Skin vs. latex, or the forgotten concept of 5 lighting zones
I feel like people who have a fetish should celebrate that and enjoy it and yes, my heart is wide open for all forms of playfulness [dramatic pause]... But when those rubber fetish guys told me that latex is like a 2nd skin, I thought, boy, they obviously have no clue what they are talking about. I mean looking at it from a photographic point of view, they compare a pretty matte, dim and complex textured thing like “skin”, with a really shiny and completely untextured surface like “latex”.
Photographically, if I am shooting light at them, those two have pretty much nothing in common!
Maybe I missed the point of their comparison. But for my fellow photographers I want to make clear, that those two surfaces react completely different to light. Once you know the differences and once you can control your light source so that you can amplify or remove the differences, you enter a whole new ballgame of lighting. You are really mastering light. For instance: You can now use your knowledge to make rubber looking even more like rubber than it does in reality. Just care that the specular highlights are bright and have sharp edges - for instance.
Does not make sense to you? Then watch the video:
Some photos from this photo shoot
Model: Notorious Estrella
Styling: Emily
I wish you good light!
-- Michael
I'm loving it when you fry my brain! Don't worry!
Hahaha, OK, I will take your word, cousin Danielle
its odd that when you put both surfaces and compare the quality of light one starts to actually notice the highlights and shadows everywhere. Sometimes we forget the basic things.
Thanks for posting this!
Cousin Juan, thank you for putting it into practise and training your photographic eyes
Hey cousin Michael,
Another silly question maybe: In the end of this movie I saw ur settings from your camera. It occured to me you are using the Large Jpeg setting to shoot your pictures in. Is there a reason why you are not using RAW format CR2?
Greetz,
Anton
The Netherlands
Anton, the question is excellent - not silly at all. Yes, I am shooting JPG only. With my sort of photography RAW does not offer the slightest advantage, but a whole lot of disadvantages. I tested a few usecases with RAW vs. JPG. No use for RAW. When recording a photo, the extra resolution offered by RAW makes no difference. But there is a trap: As soon as I apply filters and curves to a photo, I will absolutely go to into 16 bit mode, because when shifting tonalities, then the extra bits make a huge difference. It's the difference between chopped gradients and smooth gradients. So a PSD file on my machine is usually 16 bit, while the JPG which is the basis of the PSD file can happily live with 8 bit.
Hi Michael, first of all my compliments and thanks for helping me with your tutorials..
I know that this is not the right place but I don't know where to write. I have a Iphone4 and I subscribed to your podcasts so that I can see them everywhere. Unfortunately, I can not sync the last 10 in my Iphone. I'm able to sync podcasts since number 23 but not the others. I've downloaded in itunes but they doesn't appear in the Iphone? Do you know if I'm the only one who have this problem?
Thanks in advance
Compliments
Nick
Thanks a lot for making me aware of this. I have not heared about it yet, but may be I messed up the technology somehow. I am using blip.tv as the provider for the podcast and I think usually blip.tv is pretty reliable.
I'll have a look into the issue as soon as I got a few minuts.
I studied the problem of podcasts. IPhone can download only the episodes of 2010, none of those of 2011. Please check if the provider who manages your podcast has changed some parameters in those of 2011 compared to last year.
Thanks
Nick
Awesome! Currently I am trying out an alternative encoding with the latest video, the one about the fireplace shoot. Later today I will try out downloading that episode via itunes to my iphone. Let's see if that change fixes the issue. If so, I'd reapply it to the other 2011 episodes.
Hi cousin Michael.. great work, podcast 35 (fireplace) e 36 (photo idea) perfect dowloaded..
Thanks a lot..
Nicola
Hello Michael,
This is really an ejoyable tutorial. Your video explains the five zones of light reflecting off an object very well. I have to admit that the subject is also really, really easy on the eyes.
Occasionally I get the "deer in the flash-light-look" from fellow photographers when asking me: "What do you mean by shadow edger transfer" - and now I have a place where I can point them to get an answer!
Einfach klasse erklärt!
By they way, I it would have been really cool to show the different effects and quality of light between a white shoot through umbrella and a silver bounce umbrealla, but may be that is something you will cover in a future video.
