As someone who designed learning content for thirty years, I feel compelled to tell you that you did a great job. The scope of the clear and you developed it for a specific audience. Your delivery and editing made the content easy to understand. I am new to studio lighting. The video confirmed my understanding of some things and suggested some new approaches. I was already a subscriber but will be on the lookout for more videos from you.
Great video as always Emily!! One thing I wanted to note/share for beginners, is that you must take into account the space you're shooting in. In the setup at 8:19 the white ceiling is maybe a foot above the light, so the ceiling is bouncing a ton to light back down onto the set. This can be good or bad depending on the situation and what you want..and in Emily and Brandi's case.. they've mastered their space!! I bring this up, because I once had a client with a small white room that we shot their ecomm in. After 4 years we switched to a much larger space w no white walls, and instead, was a storage space w racks of clothes. When I setup my lights the exact way I had done for 4 years, the light looked totally different!!! I had been getting so much fill from the walls and ceiling that was just gone, and I had to make use of my last 2 lights to try and make it look as close as possible.. it was really stressful to have a client that wants to be shooting in 10 minutes, while asking why the current shot doesn't look like the previous ones! :P
Thanks for pointing that out for us newbies. I was playing with my new umbrella yesterday and a small space with all white walls but I had a backdrop hung on one side and I noticed a difference by doing it on the white wall compared to doing it on the backdrop immediately. 😉
I FULLY agree with LaneMaine! GREAT video! Professional, simple, well spoken, easy to follow, GREAT examples and you explained EXACTLY what is going on. Thank you so much for this. I will be looking for more from you.
So simple, yet so effective. This can be done on a really low budget with smaller umbrellas and a Speedlight. I'm going to recommend this video to my students.
Dropping gems and making me want to empty my bank account for lighting grear, as usual. Nice work! (My two favorite setups were the overhead lighting and clamshell)
Great intro to umbrellas and one setup I've never seen: umbrella partially exposed behind the background with a hair-light and the v-flat. Great video - Clear, concise content, thanks Emily!
Very great ideas, I need to try the overhead setup sometime and I think that I might add a reflector to that underneath like you did on the last setup. Thanks for shearing.
Thanks for this useful video Emily. I, too, like the hollow cheek look and often use a similar set-up to your last one. Sometimes I substitute the silver reflector on the table, for a white one, to give me a more gentle fill.
This is a excellent video Emily. So nice to see you make videos for Adorama on a more consistent basis. Your information is very good. All of your lighting setups are excellent. The first, and second lighting setups are the ones I like. Although, the 2nd lighting is the one I like the most. That is very beautiful lighting on your model. Excellent examples on showing how to use those two types of lighting. I like to request for future videos. If you have a beauty dish. It would be interesting to see how you would use a beauty dish in different ways with a model. I hope that can be something to see from You. Again, excellent video. Keep up the good work. You are doing great.
What a fun episode. Thanks @emilyteague I appreciate these lighting examples. I was waiting with baited breath to hear if you had to bump up the power or change any settings and you came in at the end and update what you had to do for compensation to the changes in light. Wonderful (I hope you can get away from the "c" anon gear because "Ewww David" ;) .. (Seriously, joking, it's in my nature) .. I ordered a pair of umbrellas for this weekend at my niece's engagement party .. So many ideas, I hope she doesn't take my camera away :) ..
GREAT JOB! I liked the clam shell and the one where the umbrella was behind the backdrop....thinking if you would combine the 2....that would be great....you'd have a hair light then, but I know this is a one light photo shoot. I only have one light and one umbrella.
Great, simple setups and well explained. I'm a little confused about the exposure here. Maybe it's a matter of reading the video (or the histogram is different to what I'm used to) but it feels like her skin is underexposed and there is a lot of data in the bottom quadrant. The final shot seems the closest to me. Is this just a matter of taste? Personally, I would probably shoot about a stop above where you do, even if I was going to drop it down a little after.
Always dig your videos and detailed explanations, Emily! One gear question for you: where did you find that posing table? Is something that like that available from Adorama? Did you have yours made for you?
Hi Emily, Great vid as usual. Glad to hear you are a regular with adorama . I was wondering if you were on location if you would use these. Is there one that you would prefer on location? Would you prefer softboxes to umbrellas on location? I travel a lot to places for shoots. sometimes outside and sometimes inside, Interested in how you would approach that. Thanks.
