Studio Induction

This morning we had our first studio induction. This was a great opportunity as we can now use the studios for our own projects. We were given a talk about the health and safety of the studio and the equipment as well as taught how to use flash lighting for shoots.

Health and Safety List

​As we had never used the studios before or the lighting, we had to be taught about how to use it all, what settings to use on the camera and what equipment we need to get from erc stores. The first thing we were told about was the flash lighting in the room. As they're attatched to the ceiling we needed to know how to get the flash to go off in time with the camera taking the photo. The way to do this is to use an infrared trigger which sits on the top of your camera and connects to an infrared spot on the light telling it you're taking the photo. When we take photos in the cove and any other studio in the college, it will mainly be work based on portraiture, fashion or still life so the settings stay quite similar for all styles. We need to be using the camera on manual camera setting and manual lens setting. We need to make sure that the ISO is set to the lowest one possible which is somewhere around 100-200 on D80/90s. The shutterspeed needs to be at 1/125 so it links in with the speed of th eflash coming and going. To find the correct aperture to use, you need to use a Sekonic Light Metre which is a small device which detects what's around you and the light conditions you have. The way to use it is to point the receptor towards the light source, click the button on the side and click the test flash button on the light for it to work out what aperture you need it on. Theres a small screen on the device so that when you have clicked the button, it automatically pops up with the number aperture you need to set your camera to. This is a very useful step as you don't have to waste time working out the best aperture for your surroundings. The white balance on the camera needs to be on either the auto or flash mode. The actaul light itself is created through 2 bulbs, the inner bulb is the model bul and the outer buld is the flash bulb. You are able to alter the brightness of each of these by using the up and down buttons on the back of the light.

The last thing we went through during the studio session was the traditional aperture scale just to remind us for when using a light metre. We were given an example of when we'll need to decide on what aperture to put the camera on - if the light metre comes up with 11.9, what aperture setting would you use? - this tested our knowledge of the scale as you wouldn't put it on 11 as its closer to the end on the number. The answer was 16 as its closer to the higher end of 11. The scale is f1.8, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11, f16, f 22 and f32.

During the studio induction, I took a portrait of Amber using f22. The portrait is below.