[Benji]

A fellow Camelian sent the following to me in a PM. "I have a question about your setup for the headshots. You set all of your lights and your camera to match, then you crank up a 500w light to close down her iris. I get the purpose of shutting down the iris, but doesn't that 500w light throw off your previous settings?"

Answer. The 500 watt light won't affect the exposure unless you use a shutter speed that is balanced to the shooting aperture. My shooting aperture is usually f/8.0 so by setting the meter to the ambient setting and placing the aperture at f/8.0 the correct shutter speed is 1.3 seconds. Since I use a shutter speed of 125th of a second in my camera room the 500 watt light simply cannot show up. Just like turning your headlights on at noon. They don't help illuminate the road in front of you because the main light source overpowers them. My estimation is that my combined flash units are 64 times more powerful than the 500 watt light. (Seven stops.)

Benji