HI Emily, I love how you explain the process and how you break down lighting. So glad that I found your UA-cam videos! I have used my beauty dish, right overhead with really good results. One question. Those V flats, are they from V Flat world? I'm thinking of ordering from them, just want to know the quality and durability. Love your work and looking forward to more ! Thanks!
Hi Darryl! Thank you so much. To answer your question- There were some minor adjustments made in Capture One for contrast mainly and included was warming the image slightly. That's just my personal preference for the warmth in my portraits.
Great vid! What light are you using btw? Also instead of a V Flat do you suppose a large rectangular diffuser could have the same impact? Or not enough bounce back since its fabric? I just feel it would be more portable
Hi Emily nice umbrella video. can we use a small soft box(24") to simulate a beauty dish? if we do would be great to get your point of view on a video. thanks
Most photographers who get interested in portrait lighting often start with umbrellas because they are the cheapest option and easy to use with Speedlights but that is less the case now than in the early 2000s to the availability and lower cost of battery operated studio flashes and soft boxes. Back in 2004 I spent over $3,000 equipping a home studio with four low cost Alien Bee B800 320WS lights and a full range of modifiers. The problem with umbrellas in a small space typical of a hobbyist is they spill so much light everywhere it becomes very difficult to control the results and for a beginner understand what is being contributed directly and what is being contributed by bounce off ceiling and walls. Like Star Trek space is the final frontier for lighting and few until they become very successful pros have the cavernous open studio space one needs to use large modifiers with dealing with extraneous fill. I dealt with it in my permanently set-up basement studio by draping the walls with black King flat sheets I was able to buy separately at Walmart.
@Emily Teague Thank you for sharing this ;-) QUICK QUESTION: I want to have a good versatile modifier to use for branding photoshoots indoor and in dfferent environments. It has to catch the person and the environment/room (not necessarily the entire room but like for instance a ceramist working in her workspace - close ups and full body + a bit of environmen.). I have already a white shoot-through umbrella around 100 cm and a Godox 120 cm octabox. I am considering getting a 135/150 cm white interior bounce umbrella (doin't know what it's called but where the flash is pointing in to the umbrella and not towards the model) with diffusion since I have an idea this would spread the light better than the two options I have now and use for other purposes. What are your thoughts? For lights I have 1 Godox AD 600B + 1 Godox AD200.
My guess is that most professionals like her don't use hand-held flash meter. And I do not think you can get the meter reading using the meter on your camera to determine the power setting on your strobe. When I use strobe lights in a studio setting, I set the camera on manual mode, widest aperture on the lens, shutter speed of 1/125, and an I.S.O. of 100. Then I adjust the power of my strobe at its lowest setting and go from there, making it higher if needed. Or in a cheating mode, set the hand-held light meter on flash incident mode with an ISO of 100, and shutter speed set at 125 (same settings on the camera on manual mode), take a test shot with the lowest power setting on your strobe and check the reading on your hand-held light meter.
In photography we have a language especially when it comes to light and it's patterns in-case others may want to duplicate the image to not speak in those terms(short,broad,split,loop,etc...) is doing a disservice to the craft.
Thanks so much for the neutrality of the 5 set-ups. I will say that when you went overhead I started to cringe a bit. And I stayed cringe until about the fourth set-up. It was then that I considered putting all the concepts of the video together with the 5 set-ups and really picking apart which lighting technique suits the viewer...or combination of the techniques. So I'm all smiles and not cringing and think the video gives the viewer choices with demonstrable examples. Personally I haven't really lit a subject from far behind like that and bounced off a v-flat - this was interesting and I have some further ideas that this set-up may inspire. Nice video and I appreciate you for taking the time to share you knowledge - thanks so much! 😀
I feel she needs to lower the power a notch, the light is not really soft and beautiful it's actually kind of harsh at 5:15. Take a look a Gregory Heisler portraits of Lester Brown and Samdech Preah in 50 Portraits and you'll see what soft like looks like. One thing I like to do is to place the light as close as the subject as possible, barely out of the frame. This way the subject is "wrapped" in the light and it looks softer, contrary to our intuition that the closer the light the harsher (another great teaching of Heisler).
Hope you all enjoy!
Thanks for such clear concise explanation!
