Comments on: Random photo(shoot), snow day

By: Paul Yoder

Paul Yoder — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:23:05 +0000

What’s this? A nerdy white guys website? I would suggest that you snoot the spill issues onto a non-harsh ambient ratio of cafeteria projectile detritus. Be sure to use a canvas.

By: Jon Yoder

Jon Yoder — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:29:14 +0000

I was talking about bringing the poster board in closer to the subject on each side, then just bouncing flash off each one. It would somewhat work that way, but it might be a bit tight. As far as this picture goes, I like it for being good (and non-harsh) light, and a more controlled background would be ideal, the picture comes across as more natural, and I don’t really mind it. So for now, I know what I could do if I wanted to have complete control of the ratio of the subject light to ambient light, but right now I don’t care enough to make two softboxes.

By: Dave Nicks

Dave Nicks — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:15:21 +0000

Yikes. If you were bouncing the light off the walls, there’s no way (even with poster board) you could have blocked the light from the background. Even doing it in the hallway, you would likely have lit up the walls, floor & ceiling behind him so much that the background would be too light.

What you should do is turn those lights around and point them straight at the subject. That will create harsh light, but in this case the subject is male, and harsh light is fine for guys. If you really wanted to soften the light up a bit, you could shoot through a few pages of printer taped together to make a 2′x2′ square. With or without that in place, you would still probably need to flag off the background if it was less than 8 feet behind the subject. Same goes for the ceiling.

If you had a coupla softboxes, you’d be in fat city. Maybe a little DIY project is in order….

By: Jon Yoder

Jon Yoder — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:48:11 +0000

Thanks for the input, Dave! Comments are hard to find around here. ;)

I did have the camera at the fastest sync speed, which is 1/200 on the Rebel, so there is no ambient in the picture. The problem you see is just spill issues. I used the walls to bounce the light off of, and the background was about the same distance as the subject, so everything got lit the same amount.

That was the fastest way to do it, but if I’d do it again, I would either shoot in the hallway, to get the background far away, or bring in poster-board on each side to minimize the distance of the light from the subject.

Doing a re-do of this might not be my next project, but when I do it again, I’ll definitely put it on here. :)

~ Jon

By: Dave Nicks

Dave Nicks — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:49:10 +0000

Dude. I like that you are experimenting. If I can make a suggestion on your top photo: When I read your comment before the photo and looked at the photo, I thought, “too much ambient.” And then I read your comment after the photo ;)

So the suggestion is to remember the first step in strobist photography that has to do with exposure: Balance for Ambient. In this case, crank the shutter down to 1/250 (which I’m sure woulda made that room go almost all the way dark), then take a test shot and start closing your aperture until the background is where you want it. THEN, and only then (now that you’re working with a “blank canvas”), start bringing in your strobes to generate highlights. You’ll have to adjust the distance and/or power of your strobes to get the desired lighting ratio, since your camera exposure is now locked in. Flag, snoot or grid your light so that it hits each side of his face but doesn’t wash the background or bounce off the ceiling/walls and contaminate the canvas.

I’d love to see you make another attempt at this one :)