My turn - my attempt at SP

Mike J

Finally found some time to make an attempt at this. This is not easy stuff. Did this late last night after getting ready for our usual 5:30AM start for our Saturday ski day (it was a very warm day on Mt Hood. There were great views but I didn't have my camera as I was busy working at my son's slalom race)

This is my first attempt at "studio" lighting with my still limited equipment (hope that changes soon ). Right now I'm limited to my SB-800, a lightsphere, and some Lastolite trigrip reflectors. I tried various arrangements but ended up with the SB-800 with the lightsphere on a bar stool camera right about 2 feet from my the side of my face with a silver reflector about 18" in front of my nose.

The camera setup:
D80 with the my Nikkor 35-70 f/2.8 lens which I'm growing quite fond of.
The popup flash was used to trigger the off-camera SB-800 in TTL mode.



What don't I like about this?

• The shadow "cutting" my throat. Perhaps using the on-camera flash for a bit of fill would have helped here?
• This was shot at f5 and should have been up at f8
• All of the signs of my advancing age
• Like Scott, I found myself quite warm moving back and forth and I have more surface area than he does towards the top of my head to reflect that warmth. Hey, what's that saying? Oh yea, somethings are created perfectly and the rest are covered with hair
• My lack of smile - I find it hard to "smile" on command.
• Cut off part of my head!

Open to any and all suggestions...

divamum

Great start with this, I think

My initial response is mainly that it's soft - my (novice) hunch is that stopping down will probably help that.

I'll let the expert witnesses chime in more specifically on the lighting, but I wonder... can you aime the light a little higher? To me it looks like it's coming from underneath your left cheekbone and ear rather than above, this emphasised by your collar casting a shadow upwards onto your neck (thus I'm assuming the light must be coming from slightly below? ). Also, did you have a reflector in your lap? That's really helped me out with softening any neck shadows. I wind up looking like some kind of weird one-man band with one piece of foamcore on the fill side, another in my lap and the remote in my hand...

Take all my comments with grains of salt - I'm only just learning about this myself!

Mike J

Hi Divamum,
Thanks for the comments!

divamum wrote:

My initial response is mainly that it's soft - my (novice) hunch is that stopping down will probably help that.

Do you see it in hair above the left ear or at the front of the face? I see the softness in the hair. I did apply some "digital" makeup to the photo which may be the softness you are seeing? Here is the original untouched photo in all of its age spot revelaing glory and underexposed:

I'll let the expert witnesses chime in more specifically on the lighting, but I wonder... can you aime the light a little higher? To me it looks like it's coming from underneath your left cheekbone and ear rather than above, this emphasised by your collar casting a shadow upwards onto your neck (thus I'm assuming the light must be coming from slightly below? ).

The SB-800 was pointed up with the lightsphere on it just out of the frame. It was about my eye-level (sitting on the bar stool) so I think you are right - it was low enough that the collar was causing the shadow on my neck.

Also, did you have a reflector in your lap? That's really helped me out with softening any neck shadows. I wind up looking like some kind of weird one-man band with one piece of foamcore on the fill side, another in my lap and the remote in my hand...

The reflector wasn't in my lap. It was more to the side. I was trying to get it to fill the right side of my face.

Take all my comments with grains of salt - I'm only just learning about this myself!

But you are further along then I am This was a fun learning experience. I just need a lot more of them... This whole SP theme has been a lot of fin to follow...

Scott_Quier

A couple of thoughts:

• I took a copy of the largest version you have on your web-site and blew it up in Photoshop to better inspect it. It appears soft because the focus is not on your left eye - in fact it appears the focus is just in front of the tip of your nose. The smaller aperture would have "covered" you on this a bit more, but not completely
• The horizontal shadow on your throat is caused by the low position of your flash. Bounce that thing off the wall and back onto you. If you point the flash upwards a bit, this would solve so many of the shadow problems from the primary light source.
• The reflector may not have been posititioned correctly. I'm thinking the angle wasn't quite right to reflect the spill from the flash back onto you face. It might be better to place it a bit more to camera left - then setting the correct angle would present a greater surface area to the flash to collect and reflect more light onto the leeward side of your face.
• Cutting off the top of your head - a slightly shorter focal length and/or shooting in portrait orientation would address this issue.

divamum

Mike J wrote:

The reflector wasn't in my lap. It was more to the side. I was trying to get it to fill the right side of my face.

