How To Setup Flexible Portrait Lighting

Hi all,

I wanted to do a favor for those of you who cannot understand my strange, German-accent English. So I transcribed the video into strange, German accent written English:

Hey, photography friend, how is it going? I am Michael Zelbel. I am still here in Beijing. It is my last day. Tomorrow I am going to fly back to Germany, but today, I still have one spontaneous shooting with a new model, Amelia. She just signed up for the model forum, like, three days ago. I thought she got a wonderful face for a couple of portraits and that’s what we are going to shoot today, some crazy portraits. It will be very interesting, so keep on watching.

This lighting setup will be all about flexibility. I did not really plan the shooting. I know I just want to do a simple portrait, but there are so many variations. I don’t know the model. I don’t know whether her face is better from this side, from that side, which means should I have my main light coming from the right or from the left. I don’t know whether it is better to have her long beautiful black hair open, and probably place it in front of a black background or whether we should tie it up and place her in front of a bright white background. We will try out. I will try out and learn. And for that I need a really really flexible setup. And this is what I am going to do. I will, uh, I will use two speed lights as my main light sources. This is Speed Light A and I will have it sitting over here and have the speed light a bit higher coming from this side, like this. Just above the table, 45 degree angles, Speed Light A. Same on the other side, Speed Light B. Now the good thing with those two speed lights now is I can control from the camera, and from the on-camera flash, I can control which one of those is my main light. I just have to dial one control and say the ratio is now 2-to-1, so 2 times the light from here, 1 time the light from there. Then when I tell her to turn her nose toward this side, I just dial, uh, dial it and I have 2 times the light from here and just 1 time the fill-in light, from over there. So, it’s just one second to change the position of my main light. I would shoot from over there, to over here. I need a fill-in from below. And for that, I just put a simple white towel ontop of the table. It will reflect a decent amount of light. Here we are. Beauty light from all the sides, nothing can go wrong. ETTL, as I said – even I can’t mess it up. Good, now the background. Uh, over here, I have got windows. Uh, I can let down the curtains. Then it is, ah, pretty much bright background, creamy bright one, which would need some more light to peer white, or I want to have black. Black is very simple, I’ve got my big reflector, I’m just, uh, put it over here. I just put it over here, lean it against a chair, if I shoot from there, then, now I have got a black background. She has got black hair and probably I would have her wear a black hat. Then I would need some head light. And for that, I would use this, another little speed light. Will hang it under the ceiling, zoom it to, uh, to 105mm. So it is, uh, emitting a very directed beam of light. We will hang it this way around, right over here. So we just hit her head over here. In case I want to have the bright background, I just have to remove this reflector, turn this speed light around. Pull out the build-in diffuser, so it zooms out to 14 mm. Now it is emitting a very broad cone of light to the whole wall, to the whole window wall over there. If I now shoot her against the light, then this will be brightened by this speed light. It’s set to group C, so I can control it again from the camera. To brighten up the wall, I would probably dial it to +1 over-expose the wall by one f-stop. To have deliniation in the hair, I would set it to -3 to have just a little bit of light over here. And uh, it is just a matter of two seconds to change the setup.

Okay, that’s it. Now we can try out a lot of things within a few minutes. Let’s do so.

[Photoshoot here]

There you have it, just a little portrait shooting, but with quite some variations. Uh, and the speed lights, especially the ETTL element of the speed lights, it was quite helpful. It makes it a whole lot faster. So, I hope you enjoyed it. And uh, I hope you have fun with your shoots, and I hope to see you soon. Until then, I wish you good light. Bye-bye.
 

Hey Michael,

I love following the pictures online, of course I am always open for new tips on my pics. I am looking at taking pictures of models in the near future for my own interest. Next time you are around in DE (you know what city) let me know I would like to meet up and pick your brain ;)

Talk soon,
Stuart

Hi Michael... Firstly thank you! for the wealth of information on your website and in YouTube, I have just finished watching all your videos.

Secondly do you have a forum on your website?

And finally, I am becoming a strobist and shoot with a Canon 20D. My flash is a 420ex. I plan to buy an ST-E3 and another 420 or 430ex. I can't afford the new Odin system. Is this a good move towards getting into speedlight photography? The ST-E3 appears to offer the functionality I need from off-camera flash including ratios although the 420ex flash is an automatic only option (no manual zoom or power settings)

Many thanks once again...

Goose

Hi,

I am trying to use one shoot thru umbrella. But I am not sure why seems like I am getting hot spots...
Like in this pic..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14783330@N02/6230702422/in/photostream
The cheek seems too hot...
Is my umbrellat to far/ or close ? or I need fill in ?

Thank you

PS. I really enjoy your videos and your simple style.