Great help for people starting. A couple comments. You can think of microphone and distance in terms of gain and noise, as Daniel does here, but alternatively explain the whole things in terms of "inverse square law". When you want to remove "environmental" or ambient effects from a background - rendering a white background black in the photo - then you place the flash as close to the subject as possible, to begin with. Bring the microphone at half the distance and you need squared less recording level. I would distinguish room noise that we are not conscious of from the noise floor in the electronic sound recording. Dynamic range will be a function of a sensitivity aspect somewhere in the audio chain in the same way sensitivity or ISO settings impact that in photography.
Sound is so often overlooked. I can think of a couple of podcasts that could use a sound engineer for advice. Excellent advice on the cardiod vs shotgun. Do you have any advice on reflective sound? You have some hard walls in your studio and I would expect some bounce back of some frequencies.
Have you ever had an issue with phase due to using two mics at once? Was told that could potentially happen so I’ve stayed away from using two at once. Just wondering as I’m always trying to learn.
What's with the deep parabolic light modifiers, Daniel? Take this lightly, but you being a supreme master of light modification, I ask you how a deep parabola with a diffuser on it differs from a regular softbox/octa of the same diameter? Here, you shoot the light into the back and do not use the parabola aspect. Used this way, the total depth of the contraption is a problem in smaller studios. My position is, when you don't fire the strobe into the parabola, using the (mathematical) parabola property, then you can go much shallower. Also, if you cannot focus/defocus the light in the parabola, then forget "parabola". One thing you could do a video on, is a comparison of the light circle put out by different modifiers, by firing them at a white wall from, say, 2m or 7' distance and recording the flash in photos taken from farther back. When you are in the non vignetting zone of the lens, you can then assess the light fall off in post, as well as compare the light circle each variant puts out. This does not however inform about the "quality" of the light. Within the same light circle, light can be focused, defocused (compare your torch that you used during your childhood night walks in nature), or it can be diffused. To see the difference between these in the results, is not so easy, but it's there. If you would do such an experiment, I would add a second series of comparative test shots where you photograph the front of the modifier, especially when there is no diffuser. This will illustrate how your strobe is hitting the reflecting inside of the modifier. With a Profoto strobe that has its flash tube in a reflector, the flash angle is comparable to a 35mm lens and either a wide modifier or shifting the Profoto far into the modifier may prevent the flash from hitting the modifier wall. With shoot through umbrellas this already becomes visible when recording the light circle from a distance. Put a colour reference calibration target in the circle and you can also test the RGB tint differences between the modifiers and their diffusers ... Seems like a lot of work, but a starting photographer may have only one strobe and modifier, and each time they add one, it's a relatively small chore to do the calibration again. And it teaches a lot faster than experimenting in a room with a sitter.
The simple answer is that is what I have - these lights are not focusable so they are basically acting as punchy octas - the one advantage to the depth though is that light is fully even by the time it reaches the front diffuser.
Great help for people starting. A couple comments. You can think of microphone and distance in terms of gain and noise, as Daniel does here, but alternatively explain the whole things in terms of "inverse square law". When you want to remove "environmental" or ambient effects from a background - rendering a white background black in the photo - then you place the flash as close to the subject as possible, to begin with. Bring the microphone at half the distance and you need squared less recording level. I would distinguish room noise that we are not conscious of from the noise floor in the electronic sound recording. Dynamic range will be a function of a sensitivity aspect somewhere in the audio chain in the same way sensitivity or ISO settings impact that in photography.
Cool thanks Daniel, starting to venture into this stuff now...
Cool. I wish we could’ve heard the two different mics.
Sound is so often overlooked. I can think of a couple of podcasts that could use a sound engineer for advice. Excellent advice on the cardiod vs shotgun. Do you have any advice on reflective sound? You have some hard walls in your studio and I would expect some bounce back of some frequencies.
Have you ever had an issue with phase due to using two mics at once? Was told that could potentially happen so I’ve stayed away from using two at once. Just wondering as I’m always trying to learn.
What's with the deep parabolic light modifiers, Daniel? Take this lightly, but you being a supreme master of light modification, I ask you how a deep parabola with a diffuser on it differs from a regular softbox/octa of the same diameter?
Here, you shoot the light into the back and do not use the parabola aspect. Used this way, the total depth of the contraption is a problem in smaller studios. My position is, when you don't fire the strobe into the parabola, using the (mathematical) parabola property, then you can go much shallower. Also, if you cannot focus/defocus the light in the parabola, then forget "parabola".
One thing you could do a video on, is a comparison of the light circle put out by different modifiers, by firing them at a white wall from, say, 2m or 7' distance and recording the flash in photos taken from farther back. When you are in the non vignetting zone of the lens, you can then assess the light fall off in post, as well as compare the light circle each variant puts out. This does not however inform about the "quality" of the light. Within the same light circle, light can be focused, defocused (compare your torch that you used during your childhood night walks in nature), or it can be diffused. To see the difference between these in the results, is not so easy, but it's there.
If you would do such an experiment, I would add a second series of comparative test shots where you photograph the front of the modifier, especially when there is no diffuser. This will illustrate how your strobe is hitting the reflecting inside of the modifier. With a Profoto strobe that has its flash tube in a reflector, the flash angle is comparable to a 35mm lens and either a wide modifier or shifting the Profoto far into the modifier may prevent the flash from hitting the modifier wall. With shoot through umbrellas this already becomes visible when recording the light circle from a distance. Put a colour reference calibration target in the circle and you can also test the RGB tint differences between the modifiers and their diffusers ...
Seems like a lot of work, but a starting photographer may have only one strobe and modifier, and each time they add one, it's a relatively small chore to do the calibration again. And it teaches a lot faster than experimenting in a room with a sitter.
The simple answer is that is what I have - these lights are not focusable so they are basically acting as punchy octas - the one advantage to the depth though is that light is fully even by the time it reaches the front diffuser.
🥳🎉🎂