elinchrom_ranger_quadra

It's here! I believe this is the first Quadra delivered to Germany. I think it's also the full writeup from an individual, and definitely the first unboxing post. I normally don't do this kind of thing, but since it's so new to the market, this might help some people decide. There were some things I wasn't sure of, that I would have loved to know before buying.





The box was conveniently sized. Not too large, it fit in my backpack to take home by bicycle.



Everything was packed nice and tight, with cardboard padding to keep it from rattling around.



First things out are the manuals, shoulder strap, PC-sync cable, and the connector cable for the head to power pack.



Everything out of the box. Click through to Flickr to read the notes highlighting what is what. I love the fact the charger has easy to change adaptors, for UK, US and EU, so you don' t have to pack an adaptor. I like how the charging port is on the battery itself, so if you buy a 2nd, it can be charging while you are using the power pack and other battery. It can also run off wall power if the battery is gone, but it won't charge till you turn the pack off. They included 2 standard 20 watt fuses, and there is a tray for both. They recomend to remove the necessary one while traveling, so it's nice to have 2 spots so you can have your main and spare in the pack, so you won't lose it, while traveling.



Closeup of the pack itself. Large size should let you read all the text. Again, click through to flickr to read the notes. I like how it has LEDs for each function so you can easily see. I also like how you can have the power display either in F-stops or in Watt seconds. I picked Ws because I understand that better, coming from someone who never uses a light meter. I like that all the top ports are covered when not in use (like the sync port) to keep out light rain, though they don't recomend using it in the rain. The shoulder strap hooks are also very nice, and I like that they are carabiners to fascilitate easy removal.





The head itself compared to the 580ex II.



Full setup. I particularly like how the battery pack acts as a weight to really stabilize the stand, without being too heavy for these Nano stands.





Closeup of the S-head. Note that the umbrella holder DOES NOT fit Wescott hexagonal umbrella stems. The stems are too large. Also note the lack of a clamp of any sort. These fit the Elinchrom shaft diameter, which I believe is 7mm. I am awaiting the arrival of my replacement Alzo 60cm silver umbrella, which I'm unsure if it fits or not. This is the only dissapointing aspect so far.

This head does not use the standard elinchrom mount. If you want to mount elinchrom modifiers to it, you have to purchase an adaptor. I want to try to build one myself. I plan to get the XXS or XS Chimera softbox with a 20 degree grid, but it will have to wait till next month's paycheck. :-) There is coming a 40x40cm Elinchrom softbox that will mount directly to this head without the need of the adaptor, but it's not out yet, the price isn't known, nor whether it can accept a grid, which is important to me.

Now for some comparisons in light quality. Inside a lighting modifier, the light source itself is practically irrelavent as long as it can fill the light mod, and be bright enough. A 60x60 cm softbox will look the same on the subject regardless of the flash inside it, if the power levels are comparable. However bare bulb is a different aspect. Bare bulb throws far, won't blow over in a strong wind, and is the fastest to set up. It also gives a very edgy harsh look, but it's very rarely desirable.



This is lit with the Canon 580ex II. Bare, at 105mm. Notice the hot specular on nose and forehead, and the razor sharp shadow from the nose on the cheek, the harsh transition from light to dark on the edge of the face, and the sharp shadow on the wall from the chair.



Lit with the Modeling LED light only. This one is interesting, because it's supposed to be daylight balanced, but in actuality runs quite yellow, at least on mine. It's possible it warms up to be properly balanced, but when it just turns on, it's 4500k with a green tint, not 5600k as claimed. So if you're wanting to use this for a video light, be aware that it is not daylight balanced as claimed online in other places. I still find it useful for previewing the light position on the face. I don't know yet if it's bright enough to push through a softbox to see the light on the face, but bare, it works fine, and throws quite far. It has a bit of a hot core, then a much dimmer surrounding. This is because it sits flush, and isn't able to bounce much into the reflector. You can program how long it stays on from 1-60 seconds, with a single button press, or if you hold it for 3 seconds, it stays on till you turn it off again. Very nice that you can leave it on as long as you have battery power, to do some light painting.

