Mastering Light Control with MagMod Modifiers - Part I

when you first start using flash you're probably going to get a lot of shots like these your lights spilling everywhere it looks like a flash photograph not great but then with a bit of knowledge and practice with your lighting you start getting images like these the only difference between them is just light control and that's what you're going to learn in this video let's get into it [Music] friends as my dad says let's not beat around the bush let's get straight into this look I want you to have three takeaways from this video number one is obviously light control how do you control light where you want it to go where you don't number two is going to be understanding a bit of light quality specifically diffused versus specular light and number three well we're gonna work our way to this final image now I'm going to introduce you to Kiara this is our lovely model and one of my friends and we'll link her up so you can give her a follow and the overall set we're in studio today not because these are techniques that you need to use in the studio because these are all techniques that I use on location that I want you to use on location it's very practical stuff we're in the studio because I want to have a equal comparison I want you to be able to see exactly what every modifier is doing throughout this process as far as the setup goes in this bat leg configuration we have a profoto A10 I'm gonna be using two off-camera flashes I have the Pro Photo a10s but honestly use whatever you would like is going to totally fine we're starting with this butterfly light configuration so I can get a good light pattern that we can make comparisons against okay let's talk about the modifiers you need so for our final look you'll want two flashes of your choice for our modifiers we're gonna be focusing around well the mag Grid 2 the mag sphere 2 as well as the mag gel too and probably we're going to be using a red you might need two spheres for the ending piece and by the way I gotta say like the new magnets on these my son would love these like just it's so satisfying he likes satisfying videos you want to try it it's nice it's practical yeah I'm gonna take a shot without the the remote just you can see that basically I'm setting the exposure to well see I don't want to get any ambient light like right here right so I'm just gonna go one two hundredth I'm gonna raise the aperture to F 5.6 and right there we've kind of knocked out all the ambient light so all the light that you're going to be seeing in these shots is light that's coming from your flashes so the light is set to seven power which is I don't know that's like one quarter power 1 8 power-ish and we're gonna go ahead and just take our first shot and hopefully it's at the the right power so Kiara you're gonna hold a pose you can kind of hold throughout all the shots there you go okay so that's our bear flash so we have this highlight that's right on Kiara and you kind of see that the lights just hitting the entire scene right it's hitting the wall everything we have a little bit of a highlight towards the center and it kind of drops off as it goes out the first thing that I want to do is I want you to understand how the grid controls spill so I'm going to grab the mag grid too by itself and we're gonna pop it off that's cool right [Music] I'm going to take the shot with the exact same settings because I want you to see two things okay so the first thing that you're probably noticing is that that pattern has just gotten really tight right the grid creates this sphere shape and it cuts off the light from touching anything else on the wall so it gives us this funnel of light and it seems like magic it really isn't so if you look at the grid of course it's not magic duh but anyway if you look at this grid from this angle you can actually see through me you can see through your grid right but as soon as you start to turn it you actually cut off that angle so this is exactly what a grid is doing it's cutting off the angle of light so it goes in One Direction Only You probably notice something else too though if you actually compare the first shot in the second despite being at the same power the second shot is a bit darker so it's worth knowing that a grid is going to actually cut down on the light output just a bit as well anywhere between like a half to one stop okay now let's go ahead and take this off and let's replace it with the magsphere 2 because now we're going to compare the bear flash against well what is the sphere going to do with that bear Flash so the max Veer 2 is going to bounce light around Kiara is going to hold that same pose I've got the light right on her what's going to happen here is if you compare it to the first shot you'll notice that the Shadows are a little bit softer they're just not quite as edgy but it's not a huge difference right we're going to talk more about that later a lot of people think that if a light is diffused it means that it's soft soft versus hard light well that's based on size and we'll cover this in like the next one in this series it's still a small light source so it's still going to be a hard light but the light is a bit more diffused so if I put this image next to the other one with the bare Flash and I zoom into the face what this means is a specular light has light that goes directly to your subject and because it's going straight to