Hello all
This is a shot of my daughter from today. This is my second attempt at portrait photography. I rethought my lighting setup and I think it turned out ok. Feel free to C&C
What great eyes!! Crop might be a little too close for my taste. Confused on the lighting. Catch lights say the main is on the viewers right but it seems to be coming in from the viewers left.
Thanks Hackbone,
Yes she does have some beautiful eyes. She gets them from her mother of course. As far as my lighting setup goes, yes the main light is on the right and up high I also have a hair light behind and up to the right. I also was using a third light for fill and was hand holding it with my left hand while I was taking the picture with my right. The third light did cast a wee shadow on the left side of her nose giving the appearance of main light left. The reason you are not seeing the third light as a catch light is because I removed it along with two other distracting catch lights coming from the two glass block windows I have down in the basement.
My light setup is not professional in any way it consists of two clamp on brooding lamps, main and fill, with 120 watt and 40 watt daylight florescent bulbs and a desk lamp with a home made snoot with a 100 watt df bulb.
Sorry for the confusion and glad you pointed that out.
Keep working on it. You don't need fancy lights to take quality portraits. It can be done with 100 watt bulbs and an Ace reflector. Generally speaking your fill light should be about half of your main. Now I repeat this is just a general guide line. Photographes do all sorts of variations and the results can be great.
Yes I should have picked up a 60 watt as well when I purchased the 40. For fill light and in terms of f-stop, since 60 is half of 120 does this equate to 1 stop? Or is comparing f-stop to Watts like comparing apples to oranges?
Here is the original shot before I cropped square. I liked it as the original until she made it her profile picture on facebook. I looked at it on her page and my eyes were immediately drawn to hers and I thought the square crop thinned her face a bit as well.
A pleasing ratio to start is considered to be a 3 to 1. Use two lights of equal intensitity. Place your first light and get a reading. Lets say it is f 5.6. You can then place your fill light at 8ft and get a 3 to 1 ratio. Remember a fill light is to fill the shadows and not to create them. How did I get the 8feet......good and confusing question. Use you f stop settings.....2.8
4
5.6
8
11
16 etc. As you look at these you see how I got the 8 feet. What ever you main light setting is your fill needs to be 1 stop less (considered in ft). A main of f5.6 and an equal intensitity fill light at 8ft will give you half the light from the fill (because they are of equal intensitity). The second light is placed at the great f stop but that is considered in feet. I hope I explained that simply enough. To go thru all of these.....
Thanks Hackbone,
Yes she does have some beautiful eyes. She gets them from her mother of course. As far as my lighting setup goes, yes the main light is on the right and up high I also have a hair light behind and up to the right. I also was using a third light for fill and was hand holding it with my left hand while I was taking the picture with my right. The third light did cast a wee shadow on the left side of her nose giving the appearance of main light left. The reason you are not seeing the third light as a catch light is because I removed it along with two other distracting catch lights coming from the two glass block windows I have down in the basement.
My light setup is not professional in any way it consists of two clamp on brooding lamps, main and fill, with 120 watt and 40 watt daylight florescent bulbs and a desk lamp with a home made snoot with a 100 watt df bulb.
Sorry for the confusion and glad you pointed that out.
Yes, your "fill" light was throwing more light than your "main" light. That's why the fill is casting a nose shadow and the main is not.
Has hack said, you should look for a 2 or 3 to 1 ratio to start out.
Thanks again Hackbone and I will remember what you have stated here. The only thing about your last post that I do not quite get is the 1:3 ratio from 5.6 to 8. I am thinking this would be a 1:2 ratio based on the inverse square law and as you said towards the end of your post this would give half the light. I am thinking for a 1:3 I would need to be somewhere between 8 and 11 feet because of the non-linearity but I suppose 8 is close enough to start and move back from there. Anyway thanks for taking the time to go through that. It did cause me to do some thinking resulting in a better understanding of f-stop.
From the fill light you have 1 unit of light hitting the entire face due to its being basically behind you so it is hitting both sides of the face. The main is toward one side or the other at a 45 degree angle and is only hitting one side of the face. The main is twice as strong as the fill because it is the same power as the fill but it is closer by one stop in power. So you have twice the power of the fill hitting only one side of the face. Add then 2 units form the main and 1 from the fill hitting only one side of the face and you get 3 units hitting one side of the face and only 1 unit hitting the shadow side of the face thus 3 to 1. This has been drilled into my brain by a bunch of the old old master photographers thru the ages.
Ok I think I am finally seeing the light here. I was not taking the one unit of fill light hitting both sides of the face into consideration. Thanks for clearing that up.
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Yes she does have some beautiful eyes. She gets them from her mother of course. As far as my lighting setup goes, yes the main light is on the right and up high I also have a hair light behind and up to the right. I also was using a third light for fill and was hand holding it with my left hand while I was taking the picture with my right. The third light did cast a wee shadow on the left side of her nose giving the appearance of main light left. The reason you are not seeing the third light as a catch light is because I removed it along with two other distracting catch lights coming from the two glass block windows I have down in the basement.
My light setup is not professional in any way it consists of two clamp on brooding lamps, main and fill, with 120 watt and 40 watt daylight florescent bulbs and a desk lamp with a home made snoot with a 100 watt df bulb.
Sorry for the confusion and glad you pointed that out.
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Here is the original shot before I cropped square. I liked it as the original until she made it her profile picture on facebook. I looked at it on her page and my eyes were immediately drawn to hers and I thought the square crop thinned her face a bit as well.
4
5.6
8
11
16 etc. As you look at these you see how I got the 8 feet. What ever you main light setting is your fill needs to be 1 stop less (considered in ft). A main of f5.6 and an equal intensitity fill light at 8ft will give you half the light from the fill (because they are of equal intensitity). The second light is placed at the great f stop but that is considered in feet. I hope I explained that simply enough. To go thru all of these.....
main f2.8 fill at 4 ft.
main at f 4 fill at 5.6 ft.
main at f 5.6 fill at 8 ft.
main at f 8 fill at 11 ft.
main at f 11 fill att 16 ft etc.
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Yes, your "fill" light was throwing more light than your "main" light. That's why the fill is casting a nose shadow and the main is not.
Has hack said, you should look for a 2 or 3 to 1 ratio to start out.
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