Duncan K Moore
私の大好きな亜以ちゃん
Background illumination provided by SB-26 camera left. 1/16 power, 85mm zoom. Heavily snooted to further restrict beam spread.
Triggered by hot-shoe-mounted SB-26, slightly snooted to prevent direct reflections, and bounced off the ceiling. 1/2 power, 24mm zoom.
Natural fill on right hand side provided by frosted windows behind thin, white curtains.
Nikon D90. 105mm at f/4.0, 1/50s.
This was shot for the Strobist Lighting 102 Assignment 2. The purpose of this assignment was to shoot a strobe through an umbrella, using a dark, reflective background to create a halo-like highlight around a softly-lit subject.
It should be obvious from my lighting information that I didn't actually follow the rules of the assignment. The problem was that, due to recent rain, late working hours, and the lack of non-white reflective surfaces in my apartment, I was forced to use the black surface of a five-in-one reflector for my background. Of course, the purpose of the black surface is to kill reflections, so problems were pretty inevitable.
After 150 photos, many of which looked good, I uploaded to Lightroom. Then I discovered a problem with the camera's histogram: even if it tells you your exposure is fine, it might not be the way you want in all of the relevant places. Along with the histogram fooling me, here was another case of the camera's LCD tricking me into thinking I'd lit the background sufficiently, when really it was way underexposed. That's inexperience for you.
(The other option using a single umbrella was to light the background as desired but massively overexpose the subject.)
Sometime, I'd like to reshoot with the same setup plus an added rim light to provide better separation; but for this session, I had to keep shooting, abandoning the original lighting plan. From that point, I had the sense to attach the tethering cable I recently bought, and checked each exposure at a larger size on my computer monitor. That was a real lifesaver.
Because the background was so non-reflective, I could only get the exposure I wanted by dedicating a strobe solely to that purpose, snooting it to avoid spill. This meant that instead of using a hot-shoe mounted SB-400 solely to trigger the other light, I needed to use the hot shoe position for my main light, so I switched to an SB-26 for more power and control.
Then I moved the whole set up over close to the window and increased my exposure time to allow some ambient fill. As much as David Hobby talks about avoiding light meters, I used an incident meter to choose 1/50s at f/4, since my model was getting fed up and I'd been having problems with chimping off the histogram.
In the second round of shooting, everything fell into place nicely.
One of the most useful things I learned was about the ring of light on the background. If you place your model in front of the edge of the light, right where it begins to fall off, you can move the halo in and out dramatically with only very small changes in camera position/angle. It's easier if you fill the frame with your model like I did here because then you don't have to worry so much about the exact shape or size of the light on the background, as long as the edge is curved.
For catchlights in the eyes and for fill, I had her substitute the book I`d given her to keep herself occupied with a piece of white card held just out of the frame.
At the end of this long explanation, I'd like to thank my wonderful model for putting up with me flashing lights in her face for 90 minutes on her day off work.
P.S. I know I didn't follow the rules of the assignment in the end, and therefore fail by default; but making this photo has been such a big learning experience for me, and that's what Lighting 102 is all about, so I'm submitting it anyway without feeling too bad.
私の大好きな亜以ちゃん
Background illumination provided by SB-26 camera left. 1/16 power, 85mm zoom. Heavily snooted to further restrict beam spread.
Triggered by hot-shoe-mounted SB-26, slightly snooted to prevent direct reflections, and bounced off the ceiling. 1/2 power, 24mm zoom.
Natural fill on right hand side provided by frosted windows behind thin, white curtains.
Nikon D90. 105mm at f/4.0, 1/50s.
This was shot for the Strobist Lighting 102 Assignment 2. The purpose of this assignment was to shoot a strobe through an umbrella, using a dark, reflective background to create a halo-like highlight around a softly-lit subject.
It should be obvious from my lighting information that I didn't actually follow the rules of the assignment. The problem was that, due to recent rain, late working hours, and the lack of non-white reflective surfaces in my apartment, I was forced to use the black surface of a five-in-one reflector for my background. Of course, the purpose of the black surface is to kill reflections, so problems were pretty inevitable.
After 150 photos, many of which looked good, I uploaded to Lightroom. Then I discovered a problem with the camera's histogram: even if it tells you your exposure is fine, it might not be the way you want in all of the relevant places. Along with the histogram fooling me, here was another case of the camera's LCD tricking me into thinking I'd lit the background sufficiently, when really it was way underexposed. That's inexperience for you.
(The other option using a single umbrella was to light the background as desired but massively overexpose the subject.)
Sometime, I'd like to reshoot with the same setup plus an added rim light to provide better separation; but for this session, I had to keep shooting, abandoning the original lighting plan. From that point, I had the sense to attach the tethering cable I recently bought, and checked each exposure at a larger size on my computer monitor. That was a real lifesaver.
Because the background was so non-reflective, I could only get the exposure I wanted by dedicating a strobe solely to that purpose, snooting it to avoid spill. This meant that instead of using a hot-shoe mounted SB-400 solely to trigger the other light, I needed to use the hot shoe position for my main light, so I switched to an SB-26 for more power and control.
Then I moved the whole set up over close to the window and increased my exposure time to allow some ambient fill. As much as David Hobby talks about avoiding light meters, I used an incident meter to choose 1/50s at f/4, since my model was getting fed up and I'd been having problems with chimping off the histogram.
In the second round of shooting, everything fell into place nicely.
One of the most useful things I learned was about the ring of light on the background. If you place your model in front of the edge of the light, right where it begins to fall off, you can move the halo in and out dramatically with only very small changes in camera position/angle. It's easier if you fill the frame with your model like I did here because then you don't have to worry so much about the exact shape or size of the light on the background, as long as the edge is curved.
For catchlights in the eyes and for fill, I had her substitute the book I`d given her to keep herself occupied with a piece of white card held just out of the frame.
At the end of this long explanation, I'd like to thank my wonderful model for putting up with me flashing lights in her face for 90 minutes on her day off work.
P.S. I know I didn't follow the rules of the assignment in the end, and therefore fail by default; but making this photo has been such a big learning experience for me, and that's what Lighting 102 is all about, so I'm submitting it anyway without feeling too bad.