How to do this incredible technique

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TomHarmon
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p.3 #1 · How to do this incredible technique

Great job Al. I'll be using your tut for me next wedding for sure.

Jun 20, 2012 at 05:07 PM

junk_bond
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p.3 #2 · How to do this incredible technique

I think if you look at the angles that the city shots were taken and then compare them to the angles that the people were taken, the double exposure makes the most sense. A lot of the city shots show the same buildings at similar angles, while the angles that the people were taken at are all over the place. That really points to double exposure, in my opinion.

Jun 20, 2012 at 06:29 PM

Jon-Mark
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p.3 #3 · How to do this incredible technique

@TonyHoffer You had me excited there for a bit. We'll have to attempt to make this happen at Genesis reunion, seem like double exposure makes sense.

Jun 20, 2012 at 07:12 PM

TAGfan
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p.3 #4 · How to do this incredible technique

What if it was one long-exposure shot.

The photographer states that "The images are made in camera with just a basic adjustment in contrast and colours but no retouching."

Place the camera on a tripod, open shutter, place subjects in position in silhouette, close shutter when proper exposure is reached. You'd probably have to increase the contrast after this and back down exposure a touch if the subject is too visible.

Edit..that's a dumb idea, because the subjects wouldn't be as seemingly sharp as they are in the examples

Jun 20, 2012 at 07:16 PM

DavidWEGS
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p.3 #5 · How to do this incredible technique

I imagine it is with lighting and a window.

1. Focus is at f32 or whatever you smallest ap is.
2. using a FL of around 85 - 135
3. Camera is placed facing the glass window and tilted up to see the couple (or whomever) over your head (missing your own reflections).
4. Couple are behind you and have a flash behind them.
5. Exposure is set for the outside comp/scene.
6. Shot begins at above exposure, then using second curtain sync., flash fires at the last moment.
7. Effectively producing a white (ish) window, with only the outline and vague details of the subjects edge/face etc., but enough to see who/what it is.
8. play with above till it works in cam, then finish to taste in LR / PS etc.

…. at least I think that is how its done.

Jun 20, 2012 at 10:04 PM

DavidWEGS
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p.3 #6 · How to do this incredible technique

BTW, if you do this and it works… buy me a beer

Jun 20, 2012 at 10:04 PM

jneilosu
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p.3 #7 · How to do this incredible technique

I wonder how many of these types of shots we'll see pop up in the coming months. My guess is a lot.

Jun 20, 2012 at 11:25 PM

ausemmao
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p.3 #8 · How to do this incredible technique

lisy78 wrote:
are you saying that there's a way to:

1. do this in camera

2. without some ridiculous trickery like "the city is actually a print shot at F32 prior and printed"

3. without multiple exposures

4. without relfections

that would result in this:

including the fact that the dude's eyelashes are in focus, as is the skyscraper 800 feet away?

or this:

including the detail on them (not just a silohuette)...

Oh and can we also assume that what we're looking at are full sensor files? Not small unusable except for web-use crops from a point and shoot sensor?

I've seen these before and coudln't figure it out either... so I guess I'll have to wait 'till after John Marc shows us his light-painting to find out.

Come on, you shouldn't find it that hard to figure this out

o --- W
u --- i
t --- n
s --- d ---- -- camera w/ tilt-shift/longish lens --- -- couple --- -- strobes/speedlights
i --- o
d --- w
e

WEGS has it pretty much right. All glass reflects light as well as letting through light (it's why we have multicoated lenses). Ever notice that at night you can't see what's outside your window with the lights on as well as you can during the day (and you can use your hands to let you see outside)? It's the same principle. The flash will reflect off the window except where it's been flagged by the couple, which will only have the outside ambient.

The key is that your couple are silhouettes/flagging the flash.

To get the subject outlines sharp, use bare strobes so that they're effectively point sources (same as getting hard shadows with flash normally).