Scott addressed the other items more expertly than I can, but I'll say - ADD a reflector to your lap for the next batch (as well as the one to the side). Amazing what it can do. Any white item, a foil-covered piece of cardboard, white foamboard (my local dollar store has that stuff for $1 a sheet, so I stoked up on it last time I was there ) - something to help minimise those extra shadows under the neck and under the eyes.

I believe this is a "beauty" shot techinque (and I've certainly had it used on me when I've had my performer's headshots done professionally - in one instance, the table used as a leaning board had a mirror on it which was pretty neat for extra sparkle in the eyes, acutally), but in my experimenting recently I've learned that it's pretty much a vital extra when you only have one light - reflectors, reflectors everywhere (I should get my daughter to snap the setup when I'm doing my SPs - it's pretty funny, really - "makeshift" is probably the kindest term for it! lol)

lisap

Divamum and Scott covered pretty much everything already. I just wanted to add that I don't mind that you're not smiling. Sometimes the more serious portrait is nice too

-- Lisa P.

Mike J

Hi Scott,

Thanks for taking a look at this and for your feedback. What I'm finding is that while it is easy to read about this stuff and understand what you should do, it is much harder put it all together to make to work. Lot's more practice is required.

Scott_Quier wrote:

A couple of thoughts:

• I took a copy of the largest version you have on your web-site and blew it up in Photoshop to better inspect it. It appears soft because the focus is not on your left eye - in fact it appears the focus is just in front of the tip of your nose. The smaller aperture would have "covered" you on this a bit more, but not completely

I pre-focused on an object that I placed on the seat and then switched to manual focus. I probably was not seated in the exact same plane as my focus object. Question - how is everyone else focusing their SPs?

• The horizontal shadow on your throat is caused by the low position of your flash. Bounce that thing off the wall and back onto you. If you point the flash upwards a bit, this would solve so many of the shadow problems from the primary light source.

I played with this some more last night. Not happy yet with the results I'm getting but I did get the flash up higher and tried bouncing of the ceiling. I'm doing in this in fairly low ambient light and can't seem to get enough bounce no matter what I tried. I'll play some more with this.

Thanks again for helping out. I really appreciate it.

Mike J

divamum wrote:

Scott addressed the other items more expertly than I can, but I'll say - ADD a reflector to your lap for the next batch (as well as the one to the side). Amazing what it can do. Any white item, a foil-covered piece of cardboard, white foamboard (my local dollar store has that stuff for $1 a sheet, so I stoked up on it last time I was there ) - something to help minimise those extra shadows under the neck and under the eyes.

On my list of things to try...

I believe this is a "beauty" shot techinque (and I've certainly had it used on me when I've had my performer's headshots done professionally - in one instance, the table used as a leaning board had a mirror on it which was pretty neat for extra sparkle in the eyes, acutally), but in my experimenting recently I've learned that it's pretty much a vital extra when you only have one light - reflectors, reflectors everywhere (I should get my daughter to snap the setup when I'm doing my SPs - it's pretty funny, really - "makeshift" is probably the kindest term for it! lol)

Makeshift is a kind word to describe my collection of ladder, barstool for a tripod, and reflector. My kids think it is hilarious when I start bringing in things from the garage and get down right annoyed when I make them sit on the "hotseat" as I start playing with light positions, etc...

Mike J

lisap wrote:

Divamum and Scott covered pretty much everything already. I just wanted to add that I don't mind that you're not smiling. Sometimes the more serious portrait is nice too

-- Lisa P.

Serious it will be for me for a while! Thanks for the encouragement.

divamum

Mike J wrote:

Makeshift is a kind word to describe my collection of ladder, barstool for a tripod, and reflector. My kids think it is hilarious when I start bringing in things from the garage and get down right annoyed when I make them sit on the "hotseat" as I start playing with light positions, etc...

Makes me feel better! I'm pinching pennies so hard right now that I'm repurposing just about everything in the house to feed the photography habit; nice to know I'm not alone.

And we have pretty much zero space: I'm using my music room (about 8x10), and so it's really quite a tight fit once you take into account space between subjec and backgrond etc. But, as I'm learning, it's possible to do A VERY GREAT deal with a bit of knowledge and willingness to put up with the inconveniences...

Keep shooting and keep posting - it's fun!

Mike J

divamum wrote:

Keep shooting and keep posting - it's fun!

Definitely will keep shooting. What I'm trying to figure out is why I get decent results when my SB-800 is on the camera and I'm bouncing the flash but when I take the flash off camera and bounce, things seem to fall apart. I think it might have something to do with the flash being a different distance to subject than the camera? More experiments...more reading.