Fleeting Glimpse Images : Visions in words ~ Sagas in light: Lighting

Isolation

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:28:24 GMT

In my article Anatomy of a Self Portrait, I showed you how to, among other things, fill every crevice with light using multiple off-camera flashes. Today, I felt like doing the opposite, namely: filling almost every crevice with darkness using multiple off-camera flashes.

The Setup:

I decided to shoot an image of me at the piano. I don't really play but you don't know that.

This shot was in Ambient light from the recessed tungsten bulbs over my shoulder and a small amount of blue light coming in from the window above the piano.

There is also a lot of clutter in this room (it is a junk room) and architectural details in the background. I need to eliminate these distractions.

Bad light and bad image. I turned to software in my time of need. The light was coming from the wrong direction and software has a difficult time with that. I decided to do what I could with off-the-shelf basic software.

Software Solution:

Software used to be my salvation and still is when I can't reshoot or didn't shoot the image in the first place.

Into my image editing package I go for a little targeted brightness adjustment to tone down the periphery and accent the items I choose. I wanted emphasis on my hands and face and just a hint of a piano. My goal was moody introspective look. The result was dismal.

To eliminate the light I couldn't control, I turned off the tungsten and the room lights (fluorescent) in the adjoining rooms. I also plugged the window with a blanket. Starting from scratch, now I was the light bringer.

Attempt 1:

Using Two Flashes, I set one on top of the piano with a Lumiquest Softbox. The other was set to at the end of the keyboard with a Lumiquest Snoot.

I was happy with the keyboard lighting but the face light illuminated to much area. I can see the background again and the sheet music and t-shirt logo are too distracting. The mood was too wistful. I wanted drama.

Already I had a much more usable image than before and I could probably take this into an image editor and get a superior image to my earlier attempt but I decided to take another step by relighting the image. I liked the warmth of the light so I kept it in trying to invoke a little lamp or candle-lit feel.

Attempt 2:

With a Speed Grid from Honl replacing the Softbox, I was able to get the quality of light on my face I desired and eliminated the spill over as well. Now I had effectively created two spotlights in a sea of blackness. The mood is getting more serious-don't you think?

I wasn't happy with placement or exposure yet but I am getting closer to my goal.

Light placement was off on my face but the hand was great. As long as I could remember the chord, I was set there. I needed to adjust my 580EXII with the Speed Grid to give me a wider throw and a better aim. I moved it back and closer to the piano lid's edge and fired away.

Third Attempt:

With everything set, I dialed back the Speed Grid light on my face to 1/4 power. I set the Snoot light on my fingers to 1/4 power also.

The camera was set to manual with an ISO of 100, an F8 and a 1/60th of a second shutter fired on a 10 second timer. All I had to do was pose with some modicum of emotion.

I was pretty happy with the results. The pose was better too. Had this been a real model, I think I could have evoked the drama necessary to pull off the look I was after. Note that the sheet music visible in the Software Solution shot has vanished and the intruding Indezine logo on my shirt has faded into the shadows.

The Setup:

Canon 20D on tripod with a ST-E2 trigger driving two EX580 flash units.
The flash unit on the Piano was set to Manual at 1/4 power with a Speed Grid attached.
The flash below and to camera-right with a Lumi-quest Snoot also set to Manual at 1/4 power.

The setup photograph was taken with a Canon A550 with onboard flash. (as evidenced by the nice shiny door panel)

In a room full of bad light, you can fill it with light of your own. Sometimes,however, the photograph requires that you fill it with darkness of your own so that you can invoke emotion with carefully selected splashes of light. It depends upon the needs of the moment.

del.icio.us Tags: flash,portraits,off-camera,drama,mood,lighting

A Flash in the Pan - orama

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:23:11 GMT

Recently, I've been frustrated trying to shoot panoramic photographs of room interiors. I decided today to take a different tack on the problem. I am pleased with the results.

The problem with interior panoramic photographs is those dang windows to the outside world. They are almost always many stops of light brighter than the ambient room light. At night, they tend to many stops darker. You just can't shoot all your panoramas at dusk. The building invariably faces the wrong way for that. So you are left to shoot in that 15 minute window of balanced light, resort to software shenanigans or light it yourself.

Using Ambient Light and
Replacing the Windows in Software

Here is a photo of my first panoramic attempt at a tight interior. It was shot with ambient light - very warm ambient light. I waited till noon to get the light as even as I could out the window. The windows completely overexposed anyway. I ended up shooting the windows separately and painstakingly cutting and pasting them in via image editing software. Notice those nice barrel-distortion curves. It was no picnic!

Next, I tried the HDR Route of panoramic photography. By bracketing exposures and then combining them, I was able to compensate for widely-varying light conditions inside and out and get and image which (barely) made me happy.