You can see the shadows are a bit softer, most noticeable on the chair shadow, but it gives kind of an odd, uneven softness.



Lit with the flash itself. The shadows are softer, but you have to look close to see it. The chair shadow shows it the most. I won't use this bare with the 13.5cm reflector much, but it's nice to know that it is softer than the 580, which I would use bare sometimes. Any amount of built in softness is nice.

Here is an animated gif flashing through all 3, so you can better appreciate the bare flash bulb difference.



The best places to view the differences is in the chair shadow on the wall, and the tip of the nose shadow where it almost joins the cheek shadow.

I'm really excited to use this kit more, unfortunately it will have to wait till I get at least one lighting modifier. I had planned to use my umbrella till I get the Chimera, but since it doesn't fit, I can only use it barebulb for now.

One thing that I wanted to know, and have now confirmed, is that you can change the incremental power changes via skyport. The default setting is 1/10 of a stop per button press, but that's a lot of presses if you're off by a lot on your first shoot. I also don't like doing tiny changes, as I find things normally need a bit more to be noticeable. You can also set it to 1/10-1 stop increments. I've got it set to 1/2 stop increments. So each up or down press goes down 50% or up 100%.

Pros of the Quadra over the 580exII

1. Much MUCH brighter highest power.
2. 1.2 second recycle time at full power, compared to 5 seconds on the 580exII. If you turned the Quadra down to the power of the 580, you'd have near instant recharge.
3. Lower minimum setting. Just 8.2 Watt seconds on the B port.
4. Lighter head. The head is all that must sit on the end of a boom, so the 250 grams of the Quadra head is nicer than the 375 grams of the 580ex II
5. While the battery pack does have to be carried, it can serve as a stand weight to stabilize.
6. Bare bulb, it throws in all directions, whereas the 580ex II only throws straight ahead. This results in the Quadra filling the light mods more fully. As an example, inside a softbox, the 580 just goes straight and hits the first baffle. The Quadra also goes straight sideways and hits the silver of the interior, resulting in more even light coming out of the front.
   
7. Softer bare. As the examples show, with no light mods, it's a softer light
8. Built in skyport. This is the biggie. No pc-sync cable to bother with, no skyport to velcro to the top of the 580ex, it just works wirelessly soon as you turn it on.
9. Built in wireless power adjustment via radio! Yes, with the Canon 220 you can control the 580's power remotely, but it has limited range, and doesn't work that great outdoors. This allows you to control the quadra's power output via the Skyport remote trigger, and it's radio based, so you get crazy range, and sunlight doesn't phase it. This is the number one reason I bought this unit. I can stay in front of my subject, and adjust power without interupting our shoot.
   
10. Built in stand mount. With the 580, I have to also setup the flash mount on the stand, before I can mount the flash. It doesn't take that long, but it's just one more item I have to deal with, that slows my setup time before I can shoot. The S-head has the stand mount attached, so you just pop it on the stand and tighten.
11. Much improved modeling light. The 580 has one, but it's just a 1 second long pulse. You can't really take a photo with it, it's hard to light paint with it, and it's far too weak to fill a light mod. The Quadra's can stay on as long as you need, and doesn't flicker. It's not daylight balanced, which is dissapointing.
    

Pro's of the 580exII over the Quadra:

1. Size/weight of the total unit with flash and batteries included.
2. Can't mount the Quadra directly to the camera (which I never do anyway)
   
3. No TTL on the Quadra (again, never do that)
4. More weather proof.
   
5. That's about it.
   

Óðinn part 2

Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash behind the model and aimed forward at 4 stops above neutral grey.

