful and visually engaging lighting technique indeed.

There are a couple of very important aspects to this setup that I want you to be aware of as failing to apply them will result in more of a visual mess than a stunning portrait.

The Long Exposure Light

In this setup, the ambient light placed off to camera left is the light that cuts across the set and it's this light that is creating the long exposure light-trails effect we see in the final images.

It’s very important that this light does not hit the backdrop and only illuminates the model. To keep the light where you want it, either flag it off like I did or use barn doors to direct the light where you want it.

The reason we only want this light on the model is simple; if that light was hitting the backdrop with the long exposure, the entire shot would be filled with movement. As it is, we only want to strike the model from one side and simply create the long exposure effects from that edge light highlighting the skin. For reference as to where that light should be placed, take a look at the attached image here as it shows what the light is illuminating.

It’s for this reason that most of the model poses will be positioned looking off towards this light. Obviously, if she was to look the other way, the flash wouldn’t hit her and she’d be left in darkness.

Note: This light should be set to ambient as well as flash so it’s this highlight on the skin you see here that will create the long exposure effect.

With the Rotolight lights, we’re able to individually adjust the brightness of both the flash and the ambient light independently, Use this feature to your advantage and play with varying brightnesses of each to find what works for you. More ambient light will produce more light trails which could look cool but it could also dominate the shot.

The Flash Fill

The second light in this setup is set to flash only. Make sure that this light is not producing any ambient light as it’ll overpower and ruin the image if it does.

This second light is a soft light and you can either use a softbox or bounce it into a white V-flat like I did, but even a white sheet will work. The reason this is a soft light is so that we can illuminate the entire scene with this light without it overpowering our long exposure light.

Take a look at the accompanying image here. In this shot, the flash from the model has not fired so you can clearly see what the soft fill light is doing without it. Note that the ambient light from that model light is still present so we still get the long exposure effect in this shot.

This image is a good example of how much that flash from the model light to camera-left is actually doing, as without it, the image is very flat and lifeless.

Are you new to Rotolight Flash?

If you’re new to the Rotolight flash function then there are a couple of things to bear in mind that may help you as the way these lights control flash power is very different to regular strobes.

First, let’s take a look at the new flash menu on the AEOS 2 Pro (this is the same menu as the NEO 3 Pro too)

On the touchscreen we can access everything we need from this one menu - This may seem minor, but I love the fact that we don’t need to go multiple menus deep to access things!

Flash Trigger - From here we can access what flash trigger we’re using to fire the Rotolight Flash

Flash Power - This controls the brightness of the flash

Ambient Brightness - This controls the ambient LED power, or modelling light if you’re coming from the strobe world

Flash Group - We can dedicate certain lights to specific groups and this can make adjusting the lights from the trigger easier if we have a lot of lights we want to change simultaneously

Flash Duration - This is a new feature for myself coming from strobes as with LEDs being an electrically controlled flash, we can dictate exactly how long we want the flash to be on during the exposure

Kelvin Value - Here we can control the Kelvin of the light - Note that this is also where we access all of the RGB colours too

Flash Triggers

If you were curious about what flash triggers are supported, here are the ones available as of the time of writing this. I only say that now as more have been added in firmware updates over time so there may be even more triggers supported when you read this.

Godox, Profoto, Pixapro, Photix, Neewer, Yongyuo and Raven …and no, I haven’t heard of a Raven Trigger either!

Flash Powers

This is one area that is a little different to many strobes, but certainly more common on speedlights. The flash power on the Rotolights is displayed in fractions… mostly.

From lowest to highest power; x16, x8, 1/2, MAX and MAX+. I’m assuming the x16 and x8 are fractions, but for space reasons, they wrote it like this…. and yes I double-checked and no there isn’t a 1/4!

Note: One extra point here is that if you have your ambient power set to 0%, the flash won’t trigger at the x8 and x16 values. I’m sure I was told a reason for this, but it escapes me now. This is never an issue though as we have a lot more flash power control with the flash duration function too.

Flash Duration

I feel like I’ve used a ton of different lights over the years, but this is a new setting for me. Flash duration does exactly what you might imagine and you can indeed easily select how long you want your flash duration to be. How is this useful? Well, it actually gives us a ton of extra control over the flash ‘power’.

The flash duration settings of the Rotolights range from 1/50th of a second all the way up to 1/2500th of a second and this gives us a ton of fine-tuning when it comes to power. How? Because depending on our camera's shutter speed, the duration with which the Rotolight is actually flashing its flash power will affect how bright it appears in our shot.

