The benefits of window light portraits are often overlooked; mainly because we as photographers obsess over gear and allow it to determine our creative process. My philosophy with regard to creating images is to keep it simple, and what could be simpler than the God-given light that we always have at our disposal.
The key to good window light portraiture is to have at your disposal a, preferably, a north-facing window, and a diffuser. In the studio we are also fortunate to have a large, diffused skylight, which we made full use of in this session.
First, take one subject, meter to taste (I favour apertures from f/4 or wider for this technique) and diffuse any harsh light that’s falling on your subject. Of course, if the light allows, as when we used the skylight, there is no need to diffuse the light.
The benefits of using window light for portraiture is that you don’t need loads of expensive lighting kit, all you need is a window and you can do in almost anywhere. Window light portraiture also gives you enough scope to be as creative as you like, playing with ISO settings, apertures and chasing the rapidly changing light, which waits around for nobody, so you’ve got to be decisive and quick to get the shot.
The images here were taken from a skylight, a north-west facing window, with the fading evening sun providing a wonderful glow of light.
Equipment used for this session
Lastolite diffuser
A fast lens such as a Canon 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 (or other camera makers’ equivalent)
A light meter such as the Sekonic L308S.
I will be running a seven-week portrait and lighting workshop from September 14 at Tudor Barn, Eltham. Cost: £150. Call to book your place.
North-west window light: Image by Kevin Ricks
Skylight: Image by Kevin Ricks
We are taking bookings for the September intake of our seven-week Portrait and Lighting Workshop at Tudor Barn, Eltham from September 14 to October 26. See below for further details. There are only 10 places, so book now. To reserve your place on the course, call Richard on 020 8473 4024 or Ben on 020 8852 2026.
June 27th, 2010 in
Workshops |
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Balancing flash with ambient light is a technique that often foxes people, but it can be achieved with a little practice and perseverence. The result is often dramatic lighting.
In order to get this right you first have to decide what look you want, we wanted to control the exposure of the model, in the case Heidi, while changing the background to taste. I’m a great fan of using a hand-held metre and it was put to good use to measure the ambient light and with that reading you can decide whether you want the background over or under exposed and then use fill in flash to illuminate the model.
Image by Andrew Mason
We were using manual flash throughout the shoot. The trick here is to underexpose the background and use the flash to correctly expose the model.
Another technique where you are controlling exposure is dragging the shutter. Again we used a light meter to correctly expose the model and used the aperture to control the background, rendering it as dark or as light as we want using controllable hand-held values. Your shot can also be enhanced by choosing a suitable background. We were limited in our choice (a local square was used) but choose thoughfully and your background can add drama to your image.
You can see from the images below how by controlling the the shutter speeds we control the amount of light reaching the background. We were shooting with the shutter set between 1/30 and 1/250 with an aperture of around f4 ISO between 200 and 400.
So take your flash of ‘P’ or auto, put it in manual and experiment with the shutter, the power output, the ISO and the distance of your subject. You’ll be glad you did.
Next month we’ll be looking at window light portraits.
Image by Kevin Ricks
Image by Kevin Ricks
I’m running a seven-week portrait and lighting workshop at Tudor Barn, Eltham. Places are limited so book now. Details below.
· Learn how to take professional-level photographs, both in the studio and on location
· Learn how to use professional studio lighting equipment
· Edit your images using the industry leader, Photoshop
· Have your images displayed in the Barn’s gallery
Dates: 14 September to 26 October 2010
Cost: £150 per person
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Tudor Barn, Eltham, Well Hall Pleasuance, Well Hall Road, London SE9 6SZ
Tutors: The workshop will be run by established, published photographers Richard Liston www.richardliston.com and Ben Joseph, www.benjosephphotography.com
For further details please call Richard on 020 8473 4024 (email r.liston@ntlworld.com) or Ben on 020 8852 2026 (email ben.joseph@talk21.com)
See http://www.tudorbarneltham.co.uk/events.html
With thanks to Epson printers
May 5th, 2010 in
Workshops |
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It is with evangelical zeal that I revisit a topic of grave concern: that of the use of a light meter in digital photography. This month’s workshop looked at the whole issue of taking light readings. You can read my previous musings on the use of a hand held light meter in the digital age here. Of course, nothing has changed. In the workshop we did some shots without metering and we did a load where we did meter. Mainly, though, we talked a lot about reason why we should use a light meter and scenarios where you really shouldn’t be without one. The obvious reason to use a light meter is to get spot-on accurate readings. Simply, a light meter takes the guess work out of exposure and is more accurate that the LCD screen on the back of your camera or your histogram.