Thanks Emily.
yep! Thanks for the video Emily!
enjoyed watching. Love umbrellas. Thank you Emily
We did thank you
As someone who designed learning content for thirty years, I feel compelled to tell you that you did a great job. The scope of the clear and you developed it for a specific audience. Your delivery and editing made the content easy to understand.
I am new to studio lighting. The video confirmed my understanding of some things and suggested some new approaches.
I was already a subscriber but will be on the lookout for more videos from you.
Great video as always Emily!!
One thing I wanted to note/share for beginners, is that you must take into account the space you're shooting in.
In the setup at 8:19 the white ceiling is maybe a foot above the light, so the ceiling is bouncing a ton to light back down onto the set.
This can be good or bad depending on the situation and what you want..and in Emily and Brandi's case.. they've mastered their space!!
I bring this up, because I once had a client with a small white room that we shot their ecomm in. After 4 years we switched
to a much larger space w no white walls, and instead, was a storage space w racks of clothes. When I setup my lights the
exact way I had done for 4 years, the light looked totally different!!! I had been getting so much fill from the walls and ceiling that was
just gone, and I had to make use of my last 2 lights to try and make it look as close as possible.. it was really stressful to have a client that
wants to be shooting in 10 minutes, while asking why the current shot doesn't look like the previous ones! :P
Thanks for pointing that out for us newbies. I was playing with my new umbrella yesterday and a small space with all white walls but I had a backdrop hung on one side and I noticed a difference by doing it on the white wall compared to doing it on the backdrop immediately. 😉
I FULLY agree with LaneMaine! GREAT video! Professional, simple, well spoken, easy to follow, GREAT examples and you explained EXACTLY what is going on. Thank you so much for this. I will be looking for more from you.
So simple, yet so effective. This can be done on a really low budget with smaller umbrellas and a Speedlight. I'm going to recommend this video to my students.
No joke, but this is legit some good shit on UA-cam. Very insightful, on point and visual.
I like how you explain the different set up and how it change on the light and shadow effects.
Dropping gems and making me want to empty my bank account for lighting grear, as usual. Nice work! (My two favorite setups were the overhead lighting and clamshell)
The most accurate comment here. Haha
Great intro to umbrellas and one setup I've never seen: umbrella partially exposed behind the background with a hair-light and the v-flat. Great video - Clear, concise content, thanks Emily!
I try to watch Emily video since it well made. Wish her great success this year and next year. Thank you Emily and Adorama for great content.
I would LOVE some long format stuff from you. Emily is awesome!
Awesome vid! Simply illustrated, concise and clear. Thank you. 🙏🏾
Nice video , I think you are using your umbrellas as large soft boxes when you have a diffuser over the front of them!
Very great ideas, I need to try the overhead setup sometime and I think that I might add a reflector to that underneath like you did on the last setup. Thanks for shearing.
Thank you for this video. Concise comparison of various umbrella setups. Please do more!
Thank You Emily! You've given me some fun ideas to try. I didn't notice the shadow cast on the left side of the model face until you called it out.
I like the clamshell best! 😊
Same here. I have mine U-shaped, with wheels, and bought used.
Great job Emily, Really loved the last two setups.
Thanks for this useful video Emily. I, too, like the hollow cheek look and often use a similar set-up to your last one. Sometimes I substitute the silver reflector on the table, for a white one, to give me a more gentle fill.
I watch this 100 times ! Dropping tons of Gems !
Emily, this was skillfully done. Ideas I can use and apply. Great balance between you and your model.
This is a excellent video Emily. So nice to see you make videos for Adorama on a more consistent basis. Your information is very good. All of your lighting setups are excellent. The first, and second lighting setups are the ones I like. Although, the 2nd lighting is the one I like the most. That is very beautiful lighting on your model. Excellent examples on showing how to use those two types of lighting. I like to request for future videos. If you have a beauty dish. It would be interesting to see how you would use a beauty dish in different ways with a model. I hope that can be something to see from
You. Again, excellent video. Keep up the good work. You are doing great.
Great creative use of a simple modifier thanks. I would like to see how the lighting might change with a model wearing glasses.
I love a good overhead light! Great video especially about the bouncing light with vflat for the light behind the backdrop.
Thank you love this video and lighting recipes.. Will definitely incorporate them in my next shoot
I'd love to hear how it goes!! :D
@ Emily Teague your videos are freaking awesome. I love how much I get out of them.