After the shoot out in the snow, we warmed up in the car and went back to the subject's flat to take some interior portraits. I used the 1x1.2 meter black/white backdrop I've spoke of before to get the pure black background. I set up a front flash into a silver umbrella for the front fill, and a back flash for the rim light. However the front flash was at full power, which takes 5 seconds to recharge, and I tried to take a photo before it had finished, and I got the first shot of this post, which ended up being my favorite. The flash is bouncing off his skin and hands to fill what little of his face you can see. The rest falls off into black.

When the main flash actually fired, it looks like this:



Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash behind the model and aimed forward at 4 stops above neutral grey. One flash in front into a large silver umbrella, at 2 stops above neutral grey.

It was a very easy setup to throw together, and it turned his living room into a studio as long as I kept the framing tight. Any stray edges of room that peaked in were easily blacked out with a paint brush in photoshop.

I will definitely try to play more with the look of the original shot, aiming for it to be my actual lighting setup. The main problem I have with it, is that it's so blown out. I'd prefer to use a larger light source, maybe a large or small silver umbrella, and keep it from blowing out so intensely.

Óðinn part 1

Settings: Ambient is .5 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, aimed up so that just the bottom edge touches his face, at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

I'd been wanting to take photos of my friend Óðinn for a while, and finally got a chance to. We did a multi-part shoot to make the most of our time. This is where being mobile really pays off. I'm convinced that with studio strobes and a large battery pack, with the extra time it would take to set everything up, we would not have been able to fit this much in. The daylight was fading fast, and we had a narrow window when the light was perfect.

I've been to this location before, but not during the snow. It opened some really nice possibilities. The sky was still quite bright, and was providing a nice soft even light, this provided for some nice photos with no lighting equipment needed.





After a few nice shots in this setting, we moved to these wooden beach chairs that were covered in snow. There was some beautiful light still coming from the horizon, and I just wanted to add a touch of light with the strobes, to bring attention to his face. I could have oriented myself on the side of the light, but it would have given me a much darker background, and I wanted some of the interesting sunset in the background.



Settings: Ambient is .5 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, aimed up so that just the bottom edge touches his face, at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

The biggest thing that I learned from this shoot, is that when using an unmodified flash, and letting in enough ambient to make the shadows not so harsh, I like "short portrait lighting". You can find a detailed explanation here. The quick explanation, if the flash is illuminating the front of the face and the side of the face you can see, it's "broad" lighting. If it's illuminating the front of the face, and leaving the side of the face you can see in shadow, it's "short" lighting. Broad lighting with an unmodified flash is less pleasing (to me) than short lighting. I hadn't consciously recognized this preference of mine till this shoot, and I'll let it dictate my lighting placement for future shoots.

Here is an example of broad lighting. I like the pose and composition, but wish I had taken this photo with short lighting instead. The broad lighting is leaving his face too flat for my taste, and not bringing in enough of the colored shadow from the ambient to tie him into the background.



Settings: Ambient is 1 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, at 1 stops over neutral grey.

Slight flash

Settings: Ambient is about a stop below neutral grey. Flash through honeycomb grid aimed at face, from high up and to the right, at one stop above neutral grey.

I realized all my favorite photos, both that I've taken, and that I like of others, use a lot of ambient light, and the artificial light is very subtle and only adds a little pop to the main area. I really want to pursue this line of lighting this year.

For this photo, almost all the light is window light from the left. I got on a chair to shoot from this height, and took at f/1.8 to get a little depth of field on the feet, so that the attention was kept on the face. Once I had everything exposed right, I decreased the iso by one stop to make everything a bit darker. Then I added my flash to a stand at about 2 meters height, to the right, aimed it at his face, and added a honeycomb grid to constrain it to just his face. Without the grid, even zoomed to 105mm, it spread to the rest of the bed and body. It had just enough softness to fade out nicely, and because there was only about a stop difference between ambient and flash, even though the edges of the shadows from the flash are harsh, they aren't very noticeable. If I had dropped ambient another stop or two, the flash shadows would have been extremely noticeable.

I'm still working on a portable option that lets me through softer light a longer distance. I'll let you know what I come up with. I would have loved to have this light constrained only to the face like this, but softer.

