[Rainer.]

Originally Posted by Guitar4God

Didn't want to start a thread with this so please allow me to ask here:

I learnt this at the workshop yesterday, thought I remembered what I saw but could not duplicate it when I got home:
(a) Can you please tell me how to Mass (Masque, Mast) / blend a picture into a background with same edging colour - MS PowerPoint or other graphic tools.

I looked up the web but what I saw was to download a Mass Software:
(b) is this the solution - was avoiding downloading

Thanks much

Not sure what you're talking about exactly... link to the software you were looking at?

[ApparentlyNothing]

I think he means masking, though I'm not sure what PowerPoint has anything to fo with it.

It's quite simple in Photoshop. On the layers panel, add a mask, then paint on it with black to hide, white to show.

[RipVanWinkle]

Jon (or both of you Jon's), what do you use to make your darkroom style borders. (Man...I really loved and miss my high school film photography class...8 years fly by quick)

[guitarguy90]

[Guitar4God]

Originally Posted by ApparentlyNothing

I think he means masking, though I'm not sure what PowerPoint has anything to fo with it.

It's quite simple in Photoshop. On the layers panel, add a mask, then paint on it with black to hide, white to show.

Thanks for your help, this is it.

Edit: I need to correct that. Here is what happened:
The instructor added a photo of a person to MS PowerPoint and the background was plain, dark brown. She pointed on the edge of the photo to get the dropper colour, then filled the entire with the colour. As a result, the edges of the photo blended.

I tried but could not get this done although I was sure those were the steps taken. And I am pretty sure she used PowerPoint, but I could be wrong. So you are saying the above description cannot be done in ppt, that maybe she was using an edition software?

[Rainer.]

Oh, I know that. It only really works if the backdrop of the image is one single color. Even if there are slight variations in the color, it won't work. PowerPoint is not very good at that sort of thing.

[ApparentlyNothing]

Originally Posted by guitarguy90

Alright, so I can post my advice here now.

First of all, I'm far from an expert at lighting. I know some people who are absolute geniuses at it., using multiple strobes to create this incredibly dynamic scenes. I think I'm fairly adept at a simple 1 or 2 strobe setup though. But all that I know is from the small amount I've seen them in action and from my own experience. So take any advice I give with a grain of salt and just try it out yourself.

First of all, do you have a light meter? If not, it can really help with getting a good exposure and can be imperative once you start using multiple strobes. Since you're only using one, you can get away with just "chimping" if you'd like, which is what I usually do. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it essentially means taking a photo, looking at it on the LCD screen and looking at the histogram, then adjusting accordingly to what the photo needs.

This photo is underexposed. You should have either increased the power on the strobe or opened up your aperture more. You can tell just by looking at her skin, but the confirmation you could see while shooting is looking at the histogram. Open it up in your photo editor and check it out. It's not so much the large spike in the blacks, since that's explained by the black background. What gives it away is that there's barely any info over near the whites. Move the white slider up to about 202, and you can already tell a huge difference. Levels helps fix this in post processing, but you could've gotten it right in camera from the start, which can be so crucial sometimes to get the best quality out of your digital files.

Generally, the way I've seen it done by the photographers I've worked with tends to be a balancing of strobe power with the desired aperture. In a studio setting like what you've got, what aperture you shoot at is pretty unimportant, so long as you get the depth of field you're looking for. In a studio, f8.0 isn't a bad place to start. Then it's a matter of increasing or decreasing the power on your strobe till you get correct exposure on your subject at the aperture you want. Shutter speed is also pretty unimportant so long as it remains within your sync speed, since the strobe will freeze any action anyways (so long as there's little ambient light). A light meter helps by measuring how much light your strobe is putting out and translating it into an f stop. Meter the strobe, and adjust the power till it hits near the aperture you're shooting at. (side note: shooting on location can be different since you can add ambient light into the mix, but it's essentially the same. I can go into some of the differences later if you'd like)

Ok, so that covered getting the correct exposure and strobe power. But another problem with your photo is the position of the strobe. It's way too far camera left. It makes the lighting way too dramatic for a shot like that. I'm not saying, "Never have the strobe that far off camera." I'm just saying that for a shot like that, it doesn't fit the style. It casts way too much shadow on the right side of her face, particularly on her left eye. A solution would have been to have her turn her face more towards the light, so that her face was still lit by the strobe, but you had the dramatic lighting and shadows still there. It would have added a different feel for her to be looking off camera, maybe with a much more subtle smile, or perhaps even with a more contemplative, morose look. Either way, lighting translates to feel and emotion. If your model doesn't fit within that, she will look out of place.

Now, if you weren't wanting that dramatic lighting or for her to be posed in a way that fit the dramatic lighting, what you would want to do is position the strobe closer to you. The easiest, best looking position for having a single strobe is slightly to the left or right and with the strobe position high above the camera, pointed down at the model. Now, in the other thread, you said that when you do that, it looks too "nasty and flat". Do you have any photos where you put the strobe more direct? Maybe your softbox isn't diffusing the light enough? Maybe you need a larger softbox?





