Category Archives: Light

High Key

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an assignment for you all: Take a high-key portrait.

“High Key” means that the entire photo is bright. That means light background, good lighting and light clothing. This makes the subject’s face stand out beautifully as the obvious focus of attention, and it also gives the portrait a bright, cheerful look, as in this portrait of a few days ago:

Do you need two umbrellas on light stands, fired via E-TTL, as I was using here? And a backdrop? Or perhaps a few studio strobes? A background light?

Well – you could use all of the above. But you can also just use a small room with white walls, with an on-camera flash fired in a backward direction – i.e. behind you. That makes the entire room into a giant light box. Ask your subject to dress in light colours and put them in front of a white wall.

If you want to do it well, make sure your subject has a catch light in his or her eyes. The wall behind you, lit up by the flash, should take care of that, or else use a little flash bounce card to direct some light back into the eyes.

Do keep in mind that if you are using automatic metering (eTTL/iTTL), then you either need to spot meter your flash light off a grey card (or something similar), or you need to use Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) to increase your flash power. You may need +1 to +2 stops extra flash light.

Have fun!

12800

Posted on by
Reply

A quick snap from my Canon 1D Mark IV taken at 12800 ISO. I applied very slight noise reduction in Lightroom and upon export, reduced the size to 1200 pixels wide.

If I had not mentioned it, would you be able to tell that was taken at such high ISO?

For high ISO shots, it is imperative that you light the shot well. Remember Willems’s Law: “Bright Pixels are Sharp Pixels”.

I shot that with the 1D Mark IV, at 12800 ISO, with the 100mm EF [corrected!] Macro lens, and shot at 1/60th sec handheld at f/2.8. A slow shutter speed like that (lower than one divided by the lens length) needs a steady hand and a bit of luck – oh and shoot ten pictures to get a few very sharp ones.  Better still, use a tripod.

Expose well

Posted on by
Reply

Your camera wants everything to be grey. So every time you shoot a very light subject, such as snow, the camera will make it look too dark. And when you shoot a dark subject, like this coat, it will look too bright:

This is because your light meter labours under the engineering assumption that what you point it at is neither bright nor dark. When that is not the case, that assumption no longer holds and you need to adjust the value your meter comes up with.

So in the case of the dark coat, you turn down exposure (use “exposure compensation”, the +/- button) by 1-2 stops and now you get this:

Solved!

What is Exposure Compensation actually “doing”?

Just the same that your camera always does, except more so or less so. So of your meter is setting aperture, then exp comp means it is set to a slightly lower or higher aperture value than it would other wise have done. If your meter is setting shutter speed, ditto for shutter speed. If you are in “P” mode, your camera can set either or both.

A few portrait pointers

Posted on by
6

Today, a few quick portrait pointers.

Here’s a picture from a very recent portrait shoot:

Why did I shoot this the way I did? What went into the decisions? I thought it might be good to share some of my thoughts.

  • I used a standard key/fill light arrangement, with the key light a small softbox aiming straight into the face, and the lower-powered fill light an umbrella-mounted flash on camera right.
  • I ensured the positioning of the key light gave me a catch light in the eyes.
  • I used a low-powered hair light in a snoot.
  • I selected a dark background (grey paper) so that I could emphasise the subject.
  • I used a background light with a Honl grid, so get that nice oval shaped light behind the girl.
  • I also used a Honl gel from the “Hollywood” and “Autumn” sets. I chose the blue-ish colour for its subtlety and for the way it so nicely contrasts with the girl’s hair and skin colour.
  • I took many pictures with the girl in many poses – mainly her own natural poses. Here, I particularly liked the S-curve in the pose and the triangular shapes in her legs. “S”-curves and triangles are good!
  • Finally, the bit of the stool that is visible and lit provided balance with the other yellow colours.

Every shoot is different, but here you see some of the decisions that can go into a portrait.

Metering

Posted on by
Reply

A few words on light meters.

When shooting studio shots like the ones I talked about, you use a flash meter. When doing that to accurately judge the right exposure, keep this in mind:

  • Have a spare battery at hand
  • Move the dome out. Do not leave it screwed in.
  • Use the meter in Flash-metering mode!
  • Only flash one flash at a time. Turn off other flashes when you meter one.
  • Start with your key light; then one by one meter the other flashes. These will be darker generally.
  • Ensure your meter is set to the right ISO.

Then use the measured aperture as your starting point and check the histograms on your camera for fine adjustments. I believe that “exposing to the right” is generally a good idea.

Also, don’t forget to use a grey card to get a nice white balance reference target.

