Settings: Ambient is gone, main is from the small softbox with grid on camera right, 1.5 stops above neutral grey, and fill is from a large 110cm silver umbrella almost directly behind the camera even with neutral grey.
For Christmas my husband (that's him above) got me a 2nd S-head for my Quadra. I can now use 2 lights again. It was freeing having only one for a while, and I imagine I'll still use just one for a lot of photos, but now I can bring in two when I need it.
This was a quick test with using it, as well as a long term series I want to do. A mugshot of each of us every year at New Years (our engagement anniversary). I got the idea from another family that did this from the 70s through the 2000s, including when they added their kids in. I forget where I got it from, but you can see the sequence here: http://www.poopinmymouth.com/wip/age_family.gif I have a long way to go to get that far, but it's good to have some extremely long term projects.
Settings: Ambient is gone, main is from the small softbox with grid on camera right, 1.5 stops above neutral grey, and fill is from a large 110cm silver umbrella almost directly behind the camera even with neutral grey.
If you look closely in the eyes of the large version, you can see the placement and relative brightness of the two mods. The umbrella is the dimmer fuzzy one in the center, and the softbox is the square in the upper right of the eye.
I've been studying Dan Winter's work, and I love how he controls the shadow density with a ringlight. I'm not a fan of actual ring lights, but the principle of using an on axis fill (something strobist fans will be familiar with) is really appealing. Right now the Quadra can only do a 2:1 ratio, so I can only play with distance, but I plan to build some mesh covers that give me 4:1 and 8:1, as well as letting me drop a single head even lower than the current minimum of 8.2 watts. By placing the umbrella directly behind the camera as a fill, every surface you can see gets light. This way you can keep your shadows from going black. If you move it off to the side, you run the risk of creating pockets of shadows which normally looks awful. Fill goes on axis, or as close as you can get without coming into view of the camera.
One thing I really like about this, is that I still have my super contrasty main light, my small softbox with grid, but I can keep the shadows under control even in an indoor environment. Most of the time I use ambient as my fill when doing outdoor stuff, but now I can bring it in even indoors easily.
Awesome photos (as ever) - and thank you for explaining the on-axis fill thing with regard to Dan Winters. I love his portraits, and it's really good to have your detailed explanation, as opposed to my own "woah - great shot, wish I could figure out how he did that"!
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's time to supplement my one speedlite with another!
No problem, it was kind of a "whoah" moment for me too, even though I read all about David Hobby's same revelation about Winter's stuff. I think it's because Winter's just uses much more controlled, yet soft and contrasty main lights, so his fill controlling shadows is more impressive and made me want to emulate. A friend of mine sat on a couch in Brussels and looked over Winter's whole portfolio trying to dissect how he shot the different portraits.
ReplyDeleteThat, and I remember reading a really old-school portrait guy that always uses a white shoot through umbrella over his shoulder as fill, and it was apparently a pretty common thing a while back, somehow lost in the new rush to do lighting with as few battery strobes as possible.
I am new to this but how do you measure: 1.5 stops above neutral grey?
ReplyDeleteDo you take a reading using your graycard first then adjust your f stops? Thanks.
Hi Ben - I'd be interested to know this also. You mention above neutral grey a lot but I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to meter lights like this. Could you describe this process?
ReplyDeleteGreat blog by the way :)
Both Rennan and Alan, unfortunately I'm mostly guessing based on the light levels. I don't have a meter yet, but I intend to buy one. I am more trying to describe ratios of brightness, each light in comparison to one another.
ReplyDeleteyou r adorable, dudes (:
ReplyDeletedo you remember me? I've lost my flickr-account key and all the ways to contact you with it (: