svavar_shoot

Settings: Ambient is underexposed by 1/2 stop, and face is properly exposed using a small gridded softbox just outside frame left.

I saw this location when walking back to work from a coffee shop and knew I had to do a shoot. Their are boulders embedded in the wall, and ivy growing along the side. many of the boulders are high enough I knew I could crop out the ground and remove the sense of how high it was. I asked a friend to sit for me, and asked him to wear a suit. He told me he only had an older ill-fitting suit, but knowing his look, I thought it might work. He showed up in these ratty shoes, and at first I was a bit disappointed, but I think they work with the look. Newer shoes would have shown how disheveled the suit is.

Lighting was simple. I set my camera on a tripod and got the framing I wanted. At first I was using my 85mm lens to flatten everything, but I wanted to see a bit more of the wall, so I switched to my 50mm, which let me go closer and keep him larger in the frame while still showing a lot of the wall. Once I had that setup, I underexposed by 1/2 stop, set my small gridded softbox to the full 3 meter height of my light stand, and aimed it at his head height. I used the light meter to power the flash so it was properly exposing the face. This would give me a bit of focus on the face, without too much of a light intensity difference.

Once that was set, it was just a matter of getting a pose and expression I was interested in.

This image shows the before and after of the post work. I found the image overall was a bit too bright, and the wall lacked volume because the day was fairly overcast. I used the adjustment brushes in lightroom to make the top edges of the boulders pop, and another to deepen some of the undersides of ivy and boulders. Then I took it into photoshop, gave a bit of white sleeve to his left hand so it would look more balanced, then underexposed the whole image another small amount while leaving the face untouched. I cloned out the few small imperfections on the face not visible at this resolution, and went through my normal sharpening procedures to give more micro contrast.

first_shoot_with_light_panels

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:

second_light

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.

pepe_portrait

Settings: Ambient was completely underexposed, 3 stops or more. Large white softbox from camera left at neutral grey, and small gridded softbox from above and to camera right at +1.5 stops over neutral grey.

This one was a little different than most of my stuff, being that it was a real studio shoot rather than a location based outdoor shoot. I was inspired by a real life lighting situation. I was riding the train, and sitting in one of the small glass booth partitions. It had a glass back wall behind my head, which let in the bright soft light from the main car to provide a dim fill, and a spotlight embedded in the ceiling lit up my forehead and cheekbones while leaving my eye sockets relatively dark. The reflection on the window behind me gave a brighter background to show the silhouette of my face. I knew I wanted to use this lighting setup, but it would require more equipment than I have.

Luckily a coworker allowed me to borrow his grey seamless background, a hensel studio flash and giant 1x1.2 meter softbox. First step was to setup the seamless, fairly easy, just two stands, a cross bar and a roll of paper. I have to get me one of these. Next was his softbox. I kept the power as low as it could go, because it was a 1,000 watt unit compared to my 400 watt running the small softbox. The large one was to keep anything from going black, to illuminate the background, and cast a nice soft shadow onto the background, anchoring the subject.

I set my camera to iso 100, 1/125 and f/5.6 to get sharpness and enough depth of field. I was using an 85mm lens to get rid of any distortion from being a full body shot, and to make sure I only got grey seamless background. (longer lenses compress the background, shorter lenses show more, subject size staying the same) The background was featureless so there was no room to isolate or try to over increase dof. The softbox had to be boosted just a tad to get the right lighting on the face. Most of this initial time was spent with my friend acting as assistant (more on this later). I had to move the softbox forward, closer to the camera axis to get the light to fall correctly and fill both eye sockets. I also kept it about 3 meters back to evenly light him and the background without too much severe light falloff. The dark color of his suit, and the lightish grey of the background paper is what gives the nice silhouette outline. The softbox adds just a bit of volume to the suit, but it's too low to brighten it fully. The grey paper background reflects a lot more, giving a good tonal change. The soft shadow on the background paper is from the large softbox.

Once the fill softbox was dialed in, I added my small 30x40cm softbox with 20 degree grid to a boom, directly in front of the subjects face, about 2/3 of a meter above the head. I wanted the light to hit his face, but only on the forehead, and cheek ledges, not fill in his eyes. This would give me several things key to the look: Deep eye sockets, falloff from head to toes bringing attention to the face, soft edged shadows from the apparent size of the softbox being so close to the face. Without the giant fill softbox, the eyes would have gone way too dark, and had no catchlight, making a much more sinister look. The bright area around his feet are from the beam of this overhead softbox.

