DIY snoot delivers light to right where it's needed

    Electronic flashes are easily one of the great innovations in photography, making it easier to get indoor photos.

    But when you're ready to get past the harsh light coming from either on top of the camera or alongside it, there are a variety of ways to modify the light, either commercially or homemade, and go for a more artistic look.

    In previous posts, we've talked about softboxes and reflectors take the edge off the flash's harsh light, and an adapter for macrophotography.

    Today's installment deals with snoots, which turn the flash into a spotlight, putting a small relatively tight spot of light on a subject.

    While a grid, which we talked about building earlier, may seem to do the same thing, there's a difference. The grid's honeycomb pattern not only directs the light into a tighter area, it also feathers the edges so it's not so harsh.

    A snoot instead throws a sharply defined beam of light at its target. This can be good for creating a hairlight to separate your subject from a background or to create a shaft of light effect.

    My DIY snoot consists of postal box cardboard formed around the flash head, creating a tube that funnels the light forward. While some have used Pringles potato chip cans for this purpose, I found it was too narrow to put my flash head in straight on, and the bouncing in the macro tube was not effective for long distance.

        Now, to see how it works

    First, a photo with the unmodified flash, to serve as the baseline.

    With our DIY grid. See how it's a narrower beam but just fades off on the edges.

    The snoot produces a tight, harsh light. If you wanted to create the look of a shaft of light, this would be an effective tool for the job.

Work flashlight can aid aiming speedlights in studio settings

     When you start using off-camera flashes, usually the first lights you're going to use are your speed lights.

    One drawback with they have, compared to their larger, brighter studio cousins, is the lack of a modeling light.

    A modeling light is a small lamp, incandescent or now, LED, that shows the photographer where the light from the flash will fall, especially if it's used with a modifier. You likely saw these if you ever went to a photo studio for a portrait, or when you had photos taken at school; it's that glow you see coming from the umbrellas or softboxes before the picture's taken.

    Modeling lights are helpful if you're trying to set up a Rembrandt lighting (that's when one side of the face is illuminated more than the other side, but you have that triangle of light on the cheek on the darker side), or trying to adjust a rim light.

    You can still work without a modeling light, but that can involve quite a bit of trial and error, which might not go over well with some subjects who might question your competence behind the camera.

    But there is a way to at least get a similar effect and get your lighting within the ballpark, and just require a little bit of fine-tuning.

    Remember the flashlights I mentioned earlier as a night-photography light? You can use that as a makeshift modeling light.

    And it will only set you back 99 cents at Harbor Freight, unless you catch one of their free giveaways.

    For this to work, you make sure the main light is on, and center it over your flash head, or the center of your softbox. This will show you where the light is generally falling, and you can adjust the light's position as needed.

    It won't be as WYSIWYG* as a modeling light, but it will give you the general idea of where your light is going to go, and that should mean fewer adjustments when you start shooting.

    

    *What you see is what you get. It's a term first coined when word processors began to show you how your document would actually look with the chosen fonts and text styles.

How to get decent portraits with on-camera flash

     So you've decided to get a speed light to go with your camera, but you don't have a way to use it off-camera, or you don't have the space for a portrait.

    What do you do?

    Gavin Hoey, one of the photographers featured on Adorama's Youtube channel (disclaimer: I am not sponsored by Adorama, but its channel is a good resource) goes over some ways to get flattering light with a camera-mounted flash.

    (Note: This is for flash units mounted on the camera's hot shoe. If you're using a pop-up flash, these tips will not work for you, but check out the diffuser we featured earlier.)

     What Hoey suggests is essentially bouncing the flash, preferably off a white or neutral-colored wall or ceiling. If you bounce off a colored wall, you're going to get a color cast.

    But what I found interesting was Hoey's suggestion for bouncing off a wall behind you if the room's small enough. Along with creating a softer light by bouncing it off a larger reflector, this over-the-shoulder move can also allow you to avoid the harsh look of a subject against a black background since the foreground/background light are now more balanced, thanks to to the inverse-square law.

    For those not familiar with this law of physics, light falls off at the inverse square of the distance from the light source. At 3 feet away from the light source, the light is 1/9 the brightness it would have at 1 foot. As you go farther out, the difference decreases, so you can actually get a more even lighting the farther back the light source.

    You do have to pay for that with either a wider aperture or a higher ISO.

     Another tip Hoey offered for overall studio photography is to first take a test shot with the settings you plan to use but no flash. The goal is to have the frame completely black, which means that the ambient lighting will not have any effect on the picture, and that all lighting will come from the flash. That can also be helpful if you're in a situation with mixed light sources. 

Double the output of your home studio clamp lights

    Photographers moving beyond "natural light" toward studio lighting usually start out with continuous lights.

    It's not a bad idea, as it is a more "what you see is what you get" approach that helps you see the effect light placement and modifiers have before you hit the shutter. Continuous lights are also a necessity for anyone shooting video.

    One of the most economical ways to get a light set up is to use the clamp lights you find at home improvement stores. They're the lights in metalic reflectors that have a clamp you can attach to a stand, shelf or other object to position the light.

    However, one of the limitations of the light is that they only take one light bulb, and finding bulbs with high enough lumens for a reasonable shutter speed can be difficult. And if you are using halogen bulbs, you're going to run into a wattage limit on the lamp as well as overheating issues.

    But there is a way to boost the light output without turning the studio into a sauna or risking an electrical overload.

    For starters, go with LED lamps. They produce the same amount of light for a fraction of the energy, which means they don't heat up as much. That comes in handy if you need to put a diffuser or color gel on the front of the light. Growing up, I can remember a few lamp shades that were damaged because they got too close to the bulbs.

    LEDs also come in different color temperatures, so you can get daylight-balanced lights or go with tungsten and set your camera to the precise color temperature, saving you a bit of work in post production.

    But you still have the issue of just one light socket in the lamp. But there's a way around that, and I have to give credit to The Frugal Filmmaker, Scott Eggleston, for this idea.

    The Home Depot and other hardware stores sell twin-socket lamp adapters. They screw into the socket and give you two light sockets, allowing you to put two bulbs in, doubling the light output.

    In my setup, I use brooding lamps, which offers both a larger reflector as well as having a 300-watt rating, giving me more than enough margin for safety. In the lamp, I have two daylight-balanced 100-watt-equivalent LED bulbs that throw out a tremendous amount of light.

    It's a setup that provides a decent lighting system for both video and studio photos, whether you're doing portraits or just photos for your eBay/Etsy/Amazon page.

Light tent for shooting people

    There's been talk on some of the photography websites about a portable studio that's about seven feet by four feet.

    The Konseen Photo studio, includes a tent, backgrounds and LED light system. The larger size goes for about $380. The concept is not bad, considering light tents have been used in product photography before, so it could be used for portraiture, especially when you have limited space for a proper studio.

    But the price tag could be a bit off-putting, especially for people whose Gear Acquisition Syndrome is kept in check by their wallets. It was disappointing to see another DIY photo website highlight this product without suggesting a cheaper way to get the same effect.

    That's why I'm here.

    Taking a quick look at Home Depot's website, you can get enough PVC pipe and fittings to construct the frame for less than $25. It's essentially a larger version of the tent I recommended for product photography. For the side walls, I would go with shower curtain liners from your local dollar store, and I would suggest using whatever light system you have, be it clamp lights, speed lights or some other rig.