I'm new into the lighting and I'm tryin out some home made studio lighting and I'm looking for some C&C. I know the shots need a little more pop, maybe PP would help, but I'm attempting to get better exposure, albeit w shop lights.
Please feel free to let me know hw to boost these shots.
Appreciative for any C&C given ...
My Simple Suggestion: Use less light on one side of the face.
I hope this tip helps you.
Thanks Steady,
I'll try this in future shoots. If I may ask, would you go with dramatically lower light on the "darker" side or slightly lower. I know this is a sunbjective question, but I'd like to hear how much less you are implying. If I'm not being too picky....
Again, thanks for the kind words and criticism.
The choice of how much of a ratio or 'shadow to light' is purely a subjective (opinion or taste) choice.
I tend to like significant amounts of shadows as I like a darker image with light on the face. But, that is just my personal preference (like I prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate).
For your purposes, since you are controlling the light, I would suggest trying variations.
Take a look at the second image you posted. Notice around the nose. There is a shadow but it is very faint. Now look at the shape and color/tone of the skin on his cheeks and forehead. Notice that the skin seems to be the same 'lightness' on all surfaces? This indicates almost 'flat' light. In other words, the face is 'flattened' because there is such even (same amount of light) coming from both sides of the face. This rarely occurs in nature unless someone is looking directly at the sun. So, it is more 'natural' to see one side of the face with more 'shadow' (even if not a dark shadow) tone than the 'highlight' (lighter) side.
For working with your son, I would simply move one of your lights further back (try twice the distance to your son as the key light). You did not mention what type of light you are using. IF you are using inexpensive 500w halogen 'worklights' like you find at home depot, then DO NOT put anything like fabric near them (to diffuse the light). Instead, simply turn the light around and face it away from your son. Then reflect the light back to his face by using a reflector (big piece of white foam core) or simply a wall in your house.
You could also try bouncing one light off the ceiling, while another is more direct to the face.
Describe your lights in more detail or post a photo of your set. It will help me help you. "Shop Lights" could mean two tube fluorescents or it could mean 250- 500w halogen 'hot lights.' Tell me what kind.
So, if you have one light pointed at the boy, and the other pointed at the wall, you will have a 'key' and a 'fill' and probably see a big difference in the light on his face with more 'shape' and 'definition' of the facial features and contours. Try it and post anothe pic.
Wow Steady... that's exactly the type of help I'm looking for. Thanks a billion.
The lights, as you pointedly guessed, are halogen home depot and canned bulbs.
1) dual head 500w halogens (1000w) and
2) 300w on clip on shop light with wide reflector pan.
I will definitely attempt using the wall bounce. Would you suggest the 1000w as the bounce? (wall or ceiling w or w/o reflectors, etc.,..) That would make the 300w the key... or should I try the other way around (1000w key, + bounce/accent w 300w)
Probably both ways, eh?
Truth is, your description of the flattening effect just opened my eyes... perfect!
Again, absolutely inspirational with your encouraging and experienced guidance.
Thanks for the kind words. Always glad to help when I can.
You asked about which light to use for the key. You also guessed the answer: just experiment.
Also, you might try adjusting your light's distance to the subject (son). Remember, if you double the distance you get 1/4 of the effective 'light' on the subject. So, if you bring the light closer (halving the distance) you will double the effective light on the subject. IF you take some shots and notice the exposure is too 'dark' then simply try the following:
1. Adjust your ISO to a higher level (e.g. from ISO 100 to ISO 200 to ISO 400 etc.)
2. Move your subject closer to the light source
3. Change your aperture/shutter speed
I mentioned above about not putting any cloth/fabric near the hot lights. Of course this is simply to avoid a fire.
That said, there are other things that could be used to 'diffuse' the light (grids/screens etc.) but I think the easiest and cheapest way would be for you to simply 'reflect' the light off a white surface. Just avoid having the 'hot lights' point at anything flammable, if they are close, as accidents do happen.
