Night photography requires a few “different” tools than

day photography. The most important is a very steady tripod. Obviously you want to park your camera somewhere sturdy regardless, but with night photography your exposures may be anywhere from 1/2 second through 30 seconds and more. While the shutter speed in the featured image was only 1/25 second, I was using a fairly fast f3.2 with a 14-24 f2.8 lens to capture the dimming light. However, once the sun fades and the stars show up to the party, shutter speeds will need to get much much longer. With that, the second “tool” that I recommend for night photography that you may not find necessary during the day is a good headlamp. (At least a few people just went “HUH?”)
By headlamp, I’m basically talking about a flashlight for your head. They come in all sizes, prices and with a variety of features. But before you spend your money on a headlamp, let me make a recommendation… You will want one that has a RED light mode. While fairly dim for walking around and such, the red light will not interrupt your night vision or of others that may be around you. You may also want to be sure it has a good SPOT beam which is perfect for hiking to and from your campsite or vehicle, and a wide angle mode which is perfect for digging around in your bag or during setup and breakdown. I personally picked up a Black Diamond Storm headlamp (pictured) from a local REI store after comparing many other models online and in person. While it may set you back $45-$50 for the headlamp, you could opt for the slightly less waterproof Black Diamond Spot headlamp which is about $10 less but has a slightly lower peak light output and less battery life, though still very capable.

Not to be left out, another thing that I suggest you keep in your bag for night photography is a good remote release. It can be a cable type or a wireless release, but a remote release will allow you to trigger the camera without the possibility of even the slightest camera shake. If you happen to be setting up to do a night HDR bracket, this is even more critical as even the most steady tripod and head will move ever so slightly when you press the shutter without a remote release. And if you are using a longer, heavier telephoto lens, the odds that you will have camera shake that will blur your image goes up by magnitudes. I typically use fast wide angle lens for night landscape where very minor shake isn’t amplified much, but I have been known to use up to a 500mm lens for moon captures and even the mirror slap can cause the slightest motion that gets amplified highly by the huge focal length of the lens.

I would suggest bringing along any “fast” lenses you may have.

As for your lens selection, this is going to depend obviously on what you have access to, but also what your intentions are. If you want a nice wide-angle landscape shot at night, clearly you should opt for the appropriate lens. But I would suggest bringing along ANY “fast” lenses you may have. By fast, I mean max apertures of f2.8 or less. While the depth of field at f1.4 is very shallow when shooting close to your subject (portrait distance), when focused on a point several hundred feet away or greater, the range of image in focus will not be as much of a limiting factor. Additionally, lenses with faster max apertures will allow for the camera to meter and auto focus better in this very low light than similar lens with a slower max aperture. (since the camera opens the lens to the max aperture until the shutter is pressed) I almost always pack my 85mm f1.4 lens and the wonderful 14-24 f2.8 lens, but for super-telephoto images (such as moon closeups) the Tamron 200-500mm f5/6.3 lens proves satisfactory since my subject is “well lit” anyhow. Any f1.2 to f2 prime (such as 35mm or 50mm) will be a great option for night photography as well.

So now on to setup. This is what separates the novices from the experienced night photographers. Depending on your camera, you may be able to get away with using higher ISO settings and lower shutter speeds, however I typically find that I “prefer” the longer shutter speed and stick with lower ISO settings whenever possible. Also, your white balance settings can prove tricky depending on what light may be left over. If you are in a more urban setting with street light glow, you may prefer the “colored” light look of the street lights, in which case I would stick with a Daylight white balance (which is what I use for “most” of my night photography anyway), but if you want to neutralize that cast, you may need to create a custom white balance which can prove tricky in very low light. Your best bet is often to simply take a reference image of a target such as the X-Rite Color Checker Passport in these various light settings and work out the color later in your RAW editor. (Just remember, you want to take the picture of the target with the same settings, including exposure time, aperture and ISO, as you are taking pictures as the various ambient light can mix differently depending on the length of the exposure and so on.)