Simple portraits

Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is through a Lumiquest softbox 2 at 1 stop above neutral grey.


I have felt a bit like I might be trying too hard to deviate from "safe" and standard lighting, so I have been wanting to try some more traditional lighting setups. By putting the umbrella at the same height as his head, and aiming it horizontally instead of angled down, it emulates window lighting quit well, and is very soft. The right side light does an ok job of filling, but I think either another umbrella, or just bouncing that flash off the ceiling to raise the light of the room would have looked nicer. It would have kept the harsh shadow from the left side of his nose.

The background is just a piece of black posterboard taped to the wall. I'm going to add to my kit a length of black, and white fabric to use as quick backdrops.



Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is bare, zoomed to 105mm at 3 stop above neutral grey.

For this shot, first Agust got ready for the Gothtasm Halloween party by dying his hair and applying makeup. Since it was such an effort, I decided it would be good to document it. This is a fairly standard setup also. The silver umbrella is a little high and aimed down, to produce nice directional lighting. The right flash provides a really nice rim light along the cheek and back of the head, for a bit of separation from the background. I think this is easily my favorite lighting setup.

I had to get in on the action too.



As a slight aside, I recently purchased a photo editing monitor. The HP LP2475w. It's a 24" monitor that uses an S-IPS panel, which is a true 8 bit panel, that does a very wide gamut of colors. It's a huge upgrade from my little 17" laptop, both in color accuracy and brightness. I also got a monitor calibrator to ensure color accuracy. Even just looking at other people's photos is more fun now, because I can see so much more detail and dynamic range. I highly suggest ensuring you have a good monitor with accurate color (either an S-IPS or S-PVA panel, not all LCD panels are made the same way, TN and TFT which is the most common used panels, are not true 8 bit color) and a monitor calibrator to ensure you're getting your colors correct. I know I've been over compensating for my poor monitor quality in past photos by pushing the contrast and colors a bit too far.

Fishtank

Settings: Ambient light is -3 stops below neutral grey. Green rim light is +1 stops, and Main fill is +1 stops. Rim light is from the right, through the fishtank, slightly behind the subject but aimed toward subject head. Fill is snooted and aimed directly at head, and is forward from subject and to the left (of camera).

This was a quick test over the weekend for a shoot I have coming up. I wanted to be more familiar with the setting, what works, and what doesn't. The main worry of mine, was that I wanted a flash coming through the fishtank to use as a rim light. It took some experimenting to get it to work. First I tried putting the flash on the opposite side of the tank pointing forward, but that created too much flare, and didn't give me the rim light I was looking for. Then I put the flash on the right side of the tank, and aimed it forward. This gave me the rim light that I needed. Now it was a matter of balancing ambient and the main flash.

On the above photo, the green light on the right side of my face is the rim light from the flash aimed through the tank. Even though the flash was at 1/1 power, and full 105mm zoom, I had to bump the ISO up to 400 and drop my aperture to f/3.5 in order to get that rim to the brightness I wanted. This was my hard point around which all other settings had to revolve, because this was the only option that worked.

Next, I figured out my ambient level by opening the shutter till it was where I wanted (I almost always start at 1/250 shutter when using flash) I wanted the ambient to remain dark, so it's about -3 stops from neutral grey. I had a few with it opened up more, but it was not enough contrast for my taste, and the fishtank started to blow out.

Now that I had my ambient balanced with the rim light, I needed my main light. I started with it at 1/128 and 105mm zoom, aimed directly at the head, but this was still too bright. The face where it hit was completely blown out. Since the 580ex doesn't go lower than 1/128, and I didn't have any ND filters with me, and the other settings were already anchored down, I only had one choice, and that was to start backing the light away from the subject. Every time the distance doubles, you get 1/2 the light. The more I backed it up, the more of the subject that would be lit, and I wanted it restricted to just the face. I popped on my grid-spot, to constrain the light to a tighter beam, and that did the trick. I got my main, ambient and rim all balanced in a way that worked.