That makes me so happy to hear!! Thank you!!! :))
Such a great informative video, the umbrella above but forward of the model is the outstanding take away.
Many thanks for sharing
Thanks for all the great tips, Em!
So happy you enjoyed!! ^_^
What a fun episode. Thanks @emilyteague I appreciate these lighting examples. I was waiting with baited breath to hear if you had to bump up the power or change any settings and you came in at the end and update what you had to do for compensation to the changes in light. Wonderful (I hope you can get away from the "c" anon gear because "Ewww David" ;) .. (Seriously, joking, it's in my nature) .. I ordered a pair of umbrellas for this weekend at my niece's engagement party .. So many ideas, I hope she doesn't take my camera away :) ..
Great video! I just purchased a Photek soft lighter and this is so helpful! Thank you!
Tjank you so much, will try all them all!
Great class!
Great sharing of tips. Have to acquire some V-Flats ...
Four and five my favorites. Good job 👏
Love the compare and contrast. Great video!
Very cool video, i like the set-ups 2, 3 and 5.
Thanks
great job and thanks for your advice. now i need to try it.
Dear Emily, thank you for the informative video. Will use a speed light and see the result. Cheers and Happy New Year.
GREAT JOB! I liked the clam shell and the one where the umbrella was behind the backdrop....thinking if you would combine the 2....that would be great....you'd have a hair light then, but I know this is a one light photo shoot. I only have one light and one umbrella.
Awesome refresher course. Hope to see more videos from you and your team. Thanks.
Good job, simple and affective.
Another great video. Very clear. Love your teaching style!
Great video! So many different options to use my umbrella
Nicely done! Thanks for sharing!
very useful. thanks for the video...
Very useful content Emily! Thank you for your precious vids 😊
Good job team
Thank you for sharing
Well done, thanks for sharing. 🙏🏾✨
Great, simple setups and well explained.
I'm a little confused about the exposure here. Maybe it's a matter of reading the video (or the histogram is different to what I'm used to) but it feels like her skin is underexposed and there is a lot of data in the bottom quadrant. The final shot seems the closest to me. Is this just a matter of taste? Personally, I would probably shoot about a stop above where you do, even if I was going to drop it down a little after.
the model so gorgeous...☺
Always love clamshell
Very informative! Thank you.
Great job, thanks for sharing!! 🙂
Nice! You are a great educator.
The class was worth it
Great video thankyoy
Great video Emily. One question: Did the silver reflector inside the umbrella emphasize the specular highlights on her skin?
Very helpful , thank you ❤
useful info
Always dig your videos and detailed explanations, Emily! One gear question for you: where did you find that posing table? Is something that like that available from Adorama? Did you have yours made for you?
I thought EXACTLY the same thing. The video is truly excellent. The examples, top-notch. But....WHERE DID YOU GET THAT TABLE!!? :-)
What are you using for the video light, it looks very soft and properly diffused without spilling over
Kindly guide
Hi Emily, Great vid as usual. Glad to hear you are a regular with adorama . I was wondering if you were on location if you would use these. Is there one that you would prefer on location? Would you prefer softboxes to umbrellas on location? I travel a lot to places for shoots. sometimes outside and sometimes inside, Interested in how you would approach that. Thanks.
HI Emily, I love how you explain the process and how you break down lighting. So glad that I found your UA-cam videos! I have used my beauty dish, right overhead with really good results. One question. Those V flats, are they from V Flat world? I'm thinking of ordering from them, just want to know the quality and durability. Love your work and looking forward to more ! Thanks!
Thanks much Emily!
Great tutorial Emily😁
Always enjoy your videos! I do have a question about how you set your white balance. I noticed that the Kelvin Temp was 6029/
Hi Darryl! Thank you so much. To answer your question- There were some minor adjustments made in Capture One for contrast mainly and included was warming the image slightly. That's just my personal preference for the warmth in my portraits.
Thank you very much.
AMAZING
Awesome 👏🏾
Great vid! What light are you using btw?
Also instead of a V Flat do you suppose a large rectangular diffuser could have the same impact? Or not enough bounce back since its fabric? I just feel it would be more portable
Thanks ❤
Great video!