For example, I shoot most of my images with a camera shutter speed of around 1/125th of a second, which means that any flash durations above that setting (faster than 1/125th) will be caught in my exposure and I can use those settings to adjust the apparent brightness of the light in that exposure.

For example, let’s say I took a shot with my camera set to 1/250th of a second, but I set my Rotolight to have a flash duration of 1/500th. The Rotolight would only be producing light for half of my exposure time compared to if I’d set my light to the same as my shutter speed at 1/250th. This may take a bit of getting used to, but it's actually a very useful way to control power once you start playing with it.

TL;DR Rotolight Flash Settings

Set your Rotolight to the trigger you have. Make sure you have a flash duration that’s faster than your camera’s shutter speed and then set the flash power as required.

To achieve the brightest flash power from your Rotolights: Set your Flash Power to MAX+ and your Flash Duration to 1/50th

To achieve the lowest flash power from your Rotolights: Set your Flash Power to x16 (must have ambient brightness to set to at least 1%) and set your Flash Duration to 1/2500th.

Back to the Lighting Setup…

Adding the Colour

Some of you may have noticed a lot of blue light in these images and wondered where that was coming from. There’s actually nothing too complicated going on here and you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to, but I have my model flash light set to a different Kelvin value than my fill light - Take a look at the lighting diagram again to see which light is set to what Kelvin. In fact, if you just look at the two example images here, you’ll see that the flash one is more orange than the ambient one which is clearly very blue. This Kelvin mixing technique is something that I play with a lot, but again you don’t have to. If you do want to give it a try though, I’d suggest keeping the flash at a similar Kelvin value to your camera and then setting your fill flash to be a lot cooler.

Adding the Movement

Up until now, all I’ve done is explain where everything is placed and what settings to use. If you took a picture at this stage and did nothing else, you may be less than impressed by the results. Why? Well, it's because we’ve yet to add the movement as it's this movement that actually creates the long exposure ‘effect’ we’re trying to achieve.

If you’re still following along, then it’s the flash/ambient light to camera left pointed at the model that will be creating these effects, so how do we make them? At this stage, you could set your camera to 1/125th of a second and take some beautiful portraits, but if we want to add the long exposure effect, we need to increase the exposure time. To begin with, I’d recommend about half a second. You can increase or decrease that time based on preference, but that half a second will give us a very prominent effect for now.

Now that you’ve got a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds, you need to move the camera around once you hit the shutter. This will take some getting used to at first, but you simply compose the shot, press the shutter, the flash will fire, but then you immediately need to start moving the camera.

When that shutter is open for that half second, your camera will see the highlights on the skin created by the ambient light from your model light and it will start to paint light streaks across your frame.

It’s this aspect of the shot that is most creative and you’ll need to experiment with a variety of camera movements to get a look that you like… just don’t ever expect to get the same effect twice.

Points to Remember

Make sure that ambient light only falls on the model - Failing to do this will result in a blurry mess all over where you really only want the light trails from the shine on the skin to be visible.
The light trails will be most visible on highlights - As you can see from the shots I took, the light trails really pop on shiny skin. Consider this when setting up the shot and adding shiny jewellery is also a great way to add extra effect too.
Experiment with camera movements - I’ve been doing this technique for a while so I kinda know what works best, but I recommend you try a bunch of camera movements with shutter open to see what works for you. Consider small movements as well as large movements, zoom in and out, up and down etc.
Don’t stress about the colour shifting to begin with - I’ve shown you how to add a bit of colour via Kelvin shifting in this technique, but if you’re doing this for the first time, I wouldn’t overcomplicate things. To start, I’d recommend you just stick to all the lights and camera being the same Kelvin value and somewhere around 4000K-5000K is a good spot.

Rotolight and Me

Below are some of my thoughts on what these new LED Rotolights are bringing to the table and I know many of you already know this, but if you’re new here then I’ll add my disclaimer that states that I’m currently a Master of Light for Rotolight. That simply means that Rotolight deem me good enough to use their lights to their fullest potential and that I have the ability to share my thoughts on them via socials and in-person training.

Older long exposure shots like this one were obviously possible with tungsten lights, but when you have to layer multiple gels to first colour correct the orange tungsten to flash before you can then gel the light with a different colour, it was a real pain. Not to mention extremely likely that your multiple gels would overheat and melt. LEDs that can flash simply make all this obsolete!

