Lighting

Image noise can really ruin an otherwise nice photo with ugly artifacts that appear as random speckles of grain and unsightly variations in the brightness and colors of your shot. It's a rather common occurrence, shrouded in a common misconception, that's demystified in the tutorial below.

Today’s modern digital cameras offer insanely high ISO options, and conventional wisdom is to avoid them and go no higher than at least two settings below the maximum. But according to one top pro, there are times when is OK to use the highest ISO setting available.

As the name implies, the Fotodiox LED Studio-in-a-Box is a self-contained tabletop studio that features interior LED lighting that has a daylight color balance of 5600 Kelvin. The CRI, or Color Rendering Index, is 85 (on a scale 0 to 100).

The latest video from the Cooperative of Photography (COOPH) takes you on a psychedelic, three-minute journey on how to create some really amazing UV blacklight images. All you really need is some imagination and either a simple UV flashlight, lamp or specialized head for your flash unit.

30-Inch Moon Unit by Paul C. Buff: The 30-inch Moon Unit is a unique softbox-like device that attaches to the AlienBees (ABR800) ringflash unit with a quick-release rotating speedring. The camera’s lens can see through the center of the Moon Unit to achieve a unique large-source light on the camera axis. Using the ringflash with the Moon Unit produces subtle, controlled, almost indiscernible shadows and large appealing catch lights at modest camera-to-subject distances. Its minuscule depth and weight allow handholding right along with your camera, or you can use it as a conventional off-camera compact softbox. The Moon Unit is lightweight, compact and easy to assemble. It consists of a reversible gold/silver reflector surface in an octagonal shape, a removable front nylon diffuser (with a center hole), a removable black fabric mask to convert the octagonal shape to a circle, a rotating speedring, assembly rods and a special reflector that bounces the flash energy into the Moon Unit (instead of forward). The suggested retail price is $59.95.

The problem with making the right exposures in low light environments is that exposure meters, in-camera and hand held, are not particularly suited for the task. Light meters were designed to read subjects in normal daylight situations or in bright interiors. The meter will deliver a good exposure under these “normal” conditions, but low light photography is anything but normal. There is either a lack of light, many dark areas, very high contrast or all of these combined.