Recently I took another shot for my red-heads series:
and I managed to snap a wide angle shot of the lighting setup I wanted to share:
On the far left, you can see one of the Quadras, this one was plugged into the B port, so it's pumping out half the light of the main, all the way in the upper right, which is shooting through the 1.5 meter Softlighter. The back light is directed through a white scrim on an aluminum frame. I have both scrims on it, one on each side, to soften as much as possible. This is providing the pure white background of the image. Then the Softlighter is from directly in front and above, at a 45 degree angle, providing the main light.
Settings: Main light through a 1.5 meter softlighter, and is metered to proper exposure at his face. 2nd light is behind a white diffusion panel, aimed into the camera, and meters also at proper exposure.
From the numerous shots of my husband, one might be able to ascertain my affinity for red-heads. I find the features fascinating, the trending toward pale skin, freckles, what the light colored eyebrow hairs do to the reading of a face, and the often green eyes. I just think red headed people are fascinating in their anatomy, skin tones, and differences from the rest of the pigment gamut. I decided to put my fetish toward a new photo series. One might think I'd start with my husband first, but I had an opportunity to shoot a stranger first, more shots will follow in this series.
The lighting goal was to keep the focus on the features. Soft, revealing light, and a pure white background so as not to distract from the features. I kept a slight falloff of focus to give it a sense of immediacy. An all in focus image would have been a bit too clinical. I used my 85mm lens to make sure there wasn't any distortion of the facial features, and a benefit is that at f/3.5 this lens is nearing it's ultimate sharpness, giving crystal clear sharpness to the details in focus.
To achieve this lighting, I used 2 lights, and to get a pure white background, I used a very convenient approach. The first light is in my giant 1.5 meter softlighter, directly over the camera and about even with the lens, placing camera and light about 1 meter from the subject, with the light raised above and aiming down. This provides soft even lighting with some volume from being raised. If it were even with the camera in height, the light would be more flat. Now the kicker, is the 2nd light. I have one of my 1x2 meter panels with diffusion material behind the subject about 1 meter, and the 2nd light is behind the panel aiming back through. This means rather than trying to evenly illuminate a white paper backdrop, I'm lighting up a diffusion panel from behind. This is similar to the lastolite popup white background, but works with my existing equipment. By keeping it a bit behind, I avoided flare. If you pump too much light off or through your white background, you can create a contrast reducing flare. I used the B head from my quadra, so it's half the output of the main light, but since the diffusion panel eats up less lighting than the softlighter, they are even in light output. This results in a proper illumination of the face, and since the diffusion panel is white, proper illumination of it ends up with solid white background.
Post processing was mainly to remove a few tiny blemishes, and really enhance the contrast. I wanted to avoid an over baked look, but really get some details popping. This resulted in a lot of back and forth between curves, and then fine tuning the saturation sliders to make sure the shadows didn't go too burnt in redness. I toggled between color and black and white a lot to make sure I got the full range of contrast, this is more evident in B&W, so by changing over to that you can see how your value range is, then switch back to color to make sure the saturation levels work with your adjustments. The other really important thing is White Balance. Skin tones and hair color is really important for this series, so I had to be absolutely sure of color neutrality. One thing I love about my Quadra is it's color consistency at all power levels, but working on a color calibrated monitor was pivotal to making sure it was perfect.
Settings: Face light is proper exposure, right rim is one stop above, left is about a half stop above.
I attend a Kettlebell class at a gym called Mjolnir (the name of Thor's hammer in norse mythology). The gym really loves having masculine aggressive imagery up, but I noticed that all of it was from foreign athletes, despite numerous staff members, as well as attendants, being just as muscular and photo worthy. I love Iceland, and any chance I can get to promote internal imagery rather than importing stuff made elsewhere, I try to encourage it. I decided to pursue a shoot with them, and do a test shoot before hand so that they would need to do very little imagination to see how it would come out.
Settings: Face light is proper exposure, right rim is one stop above, left is about a half stop above.
I knew I wanted rim light for the revealing effect it has on muscles, but I also wanted to light the face. Before going into the lighting, here is the setup shot. Click through to flickr to read the notes.
The main light is my standard 30x40 XXS softbox with a 20 degree grid to keep it just on the face. This is reading f/4 with the light meter, and my aperture is f/4. So the face is going to be properly exposed. The 2nd light is off to the side, it's shooting through the white diffusion panel, but also past it (you can see the edge on the floor where the light is spilling) and bouncing off the reflector. The rim is reading f/5.6 on the right side (for one stop over) and f/4.5 on the right for a slight over exposure. I would love to keep them even, but the light has further to go when bouncing off the reflector, and loses some light because of the inverse square law (double the distance, quarter the intensity). If I had a longer cable, I could bring the light way further back, to keep the distances more similar, but the cables were already at their limit. Having a light meter really helped a lot to be able to ensure proper exposure, and making sure my rim lights were coming out brighter than the main, and by how much.
For this one I sprayed him with a water spritzer to get a sweaty look going.
For the actual shoot, I am going to run both lights through diffusers to get even, smooth rim on both sides. To keep from getting skunk lighting on the face (a dark black line down the center) I will just put a silver reflector disc on a boom arm for some slight fill. I much prefer the rim look, and lighting the face too evenly removes the constrasty affect from the muscles. I'll post them when they're done.
Settings: Ambient is effectively gone. Not sure the ratio between the two flashes, but the output is 2:1, the main on the face double the brightness of the side light. The main is in a less efficient modifier, but it's also physically closer. I'd say side is 1 stop over neutral grey, and the main 1.5 stops.
