What did I do wrong?

Mnemosyne

So, I'm redoing the mug shot/portrait system at my school paper, and I've been running into some problems. The first batch turned out real well, but lately as I've been trying to play with them and make them better I've run in to some problems.

This photo was shot at...

1/250, f/7.1, 100 ISO at 135 mm (135 F/2 L) There is no post processing, this is a jpg of the straight out of the camera RAW.





I have a strobe right behind her aimed about 45 degrees up, from just below her waist reflecting off a screen right behind her. I have a main light, about 45 degrees to her left, shoot through umbrella, about 4 feet away. Lens hood was on. I also tried using a black reflector to camera right, slightly behind the subject, wanting to push the shadows. Not sure if I did that right.



Where as this photo is the same style I want, but turned out MUCH better. This is the EXACT same "photo" with some slight differences.

1/250, f/6.3, 200 ISO, 135 mm (same lens)



Same situation, no PP. Just a jpg of the straight out of camera RAW.

The back flash is maybe a foot or so LOWER than in the previous photo, but same scenario. Aimed up about 45 degrees at a screen. Both subjects were about 3 feet from the screen (I want the rim light from the screen while creating a washed out white, for purpose of where the photo is used).

The main light may be more like 20 to 30 degrees to my left, but in this photo it wasn't shot through the umbrella, it was reflected out from it.




Am I playing too much with my settings? Or is it something else? I don't recall what settings I had for the strobes, but I'm pretty sure the main light was double the back light each time.

Or am I stupid and it's as simple as the ISO? Did I underexpose the subject in the first photo and not realize it?

Thanks

PS. This is what the second photo looked like after PP. I noticed the shadows were also different. Is it because of the degree of the main light (I'm sure that was part of it) or did it have more to do with something I missed?




Thank you again

Mnemosyne

Something else just occurred to me. Is it possible that when I was shooting through the umbrella, light was reflecting backwards into the camera?

Scott_Quier

Mnemosyne wrote:

Something else just occurred to me. Is it possible that when I was shooting through the umbrella, light was reflecting backwards into the camera?

Yes - it's possible depending on the relative positions of the strobe, umby, and your camera.

I've also run into this sort of contrast issue and had a devil of a time finding the culprit. Turned out the lens, freshly received from Canon Service, had a huge thumb print on the rear element of the lens.

bmoreshooter

It looks like your background is over lit. Look at the light coming throuh the ears on the male subject. The excess light is causing you to misread the exposure. To check this turn off the background light and take a shot just with the subject lit. Then bring your background into balance. Overlighting the background causes a wraparound effect. Light is scattering around all over the surface of your lens. When setting up a lighting system build it one light at a time. Check the effects of that light and then add the next. Do this when practicing not at a shoot.

Scott_Quier

bmoreshooter wrote:

It looks like your background is over lit. Look at the light coming throuh the ears on the male subject. The excess light is causing you to misread the exposure. To check this turn off the background light and take a shot just with the subject lit. Then bring your background into balance. Overlighting the background causes a wraparound effect. Light is scattering around all over the surface of your lens. When setting up a lighting system build it one light at a time. Check the effects of that light and then add the next. Do this when practicing not at a shoot.

I didn't notice it until I read this, but I think there's something to this.

I seem to have done good enough with high-key - check this post for a picture of my setup and a reference to where I got the information and this post and this post for some examples of the results I got.

Qarik

is it possible that one of your strobes did not fire or was not fully charged in the 1st shot?

Mnemosyne

I doubt it. They're plugged in to the walls, and I'm not taking rapid shots. They're are like 15 second pauses or more between each one. So I doubt it was the charge.

I took some more portraits tonight, and I think it was a combination of A: The room I used in the first photo (it's my back-up room), the ISO, and where the subject stood in relation to the reflection.

I also stopped shooting through the umbrella, cause I liked the soft line of the shadows with the bounced.

sweet caroline

That first shot looks hazy, like light coming towards the camera. If she was shorter than the man, and your camera was aimed differently, it's possible the camera was pointed more toward the light source.

Caroline

Mnemosyne

Well that's what I was saying. The first one was a shoot through umbrella, so I asked if it was reflecting back at me from the umbrella. I switched back to reflected umbrella and it fixed a LOT of that haze. I also liked the quality of light when it was reflected. Thank you though

ian408

One thing that would help is a gobo to protect the camera lens from stray light. A gobo could be a dark curtain or anything else that goes between lighting and camera to keep light from reaching the lens.

I do think your background is over lit. But I like the style you're going for.

WingsOfLovePhoto

To me it just looks like way too much backlighting spray off onto the subject. The subject also looks very close to the background which would compound the problem. Or because of the way the guy came out just a temporary fluke with your camera and lights with that first shot.

Mnemosyne

Well, the background has to be pure white by design. Any other color would look odd in the paper, and even more odd on the website. The pure white allows it to blend in with the pages.

I've even had to paint the full frame white because of some stray corners.

Mnemosyne

http://mnemosyne.smugmug.com/gallery/7226615_rbJEV#465462540_NB9nu

That's the whole gallery so far. I wanted the highlights from the screen to give a high key feel.

Not ALL of them turned out like the bad one, which was fixed pretty easily in photoshop. But the really bad glares were some of the first ones, as I realized that, I started having people step away from the screen more, and that's what happened with the guy I posted.

Next step is to figure out how to stop the red flare in the right ears. Since I'm using newsroom equipment, I'm not only limited in what I have, but I'm limited in how I can set it up. The room they used originally was like a small room, and had WAY too much ambient reflection from the walls, and you couldn't move the lights enough to get the proper angles, so I harassed them into letting me take them out of the newsroom to a bigger room.

But I'm still learning, so I just want to figure out what's I need to do to improve. I've read a lot of lighting books and Light:Science and Magic repeatedly, but never had many opportunities to put it in practice.