I really like how clean the final result came out without looking too soft or safe. It has some edge and contrast to it, with a clear focus point of his face, and nothing important getting lost.

shoot_walkthrough_part_three

Settings: Ambient was all over the place, the lightbulbs almost clipping and the shadows near black, but it was a neutral exposure with no flash. Flash at 2 stops over neutral grey providing the rim light on his shoulders and hair.

Above is the final composite, click through for large.

Below is the animated gif of all layers, with images brought in fully, then the next frame showing the masks applied to cut them out.

1. First was to get the main background plate more symmetrical. The benches were slightly offset, so I evened up the front most bench. The farthest two benches on the left were broken (not illuminated) so I cloned over the benches and lit tree trunks from the right side.
2. Darken the farthest trees so it would fade well into the next layer.
3. Comp in 2nd photo of the same benches, but I was further away. This required scaling the image way down and careful placement to make it fit.
   
4. Color correction for the main background plate.
5. Using an exposure layer, I boosted the foreground path, and then comped in some empty ground from one of the bench shots with no subject. It was made by copying just the ground in front of the bench, then duplicating it, and flipping it vertically to be now above, doubling the height of the lit ground, then using perspective scale matched to the perspective of the bottom chunk. Then I used the clone brush to get rid of the seam or any other identifying details you saw near the flipped edge.
6. Add in fake shadow from the bench using another exposure layer set to reduce exposure.
   
7. Pull in the bench, then mask away the dark background. I mainly used the marque selection with a 1 pixel feather built into the setting (only CS3 and above). I used a magic lasso for the non geometric bits, and a paintbrush to clean up, working in the mask.
8. Bring in the subject and arrange him in place, mask him out using magic lasso and then a brush for cleanup.
9. Exposure and contrast boost on his face. I liked this body pose and another face, so I comped that together also.
10. Final color correction on all layers.

I found a new trick for matching White Balance on separate layers, and that's to make a Hue/Saturation layer at the top of the image with saturation set to 100%. This makes color discrepancies really obvious and can be turned on and off by hiding the layer.

In the end, the final composite looks very similar to my original vision I had in my minds eye. Shooting everything at the same time and in the same lighting conditions, as well as with similar standing heights and angle the camera is aimed will make sure these composites work. If the lighting is lying between layers, or the perspective radically different, your white balance matching and perfect masks won't have any affect on unifying the image.

shoot_walkthrough_part_one

A friend of mine mentioned that there are fluorescent tube park benches near my work in Dusseldorf. I knew I wanted to do a shoot there, and struck out on a research trip during lunch. The park benches were cool but there wasn't much behind them providing interest. I knew I'd need to do a composite of some sort. I was pretty sure the park benches would make a nice scene when looking down the lane with them on either side, and there was an interesting building in the background as well that could be used.

Once I arrived with my subject, we focused first on getting the shot I wanted of him. I like symmetrical poses, but I wasn't absolutely sure of what I wanted, so we shot several, focusing on his leg position, how slouched or straight he sat, and whether he looked directly at me, or off to the side. I plan to roughly mock out the final comp with my 3 or 4 favorite poses and see which one feels right.

These are my initial shots in lightroom, no post processing yet. I imported the entire shoot, and went through adding one star to all the ones I thought had promise, or the best background plates for the final comp. Then I turn on ratings with only one star, so that all the rest are hidden and I can focus on these.









You'll notice that most of the poses are similar with slight variations. I won't know which one is best till I mock up the final comp and see how it feels. The background plates show that I got a clean shot of the bench with no light stand or subject, and then a few views of the park benches to pick from. The building will most likely be so blurred in post that it's ok there are some cars and pedestrians, but in all the shots I waited till the scene was empty of people as much as I could.

sebastian_balcony_portrait

Settings: Ambient is around neutral grey, with the flash modeling light one stop over neutral grey.

This is my friend Sebastian. He told me he had an awesome balcony with a view of the city of Cologne, and he wasn't lying. While visiting with him, he went out to smoke, and it gave me this really cool vibe of him out there, and I felt like doing a Marlboro man-esque shoot with him there.

I knew before the shoot it was going to be difficult. The city is way in the background, so keeping them both in focus even on a bright day would be hard, at night even harder. Even just letting in enough light for proper exposure was an ordeal. This was taken at ISO 1600, F/1.8, and 1/30 of a second on an 85mm lens. The light was so low, using the flash was out of the question, so this is just the modeling light from the Quadra, a 20 watt LED that is daylight balanced.

I used the softbox without the inner baffle to let through as much light as possible, but used the fabric grid to restrict the light to his face, with some falloff towards the body. To get a good balance, the light is about 2 meters from his face on the right. Then I turned on the lights inside his flat, which were tungsten bulbs, to provide some fill, that's where the orangeish light is from.

