No more DIY stripbox

Appologies for the long silence, I've been in Texas at a conference, and work has kept me busy. Frequent updates will return now.



I took delivery of my official stripbox, and it is mighty nice. I like how it folds down flat, is much larger than my DIY version, and has less of a hotspot, thanks to the internal, removable baffle.

The best part about a softbox, is how soft, yet volumetric it can be. I love the options of rotating it in different axis to achieve different affects. You basically put it lengthwise in the axis you want to be soft, and perpendicular to the axis you want to be defined and volumetric.

Here's the setup shot, click through to flickr for notes.



Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
main flash at 1/1 power,
through 1/8 CTOrange gel
at wide zoom,
through a striplight (30x132cm),
Striplight was vertical,
top was about 2 meters height and bottom .6 meters,
.5 meters in front and to the right of subject, aimed at face,
rim light was at 1/4 power,
through 1/4 CTBlue gel
at wide zoom,
into a frosted container to act as a bare bulb,
.6 meters to subject left, and slightly behind,
at 1.8 meters in height.

This was just a quick exercise to practice with the stripbox. I find the more small informal practice sessions like this that I do, the more seamless it fits into my more planned shoots. I already know how it will behave, how to set it up quickly, what settings will most likely work, and what will happen if I rotate it, or swap out a different lighting modifier.

I used the secondary light to not only cast a bit of rim light, but also to light the background a bit, which is why I used a bare-bulb modifier. It's just a frosted container, but it turns the flash into an omni directional light, rather than a directional one. This way some of the light got on my face, as well as the wall. Since the stripbox bled quite a bit also, you get a nice blue to orange gradient on the back wall. If I'd wanted to keep the wall relatively clean, I'd need a barndoor or flag for the stripbox, which I do not have yet.

I'm in the process of putting together a lighting/camera case that I want to work out of exclusively. It will be a two light, two stand kit, and I want it to be as flexible as possible. When I get it completely ironed out, there will be another gear post covering it.

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.

Forest portraits

I'd been wanting to try something in the small copse of trees in Reykjavik for a while, but hadn´t had a chance till last night. I consider the shoot an educational failure. I had a more specific look I was going for, but I didn´t mess around enough to get it. I did learn something, so it was educational.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
main flash at 1/16 power,
at normal telephoto zoom,
through tiny softbox,
light stand was at 1.8 meters height,
light was 1 meters to left and slighting forward from the camera,
aimed directly at subject head,
rim flash was at 1/8 power,
through 1/4 Windows Green gel,
normal telephoto zoom,
into silver umbrella,
light stand was at 1.2 meters height,
light was 3 meters to the right, even with subject.

The main problem with the shoot, is that the subject is too well lit. I should have pushed the umbrella back further behind the subject, so that it only contributed rim light, and I should have snooted the main light, so as to only hit the face. I do like the spill of the rim light/umbrella on the ground greenery, and my attempt to use cool colored gels worked well. In that I'm happy.

I like how the tree helped give more foreground for the subject to sit in, but I'd have preferred to find a spot with even more layers. Right now there is just the subject space, then the background. One closer tree, and perhaps a further layer before background would have worked well. A third flash set to spray the trees in the background would probably have worked for that.



I used the slow shutter speed to let the background burn in, but with this longer lens, I have the problem of a kind of "cut out" affect, where the subject doesn't look like he belongs in the scene 100%. A tripod, or starting earlier when there was more ambient, would have fixed this.

My favorite from the night doesn't even show the surroundings.



I like how the only part of the main light you can see is on his face, and a bit on his hands. In this case it's because his black hoodie just doesn't pick up much light, but I could easily emulate that with a snoot in the future, to restrict the main to just the face. Then the green rim light reveals the back portion so he doesn't go to shadow. I've always enjoyed profile shots.

Gróto again

Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
flash at 1/2 power,
through 1/4 CTOrange gel,
at normal telephoto zoom,
into silver umbrella,
light stand was at 2 meters height,
light was .5 meters to left and even with camera,
aimed directly at subject.

Whenever the sunset is looking nice, I am always tempted to run down with any available subject and do some portraits. This past Saturday I gave in to the temptation and raced down. It was quite windy, so I was limited in where I could place the umbrella. I had my left arm straight out, holding the light stand. I gelled the flash slightly, so that in post, I could adjust the WB to be a bit bluer, but still retain a warm look to the subject. I started at my max sync speed of 1/250, got my flash settings right for the subject (I started at 1/4, but had to bump up to 1/2), then I lowered the shutter till the background was the brightness I wanted.

