My GOD I finally get it! (Studio lighting)

I've been shooting since about 2016 or so.. I've shot concerts, events, landscapes, street, portraits, astrophotography and just about everything in between both digital and analog.

Whenever I shot flash I always use TTL but typically I try to avoid them. Why? because deep down I feel I didn't know what I was doing.

One concept that has always alluded me was studio lighting, and how to know what settings to use. Both in camera and on the lights. Any shoots I did with studio lights (I own a couple), I always used in TTL and hoped for the best.

I've never been to school for photography and I'm completely self-taught, mostly through Youtube. I swear to GOD like nobody ever explains how to correctly set your lights.. but for me that was the most important. Whenever I shot with lights I get flustered because I hate feeling like I don't know what I'm doing when the model is waiting... so i tended to avoid it after while. Oddly enough I actually have a good understand of HSS and more advanced flash concepts but I never understood what manual settings to use on my camera with a flash.

It wasn't until this video I watched the other day put out by Sekonic that it finally clicked.

Turns out you just kinda guess what your starting strobe light setting is and use your meter (your handheld light meter, not your cameras meter) to get the light down (or up) to a F-stop setting (for your camera) that you want.. thats IT. WHY DONT PEOPLE EXPLAIN THIS?! 10 years! people who make photography videos always just gloss over this stuff and I don't know why! Maybe there's just something wrong upstairs but that just never clicked for me until now.

ARGHH

To explain, strobe lights always confused me because of the settings they use like 1/500th or w/e and I was thinking that it had to do some calculations to account for that specific setting in my camera that I needed to factor in... and because of that I just never got it. Typical me overthinking it. Thinking about it now that would be just about impossible to calculate off the top of your head because of the distance from your subject and the inverse square law for light falloff. Hey, I suppose that's what TTL does.

Anyways I'm happy AND frustrated that it took this long to finally get it. Just had to get that off my chest. Looking forward to doing some studio work now that I can actually feel confident about.

Also, not an endorsement but I highly recommend the Sekonic video linked above along with any subsequent one with Chris Knight in the studio, hes great.