This is a first shoot for a couple of techniques for me. It's my first real shoot using the giant panels I reviewed in the past post. I really like how soft the quality of the light is. Works great as a fill with the small softbox acting as my main to draw attention to the face. This is also the first time I worked with a remote shutter and the camera on the tripod. This was immensely freeing for directing the subject, and I could really focus on connecting with him, instead of hiding behind the camera. I was able to be closer to him physically, for a more human interaction as well.
Here is the setup shot. Click through to the flickr to see notes over the different lights:
Real quick rundown. The Quadra pack is a 2:1 asymmetric pack. The small softbox is in the A head, getting double the output of the side light that is aimed into the panel. This is as full as I could fill the panel without serious spill on the background, but I would have preferred to fill all of the panel for a more soft and even light. The main head is in my 30x40cm XXS softbox with the 20 degree grid. This keeps it right on his face, feathering off down the torso, and the grid keeps it from spilling on the background. The 2nd panel is providing a reflector to keep the shadows from going pitch black. I could bring it closer to fill them more, or further to create more contrast. Without that 2nd panel all together, the shadows would have been jet black.
This barndoor solution isn't working yet. The default reflector is just too wide angle, so even with the barndoors closed almost completely, it can spill out over the edge. I'm in the process of buying the 18cm reflector which will give me more control.
I was able to set everything up in about 30 minutes, including the background (borrowed from a friend). Since I was working with a tripod and remote trigger, I was able to test the lighting on myself before the subject came, but I'm looking forward to next week when I'll finally have my light meter. My settings will be much more accurate from then on out, as so far I've been guessing at ratios. Once he came I fine tuned the placement of the softbox. I have wheels for my light stands, but didn't bother to bring them this time, and I really wish I had at least brought one set, as positioning the boom stand with the softbox was a pain without them. I also need to make a small strap for attaching the quadra power box as my boom counterweight.
The shooting session went really well with the remote trigger. He had never been in a shoot before, and was a little unsure, but being able to be close and use full hand movements and body language to show poses and communicate was a real positive. I don't like working at f/8, as the background didn't need to be in focus, this was at f/4. This enabled me to use the pack power really low, like at 80 watt seconds for the main, giving me insane recycle times. I never had to wait, it was always ready for another pop. That enabled me to get some really great mid emotion shots like this:
Working with modeling lights is really great, for those readers who only use speedlights. For perfect placement of the light, especially on the far eye from the light source, it's really key. This specific shot relied on very carefully directing the turn of his face to be just right:
Even just the two preview videos can teach a ton. Sadly the lightform brand is no longer sold, so I was hunting around for what the most equal equivalent is. It seems that Calumet's light panels are the most similar, but made out of aluminum rather than PVC. Since there is a Calumet in Dusseldorf, I purchased 2 frames, 2 diffusion fabrics, and 2 clamps. I plan to make my own black/silver version, but fabric store white fabric can introduce unwanted color casts, so I wanted to purchase the official diffusion fabrics, which were also the cheapest. The photos online aren't so great, and I couldn't find any reviews, so this is serving to show how the system works with closeups.
Panel frame itself:
It's made out of thin aluminum tubes, very lightweight, the whole thing probably weighs less than 2kg. It has a shock cord running through it, and square indents that keep it from being able to twist, which adds extra rigidity. It does not flex in the middle like the PVC versions. You can assemble it just like the frames in the Dean Collins videos, but they don't shake together quite as easy. Maybe after some more usage, but it's easy enough.
The Clamp:
The clamp is identical to the one in the videos, with the added benefit of having a clamp that really holds onto the tube. It can be clamped to almost any tubular surface, it rotates, and the middle T-bar can be screwed tight to the holder to clamp the angle tight, not allowing the frame to rotate. One alone is not sturdy enough to hold the frame from the side, but if you clamp it to the top of the frame, you can hang it and it's secure. It's more likely to use two, one on each side of the frame.
The diffusion fabric:
It doesn't completely even the light, as you can see when the panel is severely under exposed, but I haven't found it to affect illumination of the subjects at all. If you photograph it so that the flash isn't directly visible, as in the 2nd image, you get a fairly even soft white light. I also bought the double clips, and can clip both of them together, with diffusion panels on both, for a giant 2x2 meter wall of soft light. Unless the flash is positioned perfectly, you cannot see the light leaking between the two panels, meaning you never have to worry about a line of undiffused light shining through when using them clipped together. The fourth photo shows the panel from the flash side, showing that while the material is thin, it can be used as a reflector, no real need to buy the white fabric panel. I plan to make a double sided black/silver panel, and I would put the silver side on the other of the white, for a more efficient bounce. The 5th final image shows a real white reflector to show the difference in bounce efficiency. The real white fabric would most likely be more reflective, but it's quite expensive, and only comes with either gold or silver on the opposite side. If they made a double sided black/white I might have bought it.
Examples:
The two panels together give incredible soft light, in fact I have a 2x2 meter window in this same room, and the lighting is near identical in terms of it's directionality and softness. Now I can reproduce it at will at any time of day.
Even when I backed the subject up quite far, these panels are so large they still produce quite soft light. this is probably 3 meters from the panels.
This was a quick test to see how they would work as reflectors. Obviously the harsh bare flash is not flattering on the subject, but you can see a nice bit of bounce filling in the shadows, especially on the side of his temples.
These last two show how reflections are treated. Even with the hot spot, it seems to reflect as a solid white surface, which is great for revealing shape, and the large size keeps it from blowing out to a pure white highlight.
Use this link to show the different products from the Calumet panel line. I bought the large 107x198 cm panels, and the white diffusion that goes with it, plus two clamps, but they have kits as well.
The main problem I have now is not having barndoors that fit the quadra reflector. I intend to look around a bit, and even try a DIY solution I have cooking. Barndoors enable to you keep the light only to the diffusion panels, rather than spilling past to a background or the ceiling.
