Help with Studio Lighting
GrovesStudio
Registered Users Posts: 28 Big grins
Alright.. here is the deal
I was contracted to do a studio shoot for a local school. Once I had talked to a friend I decided that I needed some studio lights. I went out and purchased the promaster 300ws lighting kit. I also rented a light meter. I ONLY had about 20 mins to set up and I had an extra hand at it too. After taking about 25 pics of my helper and adjusting, and re adjusting with the info from the light meter my pictures turned out HORRIBLE. I am so embarrassed. I can't even fix them in photoshop. They wall was a blue color (that the school ALWAYS uses) every picture looks over exposed and if I change anything in PS it makes them look purple. Does ANYONE have any suggestions on how to set these lights up so they don't look that way? I can't even fix this with PS....
I have tried and tried at home and can't get them set right so there is no shadow. and the color is correct :dunno
I was contracted to do a studio shoot for a local school. Once I had talked to a friend I decided that I needed some studio lights. I went out and purchased the promaster 300ws lighting kit. I also rented a light meter. I ONLY had about 20 mins to set up and I had an extra hand at it too. After taking about 25 pics of my helper and adjusting, and re adjusting with the info from the light meter my pictures turned out HORRIBLE. I am so embarrassed. I can't even fix them in photoshop. They wall was a blue color (that the school ALWAYS uses) every picture looks over exposed and if I change anything in PS it makes them look purple. Does ANYONE have any suggestions on how to set these lights up so they don't look that way? I can't even fix this with PS....
I have tried and tried at home and can't get them set right so there is no shadow. and the color is correct :dunno
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www.jonbakerphotography.com
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Once again, were these images shot in RAW or jpgs? How accurate was your exposure?
A couple images with exif data might be very helpful.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
lets try this....
Person
light A Light B
Camera
Light A is facing AWAY from the person (with umbrella)
Light B is facing towards person (with umbrella)
The wall was actually BLUE and they were wearing white shirts. It over exposed everything. Made them all look bluish.
I had my white balance set on flash
I had a light meter that said to set my shutter on 10 and my aperture on 4.5
I did just that. It over exposed everything and no, I'm a (insert bad word here) and didn't shoot in RAW, only jpeg.
Let's try this
.................................person...............................
........light A.....................................light B...........
................................camera.........................................
well not that far apart, but you get the jist right?
You were shooting at 1/10 of a second? That is probably way to slow to have stopped movement of kids and probably the main reason things were overexposed.
IMG_9675sampple.jpg
This was at shutter of 50 and ap 4.5
I think it's MUCH better but still needs work
You really should reshoot the session.
The lights are set extremely poorly. They need to be "positioned" for portrait lighting of some sort and the "key" light needs to be higher and the subject farther from the wall so that the shadow is cast further down. The umbrellas probably should be used as shoot-through and larger umbrellas will yield softer shadows.
Shoot RAW and set your WB for Flash or Daylight, just to get your starting color balance close. Turn off any ambient lights.
Use your in-camera histogram and "blinkies" to gain control over exposure. Expose "to the right" but don't clip the highlights. A 3-color histogram works better than a luminance histogram to protect individual color channels.
A studio type portrait, as opposed to an environmental portrait, can consist of a number of different lighting and subject setups and orientations. Most of the light setups can be accomplished with 3-4 lights, not all of which have to be studio strobes.
In a classic portrait lighting setup you have 4 lights.
Key
Fill
Hair (or rim)
Background
In this case the hair and background lights don't have to be studio strobes since they don't need modeling lights necessarily. You do need pretty good control over direction and output, which can be accomplished by a number of means.
There is a pretty good primer on studio lighting that shows basic lighting diagrams here:
http://www.geocities.com/glowluzid/portrait/portrait.html
Once you know the lighting setup names, feel free to Google for many more references on the 'Net.
For a school portrait session you might skip the hair light and background light, but key and fill lights are critical.
A very nice collection of lighting links:
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=742194&postcount=10
A good primer on why you expose to the right:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
The more difficult route is to try to correct them. You will need some photoshop experience but it is possible. Try starting by selecting the entire background with the "magic wand tool" and change the background to something pleasing to you. Then invert the selection and work on the color of your subject seperately. With a few other afjustments in brightness and saturation your images can become acceptable. Finally-sharpen as needed. They may never be perfect but if you can't reshoot you don't have much choice. For future refrence, your color balance is way off. That's whats producing the the purple look. Also until you get better at exposure techniques I would recommend bracketing your exposures. Look up some info on acheiving proper color balance and practice it. If all else fails set to auto.
When shooting with strobes why would you not set your camera to it's sync speed and meter for that ?
That eliminates ambient light from the equation and you can leave the WB at auto...
Cheers, Don
Product Photography
My Acreage Bird Photographs
I was using a SEKONIC Flashmate L-308S
I don't know if that helps or not. Although I may have been using it incorrectly!