Lighting Revolution

This long exposure technique is far from new and I was doing something similar to this 25 years ago at art college. However, in previous years I would use a studio strobe to flash, but then I’d need an alternative light to produce the ambient light. Historically these were always tungsten lights and they were a real pain to use. In case you aren’t aware, the old tungsten lights produced light by passing a current through one of the strongest metals available to us, tungsten. The current passing through this metal would literally make the metal glow bright orange and this is what created the illumination. This seems simple enough and we used tungsten lights for many, many years, but there were significant downsides to these lights. Firstly, if you’re passing power through metal with enough force to make it glow extremely bright, that metal is going to be extremely hot as a byproduct. This made operating these lights a nightmare for obvious reasons, but the other major issue of super-heated metal is its bright orange glow!

Remember that this orange glow is very different to the cool blue tone of flash, so to make these ambient lights look good in shot alongside flash, you’d often have to neutralise that orange colour like you see me doing in the shots above. This meant placing colour-balancing coloured gels (thin sheets of plastic) in front of the lights. As you may well imagine, these sheets melted extremely quickly and were just a pain to work with for extended periods.

Are you starting to see why long-exposure studio photography isn’t very popular yet?

LED Revolution

Unless you’re relatively new to planet Earth, you’ll likely be aware that LED lighting has been dominating the photography scene for a while now. Sure, flash still has its place, but LEDs bring an awful lot of convenience to the table and especially when it comes to long-exposure photography.

Firstly, LEDs are infinitely cooler to run than tungsten and you can have a decently powered LED on for hours and it still be cool enough to touch. Secondly, seeing as you’re not forcing lightning bolts along thin strips of metal, you’re no longer producing bright orange light as a result. Just these two things alone now make long exposure photography a breeze, but there are yet more benefits to be had with the right lights.

Rotolight and RGB

For the last year or so I’ve been using the new Rotolight LEDs and as someone who uses an awful lot of colour in their photography, these lights are a dream-come-true. Why? Because the Rotolight LEDs can offer me a full 16 million colour RGB spectrum at the twist of a dial! So now I have cool running lights that won’t give me third-degree proxy burns AND they aren’t producing an egressive orange glow that would make a TOWIE girl blush in the process!

Are you starting to see why this will make our long exposure life extremely easy now?

But wait, there’s more…

Ordinarily, most people purchase LED lights to escape the nightmares and difficulty that flash can provide. But if we want to shoot some cool-looking long-exposure portraits, sadly we still have to use flash to freeze the subject. Once again Rotolight has us covered though as not only do their lights provide full RGB spectrum ambient lights, but those same lights can flash in the full RGB spectrum too! To my knowledge, I think this is the only LED light on the market to actually flash in any colour you want.

Now look, I appreciate this sounds like I’m overly gushing over these lights and although I’d ordinarily let our American counterparts do the uncouth work of telling you that these lights are ‘the greatest things ever made and you need to buy them immediately’, let me put my British stoicism on hold for a moment and just add that these lights are quite simply ‘lighting on easy-mode’!

If you’ve ever fused flesh-to-bulb or melted a box of gels on tungsten lights in the past (firstly, welcome to being old like me), then you’ll appreciate just how easy these LED lights make your life today. So yes, I’m very impressed with these lights, but you have to also remember what we had to use in the past. You young-uns don’t know how easy you’ve got it!

Many of you have been following my work on here for over a decade and in that time you’ve seen me working with all manner of lights. When I originally started working with these Rotolights over a year ago, I actually had no intention of completely dropping my old studio strobes….. but truth-be-told, I barely use them anymore.

Products Used…

Although I am sharing my own personal thoughts and findings about the lights mentioned in this article, many of you will want to know that I am now a ‘Master of Light’ for Rotolight. As such, I have been given a discount code to share with you when purchasing any of their products via the Rotolight website. Use my code ‘JAKEHICKS10’ when purchasing and you’ll save a bunch of money. I’ve never earned a penny of commission on this though, so if you find a better deal elsewhere, go for it.

Rotolight AEOS 2 PRO

With the AEOS 2 PRO, the world is your studio. Combining the shoot what you see benefits of powerful continuous light with a High Speed RGBWW strobe, AEOS 2 PRO offers unmatched versatility for photographers and filmmakers. Uniquely lightweight with an ultra-thin design, it’s never been easier to achieve beautiful soft light on the move.

AEOS 2 PRO Website Link