Back to the featured image at the top, that was set up at ISO 200 with the aperture set to f3.2 and shutter speed of 1/25th. While not the darkest time of day, the sky was still fairly well lit while the ground was barely visible. But as long as I get “decent” information in the shadows, I know that I can pull that out later from the RAW file. But in some cases, you can only get very little light on the ground or your subject matter to even out with the light of the sky. This was much the case with the image “Storm Warning” above. While the moon was full and very bright (it was the 5/5/12 “Supermoon” evening), clouds obscured the majority of the moon most of the time so very little moon light was available. So a longer exposure was necessary. While the image doesn’t appear to have any movement, the fast moving storm created a very strong steady wind of at least 60mph while we were taking pictures. This posed new problems, movement… Both of non-stable objects, clouds and so fourth, but also the camera itself was being blown around slightly, even with the stable tripod. To counteract this, I braced the two tripod legs through a sturdy wooden fence and added a bit of ballast to the center post to help keep the tripod upright, but also to “absorb” some of the tiny movements causing any potential motion. This allowed me to use a long shutter speed. In this case, 30 seconds at f5 with the ISO at 160 for low noise. While dark (far darker in person considering we were in an otherwise completely dark Colorado open space parking lot), the image almost appears to be taken at dusk not unlike the sunset picture. But it may surprise you to know that this was taken at 10:41pm.

I’m sure a few people just asked themselves “why a 30 second exposure at low ISO and not a shorter exposure and higher ISO” and that would be a valid question. In fact, their are several reasons why to go with a lower ISO and longer shutter speed. First, as long as you keep the exposures under 30 seconds, you will get very little added “sensor” noise that you could get from a very long exposure (such as exposures of several minutes and up). But also, the image will have less ISO noise which in some cameras may jump dramatically from your base ISO settings (ISO 50 to 200 depending on the camera) but I also feel that the longer exposures help “unfreeze” some of the moving aspects such as cars (note the highway in the background of the “Storm Warning” picture), clouds and even stars if that is what we are after. More on star trails in a later post. While “freezing” the movement of stars may be ideal for some pictures, when using a wide angle lens, the movement is typically not picked much and you can get away with much longer shutter speeds before the “star trails” are noticeable.

Now when it gets extremely dark, such as when no moon or stars are visible, sometimes we simply cannot get enough light to bring any detail out of the foreground objects. Such was the case with the above night shot of the lake reflections. Unless I did a very long exposure and/or raised the ISO settings considerably, the trees and grass in the foreground and background were essentially a silhouette. Rather than fight the lack of light, I embraced the beautiful reflections of the sky and background in the water. (This was a 20 second exposure at f2.8 and ISO 200.)

Histogram vs Image Exposure

Now that we have a capture, how should we process it?

Honestly, we first need to consider how we want to convey the “look and feel” of the image. With the image above, I wanted a very cool blue “twilight” feel to the image. But if you look at the histogram for that image, either on-camera or in your image editing software (in this case Photoshop CS5), the image appears highly underexposed. But because this is the feel that I am trying to get, the exposure is exactly where it should be. Don’t over-correct the image just for the sake of a histogram. While the histogram is a GREAT tool for judging if you have lost detail in highlights or shadows during the time of capture and I highly suggest paying attention to it while editing in Lightroom, Aperture, Capture One or Photoshop, it is only a “graph” to help you judge where the majority of the image falls in terms of exposure (in this case I have it set to Luminosity). Because I want a “deep dark” feel to the image, I can clearly SEE that on the histogram and easily tell that I have not lost much in terms of black clipping. This is especially important if your screen isn’t calibrated extremely well or has a tendency to clip shadow details that may otherwise show up in a print, or vice verse.

I am currently utilizing Adobe Lightroom 4 for all of my RAW processing before exporting images to Photoshop for final tweaks and other edits that I cannot easily handle in LR4. The main objective of Lightroom is to get the “most” out of the camera RAW files without hurting details or clipping highlights or shadows. And while the imported file may appear nothing like the capture on the camera, this is largely because the camera is displaying the embedded JPEG file (part of the RAW file) while Lightroom is processing and displaying the essentially un-modified RAW image data. Additionally, if your default “import” develop settings are set poorly or wrong, it may even give you a very crazy preview that is even worse than it should be. So be sure to either reset all of the settings for the default import, or have minimal “tweaks” so to not mess up the image previews that are automatically generated. (You can fix it later, but it saves time when culling images to have decent previews depicting each file.)

Again, when it comes to editing the RAW, this is all about how we want the end result to “look and feel”. This largely comes down to personal preference and your creative vision. But I can say that it is quite easy to “bring back” some of that shadow detail and once you master the controls in Lightroom, you can easily manipulate the images to fit your initial vision for the scene.
As for doing this, I highly suggest watching some of my Lightroom tutorial videos on my YouTube channel: http://www.YouTube.com/ModifiedPhoto

I hope this was helpful and informative. Please feel free to share any night photos you try out after reading this! And as always, use the “Share” links below to share this post with friends. Happy night shooting!