With the camera cranked to maximum light gathering mode, I was able to properly grab an exposure of him with the city. The only problem is that the city was super blurry from the 1.8 aperture. I solved this by moving him and taking another photo of the city in focus, so I could blur to taste in Photoshop with the lens blur filter. I wanted a little blur to isolate him as the subject, but not so much that the church was unrecognizable. By masking him out first, I was able to blur to the exact amount I wanted, which was not much. I'd say this is the equivalent of the same photo at f/8 or so, which would have required a camera with iso 12,800 or so.

In post I first did some body editing, using liquify to change the profile, and dodge/burn to sculpt in more muscles. Then I masked him out, quickly with the magic lasso tool, then cleaned up with the brush using a layer mask. I added clouds to the background from another shoot, since the sky was empty, collapsed it, then blurred the collapse layer, blending the skyline and clouds perfectly. Then I used my masking trick from this post: http://mr-chompers.blogspot.com/2009/08/maskingtrick.html to blend the border of him in so it wasn't so obvious he'd been cut out.

Here you can see the stages of editing. The final stage is multiple small things, from enhancing the intensity of the cigarette, to adding some fresnel glow on his silhouette to imply the city lights, to the masking trick, high pass sharpening, and a final color grading to unify it all.

lausanne_portraits

Settings: Ambient (on the subject) is one stop below neutral grey. Flash is one stop above neutral grey.

This past week I traveled to Lausanne to vacation and attend a strobist meetup. I had a great time and got a chance to photograph two very good models, Sandra and Scott. I was a group leader, and when we were asked if any group wanted to use the library, I volunteered, as it was very bright and sunny outside, and I didn't know the campus we were on. I didn't want to lose too much time walking around looking for a spot. Once in the library, the tables and chairs near the brightly lit windows immediately drew my attention. I explained how that when walking around looking for locations, I use my hand to envision how the ambient light will fall, and how bright the exposure on it compared to things in the background will be. It's much faster than having the camera up and trying to arrange the model. It's like a divining rod for pleasing light.

Once we were all set up, I asked the group if they wanted me to walk through a normal shoot, and they said yes. I'll try to repeat all the steps and explanations here.



This first image is the natural light only. I explained my first choice is always lens fov. Because of the location, a wide angle lens would have revealed that this was just a row of tables at the edge of a library, and for the narrative of this photo, I wanted it to feel more like a warmly lit cafe. A telephoto lens would compress the scene to only show the row of tables and give a more blurry background, creating more subject isolation, and a pleasing pattern of all the background patterns.

Step two for me is to figure out ambient exposure. If I'm planning to use flash, I use 1/180 as my ceiling for shutter speed (1/200 is the 5d sync speed, but I can't seem to get my skyport/quadra setup to reliably sync, but it always hits 1/180, and I have my camera set to half, rather than third stop exposure changes, so 1/200 doesn't show up anymore, but 1/180 does). It was really bright in this room so I was able to use ISO 100, 1/125 and f/2.

We noticed that the background really blew out in brightness, so our next step was to try to control the background, and use the flash to augment the existing light. The goal was to get the same overall feel as the ambient only image, but with complete control of background and subject illumination. I doubled the shutter speed to 1/250 to darken the background. This left the face quite dark, but I positioned my softbox in the same location as the window, and powered it up to match. Because I did not want spill on the table, the shutter at 1/250 managed to block the flash from hitting the table, which was a convenient feature.



The light is a bit more contrasty and specular than the window light only, but to be honest I prefer it that way. It's not quite as appropriate for women as for men, but she had sufficient makeup on that it worked well anyway. Specular highlights tend to work nicer in bringing out skull structure on men, whereas women look better looking smooth and matte.

Notice how in the ambient only image, the bright areas in the background fight for visual attention with her face. In the flash lit image, we were able to darken the background, add a bit of volume to her face, and bring it out brighter. Now there is no question where the eye should go, directly to the subject's face. With this control we could darken the background even more, or let it bleach out. The flash frees us from the ratio of the ambient only.

Next I wanted to try a different feel. With the crop occurring mid-torso, it has a more relaxed location feel. But since she had very nice legs and a short dress, I felt that a more full body shot would be more beauty/glamor. I asked her to move the chair to the edge of the table so that I could see all of her.



Settings: Ambient (on the subject) is even with neutral grey. Flash is one stop above neutral grey.

For this the flash is coming from almost directly in front of her face, perpendicular to the camera. One of the group members asked about how the light would work in terms of reading well, since the ambient light is clearly coming from the other side. I said that since it was an indoor location, there would most likely be interior lights, and having a light source coming from the other direction was ok and would most likely still read well. It was a good question though, as it's good to have your light motivated by existing ambient. It is possible to break the lighting on the subject so they appear not to actually exist in the background.