Here are a series of images, posed admiringly by the lovely Lydia, which demonstrate the quality of lighting you get when you use a light meter to measure the exposure.
Circumstances beyond out control meant that we could not work outside mixing flash and ambient light as planned. That session will now take place in May, so don’t forget your flash gun.
Image by Leon Cato
Richard Liston LMPA
www.richardliston.com
I often get asked in my workshops what white balance setting to use when working in the studio and I often turn the question back to the enquirer and ask what white balance setting they have dialled in. The answer is often as varied as it is surprising.
Flash is a favourite setting, as is auto white balance, while some people correctly select daylight or sunshine (depending if you live in the Canon or Nikon atmosphere). As you know I shoot Canon so with apologies to Nikon people reading this blog, I’ll stick to Canon speak, so ‘daylight’ white balance it is.
The reason I set daylight is because the colour temperature of daylight setting accurately matches the colour temperature of daylight, which is about 5,600K. Conveniently, the studio flashes are also set at 5,600K, so when in the studio you should always select daylight, unless, of course, you have a good reason not to, you may actually want to shoot with a tungsten setting, which is about 3,200K.
At Tuesday’s Portrait Group workshop we set out to do it all wrong, dialling in everything from cloudy to auto to tungsten and shot as many images as was necessary to show the differences and what you get when you don’t pay attention to the white balance setting. The images demonstrate this.
Why not just shoot on auto and change the setting in post-production? My answer to that is why. I never leave my camera in auto anything. You’ve paid a lot of money for a sophisticated piece of hardware so why give up control when you have the tools at your disposal to get the shot you want; not what the camera gives you. Auto anything leaves too much to chance: I’d rather be in control and that is why I set my white balance in camera and not in your preferred raw converter, which in my case is Capture One from Phase 1.
When we talk about flash for colour balance, a mistake people often make is to confuse their on-camera flash they bought with the camera with the studio flash. To avoid confusion, just remember that the flash setting is for your hand-held on-camera flash, not studio lights. See the chart below.
| Temperature |
Source |
| 1,700 K |
Match flame |
| 1,850 K |
Candle flame |
| 2,700–3,300 K |
Incandescent light bulb |
| 3,350 K |
Studio “CP” light |
| 3,400 K |
Studio lamps, photofloods, etc. |
| 4,100 K |
Moonlight, xenon arc lamp |
| 5,000 K |
Horizon daylight |
| 5,500–6,000 K |
Typical daylight, electronic flash |
| 6,500 K |
Daylight, overcast |
| 9,300 K |
CRT screen |
Note: These temperatures are merely characteristic;
considerable variation may be present. |
During the session we also played with lighting ratios because this is a topic I often get asked to explain. To put it simply, understanding lighting ratios is about controlled lighting. The key thing to remember is that the ratio is the difference between the output of the main light and the fill light.
Ratios add depth to an image and help control texture. A simply way to calculate ratios is to either multiply or divide by two. For instance where you have a ratio of, say, 5:1, you would divide five by two, which will give you two-and-half stops difference.
Of course, as well as changing the output of the heads, you can also physically move the lights towards or farther away from your subject, which will also affect the lighting ratio.
Next month (April) we’ll be balancing daylight and flash, weather permitting, outdoors, so bring your flash guns.
See the chart below for a quick reference.
Ratio 1:1 = flat lighting.
2:1 = 1 stop difference
3:1 = 1.5 stops difference
4:1 = 2 stops difference
Daylight. Image by Tony Presland
Flourescent. Image by Tony Presland
Tungsten. Image by Tony Presland
I read the following on a forum the other day. “I saw a photographer shooting a portrait with a 5D II and between exposures he would use a light meter. Back in the film days a light meter would insure the best possible exposure. But today with digital cameras you have the histogram. Don’t see much point in using handheld light meters anymore. Am I missing something”
Yes, Mr Poster, you are missing quite a lot, and anyone who discards their light meter in the false knowledge that what they see on the back of their expensive DSLRs is accurate enough is also missing something. So why is a handheld light meter still relevant in a digital age?
The overriding reason why a handheld light meter is relevant in the age of digital is because of its consistency in determining the accuracy of the image. In my portrait workshops I am always championing the benefits of using a meter.