None the less, here is my first installment of “Articles worth reading”.

The first article here, found on the LensRentals.com website, Roger Cicala explains in detail the how and why of what makes a “good” or “bad” copy of a lens. After all, who would know better than someone testing multiples of the same lens back to back. (Which he does for this article.) It’s a bit technical, but it really does explain quite well why sometimes when we get a new lens it may not perform as good as we might expect.

Link: Notes on Lens and Camera Variation

The next article, covering a favorite topic of mine, explains fairly well how to photograph lightning. (Using nearly the same technique as I’ve “perfected” myself.) Don Peters explains in this B&H Photo blog the steps and settings to increase your odds of capturing lightning. (The same technique happens to work well with fireworks as well.) The only difference between my own methods and the ones described in the article is the fact that I set the ISO as low as I can and the aperture around F11 and then set the shutter speed to give me a 20-30 second exposure, but still keep the land/objects in the foreground dark but not silhouetted with the long exposure. (Refer to my lightning example above.)

Link: How to Photograph Lightning

And although this LAST link isn’t photography related, it really has some great information regarding Facebook and social media and how to use Facebook features to increase brand awareness, something we need to consider as photographers if we want to get repeat business. For what it’s worth, I have yet to implement much of what is mentioned on my own Facebook pages, but it’s still a good read.

Link: How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Visual Branding

However, this is where it gets tricky…

So lets say you have a studio light set up and measured the output directly at the source and again at 2, 4, 8 and 16 feet. At two feet lets imagine you metered the light at F16. But each time you double the distance from the light source, the intensity drops off by FOUR TIMES as much or two full f-stops. This means at four feet the light will meter only F8 (which is 2 f-stop or 4x less than at 2 feet). And at eight feet it will meter F4 which again is 2 f-stop or 4x less than at 4 feet. And at sixteen feet the light will only meter F2 and is now a full 6 stops less than your meter reading at 2 feet. But take note here that each distance measurement is doubling meaning that the farther from the source you get, the less the light drops off per increase in distance.

Lets me set up an example of what makes knowing the Inverse Square Law important as a photographer. Imagine you are hired to photograph your Uncle Bob and Aunt Sophie in your studio. You decide to pose Uncle Bob just behind and to the right of Aunt Sophie and place the main light source only two feet in front of her and to the the camera left. And lets say that Uncle Bob is roughly two feet further from the light source. This means to expose for Aunt Sophie will result in Uncle Bob being underexposed by 2 f-stops because only 1/4 the light intensity is hitting him compared to her. And to expose for Uncle Bob would result in her being over exposed by the same 2 f-stops. That’s not going to be a keeper!

We should try this again, but this time with the light source 16 feet from Aunt Sophie and Uncle Bob is still roughly two feet further from the source. This means that the intensity of the light hitting Aunt Sophie is going to be considerably less than with the light placed only 2 feet from the couple as above. But because of the change in distance, the intensity of the light isn’t going to drop another full f-stop until you get 24 feet away or 2 f-stop at 32 feet. Meaning Uncle Bob standing 18 feet from the light is going to be roughly a 1/4 f-stop lower than Aunt Sophie. Whoa! That’s like magic or something!

Of course the side effects of moving the light away is that it now becomes a “smaller” light source AND you will need more power to light them with the same camera settings as you would with the light source closer. As for the size of the source, it doesn’t actually shrink. Instead it is smaller in relation to your subject due to the increased distance from your subject. (Although the Sun is 865,000 miles in diameter, it appears as only a small dot in the sky due to its distance from Earth.) As with any “small” light source, the shadows will become more defined and the light will “wrap” around the subject less resulting in it appearing as a higher contrast light source. We could counteract this by using a physically larger source and/or by increasing the relative size of the source with a larger soft box or umbrella. Of course that has its limitations due to available space and larger modifiers are often more expensive. As for the reduction in output with the increased distance, that will all depend on your flash and if it has the power to compensate. Otherwise you would need to adjust the camera settings by increasing the ISO value or using a larger aperture. Or for constant light sources such as a tungsten light, you can use a slower shutter speed to compensate as well. But when using a flash as the primary light source, the shutter speed will only affect any constant or ambient lights that may be present. (There is a lesson to learn here as well, you can blend ambient with flash by dragging the shutter and get some interesting results in dim rooms or outdoors at night.)