your subject like a bear flash it's going to bounce back so a lot of the light rays bounce off and back into the camera creating Reflections and highlights that you might not want right whereas a diffused light bounces around so it's bouncing around the max sphere too and basically because it's bouncing around before it goes to our subject less of that light bounces back into the camera and we get a more diffused light source so it's a bit more pleasing and also if you zoom out on those images just a bit too you'll see that the shape of that light the pattern of the light is a bit more pleasing too with the sphere in place but now I want to get to an awesome combo one of my favorite Combos and you'll see magmond users all over the place doing this is they're going to grab the mag grid too and they're going to pop it underneath the mag sphere so let's do that you might think that well is that really gonna actually do anything absolutely what's going to happen is the light's going to get funneled forward you know what I'm just going to show you okay let's take that same shot this time I'm One Stop higher in power so the grid with the Magister now we get a completely different look right if you compare this well with the sphere what's happening is that it's making that grid pattern more pleasing but the grid is still funneling light forward so we still get kind of a tight light pattern but that circular shape is so much better that pattern is so much nicer so the sphere is not only diffusing the light a bit it's also making it more pleasing let's put it all together and go for that final creative shot through the power of editing magic I'm gonna break down this entire set because this was just for demo purposes this isn't the Practical setup that I would actually use okay these are the typical stands that I'm using on location this is a man photo Nano stand we're going to place that here for right now because I actually want to get the background light the way that I want first and what I think is a really fun effect you can do this pretty much anywhere you have a plain wall is we're going to create a sort of semi-silouette shot I'm going to start actually with the background light I usually like to get my background looking the way that I'd like it to and then go from there so grab your flash grab a MAG gel of whatever preference in terms of color it doesn't matter I'm going to use red because I kind of dig the vibe so this is where I'm going to grab a second mag sphere too I can sort of create a graduating pattern of light going across the frame I'm going to adjust the position of this just a little bit so it kind of hits a little bit more of this wall we're going to pull it back a little bit now I'm kind of angling it so the right side almost kind of hits Kiara but creates a little bit of like an edge on her [Music] oh I dig it see that right side edge I love and it kind of like hitting the wall and sort of trailing off to that side you'll notice how the curve of the wall kind of creates a separate Tone If you don't like that you could always just raise the flash up but I'm okay with it let's get the main light up now and with the main light up we're going to practice our new light control techniques so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to show you like well if we kind of light from this side since she's sort of looking towards this side if I position the light there and I take the shot without a modifier on it then a lot of that flash ends up bleeding into our background right this is the issue with without using light control without using light control our lights spilling all over the place so I'm going to go ahead and put that grid plus sphere combo onto it I'm just going to show you the difference right there I'll raise it up a stop just so we'd have a little bit more power since our light's going to drop a little bit in power with that combination so now it's at one quarter power and immediately that's so much better and I love this now one thing that I can do too is I can actually adjust the angle if I want to go for something a bit more dramatic so this looks good but what I kind of want to do is almost like Kiara sort of from the back side so we're going to position it slightly behind Cara bring the hands up as if you're in that pose there I'm going to position it right here maybe a bit further back to kind of create this highlight on her face and on the hands a little bit and the rest of her body is going to kind of drop into a silhouette and our power is a bit low so I will also raise the power a little how to dig that vibe that looks so cool so now we just got to get the right pose [Music] that's it for this video we're going to link up all the gear and the modifiers that we use in the description of the video on top of that if you guys have any questions thoughts what you guys want to see in future tutorials comment below I read all your guys's comments and I get a lot of great ideas from them so I'm going to get back to shooting what I want to shoot now we'll see you guys next time

Channel: MagMod

Views: 20,082

Keywords: MagMod, MagGrip, MagGel, MagGrid, MagSnoot, MagBounce, MagSphere, MagnetMod, Speedlight, Speedlite, Flash, Canon, Photography, Modifier, Magnets, Magnet, Magnetic, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, Camera, Digital, DSLR, off camera flash

Id: xQM3rebJ6vo

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023