Speedlights Top-Down Make For A Dramatic Beauty Light
One of the rather dramatic beauty lighting setups is the one where light comes soft but directed right from above the model. That’s the light which makes a colorful punk hairdo really glowing. However, in the video below I use it for a slightly different purpose: It throws dramatic light onto my model and at the same time it lets the rest of the dizzy hotelroom that we are shooting in sink into dark black shade. Ain’t that handy?
Like always I refrain from using a huge professional boom stand or anything. Speedlights, an Umbrella and a piece of twine are all we need.
See yourself: And here is the lighting diagram of the whole scene. Simple, isn’t it?
Some example photographs from this shoot. They show that the light from right above the model makes it easy to cover bodyparts with shade:
Models: Ajiao, Linxi and Sasha
Location: Hotelroom in Beijing
Photos: Michael Zelbel
Postproduction: Gina Hernandez
(cc) michael@zelbel.com, some rights reserved
Hard to get my thick German accent? Here's the transcript!
Hey fellow photographer! How's it going?
I'm Michael Zelbel.
In this video I will show you a very quick and easy
one-light lighting setup.
I'm using the setup in order to warm up my models before the shoot.
That's very useful especially if you are shooting nude photos,
and you need to get the model comfortable in front of your lens.
The model we are warming up today is Cousin Emily.
You might go like: "Hey come on, Cousin Emily is so
used to photographs. She is a real pro. You don't need to warm her up!"
But, that's wrong actually! I think it's a very good practice
to warm up your model.
If the model is not yet comfortable in front of your lens
and in front of your lights you will read that
in her body language and in her facial expressions.
That gives you results which you usually don't want to have.
So better warm her up and make a sort of artistic shooting
with a few little photos upfront.
Usually you don't have so much time and resources
ahead of your actual shoot that is why I think you should
go for a super simple one-light lighting setup.
Something which is bullet proof, which definitely
produces good results which the model will like,
which is very easy to light and which gives you the
ability to shoot her nude but which does not show anything.
This is what we are going to do.
We achieve that by covering the model with
a big piece of silk so she is hidden underneath the silk.
Let's have a look at the actual lighting setup.
We have a simple black backdrop which is made up
out of two black curtains.
Those curtains have a gap in the middle, right in the middle.
The model is placed in the middle and she is
pretty close to that black curtain, 1.50 meter away.
That's not so much distance.
She is covered with a big piece of white silk,
which is thin enough to let some light go through,
but thick enough to - under normal lighting conditions -
not show anything.
The one speedlight that we use is placed right in
the gap of this two backdrops.
It's in this case a speedlight with guide number 58.
It's dialed down to 1/16th of its power,
zoomed back to 24mm so it got a broad cone of light,
which makes sure the light goes everywhere in the silk,
no matter how the model is posing.
The camera is a little bit further away,
4 meters or 13 feet and it's on standard settings,
1/200s, f/11, ISO400 and daylight white balance.
That's already it. Not so much to setup.
But it's ideal for warming up your model, not only a shy model.
The model may or may not wear underwear,
that really makes no difference.
What makes a bit of difference is the hairdo.
If she is tying up her hair that really makes for some nice,
fancy shapes underneath the silk.
Some mistake that I made in this little shoot was
I had Cousin Emily wearing high heels and jewelry.
It's not such a big difference but on this silhuetted photos
it does not really match the emotion of the photos.
Wearing nothing would be much better.
Especially if you use a little trick:
You can, for instance, turn around the photos 180 degrees
and then it looks like a sort of cocoon.
If she is then inside this cocoon she looks like a
sort of embryo, actually an embryo with boobs,
but still something like an alien embryo.
And then high heels and jewelry, you know,
doesn't really match. But whatever. It's just for warming up. I don't care.
You can give your model permission to do all sorts of
wired poses underneath the silk, wired expressions.
That makes her free to later on also do wired poses.
That really warms her up.
It's ideal for that because she is so covered.
If you still say: "Michael, bullshit, you don't really
need to warm up your model so much!"
I would ask you to do ONE thing, because then
for sure you haven't done one thing:
Have somebody taking nude photos of yourself!
And I really mean that. Do it! Do it at least one time!
I don't blame you if you never did it, but now go
and ask a photography buddy to shoot some nude
photos of yourself.
Because this way you experience how exposed a nude
model feels in front of a lens.
Then you will know that even a seasoned pro of a model
feels quite exposed and it's a good idea to make her
comfortable and warm her up.
Alrighty! Enough for this week, now please click on the like button,
click on the plus one button, drop a comment,
and come back next Thursday!
I wish you good light!
Hey Michael,
you are really crazy (in a positive sense). I definately like your ideas an inspirations. Continue like this an success will be yours!
Cheers from Germany,
Jan-Marco
Hi Micheal
Did the speedlite 580 EX not influence the lighting from the camera point? Is there an option sync without emitting light?
This a good example of light weight gear on location shoot. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Inder,
Thank you so much for this excellent question.
> Did the speedlight 580 EX not influence
> the lighting from the camera point?
In fact, it did influence the lighting. With 1/128th of its power. And I made it so on purpose.
You know there are two schools of lighting such portraits: One is about maximizing contrast, the other is about preserving details.
On the one hand there are photographers, who let dark shadows sink into complete black, with no detail at all in the shadows. And those photographers like, that the overall contrast of their photos is pretty strong. The great Helmut Newton comes to mind. Or nowadays the awesome Moshe Brakha, who says “I am a dirty light - that's what I call myself.". Their photos look contrasty, powerful, crisp and often really dramatic. They please our eye even at the first glance.