SUPER. SUPER , THE BEST VIDEOS
நன்றாக இருக்கிறது வாழ்த்துக்கள் R.MANOHAR- INDIA,* CHENNAI
10:48, Super! 👌
Hi Emily nice umbrella video. can we use a small soft box(24") to simulate a beauty dish? if we do would be great to get your point of view on a video. thanks
Most photographers who get interested in portrait lighting often start with umbrellas because they are the cheapest option and easy to use with Speedlights but that is less the case now than in the early 2000s to the availability and lower cost of battery operated studio flashes and soft boxes. Back in 2004 I spent over $3,000 equipping a home studio with four low cost Alien Bee B800 320WS lights and a full range of modifiers.
The problem with umbrellas in a small space typical of a hobbyist is they spill so much light everywhere it becomes very difficult to control the results and for a beginner understand what is being contributed directly and what is being contributed by bounce off ceiling and walls. Like Star Trek space is the final frontier for lighting and few until they become very successful pros have the cavernous open studio space one needs to use large modifiers with dealing with extraneous fill. I dealt with it in my permanently set-up basement studio by draping the walls with black King flat sheets I was able to buy separately at Walmart.
Any experience with the StellaPro Reflex lights. Looming for morenof that
❤️🙏🏻
I enjoy your videos sooo much!! I learn a lot every time 😀
@Emily Teague Thank you for sharing this ;-) QUICK QUESTION: I want to have a good versatile modifier to use for branding photoshoots indoor and in dfferent environments. It has to catch the person and the environment/room (not necessarily the entire room but like for instance a ceramist working in her workspace - close ups and full body + a bit of environmen.). I have already a white shoot-through umbrella around 100 cm and a Godox 120 cm octabox. I am considering getting a 135/150 cm white interior bounce umbrella (doin't know what it's called but where the flash is pointing in to the umbrella and not towards the model) with diffusion since I have an idea this would spread the light better than the two options I have now and use for other purposes. What are your thoughts? For lights I have 1 Godox AD 600B + 1 Godox AD200.
Did you use a handheld light meter or the meter in your camera to determine the power settings on your flash?
My guess is that most professionals like her don't use hand-held flash meter. And I do not think you can get the meter reading using the meter on your camera to determine the power setting on your strobe. When I use strobe lights in a studio setting, I set the camera on manual mode, widest aperture on the lens, shutter speed of 1/125, and an I.S.O. of 100. Then I adjust the power of my strobe at its lowest setting and go from there, making it higher if needed. Or in a cheating mode, set the hand-held light meter on flash incident mode with an ISO of 100, and shutter speed set at 125 (same settings on the camera on manual mode), take a test shot with the lowest power setting on your strobe and check the reading on your hand-held light meter.
In photography we have a language especially when it comes to light and it's patterns in-case others may want to duplicate the image to not speak in those terms(short,broad,split,loop,etc...) is doing a disservice to the craft.
Thanks so much for the neutrality of the 5 set-ups. I will say that when you went overhead I started to cringe a bit. And I stayed cringe until about the fourth set-up. It was then that I considered putting all the concepts of the video together with the 5 set-ups and really picking apart which lighting technique suits the viewer...or combination of the techniques. So I'm all smiles and not cringing and think the video gives the viewer choices with demonstrable examples. Personally I haven't really lit a subject from far behind like that and bounced off a v-flat - this was interesting and I have some further ideas that this set-up may inspire. Nice video and I appreciate you for taking the time to share you knowledge - thanks so much! 😀
👏👏👏❤️❤️❤️
thanks...
I feel she needs to lower the power a notch, the light is not really soft and beautiful it's actually kind of harsh at 5:15. Take a look a Gregory Heisler portraits of Lester Brown and Samdech Preah in 50 Portraits and you'll see what soft like looks like. One thing I like to do is to place the light as close as the subject as possible, barely out of the frame. This way the subject is "wrapped" in the light and it looks softer, contrary to our intuition that the closer the light the harsher (another great teaching of Heisler).
First
Well done ;)
Where is the detail in her hair? It's all just one big shadowed mass.
That will be on her next class, adding more lights.
This woman has no sense of distance. “The light is about a foot away from her”… when the like is like 4 feet away 🤷🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
At least u used funny emojiis to cushion your words. She meant the edge of the umbrella was a foot away, vertically.
Hi Jose. Frank already said it, but yes- I'm talking about the edge of my modifier. Sorry I didn't make that more clear.
You really are bad a judging distances.