Help! Lighting background

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Braidy

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Hi - I do a lot of actors headshots and almost from day one (about 3 years ago) I've had a light behind the subject to light the background softly.
http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o220/Ermolenko/Chara45.jpg
&
http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o220/Ermolenko/DSC_6754.jpg

For a while now, though I've not been able to get that lovely soft backlight. Whilst trying to get to the bottom of the problem tonight I've realised that I can't even light a background evenly no matter what I do. I've tried different cameras, resetting cameras, different triggers, different lights, different modifiers, adjusting light settings and distances for days.

I can't produce anything without a hard edge and a hot spot. Like ...

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o220/Ermolenko/DSC_8237.jpg

This is ridiculous. I want to light a background like Damien is here (and something I used to do without thinking about it). Can anyone have a guess what I might be doing wrong?
 
Hard to tell from your setup shot but it looks like your backlight is too close to the wall.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I think I've got this figured out. Primarily the mistake was to rely on the lcd display on the camera which gives a false reading of both the brightness and colour. This morning looking back on the computer at the images I realise that I'm not far away from what I'm looking for.

Trouble is that I want a very subtle backlight when I have a client round and of course I can't see that on my lcd display - can't remember having that trouble before, but hey. Just need to have confidence that it's there.

Anyone found a cheap way to tether wirelessly to an iPad yet?
 
Braidy said:
Anyone found a cheap way to tether wirelessly to an iPad yet?
Click to expand...


Eye-fi Pro 8gb sd card (£60?) and Shuttersnitch app (£11 ish) does the job nicely with my D7000, but I haven't yet tried an SD to CF1 adapter for the D700.

I know that the Nikons use CF1 cards which are a thinner card than the CF2 that is used in Canons. I know that there are adapters for CF2 cards, and I am aware that some people have bodged the CF2 adapters to fit Nikons successfully, so one day, maybe!
 
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JonathanRyan said:
<cough>

http://peoplebyryan.com/for-photographers/how-to-tether-your-camera-to-an-ipad
Click to expand...

Are you using Ipad2 Jonathan?

My Eye-fi pro x2 8gb works directly with ipad2 without needing to use a router, so I shoot raw to a CF card in the D7000, and jpeg to the eye-fi card in slot 2.

I know also that the eye-fi pro transfers raw files to ipad, I have done it without problems, except for the longer transfer times for the larger raw files.

Simple to set up, just follow the prompts.
 
I forgot to mention that the eye-fi pro card also works directly with Lightroom LR3.
 
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