Thank you for all of your help. For some reason some of the links aren't coming up, most of them say the page is invalid.
I think that from studying online last night I did a number of things wrong.
1. I didn't have the person far enough away from the backdrop
2. I am working with a very limited space (maybe about 4 ft wide)
3. lighting positions are WAY off
4. not having enough lights (I have 2, people recommend 4) Then again if I get any more lights in my 4 ft area then I will have to use a crane to get people to the stool!
I am re shooting the session. I explained that I had a memory card failure and was unable to recover the images. (I figured this sounded better than telling her I suck and the pictures looked bad)
Is there anything in where I should set my KEY light and FILL light since this is all I have to work with. Also they have over head florescence that I am unable to turn off. I'm not sure if this makes a difference or not with how I set my WB.
I tired drawing a pic in paint and uploading it for you to see how small of a space I have. There is a blue wall with white shirts (as you can see in the example picture. The blue is much more blue than what is shown.
Bratz doll one light.jpg
This was shot with a Canon 40D 50mm lens ISO 100, WB set on flash, shutter speed 125 and aperture 5.0. Also with only one light.
Bratz doll 2 lights.jpg
I do not believe you can be successful shooting in a four foot wide box with blue walls. I would think that you would get blue light bouncing back into the image, plus you unacceptable room to move your lights.
This is a school? There has got the be a better, bigger location.
I would set my shutter speed to less than your camera's sync speed. My camera's sync speed is 1/200, but with studio strobes I generally shoot at 1/160 or 1/125. Studio strobes are normally a little slower than spedlights so if you shoot at your maximum sync speed you will get a black band where the shutter curtain is exposed to the light.
For plain school shots I would use f5.6 or even f8 for the aperture depending on your lens. For this shoot I would stay away from an artistic creative approach.
You should be able to get a nice clean portrait with two lights. Maybe try one strobe camera left higher than the subjects head pointing down. set the second strobe camera right slightly lower than the subjects head. Try setting the camera left strobe at a higher power than the camera right strobe to create some soft shadows giving the face some depth and detail. You can also use white foam to bounce some fill where needed.
Again hopefully the more experienced lighting people will chime in.
Practice your set up at home.
Sam
Edit: You posted your doll image while I was typing this. This looks pretty good to me, but maybe you could use a little more DOF. What were your settings equipment and lens?
I wish I HAD a better location. Unfortunately I don't.
I was in M mode. With a 50mm lens Canon 40D
ISO-100, F/5.0, Shutter 125.
I don't know how to set or find out maximum sync speed. I'm not sure what that is.
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They want the blue wall for a background...
Quick question: Where you using an umbrella? shoot through or bounce? Or maybe a softbox? a beauty dish?
For portraits, you don't need a lot of lighting source. Often times 1 is enough. You can do the butterfly technique, using 1 light and a reflector.
- you are right about the subject, make sure the subject has enough distance from the background to avoid the shadows, unless you want this effect (mostly used for fashion, using ring light)
- just set your shutter speed to 1/125, iso 100
- don't worry about the white balance, just set it to AWB (auto)
- you can set your aperture according the power of the light source (you can use your light meter for this, make sure you are on the correct mode)
- ALWAYS check your Histogram (in camera) to make sure that your photos are properly exposed.
I hope this helps.
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There are a lot of shadows on the face (right side) and hotspots on some areas (lips, left side of her face, just below left eye, and also just below the neck)
hotspots or uneven lighting: there are a few things you can do to eliminate the hotspots
- you may want to adjust your aperture to maybe f8 or higher
- move the light source further
- have the model move further away from the source
- power down your light source
Shadows:
- what's the ratio you used for the main/fill light? looks like the main light is overpowering your fill, which is creating the shadows on the face
- you can power down the main light
- or you can power up the fill (then compensate by changing your aperture)
Later you can research high speed sync.
Again I would probably use f8 to get a nice clean crisp image.
As to the location. I can't believe you and the school couldn't find an alternate location. The hall way would be bigger. The men's room would be bigger, and have white walls.
You are the photographer. You need to be able to determine what is and what isn't possible or feasible. Based on what you have posted, I would probably turn the job down if forced to shoot in this space.
They can make all the assurances in the world that they understand the location limitations and a little blue, and inferior lighting will be acceptable, but don't for a minute believe it. If the photos are bad, it is your fault.
Shoot RAW
Let us know how it turns out!
Sam
I had told them I was afraid I was going to get a blue cast to the photos. They said the other photographer didn't. I saw his photos, they are right, he must have known something I didn't.
I plan on shooting in RAW ( I won't make THAT mistake again)
Thank you for all of your feedback. I'm sure that if I have enough time to set up and about 4 ft wider space I can accomplish the look I am going for.
Better?