First portrait with new home studio gear - comments welcomed

theMusicMan

theMusicMan

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Name
John
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Hi All

I purchased some excellent home-studio gear from DiddyDave yesterday, and had my first photoshoot with it today. Here's the first of any I decide to upload - my wife, Jen.

I used the classic portrait setup as explained to me yesterday by Dave, with main flash unit at 45deg, with two further slave flashes onto the white back-cloth in each corner.

So.... how did I do...? (more to follow)

p820812360.jpg
 
You did very nicely indeed :clap: Look forward to seeing more.
 
Many thanks Chuck... here's another one of Mum and daughter, Heather...

p624088766.jpg
 
very Venture :)

Looks like your enjoying the studio set up

being nosey.........what gear is it?
 
Hi df... here's a list and a pic of all my home studio gear (pic is cropped from oringinal sent to me by DiddyDave). The gear used on these pics was the MD400, 2 x slaved 336VM's.

MD400 main light
2 x 336VMs
2 x diddy flashguns
1 x 1m square diffuser for the MD400
1 x 1m square white/silver reflector
3 x big studio stands
3 x smaller stands for the 336VMs, or whatever
1 x Flash meter
1 x big back that can carry the MD400 and both 336VM, plus leads
1 x 2ft white brolly
1 x 1ft diffuser brolly
2 x 1ft silver brolly
1 x 1ft softbox
1 x snoot, 1 x honeycomb - for the 336VM

mygear.jpg
 
Tres bien :clap:

I'd love to have the space to set up some studio lights











/ goes off to look to bigger houses
 
Sort of... made some space to be honest. I would usually set up this in my conservatory, but I am rearranging the music studio at the moment and there's not quite enough room to have set it all up in there. I might try tomorrow though to see if it's possible - but I am also guessing that I may be asked to take some photos of my mate and his wife and son later tonight...!!

The only thing I didn't know was the white sheet my wife bought me when I was away recently on a business trip, was a lot smaller than I had first thought. I couldn't have done any images of anyone standing up!!! hence in all the images I took, everyone is sat down...:)
 
theMusicMan the compositions of portraits are great! But you have wrong white balance set. The first picture is VERY green second a bit leess green but still quite out from correct white balance ... If you still have RAW file try to move TILT slider to red side ....
 
They look fine on my screen :shrug:

/goes off the find the eye-one
 
First shot does seem to have a caste to me, cant say I can see it on the 2nd.
Eyes dont look very sharp on either image though.

I do like the poses, as DF said ... very Venture stylee :)
 
InaGlo said:
First shot does seem to have a caste to me, cant say I can see it on the 2nd.
Eyes dont look very sharp on either image though.

I do like the poses, as DF said ... very Venture stylee :)
Click to expand...
Not sure about the caste... I use the same method to save images so not sure what I have done wrong on the 1st one... I might have another go tomorrow to see if I can amend anything - not sure what I'll be looking for though!

Darned it... I knew there was something I hadn't done when I resized the images for web display... used Photoshops Unsharp Mask tool... will definately be re-doing these tomorrow if only for this :) Well spotted InaGlo.

Not sure what 'Venture Style' is to be honest... well actually I have no clue as to what it is. The only real reason I took most of the pics like this was lack of space for anything other than sitting down.

There's a few on my gallery that show different angles etc, but I didn't realise the back-cloth was as small as it actually is. When I used it before I thought it was folded in half!!!

Here's the gallery if anyone wants to take a look at some others I have uploaded.

http://www.reflectingme.com/p562597631
 
The colours are a little off but that's less than a seconds work to set the balance to the white of the back drop.


More importantly, the lighting set up looks to have been pretty good, although you have burnt out the shoulders on your wifes T shirt a bit. Most likely because the background light is catching the subjects a tad too much. Not an easy problem to eliminate unless you have more space to work in.

All in all, you should be pretty pleased with that.

Nice to see the old jessops biscuit tin flash head too. I thought I owned all the surviving 400 and 800's. :LOL:
 
Hey Daz

Yup - I certainly have burned out Jens shoulders, and I have done similar things on many of the other photos I took yesterday. There's burnt out shorts, skin, eyebrows all over...:):)

I think you are right, it is because of a limitation of space which I will remember next time. These were done in my living room so we did have little space; I am going to do the next batch in my conservatory/music studio - which is having a rearrange right now!

As for 'setting the white balance' - do I simply do this in Lightroom by selecting the pointer/dropper tool, and then clicking on the area in the image I call or see as white...?

Thanks for the feedback though... much appreciated.
 
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