2009-07-27 Advanced Lighting

Today's lecture was on fill flash. Today's assignment was to vary shutter speed during flash exposures and see how much ambient light appears in the image.

All shots were taken at ISO 200 and aperture f/5.6 using a Nikon D3 body, Nikon 70-200 lens and Nikon SB-800 flash. Flash was synched to second curtain. The SB-800 allows exposure compensation for the flash output to be set independently of the compensation set in the camera body.

Subject 1 was photographed to make sure the flash system was working. The first shot is a manual exposure for ambient. The next shots use -3.0 EV set in the flash to minimize output. Click here to see the test exposures.

Subject 2 was photographed with -1.0 EV set in the flash. The first image at 1/500 picks up very little ambient. Subsequent shots changed the shutter speed by one stop to pick up more and more ambient (1/250, 1/125, 1/60, etc.) The last shot at 1/4 is mostly ambient, yet the flash manages to freeze her in motion. Click here to see the sequence of exposures.

Subject 3 was photographed with -1.0 EV set in the flash. The first image at 1/500 picks up very little ambient. Subsequent shots change the shutter speed by one stop to pick up more and more ambient light (1/250, 1/125, 1/60, etc.) The TTL system renders the subject's dark skin with very well (not an unattractive 18% gray). Click here to see the sequence of exposures.

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2009-07-22 Advanced Lighting

Today's assignment is to photograph different fill ratios, then add hair and background lighting.

Today's assignment was shot with a Nikon D3 body, Nikon 24-70/f2.8 lens, SB-900 for main, SB-800 for fill, and two SB-600 flashes for hair and background. Power settings for all flashes were set manually. The SB-900 and SB-800 were triggered with PocketWizards. The SB-600s were triggered with Nikon SU-4 slave shoes.

All photographs were shot at ISO 800, 1/125, and f/8. Main and fill flashes used umbrellas set up 60 degrees off the lens axis, six feet from the model. Clicking on any image brings up a larger version in a gallery.

Photo 1: Main light only at f/8.








Photo 2: Fill light only at f/5.6.








Photo 3: Main and fill at 2:1.








Photo 4: Fill light only at f/4.








Photo 5: Main and fill at 4:1.








Photo 6: Fill light only at f/2.8.








Photo 7: Main and fill at 8:1.








Photo 8: Main and fill at 4:1 with hair light.








Photo 8: Main and fill at 4:1 with hair and background lights.








Afterthoughts: Reviewing images on a large monitor showed inconsistent lighting on the shadow side of the model's face. The fill by itself metered at f/4. But adding the main light seemed to boost the fill side by half a stop or more. Maybe the main light was bouncing into the umbrella of the fill light? Maybe Nikon's Speedlights have inconsistent output?

The model's precise position/pose was critical for the hair light to work right. Photo 8 shows the hair light landing just right at the top edge of her hair. Photo 9 shows the hair light blowing out a big spot on the model's hair. We used a mark on the ground, but we weren't careful enough with position and pose so the hair light fell on the wrong spot.

Shaping the background light took many tries to get approximately right. The SB-600's rectangular head projected a rectangle-shaped blob on the background. The flash body had to be tipped sideways and the head angle upward "just so" in order for the model to be silhouetted semi-decently. Next time, I'll try using a snoot.
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Here we go

Our first post and right off the bat we pursue a HTML hack for expandable summaries, which let us present our main page in a tidy manner. We also learn to hack the dates and times of posts to establish a specific order.

After struggling to place the appropriate code snippets into the proper places in the layout template, this paragraph finally appeared in the expected place. The information at http://www.blogdoctor.me/2007/02/expandable-post-summaries.html was crucial to identifying the proper places in the layout template.
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