But wait, the distance doubles but the light intensity drops by one-quarter? That doesn’t make sense… Shouldn’t it drop by only half? Nope. Here’s why:

The diagram above shows, the light will both cut in intensity by one-quarter BUT it will then cover 4 times the area as it did at half the distance. So if we imagine that the first square is a wall one square foot in size and 4 feet from the source, the second wall is 8 feet from the source and light will have spread over a 4 square foot area at 1/4 the intensity of the first wall. And a wall at 16 feet, or double the distance from the second wall, the light will be again 1/4 the intensity but again now covers 4 times as much area (or 16 times as much as at 4 feet).

Imagine it like this. The light is spreading out like water out of a hose spray nozzle. The intensity and stream of water right out of the sprayer is strong and will soak a person at point-blank range but spray someone 20 feet away and it will only feel like a slight shower to them. Of course you could focus the stream of water as could you with the light which would result in throwing the light farther with the same amount of power BUT inverse square still applies.

In any case, hopefully this clears up some of the confusion about how it works and what it means for photographers. So don’t be afraid to move those lights around to help even out the light or to create more contrast between your subject and the background.

Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your lab and get back the best prints every time. Including press-printed products that many labs now offer.

Get prints that match:

It’s not difficult get a print that looks fairly close to your screen from most good labs. However this is assuming your screen is properly calibrated. If you order uncorrected prints from your lab and frequently get prints back that are lacking contrast, dark, dull or overall the wrong color, chances are it’s not your labs fault. (I know, it’s easier to blame them… After all, it looks great on YOUR screen right?) This ALSO applies if you are having issues matching the color from your own in-house printers but those have multiple factors that could be set up wrong causing your headaches. I’ll go into that another time.
In any case, if your prints come back dark, dull or lacking contrast there is a good chance that your screen may actually be set too bright or with the contrast level too high causing your images to look very bright and “good” on your screen but as soon as the prints go to the lab (or your own printer) they look terrible. This is because the file itself IS dark and lacking contrast.

So your screen is calibrated you say? How do you know the calibration is correct? The software told you so right? The problem with most display calibration tools these days is the fact that they dumb down the software to make it easy to use but hide all of the advanced controls away so you can’t truly calibrate your display. On top of that, some display simply lack the accuracy to be calibrated properly even with an automated calibration tool. (Forget about editing on most laptops, the screens lack the proper color accuracy.)

Although it sounds like a lot of trouble, here is one way to help you find out if the brightness and contrast level on your display are causing your printing problems. Send a file to your lab or own printer with the corrections that look “good” on your screen. When you get that back, mark the brightness and contrast settings on the front of the print with a permanent marker. Now lower the contrast and brightness level of your display to default or below (usually the half way mark). If your screen is already at half way or below, lower the settings more. Now correct the file to look good on your screen and send the file again. When you get that back, mark down the settings again and repeat until you find the brightness and contrast of the prints match the screen well. (To save time, you can correct the files and save each with a unique name and have them all printed at once and match them up with the back printing on the image when you get the prints back from your lab.)

The culprit here is the fact that most desktop LCD display are capable of brightness levels of 350 cd/m2 or greater (my LaCie goes to 400 cd/m2 which is just short of blinding at full tilt). We only want and need about 1/3 of that brightness or roughly 100-120 cd/m2 depending on your working environment. Yet most display come with the brightness and contrast levels set well over that and many of us just go with the default settings since they make everything look bright and snappy. (Except our prints which look dark and dull in comparison.)

Another very possible problem could in fact be the fact that the file is in AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB and the lab is expecting sRGB files. Although it doesn’t sound like a big problem, the labs software often doesn’t take this into account. (As the lab throwdown results showed.) This could also be caused by saving the file without the profile embedded. THIS IS IMPORTANT!! Be sure all images are ALWAYS saved with the correct profile embedded, even for the web since most new web browsers are now color managed. Although it doesn’t seem like a problem on our end, sRGB and AdobeRGB have a vastly different color gamut and even the gamma is different which will cause the color, contrast and density to shift in strange ways.