For the purpose of taking photos of your son in your own home/studio, I suggest you get some large pieces of foam core. IF you decide to use your walls instead, remember that the subject (son) will need to be fairly close to the reflective surface (probably about 3 -5 feet). So if you are in a large room, your ability to reflect the light will diminish with the distance from the walls to the subject.
You've done a good job with your make-shift lighting but let me share my make-shift lighting experience. I'm just doing photos for a hobby so I didn't want to spend $1000 on lights or even anything more than $100. I was in awe of high wattage fluorescent lights. I bought two big bulbs for about $30/each. The wattage totaled about 120 watts, which is roughly equivalent to maybe 750 watts of incandescent light. I figured this was the way because I didn't like the look of flash lighting, but I needed a bit more than the usual ambient light.
I was amazed that even with 750 watts blinding my model that I still couldn't get down to ISO 100 with reasonable aperture and shutter speed. Finally I saw some math (somewhere) that showed that I would need several thousand watts to be able to do as well as a cheap strobe (say 100ws). Armed with this knowledge I set out to find the cheapest 100ws strobe I could. I low-ball bidded on ebay for some no-name plastic chinese strobe (not one of those light-socket thingies), and ended up getting the strobe, a light-stand, and an umbrella delivered for about $65. Best $65 dollars I ever spent.
Now I know my strobe isn't going to take any abuse. It's not strong enough to mount a soft-box on. It's not bright enough to do group shots. It's color probably changes a bit constantly. It probably wouldn't last a professional more than 6 months. But it has been the single biggest leap in the quality of my pictures and my kids don't have to stare at something as bright as the sun while I take pictures.
I think having a decent strobe has taught me:
- flash pictures don't have to look ugly
- reflectors can fill in shadows
- the relationships between distance, quality, and brightness
- how to use a snoot to do low-key photos
- the color of the things you bounce off of matter
- custom white balance's are important
- E-TTL is easily confused
- how to balance ambient light with strobe light
- I need a grey card
My advice is simple, rather than making do with make-shift hot-lights, buy a cheap strobe.
Since I've had my strobe, I got really energized into doing more portraits instead of snapshots. I've bought a half-dozen backdrops off of ebay. I made my own rig for hanging them. I started collecting props and stools and stuff. I bought the cheap ebay wireless trigger. I even bought a decent on-camera flash (which I ALWAYS bounce) since I now know that a flash can look okay as long as it's not coming from a $10 flash two inches above your lens. :-)
If I hadn't given up the extra room I was using for a studio I probably would have bought a couple more strobes by now.
I can't be happier as to how this thread has developed. tfister, I will STRONGLY consider and take you up on this low end advice, along w my "sun" lamps.
I think there are many out there looking to get more out of less, especially those of us serious enthusiast/semi-professionals.
Great info, everyone. Not sure if my two cents will add much...
You can also combine the cheap strobe with the work lights. But you'll need to balance the colors. I recommend buying some color balancing gels. I use some from the Rosco Cinegel sampler (and don't forget the swatch book for 1 penny!)
DO NOT PUT GELS ON THE WORK LIGHTS.
Rather, affix the gel to the strobe. Exact method will vary, but I use a long piece of two-sided velcro and wrap it around the strobe. I think the sampler pack cost me US$30. And again, the swatchbook cost US$0.01.
The most commonly understood thing about lighting is the role of fill and where it needs to be placed to be effective.
The role of the key light is pretty obvious: it creates the pattern of highlight and shadow which model the shape of things and fool our brains into thinking the pattern is a 3D object. Fill is needed to reveal detail in ALL the shadows the camera sees. The only direction the fill will reach ALL of the shadows the camera sees is when it is directly over the camera or very close to it. In particular the situation you need to avoid is when two lights are placed on opposite sides to the extent their shadows cross. If a shadow created by the fill light to the side crosses a shadow create by the "key" light on the opposite side, shadow+shadow = no light and a distracting dark void is created. If you look at a photo and the darkest shadows are in the smile lines, side of the nose, or corners and inside of the mouth you will be looking at shaded fill.
