Fatherhood Friday 24: Yay For Not Being Sick
Here goes some pics from when I was setting up lights to shoot the Calvin and Hobbes Challenge (Pic Here just incase you missed it) Not perfect lighting since it was setup for someone my height and not two small people sitting on the floor 🙂
Emily and Sam had just got out of the bath and were getting ready to go to bed… Probably the best time to get shots of them without snot and food smeared around their faces.
Its been a pretty hectic week but have managed to get through (so far). Em had Monday off crèche due to vomiting during the night on Sunday which unfortunately ment I didn’t get to go on me and Samantha’s usual “street shooting with cute kid in backpack” foray.
All in all everyone seems to be recovering from their various colds and coughs and we have had to sunny days in a row so hopefully spring is here in force.
Daylight savings starts this Sunday so that should be a fun exercise although it should mean that Sam will sleep in for an extra hour which will be nice 🙂
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200. 2x Electra Compact 400 W Studio Lights. 1 with Softbox Umbrella and 1 with only Reflector.
New Oakleys
I managed to lose my Sunglasses a number of weeks ago and since they were worth a bit (left over from when I had money and no kids) decided to claim them on insurance.
Yay they finally came… Good old Oakley X-Metal Juliets.
Thought Id better do a pic before they got all scratchafied.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200. 2 x Electra 500w Compact Studio lights shooting into white reflect umbrellas. f29 @ 1/640th sec (even though its only supposed to sync up to 1/500th)
Darkroom Printing Session
Managed to get in a darkroom printing session this week so of course I had to get a photo of it 🙂
This is the City Council public darkroom and at $5 NZ per hour is a pretty good setup with everything you need except chemicals and paper (there a both of those there to use but are other people’s cast offs so wasnt too keen to use them)
I spent the first couple of hours thinking my paper was dud since I couldn’t get any contrast even with using a whole heap of magenta filter and then discovered that the filters had been disengaged on a switch on the side of the enlarger and once this was discovered things went a lot more smoothly… A trick to remember for next time.
It’s nice to know that I can still be a Dumbass sometimes 🙂
Nikon F5, Tokina 19-35mm Lens, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film.
How it was Done 2
Here goes another “How it was Done” Post
This is the setup for the image that I use for the header of my page. I took this middle of last year and hopefully it again shows how you can get good results without much of a studio or too much equipment.
Equipment Used: Portable Backdrop Kit x 1, 500W Electra Compact Flash with barn doors x 1, Superclamp x 1, Nikon SB80DX Speedlite x 1, Nikon D70s with 18-70mm Lens x 1, Remote shutter release x 1, Tripod x 1.
Shot 1: This is my lounge complete couches, bookcases and even folded washing stacked randomly around. I did move one couch so I had enough room to set up the portable backdrop kit across the room so i could hang the studio light off it pointing directly down and then used the barn doors to create a circle of light on the floor.
With shots like this I usually use something like a chair to act as a reference for focusing the camera.
Lens at 28mm f3.5 at 1/8 second without flash going off.
Shot 2: Same shot as before but with the camera lens shut down to f18 and at 1/125th of a second. Using a reasonably fast shutter speed with studio or speedlites means that anything not in the direct light will be much darker. Even though you can see some of the surrounding things in the room these will be easy to remove in Photoshop later.
Shot 3:
Enter the model (me). Using the remote shutter control with the camera set to 2 second delay I fired off a couple of shots to see how the lighting looked. I was pretty unhappy with the result since it left no light in the face when I had the hood up. Apart from this the general feel of the spotlight effect was pretty good.
Shot 4: I added a speedlite to the shot which was set off by the main strobe and set it to half power. This fixed the problem with their being no light on the face while still maintaining the spotlight effect.
Shot 5: After checking the lighting on my computer I decided it was “Go Time”. Since this was a dark and dramatic lighting situation I tried to put as much tension into the pose as possible (the way the shoulders are held and the was the hands are clasped). The remote is palmed in my left hand so you cant see it and the speedlite held in place by my feet and legs. It wasnt the most comfortable pose that’s for sure, with any movement making the speedlite move and have to be repositioned.