With studio lights it is important to get rid of as many variables as possible - and there are many more than you might think. Whenever a light setup changes, an incident reading will allow the photographer to accurately capture much more detail than what you see on the back of your dslr or you can discern from your histogram. The image you see after you’ve captured your image is a hastily put-together approximation of the scene the camera sees, which in most cases is a long way from what you see.
Let’s talk about the histogram. While it is in many cases an invaluable tool when used properly, and is infinitely more reliable than the poor quality camera-generated jpeg on the back of your camera, the histogram is easily fooled by high key or low key lighting. Where a handheld meter excels in its ability to drag every last detail out of the dark areas and to keep with light areas pitched where the eye sees them.
The one great stumbling block of in-camera meters, while convenient, is that they are held back because they are measure reflected light: the intensity of the light that falls on the sensor. This can cause all sorts of problems, especially in bright sunlight or where a strobe is shining directly into the lens of the camera.
A handheld meter, on the other hand, measures the light falling on the subject and ignores any other influencing lights in the scene. This will allow you to take accurate readings from any part of the subject you wish in the secure knowledge that you will have hit the exposure target.
A handheld just takes the guesswork out of lighting by reading all subjects as a midtone, or 18 per cent grey, which is in the middle of the tones between pure white and pure black. Ansel Adams had the right idea with his pioneering zone system.
If you have exposed correctly using a handheld meter, your post-production suddenly becomes easier and quicker because your light meter has capture the detail in the highlights.
I wouldn’t be without my light meter, whether I am in the studio or shooting outdoors. To leave an important shoot, be it a wedding, a portrait sitting or a demanding commercial shoot, to chance is madness now as it was in the days we all used film to capture our images
It is unbelievably negligent as an image maker to believe the image on the back of your dslr or the histogram will give you the level of accuracy that is required and expected of a professional photographer.
My handheld light meters of choice are Sekonics. I use an ageing Sekonic L-308B because of its convenient size and ease of use, but I would strongly recommend its big brother, the Sekonic L-358. This meter will do almost everything that is required to capture the smallest of detail - without distraction.
I will be running a workshop on handheld light meters soon. Stay tuned for dates.
Richard Liston LMPA
www.richardliston.com
Sekonic L-308s
Sekonic L-358
February 23rd, 2010 in
Gear Talk |
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How often are we in a studio and without much thought or consideration we set the lights to f8, f11 or f22? Why do we do this? Habit? Lack of technical knowledge? Let’s break out of our comfort zone and grab some great images while working with apertures around f4 and wider.
To achieve usable results from this extreme lighting technique, first we have to understand lighting ratios. An f/stop refers to the size of the diaphragm that allows light to pass on to the camera’s sensor. By controlling the f/stop we control the amount of light falling on to the subject. At this point it is important to remember that f/stops work in conjunction with shutter speeds.
Given that all photography is about light, how you use it, the quantity and quality and how you adjust your camera settings and your light settings to control light is very important. If we are outdoors shooting without flash we don’t have to worry about your camera’s sync speed and can adjust your shutter speed and aperture until you get the desired effect, sequentially adjusting the f/stop and shutter speed to achieve this. You can also enlist the help of an ND filter to cut down the amount of light entering your lens to cut down further the intensity of the natural light.
However, in a studio you are constrained by your maximum shutter sync speed, normally around 200/250 and the fact that you are using artificial lights. But that is necessarily a bad thing. To get around this limitation first we have to control the intensity of the lights; that means turning them way down until you get your desired aperture, be it f/2.8, f/3.5 or f4. conversely, when you turn up the lights, more light hits the sensor, which moves us back to f/8, f/16, f/22 territory.
Another trick to help kill the light is to use a number of light modifiers such as barn doors, black reflector boards and honeycombes. One trick we tried in the studio was simply to move the lights further away while observing the inverse square law - the intensity of point light source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source - which means a subject twice as far away from the source of light receives only a quarter of the light. The opposite is of course true. What this means is that the intensity of the light will change if we move the light source farther away from the subject. In this workshop we moved the light in increments of around three feet on each occasion, each time getting readings from a starting point of f/22 to f/4 and by that time we had exhausted the physical length of the studio - a difference of five stops.
So why would you want to do a portrait shoot at f/4 or wider? This technique is particularly useful when shooting close-ups. If you select the eyes as the point of focus, the depth of field will be such that the out-of-focus area will be beautifully rendered. It is a technique that lends itself brilliantly to fashion and beauty portraits.
For the record, the image of Heidi was taken on a Canon 5D MKII, ISO 100, 1/125 @ f2.8 with a 50mm f1/4 lens. The image of Katherine was taken as above but at f8 with a focal length of 115mm.
