Butterfly/Paramount Lighting

anonymouscuban

Practiced a bit with my new beauty dish. What do you think of these two shots? I was specifically trying Paramount light setup, AKA butterfly lighting.

This shot is a one light setup... beauty dish powered by an SB-600 flash set directly over the camera about 3 feet above her:



This shot is a two light setup. Key is my AB400 strobe set in the beauty dish and mounted same as the shot above. However, I added fill light from below with the SB-600 inside a 24" soft box:



You'll notice that in the second shot, the fill lifted the shadows a bit. But I don't know if the fill was overdone since the "butterfly" shadow under her nose is less pronounced. Maybe it's too strong in the first with no fill. I kind of like them both.

Thoughts?

tomnovy

I really love your work, but I think you soften the skin to much. What type of skin smoothing technique are you using? Are you blurring the skin? If so, you loosing the details on the skin texture.

anonymouscuban

tomnovy wrote: »

I really love your work, but I think you soften the skin to much. What type of skin smoothing technique are you using? Are you blurring the skin? If so, you loosing the details on the skin texture.

Interesting. On the fist shot, other than using the healing brush to fix some uneven skin tone and a few little blemishes, I didn't do anything to the skin. I did bump the brightness using curve adjustment layers and I think that is what is making the skin look smoother but that's why I bumped it... give it more glam. Maybe a bit much for certain tastes.

On the second one, I used a new B&W action to convert and I think it does use a blurred layer to give it a creamy look. Here is the color version where I did nothing to the skin:

Freezframe

Different situation - different results. Maybe!
Just a thought but in #1 you say the dish is about 3ft above subject. Results show exactly that shadows under chin and in open mouth! Also because she is smiling the light catches more on top of her cheeks-(Just a tad hot!) Wonder what lowering the light would have done to these areas.

Just an observation!

Brady

Nikolai

Alex,
I think you need to dial the power down or move the key light further away.

Also I think your lens is too close. What was the focal length and shooting distance?

anonymouscuban

Nikolai wrote: »

Alex,
I think you need to dial the power down or move the key light further away.

Also I think your lens is too close. What was the focal length and shooting distance?

Nik... I will try dialing down the key as opposed to moving it. Am I right since I don't want the shadows to get to sharp and I want to prevent less spill behind her?

For first shot, I was shooting about 6 feet away. Second maybe 4 feet. Both shot at 70mm (plus crop factor). BTW, the first shot is a crop of a bust shot and the second is a crop of head & shoulder shot.

Nikolai

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Nik... I will try dialing down the key as opposed to moving it. Am I right since I don't want the shadows to get to sharp and I want to prevent less spill behind her?

For first shot, I was shooting about 6 feet away. Second maybe 4 feet. Both shot at 70mm (plus crop factor). BTW, the first shot is a crop of a bust shot and the second is a crop of head & shoulder shot.

Well, this is kinda a conundrum. Yes, if you move your light away, it will become harsher. However it will also make the fall-off gradient less steep. I would say on #1 the batterfly shadow is already harsh, so if you want them softer, you have to move it even closer, thus making the fall-off even steeper.
My understanding (and I can be wrong:-) is that beauty dish of this (small) size is supposed to be used very close to the subject, since the idea of using BD is to eliminate all the shadows and thus avoid accentuating any skin defects (hence the name). In general, if you want batterfly or any pronounced shadows - don't count on your BD as BD.

anonymouscuban

In the first shot, I was testing the BD so I didn't use any other light. More than anything, my goal was just to get an idea of how the BD modifies the light. I placed the BD directly in front and above her, based on my understanding of what I've read for this type of lighting. I had never done this before so I was playing around with different heights/angles to try to get the butterfly shadow under the nose as pronounced as possible but still adequately light her eyes. Honestly, I don't know at what point the shadow becomes too pronounced and I assume this, like so many other things in photography, are personal preference. In the B&W image, I setup the BD pretty much the same way but I added a fill light below her - a 24" soft box. I like the light on both images but they are different.

I think what is mucking things up a bit is my processing. I was messing around with a few new concepts and maybe it's a bit heavy handed for some. Below, is the original shot plus the crop but I hid almost all the adjustment layers except for the sharpening and healing layers. I did nothing to the tonal curve or contrast here. It's pretty much SOOC aside from sharpening, WB, and a few swipes of the healing brush.

Looking at these, do you still think my Key was a bit too bright? (I really need to calibrate my monitor)

Nikolai

It's her skin; you can't do much with this light, unless you make it huge and move it far away. A proper apllication of powder/foundation/toner can also help...

anonymouscuban

Nikolai wrote: »

It's her skin; you can't do much with this light, unless you make it huge and move it far away. A proper apllication of powder/foundation/toner can also help...

Ah. You mean the specular highlights on her face. OK. She doesn't wear foundation type make up. I guess you can only do so much with a smaller light source like this. You have to incorporate other tools such as make up.

You think is diffuser on the BD would help? I plan on making one for it.

Nikolai

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Ah. You mean the specular highlights on her face. OK. She doesn't wear foundation type make up. I guess you can only do so much with a smaller light source like this. You have to incorporate other tools such as make up.

You think is diffuser on the BD would help? I plan on making one for it.

Yes. To fight those you need highly diffused light.

Diffuser (aka "sock") doesn't help in that respect. It eliminates (to a degree) the inner circle visible in the eyes reflection, but apart from that it has almost no effect on the overall light quality (well, you will lose about half-a-stop and increase spillage )

anonymouscuban

Got it Nik. And yeah, I meant a sock. So it will get rid of the "Certs" catchlights but not the specular highlights. Makes sense when I think about it because the sock is not making the source larger, which is what will make it softer and reduce the specular highlights.

Glad I paid attention in all my science classes in HS and College!!!