There’s apps with pictures of sexy girls (not photography IMHO) and apps for editing and post processing photos on or taken by the iPhone and then there’s some great photographer tool style apps.
That latter group is my favorite and also where the Strobox app fits in. An app for photographers.

Strobox is a free app by Janis Lanka (@janislanka) and it helps you create quick lighting diagrams. Whether you are jotting down notes about a lighting setup for a photo to share with others or to use again later this is a great app to have on your device.

There are currently 25+ pieces of lighting equipment that you can move, rotate and place on your diagram including backgrounds, strobes, soft boxes, umbrellas and more.

The app saves your setups for future reference or generated a PNG that you can easily email to someone (or yourself.) I’ve used it multiple times to take note of lighting setups I’ve used in specific photos and ideas for lighting setups that might produce a cool effect. Here’s an example of a PNG I just created through Strobox.

Visit the Strobox Website or download Strobox through the iTunes Music Store.
Strobox graphics are from http://app.strobox.com/ and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License

This awesome Rosco Strobist 55-Piece Filter Kit is great for both color correcting your flash head to match your surroundings: fluorescent, tungsten and daylight. All of under $10! The kit includes the following:

• 46 color correcting gels
• 9 fun, colored gels, to play with
• See a list of all the gels included here

I also recommend picking up this adapter to hold your gels. It’s Velcro enabled so if you have Velcro on your flash head already it’s great – if not try the Honl Velcro Flash Strap also under $10.

It’s perfect for your Strobist 55 set gel kit – and handy for any other use of gels on your strobe – should you want to test some sample colors from the sample packs or cut down full sheets once you find a color you are crazy about! Well worth the $15 to add a professional look to your use of gels – duck tape and non-wind resistance doesn’t always cut it in the real world!

A bounce umbrella is typically lined on the interior with a silver, gold or white reflective surface and on the outside with black to reduce light from escaping.

To show you exactly I’ve put together some diagrams that show where the light goes. For this example we’ll assume that an umbrella is a cut of a perfect sphere. The focal point, through which all the reflected light passes, is 1/2 * radius of the circle, or half way between the sphere’s center point and the edge of the umbrella.

When the light hits the reflective surface it bounces back in a straight line through the focal point.

You can see where the reflected light hits the subject.

At first you’d expect to want to place your subject at the tip of the umbrella (like shown in the diagram) but that’s rarely the best idea – we’ll cover that in another article.

Check out our sister site, Single Strobe Photography to find some great shoot-through umbrellas to buy through some of out favorite online retailers, B&H and Amvona.

A shoot-through umbrella is typically white and a fairly thin or translucent white at that. The light is intended to travel through the umbrella to reach it’s subject.

To show you exactly I’ve put together some diagrams that show where the light goes. For this example we’ll assume that an umbrella is a cut of a perfect sphere. The focal point, through which all the reflected light passes, is 1/2 * radius of the circle, or half way between the sphere’s center point and the edge of the umbrella.

When the light hits the reflective surface it bounces both through the umbrella and some spill (usually about 1f stop) comes back in a straight line through the focal point. The light that gets through the umbrella’s surface travels in the opposite direction of the light that reflects back from the umbrella’s surface.

You can see where the reflected light hits the subject.

At first you’d expect to want to place your subject at the tip of the umbrella (like shown in the diagram) but that’s rarely the best idea – we’ll cover that in another article.

Check out our sister site, Single Strobe Photography to find some great shoot-through umbrellas to buy through some of out favorite online retailers, B&H and Amvona.

So when you can’t get your flash unit off your camera you have to do the next best thing: bounce. If you’re lucky the ceilings are low enough to accommodate bouncing, I find 8 – 12′ ceilings are best for this. Now that you know you are going to bounce your light off the ceiling do you know at what angle? The flash I demoed, the Nikon SB600, there’s 5 settings: 0° (straight at the subject, ie. not bounce), 45°, 60°, 70° and 90° (straight up). I grabbed my mannequin head (we’ll call her Sharla for obvious reasons) and did some test shots.

All of these shots were taken under a 10′ ceiling with the subject only 4′ off the ground – camera and flash about 7′ away from the subject.

0° Bounce Flash (Straight on)

So starting with a straight on flash we shot Sharla to see the control, worst case scenario flash.
This flash is really harsh and adds a very heavy shadow below the chin, a hard shadow on the wall behind the subject and provides very little definition.

