- Messages
- 4,182
- Name
- Paul
- Edit My Images
- Yes
Ok, I've finally managed to get my youngest to pose in front of the camera (maybe dangerous... I'm not sure I'd want her to make a career out of it!)
The trick was to set up her favourite seat with my lighting setup* around that. Only downside is that the seat in question is a pretty ghastly bright red & orange Ikea spinny chair thing - not exactly classic studio equipment So I decided to bin the "studio" idea and just just try to get the lighting on her right. So, I'd be delighted if you could give me some pointers on the lighting setup and try to ignore if you can the background and scene...
* So, the lighting setup was simple: two flashes firing through umbrellas (coz that's pretty much all I have). Both about 45 degrees left & right of cam, so "conventional": the one which was cam left was about 50% higher at c. 5' to try to give a touch of hairlighting, the right one was probably somewhere in the 3-4' range, both pointing down at 45 degrees or so (slightly in front, i.e. camera side of the subject). I had a reflector lying on the floor between the chair and the camera to provide a little soft uplighting. Bias to the flash on camera left in terms of power - I think that was at 1/2 power whereas the other was about 1/8 (but slightly closer).
1.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 1 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
2.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 2 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
and finally, a shot I really like but sadly where the lighting has really (IMO) fallen short because of the shadow from her arm:
3.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 3 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
The three shots are not much different from SOOC (for a change for me!) - I underexposed by half a stop because I'm still a bit paranoid about blowing out so I corrected that and otherwise just knocked down both the shadows and highlights just a touch but that was it.
One question is whether a little pop up camera flash as fill might have helped the third (although not sure how to control that manually)?
Are the first two just a bit flat, lighting-wise? With a fairly fast-moving subject, using any sort of beauty dish (i.e. folded reflective umbrella in my "limited-kit" case) is just not practical because of the concentrated area of lighting. So wide and diffuse it is.
But I'd really appreciate some crit on how to improve the lighting. Please ignore the background - as I mentioned, this is not a studio shoot but an experiment to sort one thing at a time!
Cheers for looking (and hopefully commenting )
Edited to add: not sure what can be done about the specular highlight off her nose - obviously we're not putting make-up on a baby!
The trick was to set up her favourite seat with my lighting setup* around that. Only downside is that the seat in question is a pretty ghastly bright red & orange Ikea spinny chair thing - not exactly classic studio equipment So I decided to bin the "studio" idea and just just try to get the lighting on her right. So, I'd be delighted if you could give me some pointers on the lighting setup and try to ignore if you can the background and scene...
* So, the lighting setup was simple: two flashes firing through umbrellas (coz that's pretty much all I have). Both about 45 degrees left & right of cam, so "conventional": the one which was cam left was about 50% higher at c. 5' to try to give a touch of hairlighting, the right one was probably somewhere in the 3-4' range, both pointing down at 45 degrees or so (slightly in front, i.e. camera side of the subject). I had a reflector lying on the floor between the chair and the camera to provide a little soft uplighting. Bias to the flash on camera left in terms of power - I think that was at 1/2 power whereas the other was about 1/8 (but slightly closer).
1.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 1 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
2.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 2 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
and finally, a shot I really like but sadly where the lighting has really (IMO) fallen short because of the shadow from her arm:
3.
Izzy shoot 20-Sep-14 3 by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
The three shots are not much different from SOOC (for a change for me!) - I underexposed by half a stop because I'm still a bit paranoid about blowing out so I corrected that and otherwise just knocked down both the shadows and highlights just a touch but that was it.
One question is whether a little pop up camera flash as fill might have helped the third (although not sure how to control that manually)?
Are the first two just a bit flat, lighting-wise? With a fairly fast-moving subject, using any sort of beauty dish (i.e. folded reflective umbrella in my "limited-kit" case) is just not practical because of the concentrated area of lighting. So wide and diffuse it is.
But I'd really appreciate some crit on how to improve the lighting. Please ignore the background - as I mentioned, this is not a studio shoot but an experiment to sort one thing at a time!
Cheers for looking (and hopefully commenting )
Edited to add: not sure what can be done about the specular highlight off her nose - obviously we're not putting make-up on a baby!
Last edited: