So, here is what I want to do! I have a home studio and Intervit Venus 300 lighting kit (2 flash heads, and umbrellas) and a white back drop. I want to try and achieve the kind of 'hi-key' studio shots, nice and bright! I have taken photos for friends and family but the background is still a more greyish colour than white - so I end up spending AGES in photoshop trying to bighten it all up! Can someone please tell me what I need to try and do to get the backgound pure white and bright? Is it the camera settings? Or do I need a third light? I am JUST A BEGINNER and have so much to learn! However, I have so much interest from friends and family and they all love the photos I take so I want to be better!
Jenni
This is a balancing act
You need to overpower the background enough to be white, but not so much that you start lighting your subject with it (and thus have it wrap light around the subject). It really helps if you have some separation between the background and the subject. Therin lays your No1 & No2 issues - probrably a space, and definatally a lack of heads
Do you have a light meter, or are you doing this by eye?
If you are consistently under-exposing your backgrounds, you either need a wider aperture or a brighter flash on the background.
Here is the fast and loose way of doing it: Forget the subject, set your camera to f11, ISO 100, 1/60th on manual shoot just the background, keep the camera still, and adjust out the light until you have a even coverage, that just measures as fully exposed white in the final shot, if you run out of power, bump up the ISO
Now you have a white background, place your subject 6 feet in-front of it set the camera to f8, separately light the subject until it is properly exposed. if you did it right, the subject will look OK with the background light on or off
If you have a flash meter, you can manually check the background is F11 across the board. You can then check that 6 feet away the contribution to the rear of the subject is about f8, you can then meter the front light to be f8.
Different photographers have different ideas on the numbers, but on the whole, that's a reasonable starting point
Look at this:
http://www.zarias.com/white-seamless-tutorial-part-1-gear-space/ he uses 2 lights on the background, I recon that lighting with one light is a tough ask (unless you are only shooting a head shot)
