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It has been a longer time when we took the shots of this setup. Nevertheless, we could have waited twenty or fourty years more with the publication of this post. The setup would have been as modern an good as it is today… as it was twenty years ago. This is the reason to call this post: HALL OF FAME SETUP. Let’s see why.

The setup is as simple and perfect as genius. You simply place your lightsource about 30-40cm above the camera. Exactly above the camera. The specialty about this setup is additionally the arrangement of modell, camera and lightsource in one and the same axis. You can move the camera away from the modell but always stay on the axis in the middle.

As with this setup there is no concern what type of light you are using, the distance between the modell and the lightsource does not matter as well. The distance goes hand in hand with the type of light you are using. If you are using a hard light, the distance could be a lot bigger than when using a soft light. In the setup down below, we used a 85cm umbrella about 1m away.

And what is the result of the setup? A very natural portrait with nice and flawless shadows. Perfect for our modell Nicole.

Really, there is only one thing to take care of. It is the exact arrangement. You really do have to stay right below the lightsource. and with “right below” I really do mean “right below”. Not 10cm and not 5cm away from the middle. And if you do not have a boomstand, you have to hug your stand… kisskiss

Well, let’s end with the final photos. I do like the smiling a lot better than the “anger”-photo. But that are just my 2cents…

As a matter of fact, the setup is perfect because of the simplicity. It leave enough space for the modell to fill the character of the photo.

- click on image to enlarge -

- click on image to enlarge -

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Today it’s about something you need but you could build yourself as well. This post will be about the HONL lighting gear for on camera flashes. Honl, a pro shooter from the USA, created a system of tuning your on camera flash. No softboxes, no umbrellas, no big lighting gear. It is all made for one purpose. SIZE SIZE SIZE!!!!

And Honl is right. It is harder to controll the light than to make it softer. Honl therefore made GELS, GOBOS and GRIDS.

We just bought us a set of stuff we now want to present to you. Grids, Gels and the straps to fix the stuff to the flashes. These are the things we HIGHLY RECOMMEND to always have in your bag.

• 1/8” HONEY COMB
• 1/4” HONEY COMB
• STRAPS
• GEL KIT

The strap is attached to the flash with no glue, just strapped around the head of the flash. You can always sell or buy the flashes as there will be nothing left of the HONL system.

But you will certainly ask yourself why we are using something we already told everyone how to do it yourself. Everyone can build a grid out of straws, gels you can get from free filter packages directly from manufacturer LEE FILTERS. So, why do we pay a lot more money for this solution?

The answer is very simple. On camera flashes are pieces of the every-day-working-gear of us. We really use them and we do need them as small little, portable flashes. And forming the light coming out of these flashes is every-day-work. Every DIY solution is functional but it is still not pretty robust. Take for example, the little filter gels. When taking them out of the filter box, we always lost the most important filters. You need a CTO filter and you don’t have the filter because you lost the little paper during the last shooting. Sure, you can write the name of the filter on it, but still, we got a lot of troubles with those little filters.
The Honl filters are bigger in size and they are already named.

The same with the grids. Our selfmade grids never lasted longer than 4-5 shootings. After that, they fell apart or were “squeezed to death” in between our gear. The grids made by HONL have a very strong surrounding frame and the grid is nicely protected.

It is cheaper to buy one grid for 15 Euros than to build 20 grid yourself. It is not worth the time and it still costs some euros to buy the glue and straws. As you can see, it’s a matter of calculation.

And to end this posting, I will give you a very important hint for your future usage of filter gels. When working with maximum power of your on camera flash together with gels, you will clearly experience one not so nice result. The gels can melt down due to the heat of the flash. Every time you fire the flash, you damage your gel more and more. You can’t really change that fact unless you do the following:

Normally you attache the strap onto you flash plane to the front. Take a look at the picture below.

Next time you use your gel on your on-camera-flash. You let some space free in between the gel and the flash.

You can additionally move the strap forward over the end of the flash. Then you have the gel a lot more away from the flashtube.  NO MORE MELTING DOWN YOUR GEL!!!!

BYEBYE… Martin

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On the “EXPLAIN-TODAY-LIST” is the one setup we currently use the most… sounds a bit like “boring-because-normal” but you will soon see the reason, why this setup is so fantastic. Have a look at the photo first, than try to separate the photo into several lighting aspects.

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• Relativly soft and natural light on our model
  -> YOU CAN SEE ALL THE CLOTHING SHE IS WEARING.
• Background is nicely lit, shadows, sky, contrasts…
  -> LOOK NICE
• The model is nicely separated from the slightly underexposed background
  -> FOCUS ON THE MODEL

To get it straight out… this setup is so perfect, because it gives you all you need as a fashion & commercial photographer. The setups looks really cool but still is still pretty natural. The lighting is creative but still “normal” enough to present the fashion or the dressing of the model. And last: You don’t need very much to light up this setup.

You have probably noticed the big SHADOW on the ground. As you can imagine, such a big shadow can only be produced by a big tree or something even bigger. And this shadow is also the reason why this setup is so “cheap”. Under the tree in the shadow, there is less light. Less light means a open aperture. This means less power is needed to light the scene. Less power needed means less money is needed.

Ok, now we can have a look at our usual sketches…

Together with the natural sunlight, the shadow from the tree, we only need two more lightsources. A let’s get the infos straight out…

• Main light with UMBRELLA, 1m in size…
• The effect light was not modified, simple light out of the strobe…
• f8 at ISO100
• Fastes exposure-time possible…
• Main light 1,5m away from the model (the closest distance possible to light the whole model uniformly)
• Effect light about 2m away (a good distance to still give some of the effect onto the surrounding)

Now matter what kind of gear you are using… the really important stuff is the thinking behind a setup. In this case, it wouldn’t matter whether you are using a 1m softbox, a umbrella or any other stuff to get a soft light. Think about what you really want, what type of lighting you need. Why you need it… everything you do, you do it with purpose!

By the way… this setup was done with 2 on-camera-flashes. We used two Nikon Sb-26 from 20 years ago!

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