Viewing entries tagged
master of light

How To Use and Set Up a 5 Foot Octabox for LED Lights- Snapbag Octa for the Rotolight Titan

April 27, 2021

Looking for a large modifier for your LED light? Wanna really SPREAD the light out but don't know where such a modifier exists or how to use it? Check out this video that explains it all!

The video above was created to show you how to set up and use the Snapbag Octa 5 with the Rotolight Titan X1 shot in front of the beautiful Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. This was done in part because Jason recently conducted a shoot at a rain studio using this light and modifier and he wanted to show people how to use and set it all up prior to releasing his video of that shoot. Below is one of the pics created at that shoot that will be released in a future video:

For more information about this light and modifier, and to get the best deals out there on these lights please visit:

www.rotolight.com/jasonoffers

We thank you for watching and hope it was beneficial to you.

Thanks!

Jason Lanier Photography

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Canon Project Part #3- Blending and Balancing Artificial and Ambient Light Using the EOS R by Jason Lanier

April 4, 2019

Welcome to the Canon Project Part #3- in this episode we look at how the Canon EOS R performs with LED lighting. This all takes place at a workshop I taught for the Georgia Professional Photographers of America at the North Georgia Tech College in March 2019.

This shoot represented the demonstration portion of the workshop where I was helping the attendees understand how to blend and balance artificial lighting with the available ambient lighting to create results that mimic what Hollywood does with their lighting set ups.

So what does it mean to blend and balance light to match ambient settings? This is a subject that some photographers struggle a little bit to understand and I’m hoping that the blog article and especially the video help to explain it for people who are eager to learn.

In essence this is the process of bringing down the power of your artificial lighting and pulling up the exposure in your camera to make the two exposure levels blend and balance together. This usually means increasing your ISO while turning down the power on your flash or LED light. To see the demonstration of this please check out the video to see how it’s done.

Below are images taken with the Rotolight Aeos using the Canon EOS R with the

RF 50mm f/1.2 and RF 28-70mm f/2 lenses.

Below are images taken with the Rotolight Neo 2 using the Canon EOS R with the RF 50mm f/1.2 lens.

So how did the Canon perform in this shoot? It did really well. I did most of the shoot using the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2 and a few using the RF 28-70mm f/2. I’m really impressed with the sharpness of these lenses and as to be expected the camera performed great with the Rotolight system as all the mirrorless cameras do. Can you use the Rotolights with non mirroress systems? Of course you can, but they perform the best with mirrorless cameras thanks to WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get).

I really liked the colors coming out of the Canon EOS R as I have with all of the shoots we have coming out. So drop a comment down below and let me know what you think!

To see the entire Canon Project videos please visit:

www.jasonlanier.com/canonproject

**LINKS TO GEAR**

*Canon EOS R- https://bhpho.to/2FPwh7P

*Canon RF 50mm f/1.2- https://bhpho.to/2FUvfr5

*Canon RF 28-70mm f/2- https://bhpho.to/2FCH9pI

**ROTOLIGHT PRODUCTS**

During the month of April 2019 there is a HUGE sale on the Rotolight Neo 2 and the Rotolight Aeos. If you visit www.rotolight.com/jasonoffers you can get significant savings off of these two lights plus free batteries and free shipping.

If you are viewing this AFTER April 2019 you can still receive a discount on all rotolight products visiting www.rotolight.com and after selecting your products, use the promo code: JASONLANIER10 to get 10% off all products and accessories as well as free shipping to most countries around the world.

I really hope this video helps photographers out there. Thank you in advance for watching and thanks for being here!

If you haven't already make sure to check out Parts 1 and 2 of the Canon project where we review the Canon EOS R in natural light and strobe shooting scenarios.

Jason

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Creative Lighting using a Micro Four Thirds Camera- the Olympus OMD Mark 2 by Jason Lanier

February 18, 2019

Back in November 2017, the kind folks over at Olympus sent me a test kit for the EM-1, Mark 2, which is the OMD Mark ii. I was excited to see what it could do particularly because of it’s weather proofing body specs.

Well, like it can many times, life and career got busy. This little micro four thirds camera sat in my office for over a year. The people over at Olympus were more than patient and just urged me to give it a try when I found the time to do so.

**To receive 10% off any Rotolight product and get FREE shipping please visit www.rotolight.com and enter the promo code: jasonlanier10

Fast forward to the end of 2018 when the mirrorless marketplace was changed by Nikon, Canon, and Panasonic entering the full frame mirrorless sector.

