Low Key Studio Lighting

At last night's photo club, we had the studio lights set up against a black backdrop to try out some different low-key type lighting. We used two lights and a reflector and ended up with some nice contrast in the portraits.







And lastly, we removed the black backdrop to try a lighter background.


Here are a couple shots from Matthew's camera that he processed:

In this shot, we took away the back light for more shadows.

Rim Lighting

focal length: 55 mm
shutter speed: 1/125
aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 200
flash: single flash fired - camera left

Last week, we worked on using off-camera flash to create a rim of light and separate our subject from a dark background for a dramatic effect.

What do you think?

(The red on the background was caused by a reflection off of a red piece of paper I attached to the flash as a flag to prevent the light from spilling onto the bookcase behind it.)

WORKSHOP - Food Photography Using One Light

focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/4.0
ISO: 400
flash: not fired

Last night, at OAC Photo Club, inspired by Strobist's article about food photography, we decided to make a smaller version of the inside-out soft box (because we didn't have a big enough box) and try our hand at photographing food.

Here's our setup.


Instead of a strobe, we decided to try using a continuous light source, a lamp without the shade. One of us held it above the box so it would shine through the tissue paper acting as a diffuser. The tissue paper covered the opening at the top of the box.

The lamp wasn't bright enough to allow the white pieces of paper to reflect any light onto the red peppers and the pieces of paper may have been too far away to be effective, which I was ok with since I intended to keep one side in the shadows for more drama.

Here are a couple more photos using the same setup.


focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/3.2
ISO: 400
flash: not fired



focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/4.0
ISO: 400
flash: not fired

The box was super easy to make and the lighting is something everyone has at home already. It was so nice to be able to instantly see how the light would fall on the subject because we were using a continuous light source. Give it a try. I'd love to see your results.

Workshop - Product Photography & Creative Lighting

February 3rd, 2010

It was our 3rd meeting this year and we thought we'd do some more shooting. We hadn't brought out the flashes and lighting accessories in a while so for this workshop we set up two stations: product photography and creative lighting for portraits.

Thanks to all those you attended and shared your knowledge and gear. Remember to upload your photos to flickr. The tag will be "0203creativelights"

Here are just a few from the day.












Those are just a few that I shot while our members did a lot more shooting.

For more information about the OAC Photo Club, click the info link or email us at oac[at]dolcepics[dot]com.

Panning and Jump Shots

14th Meeting

News:
A couple of our members will be attending conferences and we'll look forward to seeing their shots.

Panning, Motion & Jump Shots
At our last meeting, we did some hands on experimentation with and without off-camera flash while trying our hand at panning. It was quite challenging but we had a lot of fun. Near the end of the session, we tried a few jump shots using two flashes (SB-800) off-camera. One to light the front of the subject and the other on a stand to try to get some rim light for separation from the background. Good times!

Here are a few shots I took last night.



Thanks to Keith for showing us the SU-4 feature on the SB-800's so that all our members were able to trigger the flashes using either Canon or Nikon bodies. Awesome!

Remember to submit your FLORA & FAUNA photos for the showcase next week!

Mini Workshop - On and Off Camera Flash

8th Meeting - Flash Workshop

News:

Abe, via Katherine, shared with us a nifty thing called the Gigapan process. It's a robotic camera mount that allows you to record gigpixel images. Check it out!

Barry talked a bit about the new Canon tilt shift lenses that came out recently. I found a video demo on it here. Very cool. And very expensive.

And some of the online stores I recommend are Vistek, Henry's, Camera Canada. Saneal and The Camera Store seems to have some of the best prices, but I haven't ever bought from them before myself.

Justin let us know that a local store Photo Expert has some really great prices.
Flash Workshop:

We went over the basics of flash photography and talked about some resources that are useful like studiolighting.net and Mark Wallace's video tutorials from Snap Factory (available also at studiolighting.net).

Then we spent an hour doing some experimenting and shooting with an external flash on the camera. Most members had not done a lot of flash photography before so we enjoyed the chance to try it out, tweak here and there and learn how the flash responds and what kind of results we can get with it.

I had two flashes with me (SB-800 and SB-600) and we quickly got a two flash off-camera setup going to try some shots in an otherwise dark space. We wish we had more time to experiment more but the workshop was really just to get us familiar with using the flash and seeing the results.

Speaking of which, here are a few shots I took that night.

View the set on our flickr stream if the photo browser below looks a little strange.



There is no meeting scheduled for next week. I'll keep you posted on the next mtg date by email.