3 Practical Ways to Use a Continuous Light for Food Photography

but i think what really helps improve your skill with lighting is to spend all of your money on as many modifiers as you can i'm totally kidding i know i've made a few videos at this point showing you different ways to create effective light for your food photography without having to use a soft box well this time i'm gonna show you how to create effective light using a softbox but just because i'll be using a softbox doesn't mean it'll be ugly light proof i think there are still some things to pay attention to when using a softbox in order to create the type of light that you want from it for the entire demonstration i'll be using one godox 3x4 softbox for one of the setups i'll be using two form boards alongside this softbox which you'll see in a bit and then for my light i'll be using the godox vl200 which will be mounted on a c-stand now this doesn't mean you have to use this exact light but i have gotten a number of questions from you guys asking if the setups i've shown you in the past can be done with a constant light or an led light so in addition to my answer being yes i thought why not try this shoot which i initially planned to do with a flash with a continuous light instead again it doesn't matter what continuous light you or i have the point i'm trying to make here is that if you don't use or own a flash this can be done just as beautifully with a continuous light it's just a matter of tweaking a few things and hopefully you'll see how i do that in this video for the first setup i have the bottom edge of the softbox right up against the edge of the surface and i tilted it at this angle with respect to the surface notice that the closer i have this light source and also how i have it angled the more illumination i have across the entire image and there is very minimal shadow present this is because the closer i have my light to the subject the larger the apparent size of that light source will be and i'm sure you know this already the larger the light source the softer the quality of that light will be which is what we see here so iso 100 f8 at 20th of a second i can shoot at a lower shutter speed because i am on a tripod that's kind of why i wanted to pull it out and there we go so if i turn this light off you'll see what the ambient light exposure looks like without this constant light at these settings so you can see a little bit of exposure it's coming from this window right here but for the most part it looks pretty dark so most of my exposure is coming from my constant light and that's the beauty with having such a really powerful light is that you can manipulate your settings in a way where you are only exposing for the light that you have otherwise if the light is not as powerful you're going to have your settings in a way where you have you are including perhaps unwanted ambient light so i'm shooting at f8 20th of a second iso 100 and i get that shot now with this large of a softbox it can be easy to think that the only type of light we will get is very soft like what we just saw or something similar but the beauty of practically any light source is that it always obeys very fundamental principles of light so in this case if we remember how the inverse square law of light works we can quickly see that we won't always get really soft light with this large of a softbox so all i'm going to do is move the light roughly two feet away from the set and let's see how those pictures will compare to the first set that we took [Music] this is probably not the safest [Music] so what i'm doing is i'm taking roughly the same shots that i did when the light was close so that you can see the difference from when the light was close as opposed to now that it's a little bit farther away from the scene it's going to be a much different look than what we initially had when the light was close okay so now if we compare the shots that i just took when the light far away to the same shots that i took when the light was close you will see that the light just looks different overall just even you don't even have to know how to describe it just by having the light farther away dramatically changes how the photo looks if you're wondering at this point why i'm not using any foam boards for fill in any of these shots it's because of the fact that i'm using a continuous light remember that continuous lights aren't nearly as powerful as flashes or strobes therefore my camera settings are going to be much different in these shots i'm actually shooting at very low shutter speeds which are not only helping me expose for my main light but also allowing more existing light in the room to also enter my scene and i'm using this as my underlying base layer light and from the results it seems to work well as a complement to my main light so that is why i didn't see the need to use foam boards for more fill light there but we have an issue the issue right now is this surface is so small that this does not allow me to have a slit in between so i'm gonna have to find a way to make that work i think i got it good it's standing but i have to be very careful because it could possibly like if i just breathe on it it can tip over the last step is just to move the light closer so that we have more power essentially more light output let's put it that way [Music] like i said previously i would prefer owning a larger modifier and finding ways to cut off light from it rather than start with a small modifier and have to find ways to increase its apparent size this setup is an example of that [Music] right now i'm at iso 400 f 71 and 1 6 of a second it's a pretty slow shutter speed which is why i'm on a tripod so let's take a photo of that and we'll see how it looks and since i'm at a very slow shutter speed i'm actually going to turn on my timer to a two second timer so that when i press the shutter i can let go of the entire set here and let the shutter do its thing so that actually looks great you know what i want to do i want to turn off this led light you guys can't see me but i'm turning off the led light and i'm going to take one more shot because i feel like that light was letting a little bit too much light inside of the shadows so i'm going to take that shot again and that looks pretty cool i actually really like it now i'm going to turn off the main light i actually have a remote from godox i should have used it before but i'm going to turn off the light i'm going to take that same exact exposure and we're going to see how much ambient light around us is affecting our photo alright so there is some light entering the photo and that's probably because of this bright window that i have here i can easily close the window if i want just my light source to be the only light source but again since we're shooting with a continuous light source i want to make sure that i'm utilizing the ambient light around me to fill in the shadows when i need to to of course sort of balance that contrast right [Music] so these are just three of many looks that you can create with just one soft box and a couple of foam boards now i'm not going to say that these are mind-blowing results because first of all it's a plate of oranges nothing special they were delicious though and secondly most of the light that i created was pretty well behaved and that just comes with the nature of this kind of modifier yes it is nice to own this softbox and a strip box and a beauty dish and projection attachments and fancy reflectors but i think what really helps improve your skill with lighting is to spend all of your money on as many modifiers as you can i'm totally kidding you know what i'm going to say the best way to improve your lighting is getting your gear out and practicing with what you already have i'm sure you've heard this before and i think it's true i'm not the best example of this i have purchased gear that i wish i didn't purchase but hey that's why we make mistakes so that we learn from them anyway i hope this tutorial on how to work with a softbox was helpful please give it a thumbs up if you did and don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you aren't already other than that i hope you're good and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: figandlight

Views: 165,989

Keywords: godox vl200, how to use continuous light food photography, continuous light food photography, food photography behind the scenes, soft light food photography, creative lighting food photography, food photography lighting, food photography lighting tutorial, food photography tips and tricks, figandlight

Id: mdZEUUY9wug

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020