Here is a little graphic that should help you dial in the brightness of your display. Their should be a noticeable separation between each box, except perhaps the two darkest which may or may not have separation depending on your display. (Even my high-end display has trouble with dark colors between gray 0 and 4. It’s OK though, very little detail is visible in a printed areas that dark anyhow.) But you should be able to see a difference between all of the boxes from 5 to 255 for sure.

First set the brightness control so that the box labeled 5 can be distinguished from 0 and 2. Next use the contrast control to make the 255 box as bright as you can (you may need to lower the contrast later if it is too bright still) while still being able to easily see the adjacent box. You may need to go back and readjust the brightness control again if you’ve lost the separation between the darkest boxes. This should give you a good starting point for the brightness and contrast of your display that will allow for better print matching.

After setting the brightness and contrast controls on your display, you may want to re-profile your display using your hardware calibration device such as a Spyder, Huey, Eye-One or ColorMunki. (I suggest writing down your display settings FIRST just in case the software uses DDC controls to try to one-up your new display settings.)

Once your screen is at the correct brightness and contrast and the color is calibrated well, your uncorrected lab prints should closely match the screen and make it easier for you to do corrections to your own files as well as save some money by using economy print rates. (Or have piece of mind knowing that what you’ve sent the lab has good color and exposure before they work their magic on the files.)

Try a template:

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a good photographer and a terrible graphic designer. In fact, MOST photographers are poor at graphic design and even fewer understand specific “rules” when it comes to proper design for printing. I’m not going to go into details about design here. But I will say that if you want to save yourself a lot of headaches, reprints and possibly a call from your lab asking for a redesigned album page or photo cover, read the guidelines provided by your lab and ask if they have templates available for download. Many labs offer free templates online for photographic hard cover albums and books and most have written guidelines available for pages.

For example, a cover layout sounds pretty straight forward at first but it isn’t quite that simple once you consider it. Custom photographic albums and press printed books are often printed slightly over sized and trimmed down to the final size during binding. This means any text, graphics, images or borders close to the edges may get trimmed into and/or be trimmed slightly uneven in the final book. I suggest avoiding thin borders and be sure pages are full bleed whenever possible. (meaning the images go edge to edge) Some labs may want pages to have a small margin built-in (as much as 1/4″ all the way around) while some may want pages to be designed at the exact final size. Check with your lab for details on page layout guidelines.

As for custom hard cover books or albums with photographic covers, it is easy to think the cover image for a 10×10 album should be 10×20, but that doesn’t account for the spine, spine hinge, edges of the hard cover or overlap around the cover on all sides. Even a soft cover book has a thin spine that adds to the width of the cover slightly. See the template below for an example of this. Only the green areas are the front and back cover but everything but the red areas will be visible on the final book or album.

Here is an example of a photo cover template from H&H Color Lab for an 8×10″ hard cover press printed book. Don’t forget to use templates with the correct orientation. A horizontal book will have the spine on the short side while a vertical book will have the spine on the long edge. In this example, the cover template is for a vertical 8×10 book. The green area of the template is the area that will be on the flat areas of the front or back covers. The light blue is the spine hinge area which may have folds or slight wrinkles due to the book folding at that point. Avoid important text or graphics in these areas. (Including faces and other parts of the cover images that may end up in this area depending on your design.) The dark blue area will end up on the spine of the book. This area is safe to place text and graphics but be sure the font isn’t too large for the spine. The yellow area will be wrapped around the edges of the cover. If you use a photo for the entire front or back of the cover, I suggest the image wrap all the way past the yellow area but be sure heads, hands or other important details do not fall into the yellow area. And lastly, the red area will be cut off or covered by the binding on the inside of the front and back covers.

Some other design tips:

Consider Professional Corrections:

Having your lab do your color corrections has an up side and a down side. On one side, the thought is “How does the lab know how I want my color?” And honestly, they generally don’t know what you want BUT they are going by a lab standard color for skin tones and use best judgment when working on images that don’t fit into that category.  But on the flip side, the technicians at the lab are highly skilled and color correct hundreds or even thousands of images for professionals every day. This is what they do and generally as long as you don’t send very poor quality files or have an unusual color preference, the resulting color corrections should be fairly good. The technicians are also working on monitors that are checked for calibration on a regular basis and matched to the printers. The technicians also proof check the prints under calibrated lighting before they are finished and shipped. Also, going back to the calibration discussion earlier, it is truly hard to know if your display is calibrated properly or not even if the software says that your display is calibrated. I’ve found that I can calibrate both of my display and get a VERY different result, yet the software is perfectly happy with the color in its mind. (Though through experience I can see that it isn’t correct.) I’ve since switched to a much more advanced application for very accurate calibration with my Spyder3 device but it still has its quirks.

