Shooting for post production

Scooter

Scooter

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Owen
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I recently made a cosplay-image and thought it might be useful to explain the process from start to finish - from lighting and capturing all the image assets to development and assembly of the final image. It's in some small way, a mini-dig at the "get it "right" in-camera brigade as I find that view pretty limiting and narrow tbh. Remembering Garry's suggestion last time I did this in a forum post, I've created it as a Tutorial Resource which you can find here:-


The lighting and capture process fits with this forum I think - and you can clearly see almost all of the lights in the frame :)
 
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An excellent tutorial, and although I don't do these types of shots myself, I found it useful and educative as well as interesting.

I constantly urge people to "get it right in camera" myself, but this advice doesn't conflict your approach, because with this type of shot, it would take an enormous amount of time to do everything (possible) in camera, would involve a very large studio and lots of equipment, and it still wouldn't be complete.

My own advice is based on my belief that far too many people try to substitute PP for lighting skills and care, which simply doesn't work - as you personally know, lighting is 3-dimensional and software editing isn't.
 
I normally fail to think of compositing unless I've already struggled with it for a while... but for an image like this I think compositing is just part of the basic concept.
 
Garry Edwards said:
An excellent tutorial, and although I don't do these types of shots myself, I found it useful and educative as well as interesting.

I constantly urge people to "get it right in camera" myself, but this advice doesn't conflict your approach, because with this type of shot, it would take an enormous amount of time to do everything (possible) in camera, would involve a very large studio and lots of equipment, and it still wouldn't be complete.

My own advice is based on my belief that far too many people try to substitute PP for lighting skills and care, which simply doesn't work - as you personally know, lighting is 3-dimensional and software editing isn't.
Click to expand...

Absolutely Garry - you just can't fake lighting (well not without an insane amount of pixel by pixel work, or by just going full CGI, with 3D digital models), so I'll always aim to get the lighting right on-set. I wasn't going to build a big sign for the logo though, or a massive Tesla coil to generate some giant arcs :p
 
sk66 said:
I normally fail to think of compositing unless I've already struggled with it for a while... but for an image like this I think compositing is just part of the basic concept.
Click to expand...
That's how I started with these shots - adding textures to walls, but mostly, removing lights or cables that were in the frame and expanding the background to some desired aspect ratio (16:9 is a favourite of mine) - and then before long I started to think in those terms on-set - ie I could spend all day rigging to get the light where I want it without any visible means of support, or just ensure the stand is on a plain bit of background so it's easy to remove it later (or take a plate shot).
 
Really interesting tutorial, and great work.

thanks for posting.
 
Scooter said:
I recently made a cosplay-image and thought it might be useful to explain the process from start to finish - from lighting and capturing all the image assets to development and assembly of the final image. It's in some small way, a mini-dig at the "get it "right" in-camera brigade as I find that view pretty limiting and narrow tbh. Remembering Garry's suggestion last time I did this in a forum post, I've created it as a Tutorial Resource which you can find here:-


The lighting and capture process fits with this forum I think - and you can clearly see almost all of the lights in the frame :)
Click to expand...
Deleted.
 
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