I sat Agust in such a position to put him in line with the leading lines of the telephone poles. This would compositionally balance the image and give something else to look at in the background, at a place of power. Unfortunately it left grass in the scene. Originally it was very bright, yellow, and distracting. I just used Lightroom 2's new adjustment brush to quickly darken, green-ify, and reduce contrast, so that it could be there as another layer of foreground, but not be as distracting. I also added green to the sky, pinked up the sun poking through, and made a mask for Agust's face. I used that mask to de-saturate a little, bump exposure, contrast, clarity, and sharpness. I do that often now on faces to make sure they are the most clear and attention drawing element of the scene.

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.

Triple light!

A friend of mine asked me to take some portraits out near Gróto, here in Iceland. I had an idea for a lighting setup right away, but I would need to borrow a third light for it. Luckily a friend of mine has the same setup as I do (vivitar 285hv with skyports) so I asked him if I could borrow it.

Here is the setup diagram (this is the same 3D view, twice. Top version is from the front, bottom version is from above):


Settings:
3 Vivitar 285hv
2 rim lights at 1/4 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/2 CTBlue gels,
1 main light at 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/4 CTOrange gel,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
rim light stands were at 1.5 meters height,
light was slightly behind subject, and 3 meters to the sides of the subject, just outside of the frame,
aimed a bit up to feather downward,
main light on boom arm held by assistant,
1 meter above face and in the front.

I wanted an extremely wide view, with rim light on either side. I knew this would make the subject pop, but I didn't want to take it too extreme. I started at 1/16 power on the rim lights, but it didn't show up quite enough, so I popped them to 1/4 (I've only hacked one of them, so I only have 1/8 on a single flash, out of the box, 285hvs don't have 1/8 power). The blue is to unify with the coldish color of the background.

The main was a bit harder, as it needed to be held. Without an assistant, this would have been near impossible. There would have been a light stand in the scene, and it was far too windy for a large C-stand. I put the lumiquest softbox so the light wouldn't be too harsh, and a 1/4 CTOrange gel. Not only is warmer light more flattering for portraits, but it would contrast well with the coldness of the rest of the scene, showing exactly where the focus point is. I left this main flash at 1/16 as I knew that since it was much closer, it would be strong enough. This was also my hacked flash, so I could have gone as low as 1/1024 if I needed to. In hindsight, I wish I would have tried a shot or two at 1/32 or 1/64.

For post processing on the above shot, I made a custom mask for the clouds and adjusted the curves to get a bit more funky sky color and definition.

This was a lot of fun having access to a third flash, and I might have to add a third flash to my kit soon. There are several other photos from this shoot, but they will be in tomorrow's post.

Jean portraits

Whenever I can get someone to sit for a portrait session, I jump at the chance. Fresh faces can be inspirational. Two things came together for this particular session. First, I had been bicycling by this exact spot several nights in a row on my way out, at this very hour. The light and reflections of the lake were so beautiful, I knew it would make a great backdrop. Secondly, I'd just purchased a small softbox that would sit on my flash without blowing over, a real concern here in Iceland when running with no assistant to hold the flashes. I wanted to see what I could do with this new light mod. You can see it in this post, the lumiquest softbox II.

The first shot we met near the city hall, which has this nice ledge that pokes out into the lake. I knew it would give me reflections, and the round windows in the background would provide framing elements.



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/2 CTOrange gel,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
light stand was at 1.5 meters height,
light was even with subject, and 3 meters to the right of the subject, just outside of the frame,
aimed a bit up to feather downward.

The softbox managed to soften the light more than a bare flash, but not as much as I'd like from this distance. The nose shadow is still quite hard, but in this setting it works well enough. If I use this setting again, I would position a 2nd flash to subject left, with a slight blue gel (as the natural light was already that color) to pop him from the background. (in this photo I faked it in post)

Then we moved to the main location that I'd observed the previous nights. We walked along the edge until I felt the background elements worked best compositionally. I wanted the church and city lights to show in the right of the frame, but I wanted a dark spot for his head to fit. I used my thumb as a stand in for his head as I walked, till I found an area that worked. I still had the softbox on the stand, so I just needed to adjust height and position. Bringing the ambient up to match the flash was difficult. I was already shooting at iso 400, but I had to really drag the shutter for this to work. (dragging the shutter means using a longer exposure than would normally yield a sharp photo, but the short, intense duration of the flash, 1/4000 of a second or so, ensures that the subject is sharp despite the short shutter, sometimes the background blurs a bit in this situation though). The 1/2 cut CTOrange gel provided a nice contrast against the blue background.