Hi Christoph, to be perfectly honest: I never use bounce umbrellas. I mean, not that they are not good for something - they are. And I did use them in the past. But since 95% of the time the shoot throughs are better for my kind of photography, I somehow forgot that in 5% of the cases the bounce umbrellas would do the trick beautifully.
Here's what I do instead of using reflective umbrellas:
If I need to shield the camera against stray light I put a big reflector (bookend) between shoot through umbrella and camera.
If I want the light to be a touch harder, I simply move the shoot through umbrella a a two feet further away from the subject.
i really love your photos.nice shot cousin michael. what is your white balance settings for studio portraits?
Hi cousin Gene!
In this case I used 5900K or "Flash". This setting "Flash" USUALLY adjusts the WB to the state of the batteries of the flash sitting in the hotshow. The color of the flashlight changes a bit when the batteries get lower on power - however, in this case the hotshoe flash is set to "no flash", so this automatic is not kicking in.
On other occasions I also like to use 5200K or "sunlight" as my WB setting. That is a bit warmer.
How can I send you a photo I would like to emulate? pray tell.
Hi cousin! Just post a link to the photo over here. I read my comments. I will see it.
Hi cousin! Just post a link to the photo over here. I read my comments. I will see it.
Wow, Michael. I came across your videos today and was blown away what you can do with a few speed lights in a very tight space. I am a studio photographer and know my strobes very well BUT as you said in one of your videos if you don't make it [taken a photo] happen at the moment you are asked it may never happen...The other part is I feel that I am a slave to my studio set up because,of course, it is not possible for me to drag my "big guns" everywhere I go so I took a leap and bought one of the Quantum Trios flashes and currently studying how to use it which led me to research which lead me to your videos. I find speed lights a bit challenging. So I am very exited to have found your videos. Now, my question: all of the images are very nicely finished! I am very curious to see the before post production shots. Is it possible? Also, your video about sandwiched light is nothing less than outstanding. I love all the photos from that shoot and was wondering about post production as well. I want to try a light set up like that for a pregnancy shoot next week. I know it is a loaded question but it would be extremely helpful if you could share some of your workflow. Thank you, Olga
Hi cousin Olga, most models do not want their unphotoshopped images to be posted online. I respect that. However, my wife Emily usually is fine with posting her raw photos. So we posted examples for instance when blogging the photo shoot at the fireplace. I also did not photoshop the images of the wedding photo shoot that I did with a speedlight.
I'll try to post some more unreworked photos in the future - just need to convince my models that they are looking great without photoshop :-)
Michael, thank you for all the free lessons in this website, there awsome! I fell so lucky discovering your website, thers's a lot of things to know about lighting and photography. Thanks once again sir for sharing your precious knowledge.
Thanks a lot for your compliment, cousin Leon!
HHIS I souhld have thought of that!
Hi! I've much enjoyed most of your posts, but on this one I think you've got it totally wrong.
That's because you chose to illustrate the 3-dimensional contrast concepts on a black, shiny surface. The diffused value of a black surface is black, which makes it a particular case. On such a surface's image you don't have a distinct shadow, nor a distinct shadow edge transfer area. You only have distinct specular reflections and specular to diffused edge transfer areas. Please revisit Dean Collins' explanation on those concepts - for instance, the knife image he's shown analysing in the Live at Brooks video. The black parts, he says, are not shadows, they're the actual diffused value. What looks like a shadow edge transfer is actually a specular edge transfer, and so on. In your example, on the black Latex you can only see speculars, specular edge transfer areas and the black diffused reflection. You can easily point to shadows, shadow edge transfer areas and diffused reflections on the model's skin instead. Just my 2p. Oh, did I mention I really like your videos?
Cuki
Cuki, thanks a a lot for your excellent remark! I see that you are really ontop of this topic. Awesome!
I still would not agree with you (and Collins, with all due respect) that the diffused value of black is black. But I perfectly understand that you could define it that way in case you argue, that the light reflected by the studio walls would actually cause specular highlights. But then again, if even the studio walls lead to specular highlights, then where would any light for the diffused area ever come from?
However, I think you are perfectly correct that black latex is not a perfect example. Once I see another subject that might serve as a better example, I'll most probably record the explanation again.