There is a common misconception in photography that things are always more complicated than they seem.  While sometimes that is very true, it’s not always true and whether an enthusiast, hobbyist, or professional knowing how to use one light in your photography will greatly increase your skill as a photographer.  A lot of my students or workshop attendees ask though, how much can one light do?  Quite a bit actually.  When I teach the lighting class at Ivy Tech, I require my students to buy a Speedlight, Speedlight bracket, a Stand, an Umbrella, and a off camera speedlight trigger of some sort.  I recommend the Phottix Mitros+ starter kit which includes a stand, two umbrellas, awesome metal Phottix Veros speedlight bracket and a nifty carrying case.  You need to get the ODIN2 separately, but Phottix does EDU pricing so you can get the whole kit (without ODIN) for almost the same price as regular MSRP on the Mitros+ itself; which if you ask me is a SOLID deal.  So what can you do with one speedlight and an umbrella? I’m glad you asked.

I personally feel as though an umbrella is the most versatile light modifier.  It’s cheap, it’s bendable, it sprays soft light all over everything with little abandon.  As you can see in the image above, I was easily able to balance the light  the surroundings and the kit ends up being relatively small.  An Umbrella knows no location bounds as if it falls and breaks you’re generally out very little money.  Not only that but with a little finesse (and maybe some Gaff tape) you can get several different looks out of just one light and one umbrella.  I do this demo (or at least one very similar) with my IvyTech students any semester that I teach and I find that it’s a good fit for anybody looking to change the way that they light.  I will also be doing a 4 hour workshop on April 8th at Roberts Camera regarding shooting with your speedlight.  All brands and kinds of speedlights are welcome but if you don’t have one or aren’t sure, the folks at Phottix have been awesome and have offered to provide demo gear for everyone to play with including Canon, Nikon and Sony flashes and transmitters. You should totally come check it out if you can be in Indy that weekend.

For the gear folks out there, I shot with my Nikon D5 and my Sigma 50mmF1.4 Art lens.  Why the 50mm?  That’s easy.  I own a lot of lenses that not everyone else might have, but almost everybody owns a 50mm in some way or another.  Shooting at 50mm also means that you wont look at these and go gosh, I wish I had the Sigma 85F1.4 Art, or Gosh I had a Nikon 70-200F2.8VR, or holy smokes I wish I had a Canon 135F2.  No.  50mm ONLY for this demo.  If I had my whole slew of lenses I could have easily doubled or tripled the amount of options I had with this one light and one umbrella.  But in reality, we are here to talk about the lighting yes?  For the Light in this demo I used a Phottix Mitros+ speedlight on a Manfrotto 12′ Stacker stand with a Phottix Veros speedlight holder.  The umbrella was a Converable Silver/white 32″.  I’ll tell you how I adjusted these with each shot.  You should also notice that the ISO on my camera is always 200 or below.  To say your speedlight isn’t bright enough to shoot at a super low ISO is silly.  On one or two shots I did change my aperture for effect, but me a pal and give me that one yea?  Lets get going.

I started out with the standard bounce umbrella.  45 degree angle style.  This is pretty much what anybody who buys a light and an umbrella does on their first shot.  Simple enough yea? So lets get this one out of the way.

(Nikon D5, 200ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F7.1.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand to camera left at a 45 degree angle with Brad set to TTL bounced out of a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

Ok so lets move brad a little further away from the background.  It’s a white wall, and it’s reasonably bright in that last shot, just moving Brad about 5′ away from the wall should have a positive effect on our shot for low key purpose but just to be safe I dropped my ISO a stop and bumped my aperture to 10.  As you can tell the light falloff on the background is much nicer to look at than the shot above, and it took little to no effort to achieve.

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F10.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand to camera left at a 45 degree angle with Brad set to TTL bounced out of a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

OK so that was my freebie yes?  Lets move the umbrella.  For this next one I rotated the umbrella to a bit steeper of an angle and moved it so that it was pretty much above Brad between him and myself.  It’s not always fun shooting with a stand between you and the camera, but sometimes it’s what needs to happen when you are working the whole one light scenario.  Either way this casts a shadow more below Brad’s face which depending on what you are going for can be more pleasing in your shot.  you should also look at the light on the background.  This lighting creates more of a vignette on Brad, which can also be a nice benefit to using the umbrella from above.