Multiple Exposures combined
into an HDR Image in Software

HDR photographs are starting to get very old to me. I was one of the early proponents of the process of using software like Photomatix to combine multiple exposures. After looking at some recent photography shows, the promise of HDR has faded into the annoying obscurity of the latest fad effect. It screams fake instead of the truthful mimicry of the range of human sight which was its original promise.

Discouraged with software solutions of replacement pains (no pun intended) and the gimmickry of combining exposures in a slightly-less-than-realistic manner, I turned to one of the basic tenants of photography. "Get it right in the field."

As you know I have been experimenting with Strobes in the field, courtesy of the Strobist's teachings.

A Flash-aided Panorama

Today we attacked the problem with off-camera strobes. Setting the camera to manual and exposing for the windows we find our base exposure. The remaining trick is to get the light balanced for the room. A Canon 580EX flash with a Sto-Fen Omni bounce was used at 1/2 power + 1/3 stop. It was mounted above the tripod and circled on the panorama rig as I moved it around the room. I ended up with a darker shot in some corners than I wanted originally.

Into my old lighting suitcase I went and pulled out an ancient Spiratone screw-in strobe and placed it in the overhead fixture. (You can actually see its reflection in the glass of the lighthouse picture) Now, I had enough light to light the room evenly. Well, evenly enough to determine that I had some really ugly stains on my carpet.

What does anyone do with these stupid-looking panoramas? They make QTVR movies and sell them to real-estate agencies, remodelers and others for their web sites! The Video is Here (4MB Download and you must have Apple QuickTime on your system to view it, move around inside and zoom in and out.

Again, and not to sound like a broken record ('broken record'? that expression is a little long in the tooth ('long in the tooth'? Am I that old?)) Let's see-did I count the parenthesis correctly? Anyway-I digress. To repeat myself. Capture Correctly and Save Work!

Tonight as I sip an nice merlot, I will contemplate my next task. Building a dual flash panorama rig that allows two strobes to be mounted on either side of the camera as the rig spins…

del.icio.us Tags: Flash,Panorama,QTVR,HDR,Image Editing

Anatomy of a Self-Portrait

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:42:40 GMT

Multiple off-camera flash in action

"…incredible results to counter the
most severe of circumstances…"

If you followed my blog recently, you will know that I am hanging out at the Strobist's Blog. The Strobist advocates the simple use of off camera strobes, portable and relatively inexpensive, to create professional lighting results. Yesterday my B&H box arrived with several new strobe toys which allowed me to expand my lighting arsenal. I set up a self-portrait example to test equipment and technique.

F 11 @ 1/5 Second

I started with an aperture priority shot using the camera's metering. The shot is both dark and light due to daylight coming in from the windows. A poor portrait at best. Tungsten lights in the room were turned off to keep the light color variance to a minimum.

I think one of the things that distinguish professional-looking portraits from shots like this is the ability to show detail in those dark and bright areas. In other words the ability to see beyond the dynamic range of the light available.

F11 @ 1/250 Second

I used the outside as the basis for my exposure. I metered for the exterior and set my camera on manual to ensure I exposed the sky out my window correctly. This resulted in a too-dark image. Virtually no detail is left in the rest of the shot.

With a basis for exposure, I can start looking at my ambient light picture and selecting problem areas and build from there. I began to set up off-camera flashes to light my room.

F11 @ 1/250 Second

I set up a Canon 580 EXII speedlite on full power to shoot through a Sto-Fen Omni-bounce to illuminate the room's interior. Trial and error placement resulted in a position just slightly ahead of my body in the room's center.

Notice how the ambient window light falling on my face is nearly neutralized. The window side of my face is now too dark and the area on my desk is in too much shadow for my taste. Adding a second off-camera flash seemed like the best course of action given the room's tight layout. There was no place to set up a reflector.

F11 @ 1/250 Second

With a second speed-lite placed to the left side of the image, I was able to open up the shadows on the desktop and the right side of my body. This flash was set to Manual at 1/8th power. I now have a natural looking portrait lit entirely by portable, off-camera flash.

This shot is nicely lit but one element is missing-the monitor's image (see first image). Exposing the windows ( a huge distraction if over exposed, and lighting me correctly meant I had to sacrifice the image on the monitor. That is what image editing software is for. It is much easier to replace that monitor display than to expose for the display and try to fix the windows or the room interior.


Speedlite with Omni-bounce	Canon DSLR with ST-E2 Wireless Flash Controller	Speedlite set on desktop

Above were the three components used to create the portrait. Below I have photographed a wide angle shot to demonstrate the relative locations of each component used.

Final analysis: Off-camera flash give you a powerful edge in creating more professional and dynamic pictures. Adding a second flash and a few key pieces of equipment like wireless controls, flash accessories and a stand can give you incredible results to counter the most severe of circumstances.

With digital, you can experiment, meter, and achieve incredible results-even through trial and error. A little practice and these things will start to become second-nature.

Now, off to Big Woods State Park for a little off-camera multi-flash nature photography…

del.icio.us Tags: flash,portraits,lighting