So try moving one of your lights over the top of the camera for fill and put the other about 45 degrees from the centerline of the subject's nose, which will create a highlight pattern on the front "mask" of the face as in your first B&W shot. If you have two lights of equal strength at an equal distance and they overlap like that (and don't cancel each other) you will have a 2:1 highlight:shadow ratio on the front of the face.
H:S
1:1 Fill on over camera illuminates both sides equally
1:0 Same strength Key light only illuminates front "mask" of the face
===
2:1 Front mask of face will be 2x brighter than areas in shadows
What you might try with your work lights is to shoot in the corner of a room with light colored walls and bounce the light off the walls as shown below to diffuse it:
Perhaps I should have mentioned issues with triggering the strobe. Depending on the camera this might be easy or might cost you even more. Here's some options in no particular order:
A) Buy a freaking expensive wireless trigger (over $150 I think)
B) Buy a cheap ebay wireless trigger (about $15)
C) Maybe your camera has manual flash control
D) Buy a hot-shoe flash that has manual flash control
E) Use the flash exposure lock trick
F) Buy a "digital slave flash trigger" and use your camera's built-in flash
G) Use a wired trigger if your camera has the right connection
I tried C and was unsuccessful with my Canon 300D. The problem is all cameras these days use a "preflash" to determine how bright the real flash has to be. Normal slave triggers will see the preflash, do their flash, and then not be ready for the real flash. All this happens in like 1/10th of a second or so.
I used E about twice and decided that was for the birds. It worked, so I proved I wasn't going insane and the flash really was going off, but you have to hit a button to cause the preflash, wait for your strobe to recharge, then take your real picture. Yuck.
I bought F and used it for a few months. You set your flash exposure compensation really low so it doesn't contribute much to the scene. Line of sight to the trigger was important. You can only dial your built-in flash down so much though, so you can't do anything low-key, and it sometimes mystically just doesn't work.
I bought B and have been very happy with it. Works almost every time. I've played with low-key and some pretty high-contrast setups. I recommend this setup, but since I only have one strobe, I had to stick with 1-light setups. In other words, you can't mix in the built-in flash if you got a "sender" on your hot-shoe.
I eventually bought D. Got a Canon 430EX which I can use with or without the strobe. Without the strobe I bounce it everytime. I now know the value of having a decent flash. Did you know a real flash is like 10x more powerful than the cheesy built-in thing? I can also set it on manual and use it for fill and as a trigger for my strobe. It works pretty well this way although I notice a shadow behind the subject if I turn it up too high.
I've upgraded to a Canon 40D so I could use G, but I've been sticking with B and D.
That's probably way more info than anybody really wanted...
Nice thread, interesting ideas, thanks.
This seems like a good place for my query.
Is it better when using strobes to gel the strobes for incadescent or flourescent or set the in camera adjustment for green magenta or to just shoot ambient and make the adjustments in the digital darkroom?
I'm just a novice, but I think your strobes are going to be like 100x brighter than your ambient. Unless you're shooting with a really slow shutter (and I'd have to ask why), you shouldn't need to worry about the color of the ambient light.
Fred Silver wrote:
Nice thread, interesting ideas, thanks.
This seems like a good place for my query.
Is it better when using strobes to gel the strobes for incadescent or flourescent or set the in camera adjustment for green magenta or to just shoot ambient and make the adjustments in the digital darkroom?
When matching flash to the ambient light you would ideally gel the flash to match the ambient, then set camera WB to the ambient or do a custom WB off a gray card under the combined gel flash / ambient light with the mix you plan on using.
If shooting RAW setting the camera custom WB off the card doesn't affect the actual capture, but when you open your files and get your initial impression of the color it will be neutral per the card. That provides a consistent baseline for making color editing decisions.
For example, if shooting a stage presentation where flash is allowed or a dress rehearsal of a play or concert I'll gel my flashes (I use two) with 1/2 CTO then custom WB off the card in the stage light. That allows me to add enough fill flash to get the skin tones closer to normal while retaining the ambience of the stage lighting in the background.
Thanks a billion.