A standard portrait setup

Posted on by
10

Back to the standard “small studio” setup I described earlier. This time I shall talk a bit not about how it works – I assume light sensitive slave cells and Pocketwizards and cables are all old hat to you now – but instead, I will talk about how to use it.

As a reminder, here is such a four-light setup, again:

Four lights; and after the click, more about how you use them.

Continue reading →

That portable studio

Posted on by
11

So when I pack by bags to do a location shoot, like today’s executive headshots shoot, you saw in a recent post that I bring rather a lot.

And what do I use? How does it look when it’s all set up?

That setup process, which takes about 45-60 minutes including carrying it all from the car in stages, results in this:

This setup consists of:

  1. A grey backdrop. I like grey because you can make it any colour, from black to white.
  2. The main (“key”) light: a light stand with Bowens 400 Ws monolight in a softbox. This is fired by a Pocketwizard (just visible, top left)
  3. The fill light: a light stand with a Bowens 400 Ws monolight into an umbrella. This is fired by the slave cell.
  4. The background light: a mini  light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and a Honl 1/2 CTB gel. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  5. The hair light: another a light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and Honl snoot. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  6. A stool.
  7. The camera set to 1/100th sec, f/9, 100 ISO, and equipped with a PocketWizard to fire the other flashes.

It doesn’t look like all that much, but when you write it out, and then add the power cables, connection cables, bags, and so on, it’s quite a lot.

Fun with gels

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight, I had some fun trying various new gels.

For those of you new to photography: a gel is a coloured material that you put in front of a flash to change the coour. You typically use these for background colours.

Usually I use a slight correction gel (1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTB, etc) to perhaps warm a background up a bit or to give a corporate shot that slight blue tint in the background. But tonight I thought I’d play with some great new colours.

My system for the test shots below was:

  • A key light to camera left, in a softbox on a Bowens 400 Ws monolight
  • A fill light to camera left, into an umbrella, using an Opus 250 Ws monolight
  • A Hair light, also into an Opus light, and snooted
  • A background light: a Canon 430 X flash with the various gels. I used the excellent Honl system: the speedstrap on the flash, plus gels conveniently Velcro’d on.

So for these gels I used some basic colours and the new Honl “Autumn” and “Hollywood” gel sets. Great colours. Here we go, and look how each gives you a very different shot:

[1] The new “Autumn” kit:

Egg Yolk Yellow:

Chocolate:

Rust:

Dark Salmon:

Medium Blue-Green:

[2] The new “Hollywood”-kit:

Follies Pink

Steel Green:

Rose Purple:

Smokey Pink:

Pale Lavender:

And for comparison, some basic primary colours: Red, Green, Blue and Yellow:

And finally, what it looked like with no background light, white background light, and “heavy frost” background light:

Note: When you play with gels, do not forget to set your white balance to “F;ash”, so your canera does not try to adjust the colour away.

Now to see these colours side by side, check them on one page: http://www.mvwphoto.com/gels/

Fluorescent

Posted on by
Reply

A word about shooting in fluorescent light.

Unlike Tungsten light, which stays on and glows in between cycles, Fluorescent flashes on and off 60 times a second or more.

This means two things to photographers:

  1. Light may vary during a cycle
  2. If the flashes are short, your shutter needs to be all open when they occur. Meaning you need to stay well below your flash sync speed.

The second is most obvious.

Look at these images, shot at 1/320th second just now:

See what’s happening? They vary and from top to bottom the brightness is different in both. This is because the (vertical!) shutter is not all open when the brief flash happens.

So when shooting fluorescent,

  • stay well below the sync speed
  • if possible, stay at a discrete multiple of the light flash frequency.

If you do not know what “discrete multiple” means (how would you – you’re not an engineer!) then just stay at 1/30th second (and often 1/60th will work as well). and you are safe in both cases!

Shooting hockey? Well then just shoot a lot, and you’ll get lucky for some images. Fortunately, hockey lights flash at a higher frequency, so the problem is much less common.

Eyeball it

Posted on by
Reply

You shoot RAW, perhaps (at least I hope you do). That means you need not worry about setting white balance while shooting.

So how do you set white balance in post-production?

Ideally, you include a grey card and use the dropper tool in Lightroom (if that is what you are using) to take a neutral reading off this. But if you do not have a grey card in the photo?

Look at a student who kindly agreed to be the subject of a test picture. One: the original photo

Two: after I take a white balance off the eyeballs:

Three: as a personal preference, since I like warmer light I then always drag the colour temperature slider to a slightly higher temperature (a slightly warmer light):

And hey presto – done.

This is quicker than doing it on the camera, and more accurate, and you do not waste your subject’s time.