This was a quick demo of overpowering the ambient light. I held a regular Lumedyne reflector at 400ws as close as I could and stay out of the picture. We dropped he ISO to 100 and cranked up the shutterspeed and aperture to cut the ambient light. I included some of the exif data below.

Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D
Camera serial number: 0820501629
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.1.0
Date/Time: 2008:07:10 13:23:52
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 18
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Single frame shooting
ISO: 100
Lens: EF17-40mm f/4L USM
Focal length: 28mm
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image size: 2912 x 4368
Rotation: 90 degrees CCW
Image quality: Fine
White balance: Auto
Picture style: Standard
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: 3
Contrast: Normal
Sharpness level: 3
Tone: Normal

When we meter the Background and the Hair light we must first establish the light on the subject with an incident meter, as that is our control point.

Metering the Background must be done with a reflective meter aimed at the spot on the background where you want to place the value. An incident meter really does not work for this process as it does not know how dark the background is. A spot meter is very handy as you can meter from camera and carefully meter the exact spot on the background that you want to control.

Just by changing the power on you background light you can change the value of the the background. A reflective reading in the diagram above would give a nice middle value. If it read F/8 it would be a stop darker than middle gray. If you crank up the power on your BG light you could make a dark gray background turn bright white.

Metering for the hair light is done with an incident meter at the hair. If the hair light exposure is adjusted to equal the subject lighting the hail will be rendered in full detail. Dark hair can take more light and blonds may need less!!

Here is the method to create a lighting ratio using an incident meter.

1. Meter the fill alone and adjust the reading to an even f/stop for easy calculations. Now don’t adjust the fill!!
2. Meter the main plus fill and adjust the power to achieve the difference of fill alone to main plus fill. to create the desired ratio referring to the chart below.
3. If the fill alone reads f/8 and the main plus fill reads f/14 (11 2/3) you have a 3:1 ratio!

High key is always a favorite for all kinds of photography. Portrait, editorial, advertising photographers find use for a bright white background. To do this correctly, and achieve a clean bright evenly lit background and a clear saturated rendering of the the subject we must set up our lighting and meter carefully.

Here are a few tips:

1. Arrange your lighting in zones so you have separate lighting for the subject and background. Use some depth in your setup so the background lighting does not get on your subject. Black foamcore is a useful gobo to block the background treatment from getting on the subject.
2. Light your background with matching lights and equal power from both sides. Use umbrellas or softbox to ensure an even illumination from the top to the bottom.
3. Light your subject with your choice of main light. You can successfully light a HK with the full range of lighting devices from a grid spot to a large softbox, the choice is yours. When we light a white background to a hot white it will bounce alot of light around the room, acting like a fill light for our setup. Often we can make satisfying results with out using a fill light or a reflector.
4. Take an incident light reading at the subject a make note of that reading. The adjust the power on the background to measure with an incident meter reading of plus 1 stop over the subject. For example subject reading is f/8 then the background should read f/11.
5. The ratio of subject to background is very important …. if the background is under lit it will be dull and gray …… if the background is over lit it will cause flare and degrade your image.
6. Kigh Key is a high flare situation so make sure your lens is clean and use a lens shade.

STROBIST

Read all the items in the Lighting 101 section.

BluDomain

Blu is the big daddy of this business, they launch hundreds of sites every month.

We have 3 Blu sites that we use at SchmidtPhoto.com. Our current template is the GEORGE. It features large photos, but we found that they were too large for many home computers. We are in the process of putting our new galleries up with a textured background to make the large display work for us.

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Four shot panorama shot on a 5d with a 24-70mm mounted on a homemade panorama bracket.  These shots where exposed on a summer morning in downtown Chicago.  Click on the photo to see a larger file.

I was impressed with the efforts of my students last semester and I wanted to share a few pics that stood out.

The first photographer is Drew Woolery, these shots where done in the Creative Class. He has captured a set of portraits of the locals that is quite telling and impressive.

Sarah Gaughan combined a great shoot with creative use of lightroom presets. These shots were done for an assignment in Advanced Portrait.

Tara M Schlotzhauer made these Psychological Drama images in the Creative Class.

Layton Powel did some interesting work this semester… Here is what he says about these shots: “Having recently watched Sweeny Todd and being influenced by painters within the photoshop community I came up with the idea to mix HDR with a bit of photoshop painting. Here are a few of my attempts at the such.”

I have been shooting panoramas lately and stitching the multiple shot together with Panorama Factory. I bought this software several years back when I was shooting with a Nikon Cool-pix 990. I was pretty satisfied with that combination at the time. More recently I have been shooting a Canon 5d with a homemade panorama bracket that I fashioned out of angle aluminum and an upside down ball head. The combination of great Canon optics and the large pixel count of the 5d have got me excited about shooting panos again. Last week I shot a pano that was a stitching challenge, I set up the camera and pointed a 50mm lens into the woods at Knob Knoster State Park. In this early spring view there was a vast amount of fine detail as I captured every twig in fine detail. This set of files creates quite a problem for the stitching software. The first set I processed with Panorama Factory software had several errors. If you click the picture below it will enlarge this screen grab of two files opened in photo shop.

The left is the Panorama Factory and the right is the PTgui stitching software. With close examination of this 150mb file, the PTgui was amazing.

This another PT stitching from Las Vegas!! Click the picture twice to enlarge.

PTgui has a window where you can see the control points it is using to do the alignment, points can be changed and added.

Here is another screen grab from the interface….

Here is a finished PTgui stitched pano click it!!!

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