This shot was the best of the ones I took. All up with the test shots I took around 140 images.
Shot 6: Ok I now have the image I want so its off to process in Lightroom.
Corrections Made: Sharpening, Noise Reduction, Vignette (to remove more of the background), Desaturation and Black Clipping (again mostly to remove the background).
As you can see this still isn’t perfect, especially with the light stand in the right of the frame.
Shot 7: Final Image.
From Lightroom into Photoshop to remove the last few bits of background and generally tidy things up and then a quick crop and Done!
Final Image Nikon D70s with 18-70mm lens. f18 at 1/125 second
Enjoy
How it was Done
After good feedback from the last post about how it was done, here goes details about how the shots I put up yesterday were captured:
Hopefully this shows that you dont need lots of fancy equipment and a studio to get reasonable images.
Equipment Used: 1 x 10 metre power cable, 1 x multi plug box, 2 x light stands, 2 x 500W Studio lights with 150W modelling lamps, 1x softbox umbrella, 1 x barn doors, 1 x tripod, 1 x Nikon D70s with 18-70mm Lens, 1 x 1GB CF card and 1 x Nikon ML3 wireless camera remote. This effect would be easy to replicate using a couple of house lamps in a dark room with a bit of ingenuity.
Shot 1: Overview of the garage that was turned into a studio. Had to run 10 metre power cable from the house to run the lights.
Shot 2: Set the light with the barn doors pointing at the back wall to control the amount of light that was falling on the wall and the light with the umbrella about 2 metres away from the back wall pointing across the shot to avoid shadows falling on the back wall and creating a heavy side lighting effect. Both lights were set to full power but the strobes were turned off.
Shot 3: First test shot with camera set at f3.8 at 1/125 sec 800 ISO this was with the garage door open which let in more light than I wanted as well as the bluish colour cast at the bottom of the image. I also didn’t like the shadow in the upper right of the frame and so adjusted the barn doors to take this out.
Shot 4: After closing the garage door and setting the camera focus to about 1.5 metres as well as adjusting the camera to f5.6 at 1/60th second I took the first shot with me in it. With self portraits its always difficult to pinpoint where you are supposed to stand, most of the time it’s just trial and error… I sometimes put a light stand in the shot to get the centre and to use as a reference for focus… This time I just guessed and was off centre which I liked anyway. After looking at this shot on a computer I liked the way the light on the wall darkened at the right and the light on me darkened on the left. I knew there would be enough information to make it easy to add more drama in Lightroom and Photoshop.
Shot 5: Props and Action! Yes I did give myself a Mohawk for the day just for the heck of it (its gone now) This is shot no. 23 Unprocessed straight off the camera in Raw. I have to say its the weirdest feeling using studio lights and setting off the camera with none of the usual loud popping noise that accompanies strobes going off.
Shot 6: Final Rendition. Image has been recropped and Lighroom adjustments have been made to make it darker and more dramatic (Direct Positive, Vignette and Exposure decrease). I have a tendency to make stuff darker rather than lighter since that seems to be my base aesthetic.
If people keep showing a continued interest in this type of post then I will try and make it a more ongoing subject of this blog.
Let me know.
Si
Goggles?
Ok this is what happens when I get in the proper headspace for photography and then a couple of friends happen to come along.
I had been thinking of using my garage as a studio (albeit a small one) but had always had problems with doing it because my 500W studio lights only have half and full power so getting them powered down enough to use in a small space is kinda problematic.
The workaround for this was just using the modelling lights and bumping up the ISO to round 800 (which using a D70s means noise galore). I kept the white balance on the camera set to Daylight to get the golden light which fitted this shoot.
Yes its a Self Portrait
A very Angry Frog
Red Kris
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 800 f5.6 at 1/60th Second. Lighting from Modelling lights of Electra 500W Compact Lights… Last image has red gel over background light.
Darkhalide Photography 
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