Sian: First, let’s build that studio. Now with this set up, we use heads at the back to light the paper evenly then, two at the front to light our model. See, there you go, it’s that simple. Okay then Paul, so what have we got here?
Paul: Okay, well this time we’ve got slightly more of a budget, we’ve got big backdraft, a big white backdraft and stand, and to light that we’ve got studio lights here with soft boxes on, and what you need to remember to do is balance these so that they’re the same light level so that we get an even lighting background.
Sian: Right.
Paul: And, and that’s it really.
Sian: So what’s next?
Paul: Okay, now we need Amy to come on, come on Amy, do you wanna, do you wanna come on. If you, if you stand about here, we’re gonna stand her just slightly forward of the lights and probably about 6 foot away from the background so that we don’t get too much light spill on to her shoulder or the side of her head.
Sian: So how are you light in the front?
Paul: Okay, so from the front, we’ve got two studio lights and we’re using diffusers, in this case we’re using shoot through umbrellas, you could use silver umbrella the other way, or you could use more soft box, whatever you want really. Or there’s various other things like honey combs and snoots, just different ways in manipulating the light.
Sian: Yeah.
Paul: But, this top lighting is gonna give us a very soft even lighting, and she’s gonna be quite flattering.
Sian: And I notice not many wires around. So how you gonna control these lights?
Paul: Right, yeah, I mention that earlier, we’re using a thing called a radio trigger.
Sian: Oh yes.
Paul: And basically it’s a little device, there’s a lot of different, different models in the market, but the good thing about this is you can trigger the lights without having wires to trip over and things like that.
Sian: And that just attaches to the camera, does it?
Paul: Yeah, this attaches to the top of the camera, on to your hot shoot.
Sian: Yeah.
Paul: And it’s triggering off again. Okay. And then obviously, obviously when you take the shot, you will send a signal to this unit here.
Sian: Yup.
Paul: And then all the other flashes are on slave flashes, so as soon as this triggers off all four will be flashes off as well.
Sian: Wow. Okay, so with all these different lights, how are you gonna balance the lighting?
Paul: Okay, well what we could do is use a light meter again, like we used upstairs in the window, and we basically use the light meter on the back, with meter for the back and then make sure we got a different stop on the front, so that it over exposes. However, I’m gonna use just the camera this time to show just how simply it is to get exactly the same effect without using a light meter.
Sian: Okay.
Paul: So let’s try and take some shots, shall we.
Sian: Okay, I’ll get out of the way.
Paul: Okay. Okay, so I’m gonna start off at about F10, F11, just to see how the, how the shots are coming out. So Amy if you give me a pose, okay and ready, one, two, three. Okay, that’s great, that’s great pose. It’s coming out a little bit too darker, coming out little bit too dark. So what I’m gonna do, like I said, I gonna adjust the F stop a little bit open, probably try F8 this time and see how that’s coming out. Okay, ready and one, two, three. Okay, that’s coming out much better, that’s actually perfect. And what we can do now, if I just show you that.
Sian: Oh yeah.
Paul: The shot before was, see, that was the, that was the darker shot that we did before. And then we get a lighter one there.
Sian: Oh yeah, much lighter.
Paul: Where we’ve change the F stop. Now I could adjust the shadows by taking down the keylight to get more shadows, or I could increase if I wanna fill in and get more light in. What we can also do is move the light to the side, if we want the shadows coming in a different place, you know, we can literally move the light around.
Sian: Yeah.
Paul: It’s virtually unlimited the effects that you can get with this set up. It’s fantastic really, if we wanted to get more of a gray background, we could always turn the backlights off, but that’s going into a different kind of lighting at all. Its’ not using the high key. So let’s try a couple of more shots, and we’ll, I’ll gonna try full length on now, so. Ready one, two, three. That’s brilliant. Do you wanna come in and have a look at a couple of this. Okay, so that’s what we’re getting, and that’s the full length. You can see the lighting is much better.
Sian: Yeah.
Paul: Now that we balanced it all out. Its’ looking great.
Sian: Okay, so there’s three great techniques for you to try at home or with your friends or at your camera club. Now did you guess correctly on the photographs? Shot A was done using the window, shot B was done with the two light set up, and shot C, well, you’ve just seen it.