New lighting setup - feedback please

Hodders

Hodders

Hodders

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
5,385
Location
Riding my bike
OK, after picking up a few odds and sods from the bay I now have:

1 x Canon 430EXII flash
1 x Nikon - SB-28 flash
2 stands
2 shoot through brollys
Canon 40D using a 17-85 lens canon EFS lens

The willing victim was my daughter and the setup was:

1 flash just off camera left and about 3 feet higher than the camera, the other flash was behind the subject lighting the back wall. Ratio was 2:1. Subject was usually about 3 feet in front of the wall. I wanted to blow out the wall a bit more, but the rear flash was having trouble illuminating the rear wall uniformly. Both flashes were shooting through white brollys.

Any feedback on the way this lighting works would be fab as I want to learn more about this area of photography.

Any way onto the pictures (untouched other than a touch of shrapen after the resize):

1)

IMG_0120.jpg


2)

IMG_0129.jpg


3)

IMG_0132.jpg


4)

IMG_0137.jpg



5)

IMG_0151.jpg


6) (With some more rear flash to white out the background at the expense of some front contrast)

IMG_0180.jpg
 
The white wall should be white, like the last one, thats my only gripe. Otherwise the subject is softly lit, which is a positive.
 
Cheers Raymond. The shots were taken in a bedroom with white walls and white ceiling. I'm guessing that the only way of getting a white background is to up the lighting on it.

Short of putting black sheets everywhere is there any way of avoiding the spill around of the rear light onto the subject ?

My approach was to light the subject then start to up the lighting on the rear wall but before I got to white the subject started to get too much light spilling around. Any other pointers ?
 
Yes, its about the distance the subject is from the background, you put a marker on the floor and meter from there, to see how bright the background is at that distance, adjust the lighting down or up until it meets the same measurement as your camera's fstop i.e. if your going for f11, 16 or 22 which are good numbers then you need to get the light meter to read that by adjusting the backgrounds lighting. Then point the meter at the camera rather than the background and start metering the lighting you have on the subject.

Essentially you need 3 softbox's... 2 for the background and 1 (key - biggest) for the subject.

Thats what I was taught at a-level anyway. but is basically the distance thats your problem, you are probably so close your casting shadow or having to turn down the lights because of spill.
 
So what we are saying is that I need a bigger house ;)

I tried to get the distance bigger for the last shot but there is still too much spill around and it has started to blow the subject.

I'm just about to make a snot (black straws) so I get to play with that option on Thursday....
 
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