Sylights is an online service for all strobists to design and present lighting plans. As it is told on Sylights.com
Create your lighting diagrams. Share them. Help beginners. Discover new ideas.
And that is right on the money. Sylights enables one to easily create informative lighting diagrams and then share them with others a like. The sharing-part though means that other Sylights users can browse saved diagrams at www.sylights.com and that you copy-paste a human-readable URL to social media sites. E.g. you can find the diagram presented in this post from http://www.sylights.com/ylivalotus/552-selfportraitfriday-9-4-2010.
Why would one want to do this? Why would I use this kind of a site?
Well… I learn by doing. I’ve never been good in theoretical things, though on one side photography kinda depends on theory. But the bottom line is that it can be a huge advantage in learning by doing if in addition you have a diagram or drawing with you.
The point is not trying to re-animate or copy the work of another strobist, but to learn from it. I started using strobes in my photography for about an year ago and read and learned a lot from Strobists blog. I read a lot of the posts at Strobist even before making the decision which strobes and gear to get.
The learning from other goes with Sylights too. Learn by trying to make different kind of lighting setup, see how the lights and subject are in relation to each other. Try to control the light using modifiers or just by directing the light via another surface. You’ll get the idea.
Sylights has a wide list of available items to add to your lighting design. Choose a white or black backdrop and continue with adding umbrellas, gobos, different kind of light sources from strobes and monoblocks to sun or moon, beauty dishes, reflectors etc. Once the design is ready and if you’re using Flickr, you can connect your Flickr account to Sylights and import an image of the finished shot.
I did not find an option to edit past diagrams. I mean, if I’d make a mistake about something or would want to add more information to a diagram already saved, I’d like to be able to edit it. Maybe it’s a future option, at least I’m hoping so.
Resulting from the diagrams above
Conclusion
Should one need a full control over the lighting diagram, he / she might try to find a template for all the most common gear used in ones lighting. Here’s a good example of a template for Photoshop.
What I like about Sylights and the similar sites to it is the simple drag-and-drop interface. It does not take more than a five minutes of clicking to create a complex lighting diagram.
I was not endorsed in any manner to write about Sylights. Just wanted to tell the world about it. So go a head, give it a spin.