45° Bounce Flash

Now we’ve got some nice definition on the top of her head and no hard shadow on the back wall. Unfortunately with the flash bouncing on the ceiling almost directly above it leaves most of the face in shadows.

60° Bounce Flash

Getting the flash angled up a bit higher now casts the Sharla’s eye sockets into deep caverns of darkness while her cheeks begin to show some of the warmth and light we want the flash to cast.

75° Bounce Flash

Moving the flash up a bit more we see that shadow in the eye sockets get a bit smaller and the rest of her face behind to come into the light.

90° Bounce Flash (straight up)

This is about the best we were going to get with a bare flash. Sharla’s eyes are still in a bit of a shadow but angling a subjects face up and to the side a little would solve that.

Next time we’ll play with bouncing vs. different light modifiers.

The thought behind this is: If we use a orange gel over a flash or strobe to add orange to a light on the subject to balance out the orange sun light on the background what we are also doing is using orange on our subject to add blue (orange’s compliment) to the background.

If that is the case – flip your thinking around and don’t use a gel to match your subject’s white balance to the background – bring out a color in the background by casting it’s compliment onto your subject! I wanted to bring out the spring green in the trees by using a red (green’s compliment) color cast on my subject. Read on to see how it went. Here’s a hint – it worked

To learn more about complimentary colors check out the wikipedia entry on complimentary colors.

So I grabbed a kid’s toy, for it’s bold colors and headed outside. These test shots were taken using a SB600 strobe, camera left about 2′ above and 1 ‘ in front of the subject.

Toy – Strobe Red Gel to Boost Green Outdoor Background Setup

Toy – Strobe Red Gel to Boost Green Outdoor Background Results

My results came out really well – I was super pleased with what I saw!

It needs some refinement but it’s almost there! I used the ‘red’ gel from my Nikon SJ-1 Color Filter Set equivalent to the Rosco Roscolux #26 Light Red available in the $1.95 Rosco Gel Sample Pack at B&H.

Green up the Background with a Red Gel

I had gotten this far I just needed to prove this on a portrait. In comes B my roommate / landlord / best friend. I agreed he could keep the white balance card in front of his face since I was just using him for his skin tone.

This time I put a white shoot through umbrella in front of the gelled flash. and moved the umbrella directly over the camera about 2′ away from the subject and 1.5′ above the camera. I chose a flat light setup to make sure I was evenly distributing the red color cast.

Outdoor Portrait using a Red Gel on Subject Setup

Outdoor Portrait using a Red Gel on Subject Results

Heck yea – the umbrella spread the red nicely as we can see in the middle shot and really bumped up the green int he background while filling in some shadows the first shot that didn’t have flash missed out on.

Proof of concept – proven.. Special thanks to B for playing along!

Come to find out the kid was:

1. a tool
2. arrogant spoiled rich kid
3. wrong

Lighting an egg is not the ultimate test, but a good exercise in lighting. When photographing an egg you want to eliminate as much shadow as possible but give the egg definition so it doesn’t get washed out in the white.

Here is my Final Image

I did some editing in Lightroom, mostly removing spots but also some basic contrast and white balance. No more editing than I would usually do on a portrait.

I took a lot of steps and did a bunch of experimenting to get to that final photograph. I thought it would make a good blog to walk through it with photos, samples and lighting diagrams so I meticulously documented each step I took.

Note: both strobes are SB600’s synced wirelessly with the Nikon CLS

Initial Setup

I grabbed some white paper from a sketch book and let a hot glue gun warm up while I set up my light stands and umbrellas.

I wanted to shoot through my white umbrellas to really diffuse the light as much as possible. Like David mentions in the Strobist blog Rethinking the Umbrella you can move a shoot through umbrella really close to the subject and be able to provide more light. I wanted really diffused light so I had the umbrella shafts extended as far as I could.

I taped my background to the chair, put a harder surface under the spot the egg would sit and put a dollop of hot glue down. I the pressed the bottom of the egg into the dollop and continued to fill in behind the egg with a little more hot glue to ensure it had enough support to stay standing.

Then I got me first setup ready and snapped a photograph. Here’s the lighting diagram, snapshot of the setup and the shot produced.

Camera was straight on at the same level as the egg, both flashes at 1/16 power (f/9.0 1/500)

Second Setup

So to eliminate the grossness of seeing the clue, I raised the camera ~ 2ft to shoot down at an angle.

Camera was raised above the egg, both flashes at 1/16 power (f/9.0 1/500)

Third Setup (Reduce hot spot)

the next step I took was to raise the umbrella on camera right so it would point down at the subject and reduce the hot spot I was seeing on the egg.