I also explained that once I have a lighting setup and pose that I like, it's fun to explore around to the different angles, and you can potentially find a really nice image that you hadn't pre visualized. This was one such example.



This was the first part of the day, I will cover the second portion tomorrow or the next day.

kiril_portraits

Settings: The background was shot separately with ambient about 2 stops below neutral grey for a dark feel and still allowing the lamps to not blow out. In the subject's image, Ambient is 1 stop below neutral grey, and flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

I've posted the original setting, and a closeup of this shot for the previous masking tricks post, but here is the full image.

Having scouted the door location, I knew I wanted to use a male model, in a dress coat. I asked around for my friends, trying to find someone with a look I could use, who also owned a dress jacket with collars that could be held up. I used google images of pea coats and chesterfields when asking people if they owned what I was after.

If I had the full budget of a paid shoot, I would have scouted for a Hugo Boss grey or black double breasted pea coat. I also wanted a double layered undershirt, something white with a low V-neck showing the upper pectorals, and then a button down blue shirt. However when putting together a shoot with a budget of zero monies, you work with what you have.

We arrived at the location, and I set up while the model changed into the wardrobe (it was far too hot out to bicycle there already dressed). I had already scouted the location, so I knew I was going to use my 35mm lens, I knew about where I'd stand as well. The evening wasn't dim enough yet for them to have turned on the lamps, but in hind sight it worked well, because the ambient provided a nice fill on his face on the non flash side that would have been lacking if it was closer to dark.



Settings: Ambient is one stop below neutral grey. Flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

In this photo you can see what the ambient levels were like at the time of the shooting. The flash in all these images is in a 30x40 cm softbox with a 20 degree grid. In this image, it is coming from camera left, through a fabric grid to keep the light only on his face, and not on the door or his knee. You'll notice in all the images the flash is set to a narrow lighting pattern, where the flash hits the front of his face, but leaves the side of the face we can see in shadow. I like this lighting pattern best for how it reveals facial details.



Settings: The background was shot separately with ambient about 2 stops below neutral grey for a dark feel and still allowing the lamps to not blow out. In the subject's image, Ambient is 1 stop below neutral grey, and flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

This image uses the same settings as the first, I've just moved the subject further back, and gotten down on my knees instead of taking at eye level. The background was composited in. The bricks on the ground are from the subject's image, and the background plate had to be extended as it wasn't wide enough. I used photoshops content aware resizing to extend the brick walls without ruining the windows or the doorway. Then I did some reshaping of the jacket, as it was too loose, and then used dodge and burn to give him a bit more obvious musculature. I also slimmed the waist a bit. The hardest part was getting the ambient levels of the subject to match the background, as well as the color toning. The ambient was still quite neutral, whereas on the background plate it had a ton of blue and a bit of purple in the shadows. I used an exposure layer with lots of masking to darken the non flash lit parts to match. Then I used a color balance and a photo filter to tone the ambient to match the background. In the top image, I used Photoshop's Lens Blur filter to add depth of field to the background so that the subject would stand out a bit more.

Before and After:

know_thy_equipment

While looking at my previous shoot, my favorite image (the top image in the previous post) I noticed that I don't like the way the light falls on his face. It's an ok placement for rembrandt lighting, but the shadow edge is too hard. I've been thinking about the solution, and I believe it's twofold.

In the future, the further I must place the light away from the subject, the closer to loop lighting I will use. The closer I can place the light, the closer to rembrandt lighting I will use. As a general rule of course. Harder shadow edges seem to work better with loop pattern, and softer shadow edges work better with rembrandt. This is because rembrand pattern allows for a lot of islands of light that look too much like cutouts when they are hard edged. These shapes smooth out and soften with the same light mod moved closer (so as to appear larger to the subject). Loop pattern more evenly illuminates the front mask of the face, so you can get away with slightly harder shadows.

Also, I think it's just good to know your gear inside and out. So you can operate it transparently, spending all your time on taking photos, rather than fiddling with knobs and menus, and also so that you don't lose out on a good shot, for lack of familiarity. At this point I know my lenses, and the camera quite well, but since this is a new light modifier system, I am still learning it. I decided a series of scientific tests were in order.

First, the gear itself (this is also a mini-review):

This is the Chimera XXS (extra extra small) with silver lining. It's 30x40cm (12x16in) It has two baffles, inner and outter. It's super well made, easy to setup, and the rods are nice and sturdy, while being very springy and easy to insert.



