Kitty Center

I have been stumbling around trying to figure out how to teach myself something I need to know about lighting. I am going to tell you about my process so far. Equipment and accessory acquisition seems to have taken forever. I am still waiting for stuff to arrive UPS.

I have purchased so far an on camera flash diffuser, an air blower, lens cloths, a Sekonic light meter, Bescor LED light, adapter for light, two different sizes of reflectors. I need to order or make a bender for my strobe. I am considering buying a new strobe. Mine is old and cheap.

Above is what I have been using to take pictures.

Here are some of the mentioned additions.

So I thought I would test out the on camera flash diffusers at 400 iso, 1/40 shutter, and f-3.5.

Without diffuser:

With white diffuser:

With yellow diffuser:

With blue diffuser:

I found the diffusers to mute the light so I tried a lower shutter speed with lighter results.  iso400, 1/30 shutter, and f-3.5.

With white diffuser:

With yellow diffuser:

With blue diffuser:

It’s pretty neat. I went to a wedding on Sunday and used the white diffuser for the first time. It did a good job. I usually get really washed out skin with my on camera flash. I also get the moans from my subjects being blinded by my flash. The diffuser helped with that a little bit. Here is an out of camera shot I took at the wedding with the white diffuser. Now I did not use manual mode because the light was really low and I wanted to capture as much as possible without thinking so I set the camera  mode on auto.

At the wedding:

I like how the diffuser allows their skin to look real and healthy and not like washed out vampire demons emerging  from the darkness.

This is what the room looked like without flash:

There was a photographer there. I spoke with him about chatting about lighting at a later time. He agreed to meeting me at some point and discussing lighting. He said that he was disappointed that he had to use flash for the event but he made the best of it and rigged a bounce for his strobe. I am looking forward to seeing his results.