These new cameras ushered in a renewed sense in me to try out some different mirrorless cameras. As someone who believes in the future of mirrorless I had devoted the past 5 years to Sony, the leader in the mirrorless game.

But, with these new cameras coming out, it made me think, why not try all of them? First I tried the new Nikon Z7, and then when preparing for a number of shoots in Los Angeles, I saw the Olympus bag sitting in the corner of my showroom.

I immediately felt bad for the gear feeling like I had neglected it for nearly a year and a half. So, on a whim, I picked it up and decided to give it a go at my studio shoots in lieu of my Sony gear. I still took my Sony gear in case I was unhappy with the Olympus, but I felt it was high time to see what this camera could do.

So my model Emily and I went down to FD Photo Studio in Los Angeles to do a number of shoots. We first planned on doing just 1 shoot with the Olympus, but it turned into a complete week of shooting with that little guy as I really put it through it’s paces.

This blog post isn’t a complete review on the camera but rather a post on just the creative lighting shoot I did with it. Why? Well, because most people (myself included) don’t usually associated micro four thirds cameras with shooting in lower lighting conditions.

Using the Rotolight Lighting system I set up the Anova Pro 2 as my key light, another Anova Pro 2 as my rim and accent light on the back wall, and a Neo 2 as a rim/accent light on my model Emily, placed directly behind her.

If you watch the video you’ll see the progression of the shoot as I share production shots showing how things were set up and how we ended up with the final results that you can see in the shots below:

All of these images were taken with the Olympus 25mm f/1.2 lens shot wide open at f/1.2. The lens actually performed really well and as always, the LED lighting by Rotolight was a perfect fit for the mirrorless system.

I fired all 3 lights using the strobe mode instead of continuous LED so I could get double the power output out of the lights.

To see the complete set up and shoot please make sure to click on the video to see how it all went down. I had a great time shooting with the camera and can’t wait to share more shoots with all of you.

For more information about my workshops and what we do please visit www.jasonlanier.com/register today! Don’t forget to click on SUBSCRIBE AND NOTIFICATIONS on my Youtube Channel to get updated every time a new video is released.

Thanks!

Jason

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Shooting the Corpse Bride- a Cinematic Story Telling Shoot at the Fitzrovia Chapel in London by Jason Lanier

November 16, 2018

On Halloween 2018 I had the opportunity to do a very special shoot with the Rotolight team at the Fitzrovia Chapel in London, UK. It’s always pretty surreal getting to visit and shoot in some of these exotic locations and we wanted to do something really fun for Halloween. Click below to watch the video of this shoot!

My model Emily and I arrived at the chapel that’s tucked away in the center of London. This is an old chapel surrounded by big modern buildings and can’t be seen from the street. You have to navigate the CRAZY traffic in London (I mean I really HATE London traffic), park in one of the crazy parking lots that charge $60 for a couple of hours and THEN you drag your stuff all the way to the shooting location.

SO, after doing all of that, you certainly hope that the location is WORTH it. Was it?

YES.

TOTALLY WORTH IT.

So I got Emily settled into the chair for hair and make up where she started the transformation into the Corpse Bride with her Corpse Groom Lawrence waiting for her:

The biggest challenge when first walking into the church was trying to figure out how to take the ambient lighting down as it was very warm and convert it into the kind of cold blue tones that you’d want for a corpse bride (day of the dead) kind of shoot. So we killed all of the lighting in there and started lighting it up with blue lighting from all of the lights from the Rotolight Ecosystem. In this shoot we used the Rotolight Anova Pro 2, Aeos, and the Neo 2.

The Motion Blurr teamed based out of London filmed the shoot for me and did a great job. Below are the shots from the shoot. I really wanted to craft this as a story and I believe the shots below show the story unfolding even more than comes across in the video of the shoot.

I can’t thank Emily and Lawrence enough for their hard work in making all of this happen. They both did a terrific job of getting into the characters and going for it.

Below is a list of the gear used in the video:

*Sony 85mm G Master

*Sony 35mm Zeiss

*Westcott Halo- https://www.fjwestcott.com/45-round-halo?acc=1c383cd30b7c298ab50293adfecb7b18

*Westcott Eyelighter- https://www.fjwestcott.com/eyelighter?acc=1c383cd30b7c298ab50293adfecb7b18

ROTOLIGHT GEAR: To receive a 10% discount and FREE shipping on the Rotolights used in this video please visit www.jasonlanier.com/rotolight