Superheros?

L

Lou Nardi

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I will be trying to capture of superheroes in London later this month. So which one should I use a 50mm f1.8 or 70-200mm f2.8 lens?
 
I don't know the event - but I'd say both too - mount the 70-200 and just pop the 50mm in you pocket, if you get an opportunity for a portrait shot just quickly swap.

If you haven;t already something like a black rapid or a quick change system might help, that way pop the 70-200 off, put on the cap from the 50mm (keeping it on the black rapid sling), put the 50mm on and you;re done, a really quick swap with no bags in sight :)

Others may have better tip or systems though.
 
No. Open floor, flash handheld. There's a post on how somewhere here. I steward there a bit and looked it up last time I saw them.

Great stuff
 
Thats cool. I'm doing Lincoln's Comic Con in July and would love to have a try myself
 
dancook said:
https://leicaqstreet.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/london-comic-con-excel-may-2016/

This :)
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Wow that's fantastic! I am so envy of you. Iam profoundly deaf & I've been there once many years ago. I will get there again later this month. But I never tried to get some good capture like yours. So I am asking Can I use a pop up flash instead of flashgun? & I'd probably be using between f2.8 & f5.6 on a 50mm lens? Advice would be greatly appreciated!
dancook said:
https://leicaqstreet.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/london-comic-con-excel-may-2016/

This :)
Click to expand...
 
Lou Nardi said:
Wow that's fantastic! I am so envy of you. Iam profoundly deaf & I've been there once many years ago. I will get there again later this month. But I never tried to get some good capture like yours. So I am asking Can I use a pop up flash instead of flashgun? & I'd probably be using between f2.8 & f5.6 on a 50mm lens? Advice would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Not to the same effect, you won't black out the environment (although it could just mean a lot more work in post) - pop up flash will not give the same results as off-camera flash.

Even if you did try to black out the environment, the on-camera flash probably isn't powerful enough to then light up the subject

If you can you should practice on someone before you go and then you'll be aware of the results you will get.
 
dancook said:
Not to the same effect, you won't black out the environment (although it could just mean a lot more work in post) - pop up flash will not give the same results as off-camera flash.

Even if you did try to black out the environment, the on-camera flash probably isn't powerful enough to then light up the subject

If you can you should practice on someone before you go and then you'll be aware of the results you will get.
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Thanks for your response I will give it a try to see how satisfied results before photographing them. Look forward to capturing some fantastic poses of superheroes! [emoji106] [emoji12]
 
dancook said:
https://leicaqstreet.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/london-comic-con-excel-may-2016/

This :)
Click to expand...

Dan you mention about a beauty dish/more portable softbox option. I've got a 6" EagleEyes beauty dish for my speedlight which works a charm for head shots but its not great for getting much more lit (akin to your shots).
What modifers would you recommend? I like the look of the one you've got in the picture on your blog but can't seem to find anything like it.

Thanks in advance
 
Simon Kitt said:
Dan you mention about a beauty dish/more portable softbox option. I've got a 6" EagleEyes beauty dish for my speedlight which works a charm for head shots but its not great for getting much more lit (akin to your shots).
What modifers would you recommend? I like the look of the one you've got in the picture on your blog but can't seem to find anything like it.

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I was using one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Camera-F...&qid=1494450896&sr=1-7&keywords=godox+softbox

It's one of the Godox accessories.

Any kind of softbox you can hand hold off-camera will help,
 
These are two I tried with my 6" beauty dish.

I think I need to find full sized "models" though to properly test it on.


Single Light-1.jpgSingle Light-3.jpg
 
Simon Kitt said:
These are two I tried with my 6" beauty dish.

I think I need to find full sized "models" though to properly test it on.
Click to expand...
The light is too small / too close.
The clues in the catch lights and hard edges on the shadows. A 6" light needs to be very close to a face to do it's work.

As a general 'rule of thumb' to create a soft light a light source should be 1-2 x it's diameter from the subject. Beauty dishes have an even more specific requirement.
So a 60cm softbox should be 2-4 feet from the subject. A 6" beauty dish needs to be a couple of feet away max. Making it useless for a human face.
 
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Simon Kitt said:
These are two I tried with my 6" beauty dish.

I think I need to find full sized "models" though to properly test it on.
Click to expand...

I too tried a few test shoots when I first heard of the idea - still tempted to give it a go myself.

I've a couple of the Godox AD360 units, so I tested it out with one of those with a few different light modifiers:
  1. 30cm Beauty Dish
  2. Gridded 30cm Beauty Dish
  3. 48cm Octobox
  4. Gridded 48cm Octobox
I believe the flash and the octobox are the same / similar to that in Dan's setup.

Both the gridded softbox and beauty dish were excellent at controlling the spill of the light, meaning very dark backgrounds from the outset, but I worry a little as to wether they will effectively illuminate enough of the torso when shooting Cosplay.
The beauty dish produced a more contrasty image, more shadows on features etc, than the softbox, but again with a tighter circle of illumination, where as the softbox was better at illuminating the subject overall, albeit with more spill, and produced a slightly 'flatter' image.

If I were just doing headshots - I think I'd go for the gridded beauty dish, but Comicom is more about the costumes overall, so I think that perhaps forces the softbox, the trade off being more work in post.

The one thing I would say is it doesn't take long until holding the flash start to feel like your hoisting a baby elephant into the air!

Camera wise, things have moved on and it's a toss up between the XPro2 / XT2 with 23 or 35mm, or the X100T with 23mm fixed (35mm FF equiv). I think I'm leaning towards the X100 because of the leaf shutter, which will allow me to keep the aperture open a bit. On the XPro/XT2, the max sync speed is 1/250, so that forces an aperture of around f/14, which I think is starting to push the limits of the lens.

If I can persuade my good wife to stand around for a bit this weekend, I might have another go and see what I end up with.
 
For full height i had a lot of success recently with godox ad 600 / ad 2000 and soft box / beauty dish on a monopod. I did have help holding the lights, quite tricky doing it all solo in the middle of a comic con :)
 
Furtim said:
Camera wise, things have moved on and it's a toss up between the XPro2 / XT2 with 23 or 35mm, or the X100T with 23mm fixed (35mm FF equiv). I think I'm leaning towards the X100 because of the leaf shutter, which will allow me to keep the aperture open a bit. On the XPro/XT2, the max sync speed is 1/250, so that forces an aperture of around f/14, which I think is starting to push the limits of the lens.

If I can persuade my good wife to stand around for a bit this weekend, I might have another go and see what I end up with.
Click to expand...

Silly question, but would an ND filter allow a wider aperture?
 
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