Camera was raised above the egg, both flashes at 1/16 power (f/9.0 1/500)

At this point I decided to try with the flashes at 1/8 power to see how that looked and on my LCD it looked super washed out, but now I wish I had used it. Here’s the comparison between the 1/8 and 1/16 powers.

Wish I’d been shooting tethered, then I would have switched to 1/8 power instead of sticking with 1/16 like I did. Well that’s what Lightroom’s for huh sad face.

Fourth Setup – Adding in a highlight

Now I was more satisfied with the way the light was coming from above and illuminating the background a bit better but I missed the hot spot or highlight. So I moved the left umbrella in and targeted the umbrella a bit better to point directly at the subject.
I also moved the camera to a more convenient position.

Camera was raised above the egg, both flashes at 1/16 power (f/9.0 1/500)

Final Setup

Now I just needed to add a little big to fill to the right side of the egg and a little more light to the background.

I moved the high umbrella at camera right closer and pointed the umbrella between the egg and background to provide more light behind the egg but still lighting the egg since it’s very diffused light that spreads a great distance!

I moved the umbrella at camera left forward a bit, but no closer to the subject, still pointing at the subject.

I added a reflector to the subject’s left (my Styrafoam block) and moved the camera in at a better angle to really eliminate the glue form the bottom.

I was pretty happy with my results. Maybe another time I’ll try to light it with just one light and see what I can do with that!

Final image (again)

Note I liked the angle I had better for the fourth setup, but I wanted to hide the glue without Photoshop so I settled on the 5th shot’s angle. So word to the wise: be careful with your gluing!

How about you?

Have you tried this? What worked for you, and let’s see those pictures. Post a comment!

Well it’s hard to get a hold of the Roscolux Swatchbook. I’ve seen it sell out on the B&H website in as little as 24 minutes before. Though B&H also has the Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook for the same price, and it was in stock, so I ordered it and got yesterday.

The first thing I did was remove the straight pin holding the samples together and replaced it with a clip I had previously used for embroidery floss. This allows me to remove gels easily while not making a mess of the whole situation.

Accompanying Photographs

You can pick up a loop like that at any craft store like Joann’s near the embroidery or notions storage section.

I learned about these gel sample packs by reading a post on the Photography on the.net forums, using gels to create colored backgrounds. I was immediately inspired, especially by the photos posted to that thread by curtis N, agent.media and flg8r.

That was when the Internet twisted my own arm into buying the background and stand I did the video about last week.

While waiting for my delivery I looked and found some other good posts on forums about using gel samples. This post started as a question regarding the effectiveness of a colored background and saturation of the color by the gel, and includes a sample photo. Another post about using gels shows sample photographs using models and still life and also shows demonstrations where you can fill the background with the color, or hot spot the color, even a demo that appears to snoot with a color.

I also stumbled across another post where the demo was using the gel against a white wall. Though one response pointed out that using the gel on white has a tendency to reflect back onto the subject which can cause highlights in the hair to become the color of the gel. Not always a desired effect. I’m quite glad I went with the dark grey background now!

I’ll probably be working on a holder tonight, I’ve been exploding a few options:

• Plastic Sleeve and Velcro – photo 2 – Not a big fan of the idea of putting Velcro on my flash
• Plastic name tag – Similar to the above plastic sleeve and Velcro, seems promising
• Mat Board and Clip – I’d probably use a magnet instead of a clip, and I’d use black mat board
• Plastic as Clips – Appears to work well but I would rather separate the gel from the top of the flash in fear of heat transfer and melting
• Mat Board and Snaps for Swivel Action – Is a swivel necessary? Not for me. Glad to see magnets work well though
• Plastic Strips and Velcro – Again I’m not sure about the gel flush against the flash

As you can tell I’m kind-of being a big wussie about not melting my gel to my flash but even if is unlikely to happen I’d still rather use preventative measures.

I’ll post up my final solution I settle with. My guess is it will be a lot like the mat board with clip, except with magnets since they’re way easier to change quickly and if they’re attached I can’t lose them!

Researching these holders was a big help and lead me to request sample packets from a few other companies such as Lee and Apollo Design Technologies. We’ll see how long it takes for those sample packs to come in.

The Final Product

Let’s Tarantino this and show you my final outcome first

Without using an external flash, my on camera flash or any other strobes of flood lights I took these lovely photographs. Just my overhead room light (with two 60 watt bulbs) and some white Styrofoam as reflectors.