2-3 (if that, because this is no harder than a 2 light studio portrait) months before everyone else has the technique sorted and it appears everywhere? The upside is that you need interesting backgrounds, and most photographers will have spent so long shooting at f/1.2 and 1.4 they'll have forgotten what makes a good background

Jun 23, 2012 at 02:20 AM

lisy78
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p.3 #9 · How to do this incredible technique

Explain how the shot of the dude looking down on the ci has the edge of his glasses closest to us in sharp focus, the edge far from us soft and the buildings in focus

Jun 23, 2012 at 03:29 AM

ausemmao
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p.3 #10 · How to do this incredible technique

lisy78 wrote:
Explain how the shot of the dude looking down on the ci has the edge of his glasses closest to us in sharp focus, the edge far from us soft and the buildings in focus

Tilt.

Ok, this one has be a bit curious, and hoefully I can get to a camera next weekend to verify (I would this weekend except that my camera's in for repair, and using a Canon would be like me hooking up with a dude - I supposedly know how everything works but have never had to push those buttons in the right order before, so the experience would leave all dissatisfied, unfulfilled and me slightly wistful (Oh Nikon, why do you not have independent tilt/shift axes?))

.

How I would do it:

PC-E/TS-E (any of 24, 45 or 85 will do but this looks like a 45 or 85, 24 would need a dab of right shift as well as the tilt and perspective would be off unless this is a severe crop), set the subject's face to fill the frame, right tilt 5ish degrees (right tilt ensures you get a wedge of focus that fattens up from camera right, the FL chosen lets you get a nice perspective), shoot somewhat stopped down (exact amount depending on working distance), light the dude with a medium sized softbox at low power to get those profile highlights without sending the rest of the scene white (given the exposure on him, you might not even need anything more than a bright room light turned on, depending on time of day).

This image is copyrighted by the owner

This is a 24mm PC-E using tilt the opposite way (to push the background OOF rather than increase, and have a little more depth of field in the profile of the face), so a camera left tilt rather than right tilt for a subject camera right.

Notice how her ear is quite OOF even though it's in the same plane as her cheekbone, and how the whole eye area is in focus but the background heavily OOF, and the focus falloff in the background, and this is a 24mm at f/3.5 on a crop sensor. Do the opposite, and presto, you have the shot.

Tilt gets you the DoF where you want it, on part of the subject and the entire background, shift gets the camera out of the shot though I'm betting it's a little shift + shot at an angle - a lot of shift on a 24 really distorts faces.

If it's a 5D/D700 etc, it's a 45mm or 85mm PC/TS-E, if a medium format, I'd bet on the 120mm PCTS.

Jun 23, 2012 at 09:17 AM

Eyeball
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p.3 #11 · How to do this incredible technique

I think this setup should do it:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The farther the subject is from the window/camera, the better it probably works. I think the idea would be to make sure the subject is within the hyperfocal distance.

For the child shot, the child may have hands on the backdrop, on another intervening piece of glass, or just up in the air.

The guy-with-glasses shot is the toughest to figure out. It might be use of a tilt-shift lens. I have never used that type of lens though so I am not sure the focal plane could be adjusted in that manner leaving the background apparently all in focus. It could also be a shot of a printed/displayed portrait reflected in the glass. Technically, I guess you could consider that kind of shot to still be done "in-camera".

Jun 23, 2012 at 01:09 PM

Mykal
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p.3 #12 · How to do this incredible technique

Nowhere as good as the photos posted but here is one of mine from a couple weeks ago shooting through the window.

Jun 23, 2012 at 03:39 PM

lisy78
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p.3 #13 · How to do this incredible technique

Ok, so yeah.. the dude who does it in camera with just a contrast adjustment is, I'm 99.99999% sure doing a double exposure. tried it this morning at a birthday party... here is a double exposure of my hand against the sky (underexposed 2 stops) followed by a properly exposed shot of my son. The result was just brightened up with a minor curve adjustment... had I shot my son overexposed by a shot or a little more, the OOC shot would probably have been usable as is.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

I have to admit that while if I did it for a client I'd probably use the method I created a tutorial for (safer, more correctable, etc) .. there is something satisfying about getting it done in camera.

Jun 23, 2012 at 10:10 PM

Tony Hoffer
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p.3 #14 · How to do this incredible technique

I'm currently on vacation and am shooting a ton of stuff in double-exposure... It's fun!