After shooting, there was some cleanup. I had an unsightly shadow on the right from the snoot, and some junk in the fishtank that didn't add to the composition. This is where Photoshop comes in.



First, I boosted the shadows a bit. I could have gotten this by opening the shutter another 1/3 stop when I was shooting. Next, I cooled down the white balance of everything but the subject's skin. Then I removed the shadow on the couch and grey fishtank, and then cloned out the junk in the fishtank itself. Finally I used highpass and smart sharpen to bring a little extra medium and micro contrast to the face and hands.

Now I feel prepared to do a more elaborate shoot in this location based on this experiment. The majority of the problems have been solved, and I'll just have to concentrate on composition with a group and directing my subjects. If I'd left these technical aspects till the shoot itself, I would have either frustrated my subjects with all the back and forth, or I would have rushed myself and not gotten the result that I wanted.

Kitty Cowboy

This was an incredibly fun shoot, and came together so well for such a last minute thing. Some of it was luck, but also just developing a shooting style that works fast and furious and being really comfortable with my gear helped a ton. Because of how cold it was, I had my lighting stands already assembled with umbrella swivels attached, flash attached, and skyports velcroed and plugged in. This let me start shooting within about 5 minutes of arriving to the shoot location.

The settings for these was fairly simple, and I'm going to follow David Hobby's advice and stop listing details and start listing the useful information.

Camera was set to about -2 stops from ambient (meaning the sky was about middle grey, and the model was almost black with no flashes)
Flash one was set to +4 stops from ambient, and flash two was set to +2 from ambient level. This means flash two was making sure the model was properly exposed, and flash one was giving me some bright rim light.

I started by shooting without flashes, and getting my sky at the exposure that I wanted, ignoring the model. Then I raised one flash stand to full height, and one to about waist height. I was planning to use the tall one for my bright rim light, and the low one for fill. As I shot, I was constantly repositioning the flashes to work with the pose and setting. This is where having light, easy to relocate light stands was a real benefit. Every time I wasn't happy with the light position, I just picked up the stand and moved them. No cables, no weights, no light mods to worry about.



For this one I wish I had lowered the output of the secondary flash (the one on the left) so that her face wasn't lit so evenly, but it worked out alright.



These old gears were too awesome not to use as a prop.

For these shots, I tried using my flashes "un gelled" meaning they were pure white. This way I can color correct afterwards. It takes a bit more time, but I was finding that I was doing this even on my gelled shots to match everything just the way I wanted. This makes it faster for me to not have to use and balance gels, knowing I will do the correcting at the end.

I also placed the stronger light always in the same direction as the sun light was coming, so that it would look more natural. I think in the first shot, it isn't completely apparent that flashes were used, which is a look I'd like to be able to control on command.

There are more shots in the remainder of the set.

Kirkjuljos

The title of this post means Church Light in Icelandic.



I saw this church several weeks ago at night, and knew instantly that it would be a perfect setting for a shoot. I had several friends lined up to ask to help pose for the shoot, but either my schedule or theirs precluded it. After buying a new jacket and wanting a way to show my friends, I figured I would do a trial run with myself as a the model. A bit more difficult, but this way there was no rush.

I did a bit of planning beforehand in my mind, I knew I wanted to:
Use symmetry as a framing element,
Use the running lights of the sidewalk to draw the eye in,
have the entire church visible,
have a contrasty dark blue sky,
and try not to overlight it.

My first step was to get a good angle and decide on a lens. Originally I tried my 10-20mm, but it was far too wide, and it's minimum aperture at 20mm is 5.6, which was horrid for the lighting conditions. I knew I needed my 35mm f/1.4 to pull in enough light. I set it up on a tripod and got a good angle, then using my remote trigger, I tested at which running light I should be even with for proper framing. Then I used the live view to fine tune the focus onto that running light, and locked the lens to manual focus. At 1.4, the DoF is incredibly narrow, about .4 meters.

Once I had the angle I wanted, I wanted a photo using natural light only, so I could try to emulate it. Here is a photo with no flashes used.



