Contemplating high key
Recently a few of us (at least Scott and yours truly:-) joined the high key club by perusing the great description made by Zack Aria.
You case see the picture of Scott's setup here and mine here.
While the general idea and most of the materials are largely the same, there is a significant difference I'd like to discuss. I'm talking about the gobos (bi-folding doors).
As it's easy to see, gobos block the subject from receiving the any light coming from the two backdrop lights. While allows for silhouette pictures, my understanding is also you need more fill to get the floor under the subject light. My problem with this approach is that I do want my floor very bright (it's a high key after all), but I don't necessarily want my subject being lit with same intensity.
Hence my initial solution was to use non-obstructed softboxes placed between the subject and the backdrop facing each other. I also added two low positioned reflectors at the subject level. This way those two lights illuminate both the background and large part of the floor (including subjects' position), and also play the role of the rim lights for the subject - an effect I personally like a lot.
With this setup the only thing missing is the front illumination. Since both floor and the background is already taken care of, I have a total freedom of putting as much or as little light on my subject as I want. And since I like shooting at f/4 for the DOF reason, this is what I set it up for. My single large 7' octabox is placed about 10'-12' in front of the subject with its center being approximately at 5-6 foot off the floor as shown here (it's a shot from the previous low key shoot, but the light position hasn't changed):
Technicalities:
rims: AB800 at 1/2 power, 2'x4' foldable softboxes sans grids (f/8 on background/shoulders)
main/fill: ProFoto Compact-R 600, 7' gridded octabox at 1/2 power (f/4 on the subject.
After my last (and second) shoot I also realized that I'm loosing some light on top of the backdrop. While this nothing ACR/PS cannot handle in a matter of minute or so, I'm thinking of adding a 3 light (the one I normally use as hair) to blow that part out. After all, there is no such thing as too much light in highkey game! :wink
You case see the picture of Scott's setup here and mine here.
While the general idea and most of the materials are largely the same, there is a significant difference I'd like to discuss. I'm talking about the gobos (bi-folding doors).
As it's easy to see, gobos block the subject from receiving the any light coming from the two backdrop lights. While allows for silhouette pictures, my understanding is also you need more fill to get the floor under the subject light. My problem with this approach is that I do want my floor very bright (it's a high key after all), but I don't necessarily want my subject being lit with same intensity.
Hence my initial solution was to use non-obstructed softboxes placed between the subject and the backdrop facing each other. I also added two low positioned reflectors at the subject level. This way those two lights illuminate both the background and large part of the floor (including subjects' position), and also play the role of the rim lights for the subject - an effect I personally like a lot.
With this setup the only thing missing is the front illumination. Since both floor and the background is already taken care of, I have a total freedom of putting as much or as little light on my subject as I want. And since I like shooting at f/4 for the DOF reason, this is what I set it up for. My single large 7' octabox is placed about 10'-12' in front of the subject with its center being approximately at 5-6 foot off the floor as shown here (it's a shot from the previous low key shoot, but the light position hasn't changed):
Technicalities:
rims: AB800 at 1/2 power, 2'x4' foldable softboxes sans grids (f/8 on background/shoulders)
main/fill: ProFoto Compact-R 600, 7' gridded octabox at 1/2 power (f/4 on the subject.
After my last (and second) shoot I also realized that I'm loosing some light on top of the backdrop. While this nothing ACR/PS cannot handle in a matter of minute or so, I'm thinking of adding a 3 light (the one I normally use as hair) to blow that part out. After all, there is no such thing as too much light in highkey game! :wink
"May the f/stop be with you!"
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