DSLR Photography Forum

I did a portrait shoot of Jen tonight using the only lighting equipment I have: 2 flashes. I'm fairly happy with the results, but I just want to post them here for other people to perhaps pick up on lighting mistakes I made. All pictures are basically straight-out-of-camera, with only minor levels adjustments so far, no dodging/burning or anything like that. I'm just posting them all as one big "index jpeg" to save time. Please let me know what could have been done better so I know for next time. Thanks. And a big thanks to my lovely Jenny for being so patient.



The setup: (very crude)



As you can see I didn't have a lot of room. The squares represent furniture that I had to work around. More space would be great but it just doesn't exist in this house!

The Key flash was my basic crappy flash which is basically auto only. Since I can't change the power level, I shot through a piece of white gauze cloth, and reflected it off the white side of a car sunvisor hanging on the wall.

Fill flash was dialled down to 1/16 and shot with a stofen diffuser and softbox. (the stofen sends light out to the sides so it bounces off the sides of the softbox, rather than just going straight through the front panel).

This was only my most common setup. I shot a couple with the key flash further away from the reflector, just in front and to the right of the camera, and with the fill flash either at the other end of my desk (that's what that bottom rectangle is), or on the desk level with Jen, and angled toward the left of my crappy sketch. Of course by now i've forgotten which pictures I shot with which set up, although I know the ones with the hard light on the right hand side of her face were shot with the set up shown above.

I'm going to reply to my own topic here, sorry. But to me they look slightly underexposed, I'm thinking I should have shot at ISO200.

I did a whole reply to this, then binned it, as I'm still wanting to consider what's going on here.
First, thank you for trusting us to comment: a privilege.
I'm not sure about underexposure..but maybe there are odd hotspots. I wonder if getting either a reflector or a diffused light source directly in front of her would help? Perhaps top light too?
Ooo hang on a minute: I wonder if the reflected flash might be diffused or even down by half a stop? Softbox flash and/or reflector in front of her?
13=excellent(ahhh!) and 3 too. I love 6 also but would prefer the flash from Jen's right to be down a tad, with the source from her left up a touch.
What a patient lady!

Hey, this is awesome - thanks for sharing your setup! It's great that you have the patience for structured experimentation.

My favourites are 1 and 13 mainly because the facial features are more evenly lit. I know the lighting is meant to make the portraits more dramatic, but in some of them the bags under the eyes are accentuated - maybe an additional reflector or two might help?

What do the others think?

I think you did a good job, and great job from Jen too...

I find the light a bit too hard in the first line pictures.

I like very much your pictures in the second line, and my fav would be #7 because you have good light in the area of her eyes, and #9 of the third line too.

Thanks for sharing the setup!

Hi Rabid,

Perhaps try the following - have her body face the key light rather than the fill light and try to raise it up high (have the fill light more forward - even if it means moving some furniture). If you raise the key light up higher than you can also put a reflector down low to help with under the eyes - or simply have the fill light lower than the key light.

A third light acting as a hair light would help to separate her more form the background - this may not be an option of course).

The eyes should always catch the key light in them.

Hello,

God knows I know nothing about lighting, so please, please take my comments with a great pinch of salt. For me, #3 works best, because it has no harsh shadows, yet it provides good modelling light from the side and from diagonally above. Most photos I found a little harsh for photographing a young woman. It may be suitable for somebody with a weathered old face. # 1 was a little too flat lit foir my liking and most of the photos seem lit from below, giving Jen a little sinister look. I like it when she has a little highlight on the forehead, as she does in #3. I hope that this helps. DP.