Small lights in a big studio... and more underpants...

Hey there all and thanks for tuning in for another blog post. Today we have a little bit of a continuation from the last blog post, insomuch that the images accompanying this blog were taken during the same shoot with Serena.

So why share these images, you ask? Well the thing I liked about these is that I did this entire series of images using only speedlights, triggered by PocketWizard TT1 and TT5’s. From memory I have only ever done this once before, but as that was some time ago (a few years in fact) so I was keen to try this out again.

The diagram on the right shows the lighting set-up itself. Pretty simple really. I mounted the softboxes and beauty dish to my SB-900’s by using a bunch of these great little flash brackets that you can get on eBay. They are so much sturdier than some of the other rubbish out there and they really do take a beating and are capable of supporting quite a bit of weight.

I don’t quite remember the exact light ratios – sorry – but I can tell you that the key light (the beauty dish) was metering on Serena’s face at f/4 and I’m pretty sure that the softboxes were about 2/3^rd’s of a stop below that; which makes them register the light meter at f/3.2. Shooting at this aperture allowed me to capture some of that gorgeous depth-of-field that you can see. Yummy. Well, I like it at least…

The image on the left above was actually a test shot, wherein I turned the beauty dish light off all-together “just to see what it looked like”. I have to say that I don’t mind it but all in all I thought there was just a little too much contrast for my liking, for what I had envisaged in my head to what was appearing on the back of my Nikon D3s. Not to worry, a flick of a switch on the PocketWizard AC3 zone controller sitting atop the camera and the beauty dish was turned back on again. That sure as heck beats getting up and down and having to fiddle around on the back of the flash itself to adjust stuff. Enough said.

Although speaking of not saying quite enough, I should point out that all the lights, even though they were TTL capable SB-900’s being triggered by TTL capable PocketWizard radio’s; everything was set to manual. Again, although I didn’t write it down; but from memory I think the beauty dish was at about 1/8^th power, making the softboxes dialled into 1/8^th minus 2/3 of a stop. This translated into almost instantaneous power recycling and allows 8 shots in one quick burst without having to stop and let the flashes recharge. Cool.

Getting back to the lighting diagram just for a moment, you may also notice that all the lights were gridded. I really love the control this gives for reducing the amount of light that spills all over the place. The beauty dish also had a “sock” on it in addition to the grid to soften the light just a little bit more. So the white backdrop roll that I was using turned that nice pleasant neutral grey.

Well that’s about all I can think to write for now. It’s been a really long week and a flat-out weekend so I’m going to call it a night. Thanks for reading, keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.

One light shenanigans... and lens flare...

Well hey there everyone and welcome to yet another blog post. I must find out how long this blog has been running now, but I think it’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 years. Who said I didn’t have any staying power? Shame on you!

The purpose of today’s blog post is to share some images that I did recently for a long-time friend, Serena. She has been a great help over the past four or so years, and is always eager to help out when I need a model at short notice for a shoot. I had just finished watching the wonderful “One Light Workshop” DVD’s by the uber talented Zack Arias. As the name of the DVD’s implies, there’s about 3 ½ hours of lighting instruction using only one light source – but in multiple applications. Studio lighting. Location lighting. Day or night. Zack is da man!

Anyway, one of the examples he showed in the latter part of the first DVD was the technique that produced the images I shot for this blog post. It involves creating a high-key look using only one light source. Those of you who know me know that I love to use high-key lighting. I love the way it makes the subject leap out of the image. I love the crispness and the contrast it creates. I just love everything about it. But, like anything it can get a little bit too much after a while. So I was pretty stoked when I saw Zack demonstrate this technique. The end result is that it still, obviously, creates a high-key image, but because of the positioning of the light you can create some really cool lens flare and also it makes the subjects skin go all creamy and delicious.

It basically involves placing a single studio light directly behind your subject. The catch is however is that the flash tube must be exposed, and not hidden by any kind of light modifier. This also means that you really can’t use a speedlight to create this effect, as it isn’t going to throw enough light in enough directions all at once to pull it off successfully. If you haven’t already, have a look at the video below which shows the whole set-up from go-to-woah. Sorry that the audio isn't all that great - my eBay special video camera doesn't have any audio-in jack meaning that I just have to use the built-in microphone and speak in a loud voice. This works well when I'm right next to the camera, but as soon as a walk away from it things go a little pear shaped. Anyway, enough excuses from me, take a look at the video...

One more thing – and one that I touched on in the video. You really have to be careful with your lens selection with this. Let me qualify what I mean. You really have to use the best lens that you have. This is because better quality lenses utilize all manner of glass witchcraftery to aid in the reduction of lens flare. And this is one lighting set-up that produces a lot of flare. A lot of cheaper lenses really don’t deal well with back-lighting. The biggest degradation occurs when the entire image looks washed out and pale. The tell-tale “rainbow spots” are another sure-fire sign of lens flare, but these can sometimes look quite cool.

But there ain’t nothing nice about a pale, washed out image. You can recover a lot of contrast in post production, but if the image is too far gone to begin with, there isn’t going to be a lot to gain by trying to fix it. A bad image is a bad image. I was using my Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VRII and I was still struggling with a few images having too much flare. Point made...

So there you go. Nice and simple set-up that creates really cool images. This one is going to be on my play light for a little while to come. That’s it for now. Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.