The Lighting Setup

Here’s a quick lighting diagram of what I was doing, though really, there’s not a lot of stuff going on.

The Props

Though I did not use any off camera lighting I did use a lot of things I had around to really assist in making the best I could out of the light I had to work with.

1. Styrofoam packing sheets
   At work last months we got seven new filing cabinets (pre-assembled) that were all packed with four sheets of crisp white Styrofoam. I know that since Styrofoam has a matte finish it will reflect light very evenly, and since they are 1.5 – 2″ thick they’re fairly sturdy. Not to mention free!
   I took about eight of these 24x18x2″ blocks home; only eight cause that’s all that I could fit in my trunk.
2. Bed side table
   I use the same one that holds my alarm clock, just to put the subject on to elevate it to a comfortable tripod height.
3. Glass
   I used the glass from a frame I picked up on sale at Homegoods for $15 cause the frame was damaged. I had plans to put a new picture in the frame and clean it up but I broke the glass. Read on for that…
4. Mirror
   …I’ll tell you another day how I came into a mirror that is approximately 1/2 the size of the one that may and or may not have fallen off my bathroom door.
5. Shoji screen / privacy screen
   I’ll use this to hold up my background. In the off season (when I’m not taking pictures) it serves to hide the mess in the corner of my room.
6. Black bedsheets set
   The pillow case will be used to cover the table to protect it from the glass or mirror and the flat sheet will be used as the background.

I can almost guarantee you have 1/2 of those things around the house and with you don’t have you can pickup at a discount store for a great price and probably still be able to put it to good use.

How big does the mirror or glass have to be?

I really only needed the glass and mirror to be maybe 2ft square. Bigger is great but only necessary if you need that much reflection, which on a small subject like a flower and vase is adequate.

Setting the Scene

Glass Topping the Table for Subtle Subject Reflections

In the first photo you see I put the pillow case over the table and the glass atop that. Then came the subject, the vase w/ flower.
In the last photo you see how I then used the Styrofoam reflectors to bounce light into parts of the subject that needed more light.

I put the black flat sheet over the Shoji screen, and put my bedside table about 3′ in front of the screen so I could ensure that the background would be beyond the focal point and blur out any texture attributed to the bed sheet.

Excuse the quality of these setup shots, this is about behind the scenes remember: the quality is in the product.

Here are the photographs this setup produced

White Background

With my white backgrounds, I will admit most of it really becomes “white” in post-production (Lightroom).

Moving from the previous setup I propped Styrofoam against the screen so it was high enough to serve as a background. Since I decided I was no longer going to do a full length shot I replaced the glass atop the table with another piece of Styrofoam to help bounce from below (remember the light is directly overhead of my subject.)

I still used other pieces of Styrofoam to bounce in at an angle, especially the face of the flowers. Don’t bounce your light directly into the flowers though, you want it to angle and cascade to give the flowers depth. a flat bounce to the face will make your flowers look just that…flat.

Photos from my Styrofoam White Setup

Mirror Reflection

First I removed the Styrofoam from the background and replaced the Styrofoam table top with the mirror (pillow case used to protect the table.)

In order to get the black background and ensure there were no wonky reflections besides the subject in the mirror I needed to move the background closer. I needed to get the camera at a high angle to get a healthy amount of reflection so I really brought that background in close by leaning the screen till it was touching the back of the table. I pushed the table so it was about 1′ behind being below the over head light so that when the background was leaning over the table I could still easily bounce light into the ‘dark mirror tent’ easily.

I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to actually make this happen without breaking things.

Here are the photos from the mirror setup

Word of Caution

I may have gotten overly excited and careless with my props while shooting this, and well I stepped on my glass top. So keep a paper bag and broom/vacuum around when working with glass. Trust me!

For more talk about using reflectors check out one of the installments at Strobist – Lighting 102 – 5.1 Refract and Reflect! Think foil, mirror, and use a strobe or flash or like we did here just your run-of-the-mill home tungsten lighting.

Here’s the set up I used:

I was pretty happy with the results which is fantastic since I hadn’t done my hair and was wearing no makeup and have never really had a lot of luck with self portraits in the past. I found three or the 60 photos really embodied the emotion I wanted and I used Lightroom to go gray scale and adjust my settings to really make the photographs pop. There were a couple other shots I liked but I think I might try them again another time and see if I can have better success without that silly hat on!

Hat used solely to hide my bad hair day

Other Great Lighting Set-Ups

1. Simple Lighting Setup
2. Explained lighting schemes