It's not a bad lighting scenario, but the lights are heavily tinted (streetlights) and not bright enough. I setup my flashes so that they sat at the same angle as the streetlights, and angled them up so that it would feather downward and not create a glaring shadow at my feet.

Here is the setup shot:



Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Right flash at 1/16 power,
at tele zoom,
angled up,
light stand was at 1.5 meters height,
left flash at 1/32 power,
at tele zoom,
angled up,
light stand was at 1.5 meters height,
5 meters to right of subject 3 meter forward from subject.

In hindsight, I wish I would have used CTOrange gels. I had to fake it in post with a photo filter in photoshop, as the lights were far too blue when I balanced for the rest of the scene.

Once I had the lights the brightness that I wanted, and a good angle, I poured water all over the sidewalk (I had brought a 2 liter bottle of water) in order to get some reflections off the ground to add more lighting interest.



For post settings, I took the sky from the first shot, and used it for all the subsequent shots. It started getting cloudy after that shot, and the sky was just a flat orange from the city lights bouncing off the clouds. I edited the curves of the sky layer to bring up the blues and greens in the highlights, and the reds and blues in the shadows. Then I balanced all the light sources. I used a warming filter for the subject to kill the blueish cast of the flashes, a magenta filter for the green flourescents of the church lights in the background on the ground level, and a color correction layer for the sidewalk to remove the magenta cast of the WB correction that was used on the entire scene. If I'd used CTOrange gels, I would have had one less light source to correct in post. Then I used the high pass method of sharpening, but limited it only to the subject, and the ground that was in focus. I used this same mask to smart sharpen as well. I think bokeh becomes incredibly ugly when sharpened, so I leave it out of that step.

Once I had everything setup, I could just stand there with my remote trigger and try a bunch of poses, trying to think about how the flash would fall on me based on the angle I was standing, and also thinking about where my weight was distributed, how my stature and posture would make the final image look, and making sure to straighten any wrinkling of my clothes from those poses. It would have been great to have had a stylist on hand, but you work with what you have!

Strobe on a boom

Originally this was going to be "Softbox on a boom" but the wind was way too strong, so I had to remove the softbox and go with a bare flash. I saw how nice the wet street looked, along with the warm sky, and I wanted to use a warm flash to push the blue street scene even bluer.

Here's the setup shot (we just both moved further into the scene).



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
flash at 1/4 power,
at wide zoom,
through 3/4 CTOrange gel,
strobe was on a boom arm,
1 meter above subject, 1 meter in front and .5 meters to camera left of subject.

Here's the scene with no strobe:



Post settings were simple. I cooled the WB some to bring the flash a bit more neutral, while retaining some warmth. This pushed the street very cool. I did a quick adjustment brush for the sky, reduced exposure and upped the constrast, clarity, and saturation, as well as doing a slight warming overlay to make it pop a bit.

If I were to do it again, I would have moved Agust further into the shadows so that his head doesn't break the line of the roof. I'd also have put a flash outside camera right, with a blue gel, and a very low intensity (maybe 1:8 of the main) to give a slight rim light affect.

Moonlit portraits

This doorway proved so interesting from the earlier shoot, that I got the urge to return after dark. I wanted to emulate the look of moonlight and a warm interior light.

Here's the setup shot. You can click through to flickr to see the notes over where the two lights are located.



Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
main flash at 1/16 power,
at wide zoom,
through 1/4 CTBlue gel,
lightstand was at full 3 meter height,
exactly even with camera,
background flash was at 1/8 power (hacked vivitar),
wide tele zoom setting,
through 1/4 CTOrange gel,
light stand was at 1 meters height,
even with subject and 1 meter to the left (inside the alcove),
aimed up at the wall to bounce around as much as possible.