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/2 CTOrange gel,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
light stand was at 2.5 meters height,
light was even with camera, and 1 meters to the right of the subject, just outside of the frame,
aimed a bit up ( about a meter over his head) to feather downward.

Post production for these was quite fun, as it was my first time using Lightroom 2's new adjustment brush. Tomorrow's post will demonstrate some of my post processing techniques.

Beach portraits

This past few weeks I've been in the US, specifically to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I took my camera and lighting gear with me, and managed not to take any scenery photos, but lots of portraits. I loved how the fading sun gave me lots of interesting texture in the clouds, and we had a wrap around porch on the 3rd floor, which gave me a vantage point to get plenty of sky and a bit of beach houses.

I wanted to do some full body portraits, showing the beach setting, the cloudy sky, and provide a bit of falloff to the light so that everything wasn't lit evenly. It was also just a chance to experiment more with lighting and using my new flash equipment (Honl honeycomb grid).

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power,
at telephoto zoom setting (to keep the light only on the subject)
Rim set to 1/4 power,
through 1/2 CTBlue gel,
through Dave-Honl 1/8" grid-spot,
Full zoom setting
Main light stand was at 2.5 meters height, rim was set on the balcony rail (about 1.2 meters high)
Main light was even with camera to the left of the subject, just outside of the frame
Rim was even with subject, 2 meters to the right of subject,
Rim light was aimed at his head, main light aimed directly at the subject.

Click through this setup shot to see notes over the flash heads.



I started originally with a sunset red gel over the flash, but it proved to be too strong, so I removed it. In hindsight, I wish I'd put on a 1/4 CTOrange gel on the main flash to warm everything a bit. Notice how in the setup shot, you can see how using the telephoto setting keeps the light only on the subject and feathers nicely off into the wooden balcony? I like the setting, but next time I'll aim up a bit more so that it feathers his body a bit. On all the subjects, the lower body received too much flash and removed focus from the face. Aiming the flash up a bit would give me more natural feathering of the light.

One thing I really liked was the Honl Honeycomb grid. I'm not a fanatic about keeping my strobe clean from velcro, so I forewent the speed strap, and just attached two velcro strips to my flash head. This cut down on the cost of the grid. The grid allows me to keep the light in a very tight, laser beam like area. In these portraits it was used to keep the 1/4 powered blue fill on just the face. Click through to the larger version to see it in detail.



This shoot however has convinced me that I need a small softbox for when I want to soften the light just a bit, or for times when an umbrella would blow over for sure (a real problem in Iceland where it's always windy).

Full beach portrait set
A few more examples:



My next post will show my new DIY umbrella mod. I'm building a white diffuser for my silver bounce umbrella. It's inspired by the 60" softliter that I purchased. The softliter is far too heavy and bulky for my taste, so it sits back in the states in my dad's lighting kit. The best part about it was the flat white surface. It's the best of both a silver and white umbrella.

Also, a request. Will anyone who knows of a university that teaches all in English, has a 3d art and photography degree, and is not located in the US, or the UK, please contact me via email?

Graffiti photo shoot

A friend of mine, Oddur, and I decided to do a shoot out in the fading sun this weekend. This was taken around 8:00 with a fairly overcast sky, which had nothing interesting about the lighting. This was the beginning of the shoot against a nice graffiti-ed wall.