Jun 24, 2012 at 12:49 AM

TheGE
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p.3 #15 · How to do this incredible technique

Looks like 1. there's a window/glass between the photographer and the backlit subject and 2. the surface of the glass facing the photographer is also facing the buildings.

That's one exposure, no photoshop needed. Maybe a contrast bump to lighten/darken. Cool look.

Jun 24, 2012 at 01:20 AM

brett maxwell
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p.3 #16 · How to do this incredible technique

I call BS on anyone who thinks this is possible in a single exposure with a DSLR. The DOF makes it impossible, you could do something somewhat similar with tilt, but not any of the shots referenced. And using a giant transparency of the city doesn't count, you have to be shooting the actual city/landscape. The only way would be with a Lightfield (Lytro) camera where previously impossible DOF tricks can be accomplished in post.

And why is everyone trying to figure out how he could have done it in one exposure? He never said that he did, go back to the source article and see for yourself. He said that it was done in camera, but a double exposure is done in camera and results in a single RAW file.

Jun 24, 2012 at 07:11 AM

gowhow
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p.3 #17 · How to do this incredible technique

Eyeball wrote:
The guy-with-glasses shot is the toughest to figure out. It might be use of a tilt-shift lens. I have never used that type of lens though so I am not sure the focal plane could be adjusted in that manner leaving the background apparently all in focus. It could also be a shot of a printed/displayed portrait reflected in the glass. Technically, I guess you could consider that kind of shot to still be done "in-camera".

Jun 24, 2012 at 08:04 AM

lisy78
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p.3 #18 · How to do this incredible technique

gowhow wrote:
Eyeball wrote:
The guy-with-glasses shot is the toughest to figure out. It might be use of a tilt-shift lens. I have never used that type of lens though so I am not sure the focal plane could be adjusted in that manner leaving the background apparently all in focus. It could also be a shot of a printed/displayed portrait reflected in the glass. Technically, I guess you could consider that kind of shot to still be done "in-camera".

What I know about lighting and exposure would barely fill a wrigley's wrapper but with this image, is the huge DOF Of the city not simply down to it being a reflection? The glass is actuall showing all the "depth" but in a 2D plane. This 2d plane happens to be in the area in focus, along with the guy's left side?

This could just be jibberish of course...

Adam

Think about it. If what you said were possible they could make an F1.2 lens with a mirror in it that would offer infinite DOF. Wedding shooters would hate such a thing but yeah.. not possible. A mirror does not magically make everything it reflects be in focus...

try it with your camera... stand in front of a mirror and focus on yourself... then the bg...

Jun 24, 2012 at 08:13 AM

Eyeball
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p.3 #19 · How to do this incredible technique

Well, here is an attempt to do the effect totally in-camera without double-exposure. It's not perfect but I think it comes close enough to show it is possible. I made a mistake in waiting too late in the day and I was beginning to lose the light outside, which made for a slow exposure that probably introduced some camera shake even though I was using a tripod. I was constrained with a fairly small window and a limited distance from window to wall. I couldn't find my diffusion dome for the flash so the flash is clearly uneven also.

This was shot at f/32. With a larger window and with a larger distance from window to back wall, I could probably open up the aperture and use a shorter focal length. This was at about 200mm on full-frame. What helps with DOF is that the subject can actually be fairly distant from the camera in terms of line-of-sight from the lens. In this case the distance to the window was about 14 feet making the total camera-to-subject distance about 28 feet since I took the photo positioned almost next to the subject.

With the right building and orientation to the sun, I can see this being able to be shot reflected from one window to the subject silhouetted by another window.

Of course the photographer in question may very well have used an in-camera double-exposure and that would without a doubt be easier and more flexible. The same for doing it in Photoshop. It was fun seeing if I could do it without those tricks, though.

Jun 24, 2012 at 11:21 PM

Jon-Mark
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p.3 #20 · How to do this incredible technique

Cool attempt, but this technique would not work for a shot of a couple with a gap between them, as you are hiding the reflection of the camera in your silhouette. It must be a double exposure.

Jun 25, 2012 at 03:03 AM

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