(Nikon D5, 200ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F6.3.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand between brad and myself up above camera set to TTL bounced out of a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

Ok so another freebie.  Lets change the aperture of my Sigma 50mmF1.4 art to be wide open.  Nets a totally different look.  Still one light, one umbrella though right?  So I’m not cheating.  Right?

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F1.4.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand between brad and myself up above camera set to TTL bounced out of a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

OK OK, that was really the freebie.  Lets try this out.  Lets move the umbrella for real this time.  Looking for something super dramatic? Even with a white wall behind your subject? Look no further.  I moved the light to directly in front of Brad, which would be 90 degrees from Brad in comparison to me.  Here maybe this explains it better.

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F10.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on at 90 degrees from me to Brad to camera left set to TTL bounced out of a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

So that was a big change.  And you know what? We haven’t even shot THROUGH the umbrella yet!  Shooting through the umbrella drastically changes the quality of light and the spray of the light on your subject.  Some say for the better, some say for worse it’s all up to you.  I personally prefer the look shooting through the umbrella than bouncing but shooting through makes it harder to control the spill on things like the background.   You’ll notice in this shot there is a transition from light to dark (left to right) because of the shoot through.  I kept Brad at the further out position on the background, to help prevent too much spill on the background, but you can definitely see a difference.  As I mentioned, I prefer this look from the bounce, but they each have their place.

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/160th@F10.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand to camera left at a 45 degree angle with Brad set to TTL shot THROUGH a 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

OK so I’m not going to go through all of the different things you can do with a shoot through umbrella because anything I’ve already done with a bounce you can do with a shoot through, from both sides.  No trouble.  That said, what if we purposely collapse our umbrella in the same spot?  Goodbye background.

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/250th@F10.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand to camera left at a 45 degree angle with Brad set to TTL bounced out of a collapsed 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.)

This is what I like about an umbrella as a light modifier.  I’ll be honest and say that I don’t regularly use umbrellas as much as I once did because I’ve saved my pennies and have a variety of softboxes at my disposal now, yet I always have two umbrellas in my bag just for when needed.  This particular 32″ convertible in fact, and a 60″ white one for when the need to shower the everliving bejesus out of something with soft light arises.  Wait are you still thinking about that collapsed umbrella?  Wondering what times might be needed for a collapsed umbrella?  What about in a tight hallway where you want some soft light but the walls aren’t white?  Even as a full time pro you never know where your one umbrella will come in handy but it always does.

(Nikon D5, 100ISO, Sigma 50mmF1.4Art, 1/40th@F1.4.  Phottix Mitros+ Speedlight on a stand to camera left at a 45 degree angle with Brad set to TTL bounced out of a collapsed 32″ convertible umbrella. Speedlight triggered by a Phottix ODIN2 on the camera hot shoe.) 

There you have it.  That photo isn’t perfect, the environment is a little dark but that’s how this particular environment was.   That said, look at the light on Brad balanced with the light at the end of that hallway!  The photo totally works, and it was shot with a half collapsed umbrella in a tight hallway and every shot on this page today was shot with the Sigma 50mmF1.4 Art lens.  Every one.  As I said at the beginning if I was going to change lenses I’d have twice the options for different photos that I could create because all the lenses have different properties to affect proportions and backgrounds.  Sure you can argue some of my shots on this blog are a little too similar, but the reality of it is they are different enough that your client will notice and that’s the most important part.

You have to walk before you can run, an umbrella is a great place to start if you are just learning or you just got your speedlight.  If you’re afraid to venture on your own you should come out and see me at Roberts Camera for their Speedlight Bootcamp on April 8th 2017 in Indianapolis Indiana.  You have to scroll to find the class I can’t link directly to it for some unknown internet reason.  Shout out to Robert’s Derek Martin who hooked me up with a direct link to the class.  The class is $29 and sure to be a big hit.  We will talk about shooting with just the speedlight, using an umbrella, using your environment, bedsheets and at the very end we will mix a couple of lights together.  All brands and sizes of speedlights are welcome nobody will be turned away and we will even have several Phottix speedlights of each compatibility on hand to demo as well.  Be ready to try out all the things!   More soon.

P.S. This is what you are looking for on Robert’s website. It’s a Screenshot, not clickable.