I liked how orange the graffiti was, and wanted to play up the warmth with my flashes. I'd scouted this location before, here, and had tucked it away in my mind as a good backdrop for portraits.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power with,
1/8 CTOrange gel,
through white shoot-through umbrella,
at middle zoom setting (this fills the umbrella with no spill)
Rim set to 1/4 power with,
1/2 Window Blue gel
Full zoom setting
Main light stand was at 2.5 meters height, rim was at 1 meters
Main light was slightly in front of the subject, 2 meters to the right
Rim was slightly behind subject, 3 meters to the left
Both were aimed directly at the subject

Here is the setup shot, click through to flickr for the notes over each flash and larger image:



I started with the sync-speed at 1/200 to get my flash values correct, then lowered to 1/100 to let in more ambient light and brighten the graffiti-ed wall. The blue rim was to provide a bit of separation from an otherwise all warm scene. I kept the WB set to Flash, so that my very lightly colored gels would show through. At 1/8 orange, auto white balance would correct for it, making everything else very blue. This is useful at times, but not the look I wanted here, as my goal was to capitalize on the warm background. The flash values came together quickly, and I got the gels right the first time, so the only experimentation was figuring out the angles I wanted them at. I shot a few times, moving the umbrella closer and further forward to reveal more of his face. I also originally had the rim light set to rake across the background as well, but found I didn't like the look, and rotated so it was hitting only him. I wanted a very normal Field of View on this, so I used my 35mm lens, which is not only my sharpest lens, but turns into a very normal 56mm lens on my 40d camera.

Here is the final result:





Click through for the whole set

Dual flashes in the fading sunlight

A friend of mine, Oddur, and I decided to do a shoot out in the fading sun this weekend. This was taken around 8:30 and the sun was still a ways off from setting, but the clouds gave us a really nice backdrop to work with. We started against a nice graffiti-ed wall, but I spotted a spool of electrical cable that I thought could make a neat stand against the sky.

Here is how the scene looks with no flashes:



I wanted the sun and sky to be in the background, but that is where the lightsource is, which means to light up my foreground subject, I need to use some flashes. I decided to use two, one for front fill, and one for rim light.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power with,
1/8 CTOrange gel
Rim set to 1/4 power with,
1/2 Window Blue gel
Full zoom setting on both
Main light stand was at 2.5 meters, rim was at 2 meters
Main light was even with camera, 3 meters to the right and 2 meters forward from model
Rim was even with subject, 3 meters to the left
Both were aimed directly at the subject

Here is the setup shot, click through to flickr for the notes over each flash and larger image:



In order to control the sky brightness even more, I used a 8 stop Graduated Neutral density filter, tilted, to darken the sky in the upper left, but not reach the subject. I wanted a lot of sky, and to show the interesting wooden spool he was shooting on, which meant I needed my 10-20mm lens. These were shot mostly around 12-20mm to avoid too much distortion. I kept the shutter speed at 1/250 in order to bring the sky brightness down, and since the main flash was working at full power, I had to keep the aperture fairly wide at the lens maximum (which changes as you zoom, so it's between f/4 and f/5.6 for the set) in order to let in enough flash. If I'd moved the flash in closer, I could have stopped down the lens a bit. Luckily the lens is still fairly sharp wide open. My biggest regret is not having an assistant to hold the lightstand. it was quite windy and an umbrella would have blown my stand over. I can brace the bottom, but the wind was so strong it would have bent or snapped the lightstand. That's why both flashes are bare. If I'd had assistants I would have put a white shoot through umbrella on the main light, and a silver bounce umbrella on the rim light to increase the light size and soften it a bit.

Here is the final result:



And since I was so excited about this setup, I switched places with Oddur and had him snap a few of me:



Click through for the whole set

Blue rim light

I had an idea to use hard, bright rim lights for a portrait. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, so there was very little adjustments for this shoot.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Both set to 1/2 power
3/4 Windows Blue gels
Full zoom setting
Light stands at 2 meter height
2 meters apart from one another
Aimed toward the photographer at a point one meter in front of them.

I put on my 50mm 1.8 lens, set it to 1/200 shutter speed, and f/5.6 at iso 100. I had Agust stand at the spot the flashes were aimed at (his head) and stood 2 meters in front of him. I focused on his eyes with the center AF point, and shot a few tests. I did not like how in focus the background was, so I lowered both flashes to 1/4 power, and moved my aperture down to f/2.5

Setup shot:



From behind:



The white balance was set to flash, so that the blue of the gels would come through. I held a 60" white reflector in one hand, angled up to his face, so that the flashes would bounce off and "fill" his face with a bit of light.



Here is a before/after of the post settings in lightroom.



One thing I like about this, is that it shows how sharp and nice images can come from even the cheapest lenses, when the light quality is good, and your focus is dead on.