With thanks to Katherine and Heidi, our models for the shoot. The next portrait and lighting workshop at the Camera Club will be on Tuesday March 16 will be outdoors were we will be looking a mixing on-camera flash with ambient light - so don’t forget your flash guns and reflectors.
As usual, your comments are welcome.
Richard Liston
www.richardliston.com
Equipment used for this shoot
A range of Canon and Nikon cameras
Image of Heidi by Sue Foll
Image of Katherine by Sue Foll
The Canon 5D mkII has been written about exhaustively in various forums. It is generally agreed that it is a great camera but its Achilles heel is its languid auto focus. I’m not here to trash the much-maligned aspect of this camera but to give you my observations and thoughts about my experience with the Canon 5D mkII, mated to the best value for money lens in Canon’s lineup, the Canon EF50mm f/1.8II, in a studio setting.
I had the first incarnation of this camera and while generally pleased, I was frustrated with its less than good auto focus. In my opinion the Canon 40D and the Canon 50D are much better in the focusing department. Canon has improved the AF performance of the 5D mkII considerably with some clever maths found in the DIGIC 4 signal processor, but you still have to muscle the camera to get the best out of it. As you can see from the images below, the focus was hit and miss. The details for the shoot are as follows. The lens was a Canon EF24-70 f2.8L USM and the image was shot at f/6.3, aperture was 1/13 (I was shooting with Fresnel lights by Arri) ISO 200. At 100 per cent magnification the image is horribly out of focus.
Here are a set of pictures taken at different times with different settings. The second image was from the same sequence of shots and is perfectly in focus once magnified. Details for the second image are as follows: 1/125@f2.8. Everything else as above. In niether case was centre point focus selected.
So, why the difference? I think the problem lies in the fact that both images were shot with the 5D MKII’s metering mode was set at pattern. There were more images shot with the metering mode set at multi-segment which were even worse than the previous images. Not good. Yet, the 40D was spot on 95 per cent of the time.
What is clear here, in my opinion, is that the 5D mkII’s focusing, while not in the league of the ID series, is probably down to user error and the user not being 100 per cent familiar with the camera, rather than any inherent manufacturing failings on Canon’s part. It is, after all, just a tool and we have to learn how to use that tool in order to get the best from it. For best results I strongly suggest you set your camera to centre point AF, which will in my opinion give you the sharpest results - even with moving subjects.
February 10th, 2010 in
Gear Talk |
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Many photographers hanker after the Hollywood film noir look so epitomised in films dripping with double-crossing minxes, men in large hats with murderous intent and damsels, not so much in distress, but who could cause a lot of upheaval with one sultry look. Think Gilda with Rita Hayworth, the Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall, Casablanca with the smouldering Ingrid Bergman, Raymond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake… you get the picture.
Fast forward more than 60 years and that style of photography is still popular. Well, how do you get that classic high-contrast look with modern digital dslrs? That was the question the Portrait Group was faced with in January. The answer was to get a couple of Fresnel lights and take a leaf out of George Hurrell’s book.
Fresnel was the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel who designed a type of lens for lighthouses. He was not a photographer but Hollywood soon grasped the creative possibilities of Fresnel’s invention and ran with it to create the wonderfully atmospheric light we know and love.
We were using Fresnels made by Ari, a key light of 2000w and a fill of half that output. The characteristic of a Fresnel light is that of a smooth, shadowy image that produces dramatic shadow edges. The main difference with Fresnel-style lighting equipment is that, unlike normal studio flash, they are a continuous light source and therefore get very hot during a session. You often see these types of lights referred to as hot lights. It produces clean shadows, strong directional light and smooth skin tones, as can be seen on the model, Katherine. Those smooth skin tones are achieved because the lights are frosted and gridded, which allows them to act as a diffuser.
What it produces is a magical quality of light that is not possible from studio flash, a light that is hard and soft at the same time: the shadow sharpness and light hardness can be varied by altering the focusing lamp position relative to the lens, which can be easily adjusted from the housing.
Why not use a honeycomb grid? Simply because the quality of light is not as good. We were shooting at 100iso with a shallow depth-of-field from f/2 to f/4.0. We also moved the key and fill light around the studio to create the shadows we wanted.
Next month we will be looking at how to take studio portraits with f stops wider than f4.
As always, I welcome your comments.
Richard Liston LMPA
www.richardliston.com
Image by Richard Liston
Image by Richard Liston
