Lighting How To

Yesterday we brought you a timesaving tutorial for streamlining Lightroom so the workspace displays all the tools you use in the order you want, with everything else hidden from view. We have another great trick today, this time it's a simple hack for using the Histogram to achieve perfect White Balance.

One of the biggest challenges when shooting indoors is dealing with unusual light that imparts ugly color casts to the images you shoot. This can even happen when photographing outdoors in ambient light when nearby or overhead objects may bias tones and make them appear unrealistic.

One way to really mess up an otherwise nice portrait is to get the lighting wrong and end up with shiny hot spots on a model’s face. But if you make that mistake, never fear, because one of our favorite image-editing experts comes to the rescue with a Lightroom quick fix below.

Canon has two innovative lenses that incorporate built-in LED “Macro Lites” on either side of the front element, the EF-M 28mm f/3.5 Macro IS STM for M-Series mirrorless cameras, and the EF-S 35mm Macro IS STM for Canon DSLRs. In the video below, you’ll see what you can accomplish by using these lenses instead of a conventional on-camera flash.

If you were taught to always shoot at the lowest ISO setting possible, join the club. But as you'll see in the enlightening tutorial below, this is one of those "rules of photography" that's meant to be ignored.

Low light photography presents many challenges, but like any challenging situation it also opens up opportunities to create unique images. Think outside the box and you will be surprised at the kind of images you can produce. The techniques I describe below will get you started. Try each one and see why there is no limit to what you can create with some imagination and effort, and have some fun in the bargain.

You may have used a beauty dish in the studio. Here’s a very portable model that you’ll find hard to leave at home. It’s quite affordable, too.