Strobe light help

[SDenny97]

Hello I’m doing portraits with a white background and some neewer strobe lights and I’m very confused firstly i’m struggling to connect them to ny d810 with the trigger and i don’t understand the dial on the back is that making the light brighter? I want to find the best combination of settings including the brightness of the strobe and the settings on my camera for school prom portraits on a white background can anyone help? I’m using Nikon D810 with either the sigma 1.4 35mm or the sigma 105mm 2.8.
Can anyone help!

Thanks

 

[juggler]

Welcome to TP !

I can't help you with the Neewer strobes but I can help with readings for the white background.

Are you familiar with flash at all? White backgrounds take a certain amount of understanding to get right - the instructions which follow are rather terse. If it's gobbledegook then let us know which bits you don't understand and I'm sure someone will be along in a bit.

For 3/4 length you (ideally) need two lights crossing on the background & at least one on the subject. It can be done with just two lights but it'll take more work in post.

To get the floor white full length, you'll need two more pointing forwards from behind the subject. And in fact for larger groups full length it's much easier to have 4 on the backdrop - so 8 lights in total. 4 on the background, two pointing forwards and key & fill lights on the subject. I can count the number of times I've actually done that on one finger.

Anyway.. This is one case where a light meter really helps.

• Take an incident reading at the subject and adjust as desired, e.g. to f8.
• A reflective reading off the backdrop typically needs to be 2.7 stops higher, e.g. f20. Alternatively, if your backdrop is pure white then you can take an incident reading off the backdrop - it usually needs to be 0.7 stop higher, e.g. f10. Be careful your body doesn't cast shadows if you're doing it that way.
• Then take an incident reading from the model towards the backdrop. It needs to be no more than the front reading to avoid losing edge detail, e.g. f7.1. Move your subject further from the backdrop if it's too high.
• If you're using floor lights too then these should read the same as the subject reading in the first step, i.e. f8.

Instead of using a light meter you can do it all by chimping, checking blinkies and adjusting but I find it way slower and less reliable.

hth