CLG - Flash and Creative Lighting

Photography is sometimes defined as painting with light. While available light photography is the most common used, many situations can be improved by the use of additional lighting, mostly in the form of one or more flash units. 

This course aims to both provide a good understanding of the capabilities as well as practically explore a number of situations utilising both the Nikon Creative Lighting system and an economic small home studio system.

We start with the on board flash unit of some models, then move onto a single flash unit and explore its use on camera, and on an extension lead, both as a main light source and balanced fill flash. The various capabilities and settings for this are explored, with a series of photo setups to make use of it.

A small studio setup using a low cost non Nikon lighting system is looked at using a  number of flash heads, reflectors, brollies and other accessories and light cubes, a radio trigger is used as well as flash meters.

The Nikon creative lighting system is explored, the different flash units and how they can be combined is covered. How each camera caters for this is explored. Balancing light for colour, mixed lighting, fill flash, briefly settings on both the camera and flash units are investigated. Commander mode on some cameras, separate unit or utilising the SB800 and multiple groups of flash are covered. Examples illustrated are fill flash, close up photographs of items and portraits. This covers the SB900, SB800, SB600, SB400, SB200, and R1C1 kit including commander. Most of the experience gained will be done using three SB800 and two SB600 units and several SB200'S, and any units you have, but can be applied to any of the other models. The SB400 is not a part of the creative lighting system, all the other will work together. We  have 3 SB800, 2 SB600, and a full R1C1 kit, expanded to include 4 SB200's, which includes the SU800 controller. We also have a hi-lite, a large 6' by 7' background we can light up with two SB200's as well as other backgrounds and various reflectors, flash cubes and more.

We show you how to use reflectors instead of flash units, so you will be able to handle anything from a single flash on camera or used via the cameras commander with reflectors to manage portraits, up to a larger creative lighting system.

Before this course

Before attending this course you should either have attended another of our courses (ideally the HNK Hands on a Nikon) or have a very good understanding of digital photography and the operation of at least one of the Nikon DSLR cameras. If you have a good practical knowledge, and understand much of the theory of photography, you can do this without having done any other course. If in doubt please ask. There may also be special circumstances where you may want to do this course, without being able to undertake other photography, and we will meet your requirements, but do need to know what they are in advance to make sure we have adequately prepared.

Flexible course contents

As our courses are made to measure, you can take this course as defined or take a part of it and mix in something else. Only the CNX and HNK courses need a full day, and cannot be easily changed. The most common changes are to add just the Nikon Creative Lighting, but not studio lighting part to either an experience day following another course, allowing you to put more into practice, or with a shortened look at macro photography.

We can also focus this course on a specific interest, and for a modest additional cost bring in a model for you to photograph, but we can include this in one option at no cost, see below.

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How long a day to have

Like all of our courses you can choose the day length that is right for you, varying from a 'short', just 3 hours long, to days from silver at 5 hours up to platinum plus, 10 hours in length. It's also possible to break this into a number of days including a lot of practical.

So with so many options lets make a few suggestions

• Creative lighting can be covered in a 'short' using still life subjects

• Studio lighting with minimal use of mains units and then concentrating on creative lighting or the reverse, minimal use of creative lighting and mainly using mains powered lights, can be done in 5 or 6 hours.

• As above but with a model for 2 hours requires 6 to 8 hours.

• Creative lighting and exploring portraiture using a model requires about 7 hours.

• If you are more interested in product photography then consider combining this and macro into a 8 to 10 hour day.

• To cover both still life or product photography, as well as setting up a full studio and creative lighting, getting experience with a model, and making the most of all the option of the hilite, requires 9 or 10 hours, or better still two gold 7 hour days.

If you book a CLG with a gold or longer day, and don't define what you want, we will cover the course defined at the top of this page and bring in a model for 2 hours to be used for both demonstrating practical effects, and to allow you to get some practical experience. There is no additional cost to you for using this model.

If you would like more time photographing a model then rather than extending the time they are with us, we suggest its better to have a second one, possibly overlapping with the first, so as to allow you to get some photographs with two together. Each additional 2 hours of model time requires 1 training voucher in addition to the training vouchers to cover the course time. So for example if you chose to have 2 gold days 7 hours long and on the first day to do the CLG, with the free model included and the following day to have a practical day partly used with light cubes and still life and flowers, but also having 2 models in for 2 hours, overlapping by 1 hour, so you had an hour with one, an hour of them together and an hour of the second alone. You would require  7 training vouchers for the first day, and 7 plus 2 for the models for the second, 16 in total.

You can call and talk over your requirements if you like, and we will try to give you exactly the day or days that you want.

If you don't know what you want or find this too complicated then choose a Gold (7 hour)  or Gold Plus (8 hour) day, and leave the rest to us.