The goal was to emulate moonlight, so I gave the main flash a blue gel. In hindsight, I wish I would have put my silver umbrella on the stand, to make the light just a bit softer. Moonlight is normally a bit hard, but I think I could have gotten away with softening it a bit. If I'd had a third light, I would have snooted it, and put it slightly to camera left, and aimed just at his head. That way I'd have gotten a more even light on the face with less shadows. As it is, I did a quick adjustment brush over his face in lightroom, and boosted exposure a half stop, as well as contrast, clarity and sharpness.

The goal of the shoot in my mind was this shot below. I couldn't get any ambient to show up at f/5 and 1/60 of a second at iso 400, so this is entirely lit by the flashes. I started with him in the doorway, and adjusted the background light till it was proper brightness. Then I turned on the main flash, and it was fine at 1/16. I managed to get the light ratio fairly quickly, so the rest was getting the composition and pose that I wanted. This one hit all my mental expectations.



Once I had the shot I was after, I started playing with angles and also switched to my telephoto lens (85mm) for the first shot of this post. I ended up getting my favorite shot of the shoot when I changed angles. This shot below was from getting much closer to the wall and angling up slightly. This is also the main one that makes me wish I'd had a third flash to add just a tiny bit of light to his face. If I'd had it, I probably would have made the blue of the "moon" flash a bit stronger, maybe 1/2 or 3/4 CTBlue. I would have placed the third flash almost even with the camera from this shot below, put it at full height, with a snoot, and a 1/8 CTBlue. This would have brought the focus of the shot to his face, and would have kept me from having to emulate it in post. It would also have evened out the lighting on his face, so that there isn't as much dark running down the center.



After I was happy that I had enough shots, I asked Agust to swap with me, so that I could have one in the same setup.

Overhead light

In 3D (my original artistic passion) lots of lighting is done in this style. Overhead light of perfectly neutral color, and strongly colored underlight to define volume and show areas in shadow without overcoming the contrast of the main light. I wanted to try it with a real person.

Setup shot:


Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Overhead light at 1/4 power,
at normal telephoto setting,
into tiny softbox,
light stand was at 2 meters height,
light was .5 meters in front of subject and just barely out of frame left,
aimed directly down at face,
underlight at 1/64 power (hacked vivitar),
through sunset red and 1/4 CTOrange gel,
at telephoto zoom setting,
light stand was at minimum height of .5 meters,
dead center of frame, aimed up at face.

I took one with just the overhead light to make sure I was getting it the way I wanted. I could have put the light on my boom arm to get it perfectly overhead, but I liked the way the slight asymmetry fell on the face, mainly because it illuminated one ear while leaving the other in shadow, and it revealed a bit of cheekbone. I also used a shutter speed of 1/200 and aperture of f/11 to kill the ambient, giving me black shadows. The softbox widened the light a bit, so that it wasn't as harsh as a barebulb.

I asked Agust to lean forward and to "glower" at me, in order to have his head pose and facial features match the theme of this lighting. It's a dark, contrasty, and fairly unflattering lighting setup, so it's only useful for graphical applications, not really as a portrait.



Then I turned off the overhead light, and started messing with the underlight. I wanted it to be dark, but visible. I left my camera settings alone. This gave me a chance to see if the light was the color I wanted (I guessed right with my gels), and to ensure it was the right ratio (by leaving my camera settings alone, I know how bright the main light will be. I just need to adjust this light to fit). I started at my lowest setting (below 1/1024, unsure of the exact amount) and saw it was way too dim. I upped the flash power 2 stops, still too dark, 2 more stops, good to go. I kept this light perfectly centered. First because it was easy, since it was below. No stand to get in the way. And second because I wanted the nose shadow to be aligned, so as not to block the eyes at all.



Once I had the underlight and main light ratio set, I turned the main light back on, and started trying to get my final shots. it was just a matter of evoking the right expression from the subject, and making sure I liked the image on the LCD after. The setup and ratio figuring took about 5-10 minutes, getting the final shots took less than 2. One thing that helped, is that after I got one or two good ones, I showed it to Agust. This gives him an idea of the look I'm going for, and he can adjust mentally to emote appropriately.