These were both taken with 1 strobe (well, the first one had the backlight strobe, but that wasn't really used to light the subject at all). Notice the subtle shadows that tell you where the light is coming from. It's not straight on and boring like on camera flash, but it's not so dramatic that their faces are hidden in shadows. Subtly is often the key. I had a large lightbank for diffusing (maybe a meter diameter or so), so I'm sure that helped. But so long as your softbox isn't tiny, it should be able to do the job. Maybe not for a full band shot like the second one, but at least for a single headshot like the one you posted.

Let me know if you have any questions about anything I said.

[metropolis4]

I'm trying to learn to expose for flash and would appreciate some feedback on the lighting in these pictures. Unfortunately the only flash I have is a really really old one that says Cobra Auto 420 on it. I have to try to do everything manually so these are all trial and error for the exposure. (I wanna post a few of these so I'm gonna make them small). I know the composition isn't great (and they're pretty much all the same)...







I guess I should mention I used the flash mounted to the hot shoe on my camera, for the bottom one it was pointed into the wall behind me, for the rest it was aimed straight up. I think what I did for most of these was to underexpose about 2 stops and set a warm white balance. These are all straight out of camera

[RipVanWinkle]

They look decent. Composition wise, #4 is your strongest. I'd go for more exposure. #4 (to me) is you best exposure, but even this one could be exposed more. The White balance on these all look too warm to me. Keep slamming away at your shutter. The only way to get better is to keep shooting.

I'm constantly surprised at how many people don't bounce the flash much. Bounce flash (usually) = teh g00dness

[Rainer.]

Does your flash happen to have a scale on it that looks something like this?

[metropolis4]

That picture isn't coming up on my computer. Here's a couple quick pics of the flash I'm using. I don't know much about it... I found it in an old storage box in my father-in-laws basement:

[They look decent. Composition wise, #4 is your strongest. I'd go for more exposure. #4 (to me) is you best exposure, but even this one could be exposed more. The White balance on these all look too warm to me. Keep slamming away at your shutter. The only way to get better is to keep shooting.

Thanks for the feedback. I was afraid when looking at the LCD that I was overexposing when I went with any more exposure than this. Maybe I need to save all those though and look at them full size before scraping them. I'll try using a bit cooler white balance next time.
I'm trying to keep shooting, but it's getting more difficult to find someone who isn't annoyed with me for constantly sticking a camera in their face

[Rainer.]

Alright, so the way you want to use that is you want to move the flash head to the appropriate focal length, first dial to the ISO that you're using, then set the second dial to the appropriate focal length setting.

What you're going to do, then, is read the distance you are to the subject using your focus setting, find that on the bottom scale, then read up to the top scale for the recommended aperture value. If you're bouncing flash, your distance is going to be a bit more than 2x the distance from the ceiling/wall you're bouncing from.

At least, that's how those scales are supposed to be read... back in the day when all flashes had them on there.

[OiBoyz]

Originally Posted by RipVanWinkle

The White balance on these all look too warm to me.

I think the warmth works well with portraits.

[guitarguy90]

@ApparentlyNothing:



Dude, talk about lighting genius. . .Flickr: nickwheeleroz's Photostream
This guy is amazing. He's the reason I built the softbox in the first place.

No, I don't have a light meter. . .I was pretty much just chimping by adjusting the aperture/placement of the light. As far as exposure goes, I guess I've never paid much attention to the histogram (mostly because it slows down shooting way too much with my 6 year old Rebel), so I just check the resulting picture and go with what looks right to me. So yeah, I'll bear that in mind.

Before I go any further, my setup was my camera with a 580EX II bounced off the wall to her left, and an old Honeywell strobe in a softbox to her right. The whole setup is fairly limited, since the strobe (an old one that I just found out my Dad had from way back when) only has two power settings. The only way I had to adjust the lighting was to move it further back, or raise the power of the 580 to balance it out.

I don't have any of those pictures. . .I deleted them already. I'll give you an example when I get my 580EX back (I loaned it to a friend).

So yeah. It's very possible that the softbox isn't diffusing the light enough. It's fairly small (24x18), and I haven't settled on a good diffusing material yet (for those pictures I had two white plastic trash bags and a thin bedsheet draped over it - it's not a very professional looking setup )

[ApparentlyNothing]

Originally Posted by metropolis4

I'm trying to learn to expose for flash and would appreciate some feedback on the lighting in these pictures. Unfortunately the only flash I have is a really really old one that says Cobra Auto 420 on it. I have to try to do everything manually so these are all trial and error for the exposure. (I wanna post a few of these so I'm gonna make them small). I know the composition isn't great (and they're pretty much all the same)...


I guess I should mention I used the flash mounted to the hot shoe on my camera, for the bottom one it was pointed into the wall behind me, for the rest it was aimed straight up. I think what I did for most of these was to underexpose about 2 stops and set a warm white balance. These are all straight out of camera

I actually think exposure wise, 2, 3, and 5 are the best exposed.

They all need better white balance though. Not just in the yellows. Looks like it could use less magenta too, but that's just from eying it. I'd have to pull them into a photo editor and check RGB levels to be sure.