This is the 20 degree fabric grid for the above softbox. It's expensive, but it's really well made, and it changes the light in a way you can't really get otherwise. It velcros into the front of the softbox, leaving no gaps, which is very nice. It collapses very small, and comes with a small velcro strip that holds it shut. It also comes with a small drawstring bag.



Here is the grid attached to the flash. notice how it blocks the light from the side.



At 2 meters, the grid restricts the beam to a 1.2 meter circle. At 3 meters, the beam is closer to 1.8 meters in size. It gives me a nice tight beam to put only on a person's face, which is how I prefer to light my environmental portraits.

For the test, my setup was:

1. Matt on the ground to make sure subject is always in the same location.
2. Camera on a tripod to ensure camera to subject distance stays the same.
3. Measuring tape stretched from matt at 45 degree angle, to allow measurement of the light distance.
4. Light moved from 1 meter, then 2 meters, then 3 meters from subject. Flash output adjusted to maintain proper exposure.
   
5. One round with bare softbox, one round with 20 degree grid installed.
6. Crop and process in Lightroom so exposure is the same for all, and in B&W so that the shadow edge and specular could really be visible.

In this first row, you see the bare softbox, no grid. First is 1 meter, last is 3 meters distance.



In this row, you see the softbox with the 20 degree grid. First is 1 meter, last is 3 meters distance.



They really have to be examined both at this small size, as well as in large full size to appreciate the differences. It might appear to be pixel peeping, but when comparing the 1 meter, directly to the 3 meter, there is a definite softness to the 1 meter that the 3 meter lacks. At 1 meter away, the corner of the face that is closest to the light, is brighter than the corner farther away. Once moved to 3 meters, this distance is too small for that affect, so the 3 meter version is very flat. The specular is more pronounced, and the shadow edges are harder.

I definitely prefer the 1 meter version, and with the grid it has slightly more volume, while maintaining almost the same level of softness. However I can't always keep the light just 1 meter away. The 3 meter is not what I want. Too hard edged of shadows, specular hotspots too hot, and the transition from diffused highlight to shadow, is too harsh. It really emphasizes the skin texture, in a way I don't like. The 2 meter is an ok compromise, but still a bit too much.

I'm glad to have done this test, as I now know my "hard limit" for how far away I place this light mod. I will keep it within 1 meter whenever possible, and keep a 2 meter distance as my maximum. The last shoot had the light more like 3.5 meters away, and unnecessarily so. I could have easily brought it to about 1.5 meters, and had I already done this test and known this behavior of the light, I would have.

andre_portraits

Settings: Ambient is properly exposed, but leaves his face 2 stops underexposed. Flash is at 2 stops over neutral grey, and is hitting just his face.

I did my first real photoshoot this weekend here in Cologne. I'd passed this location everyday coming home from work, and I thought the line of trees was a really powerful compositional element. I got a chance to use my new Elinchrom Ranger Quadra, with the Chimera softbox and 20 degree grid.

The softbox was originally placed far enough away to be out of the frame for this shot:



However once I moved closer for the main shot, I should have brought it in closer, so that it would have a softer shadow edge. I would also have put it up to full stand height, and brought it closer around to the lens axis, for a loop pattern, instead of a rembrandt pattern on his face. Even with it further away than necessary, it's definitely softer than a bare shoe mount flash would have been, and you don't get near as much specular highlights on his skin.

The compositional elements I really like are the light beam coming from the top of the image downward. I think it explains to the mind where the light is coming from. The tree line and path also leads the eye into the figure, and the lightness of the path helps make the pants silhouette pop.

The ability to adjust the flash power from my camera was really helpful. I got to keep my time all focused on the subject, and not have to worry about walking back and forth. I also liked the modeling light, but it only was bright enough when we went indoors, and when the evening got really dark.



Settings: Ambient is two stops below neutral grey. Flash is at 2 stops over neutral grey, and is hitting just his face.

Location two was much cooler in my mind, but I had discovered it while drunk. I still tried to make the best of it, but couldn't get the image I saw in my head. Mainly it was because the location didn't line up as well once compressed into a 2d plane, as the space "feels" when you're there. Also the path behind the booth was too dark to add to the composition. I still like the idea, so I'll be looking for a spot that better fits this impression for a future shoot.

So, first impressions of the ERQ while out on a shoot: The wireless control worked flawlessly. Setup and take down of the chimera softbox and grid was smooth and quick. Modeling light was great once it went fully dark, and while indoors. The 20 degree fabric grid allowed me to throw a softish light from out of the frame onto just the face of my subject. Overall I'm really pleased with the upgrade.