If you feel you are good at doing your own corrections or have special color treatments you use on images frequently, by all means go with the economy service. But those who don’t sit down and edit every image before sending it to the lab really might find that the labs corrections are worth the slight difference in cost.

Not sure what to expect? Some labs actually offer a reference image that is used by the technicians as the “lab standard color” for skin tones, density and contrast. You can request this file and/or a print from most labs to use to help guide your own color corrections or to get a better idea what to expect from a corrected file. Some labs will even allow you to make a custom preference to suit your own taste if you find that the lab standard color is too warm, too cool or you prefer richer, deeper color perhaps. A good lab will work with you in this process so that your prints are always to YOUR standard.

Using your lab for color corrections also makes for a slightly quicker work flow on your end as you can process your images on your end and do any retouching and editing and then send the files and let the lab handle final color corrections saving you the time to do more work that you would prefer to be doing.

Remember the labs limitations. As I mentioned above, flattened composites can limit the ability for the lab to do corrections as not all of the photos in the composite may need the same corrections and any background images or textures and other graphic elements may also shift in color with the overall corrections done by the lab. (Generally the technician will avoid doing corrections to the files that will result in changes that may greatly alter the look of the design.) Also, most labs DO NOT do corrections in an image editing program like Photoshop so the corrections to the files (composite or not) are on an overall basis. If you want selective color adjustments or need to do anything like a custom dodge or burn, you should do it on your end before submitting the files OR request custom art to be done which is generally an extra charge. The technicians don’t generally have access to tools to do more complicated corrections on their end. (Some labs may offer a custom print service which may include alterations like this but again, this is generally an extra cost over a standard print. For example, when I was a digital tech at Colormark in Phoenix, AZ we offered a custom print service in which we did extra corrections to the files to get the very best prints for the customer, but the price was much higher than a standard digital print.)

Also, consider the fact that the lab is working with a JPEG or TIFF file that only has so much color information available before the image quality degrades. For the best prints, avoid sending files with very bad color casts or very poor exposure. Problems like blown-out whites or blocked-up shadows CAN NOT be corrected, even by your lab. Ideally you should fix these problems on your end first if you have the camera RAW files. (or with careful retouching) Also, problems like sensor dust, dirty floors (in a high key image), uneven lighting, spotty light, very strong contrast and other problems also can not be fixed by your lab. (Unless you pay for custom retouching which can fix some of these problems.) As a professional photographer, it is our job to get the best capture including proper lighting and correct exposure, you shouldn’t use your lab as a crutch to cover for poor technique or lack of skill. (Whoa, did he just say that? Yep!)

However, if you have to error, I suggest you error slightly towards under exposed. Generally a little lost shadow detail and a tiny bit more noise is easier to correct for and much more forgiving than a blown out highlight or funky skin tones due to maxing out a color channel, thus lost color detail, frequently in skin tones which causes ugliness of all sorts and can not easily be corrected.

Under exposed, but still fixable. This CAN be corrected with some loss of shadow details.

Correct exposure. This needs little or no correction by your lab and will print very well.

This is over exposed with obvious loss of detail. Overall this cannot be corrected very well. Avoid sending this!

A strong color cast can be corrected sometimes, but not perfect. Avoid this by using the correct white balance in-camera.

Print a sample:

Most labs will allow for a significant discount for products used as a studio sample. This is both a good way for you to get to know the limitations of the products as well as any design features you may want to take advantage of. The lab wants you to spend your money on these products so they will gladly give you a discount on a sample if you just ask. This also makes it easier to fill the walls of your studio with beautiful prints at a much lower cost. And as above with products like photo cover coffee table books and such, this makes it easy to test out your design skills and templates for placement of things like your studio logo and such so that you don’t make an error on a book for a paying client.

No matter how you look at it, having a sample on hand even just to show a prospective client what they could get is worth the small cost on your part.

I hope this short guide helps aim some people afraid to use a pro lab in the right direction or those who are having difficulty with your lab towards a process to better prints. As always, thoughts and comments are always welcome.

These are short but absolutely worth watching for a few quick tips and tricks that might open up some creativity with lights.

Profoto USA – Tony Corbell Lighting Videos