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Artificial lighting: How many strobes / flashes did it take to ligh each of these?


Tom Mann

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I don't know if anyone might be interested in this, but recently on other forums (and not so recently, here), I've witnessed heated discussions break out as people are trying to figure out how many strobes / flashes the photographer actually used.

Lighting is the absolute foundation of all photography, so, just for fun, here's a bunch of recent shots that I've taken for which I've used anywhere from no supplementary lighting all the way up to using dozens of flashes to get the effect that you see. In almost all of these, there always is a noticeable amount of ambient light present, so don't forget to factor that in to your analyses. The ambient light might be the sun, sunlight coming in through a window, street lights (at night), etc. In only a few of the shots is the ambient light the major source of light (and the flashes just acting as fill).

FYI, for two of these images, there was absolutely no ambient light present: #7 (rear view of the ambulance), and #10 (the two fire trucks back to back with the logo between them). These two scenes were almost pitch black, and I supplied every photon of light that you see in these two photos. Also, FYI, all supplementary light was always in the form of strobes. No continuous lights were ever used: no LED panels, no hot lights (ie, tungsten), no fluorescent lights (that I supplied), etc. One final FYI, other than the logo in the last one, none of these are classic Photoshop composites (for example, I didn't just drop in a fire truck (or trucks) shot in daylight into a night scene).

So, if you feel like chatting a bit about lighting, for each these shots, post how you think I lit the shot, ie, how many lights you think I used, where they were, roughly what fraction of the light did I supply, e.g., "most", "roughly half and half", or "just a little".

After we get a few answers, I'll tell you how I actually did each one.

Have fun!

Tom M

PS - Don't bother looking at the EXIF data. I stripped it out. ;-) , but I'll be happy to answer questions before you give your answers. :)

#1

001-BVFD_Santa_run_photo-_0000_image_ONLY.jpg

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#2

002-D7B_8841-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB-02_for_web.jpg


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#3

003-D7B_9109-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB-2-02_for_web.jpg

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#4

004-D7B_9422-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#5

005-D7B_9997_raw-LR_to_PSD_proFoto-bracketed-ps01a-01_sRGB-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#6

006-D7C_0764_DxO_1_tif-acr-ps01a-01-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#7

007-D7C_0794_DxO_tif-acr-ps01a-01-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#8

008-D7C_0859-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#9

009-D7C_0867-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB-02_xnv_for_web.jpg

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#10

010-Masthead_composite-tjm04-ps02a_sRGB_fullR_stretch_middle_full_crest_add_LHS-01-02_xnv_for_we.jpg


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:)
 

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