On the other hand there are photographers who are lighting in a way that even on the darkest shades of their subject there is still enough light so that you can see details if your are looking close enough. Sasha Hüttenhain is a great example of somebody doing this with excellence. I also saw a lot of examples of this lighting in Albert Watsons work. Photos lightened like this sometimes look like they lack a little bit of contrast. Especially when you see them online in low resolution or on a mediocre screen. But if you see them printed big hanging in an exhibition, boy, they just shine. They are super interesting because they offer so much details that the viewers eye can explore and find when looking at the photo long enough.
Both schools of lighting are great. However, in my photography I always go for the latter one. I am preserving all the detail of my subject. Even in their darkest shades. That’s why I quite often I use the on camera flash to throw a tiny little bit of light onto my subject. This light then fills in the dark shades of the subject in a way, that they are still nearly black (around RGB 30/30/30) but in fact, the detail is still recorded. So in a way I am then using the on camera flash to dial the contrast of my exposure down to a healthy value. Masters like David Hobby alias The Strobist use a ringflash adaptor to perfection this method. However, for me this adaptor is too bulky. If I just want a little bit of fill in light from the on camera flash, then I really don’t need it.
In this particular shoot, I had my two main speedlights working at 1/4th of their power. The on camera speedlight was going at 128th of it’s power. You see, it could only add a tiny little bit of light. And chances are that it’s not even visible in low resolution online versions of the images. But it’s all I need in case I print the images big.
You know, if I want parts of my subject to be really really black (which I very rarely want), then I can easily do that in postproduction with Lightroom or Photoshop. To make something that is nearly black completely black is a piece of cake.
But the other way round, to bring back detail into a shade that is completely black (RGB 0/0/0) – well, that is impossible. At least for me.
> Is there an option sync
> without emitting light?
Yes, there is. Like so often with Canon, the way to set it up is not very intuitive. This is like you do it:
Use the zoom button on the speedlight in order to toggle through your settings. You have to press the button a couple of times and watch the display of the flash. Usually when you press zoom for the 4th time the little “Light ray symbol” in front of the “speedlight symbol” starts blinking. Now you can use the dial wheel of the speedlight in order to switch the light emission on and off. The feedback in the display tells you whether it is on or off.
When it is off, then the on camera flash is supposed to emit the ETTL trigger impulses that makes the other flashes go off. But it should not emit any flash that contributes to the exposure.
I personally have used this option quite a lot of times. But it did not always work. Even in cases where I had a lot of other speedlights doing the actual exposure and where I had the shutter speed set to a pretty fast 1/200 of a second, I sometimes could spot that the lighting was influenced by the on camera flash a little bit.
So what I do when I really don’t want the on camera flash to contribute is these two things.
1.
I set it up not to emit light during the exposure like explained above.
2.
I turn the flash head away from the subject. If the little bit of light that the flash still contributes has to bounce off the ceiling or a wall, then it really does not add to the exposure anymore.
If you trigger with a flash that has not such a sync option, then simply set it to it’s lowest possible emission value (1/64th or 1/128th usually) and turn it’s head away from the subject. That should do the trick.
I hope this helps a bit.
I wish you good light!
-- Michael
This set up is a brilliant idea. Thank you for sharing!
genau was ich fuer heute gbraucht habe...sind da cto gel auf den strobes? Echt klasse diese idee! danke !
Hey Miro!
Excellent question (he said while switching back to English). Is it fine if I answer in English? I promise to weave in some German accent. With that said, yes there are CTO gels on the speedlights. It's Lee 204 filters that I got from eBay. In Germany Musikhaus Thomann might be a nice and groovy alternative, as they offer the complete Lee sample packs at a very reasonable rate.
The reason I used the filters are on the flashes in the above photo shoot is ... well, actually...to be perfectly honest... there is not much of a reason.
The complete exposure of my image comes from the flashes. I am not mixing tungston light with flash here. So having the flashes geled and using tungston white balance on my camera, provides me with the exact same images that I would get if I would leave away the gels and use the flash white balance setting.
However, there actually IS a reason. I will speak about it in my next video. But as a "preview", the reason is simply this: I did a couple of different photo shoots on the day we recorded the above shoot. Some of them involved mixed light with tungston. If I would take the Lee gels on and off for those scenes, sooner or later I would forget the one or the other gel on a flash. Or I might forget to adjust the white balance or something. Or adding and removing the gels a number of times might wear of the scotch tape so that the gel falls off the flash while I am shooting. So many things that could fuck up the exposure.
So I decided to put the gels on in the moring, set the wb to tungston and stay with this setup for the whole day.
There's a lesson to learn here: If you are lazy (like myself) or if you tend to forget a lot of things (like the strange photographer in that video, I forgot his name), then choose settings that work for you in all the situations that you are going to shoot. Try to go with a lighting and with settings that you don't need to change and adjust too much. It makes life a whole lot easier.
I wish you good light!
-- Michael
hi michael I've been very impressed about your creativity!thank you and good luck!!!
lovely shoot!very innovative this will certainly come in handy, Thank you!^^
Hello,
I must agree with some of your other reviews that yes you are barking mad but in the most positive way. I am quiet new to photography and just getting all my kit together and learning on the way. I just loved your work and how easy you made it look setting up the lights. I am currently working away doing my day job but will be home soon and you can bet will be taking some gorgeous pictures of my fiance upon my return using ideas I have gotten from your video's. I feel truly inspired now and cant wait to get shooting.
Thanks for the video's and sharing. I am sure to be a member of your site and look forward to seeing all your new posts etc.
Martin
Hi Martin!
I hope you can make some really cool photos of your fiance so that she and you can be really proud of it!
Hey Michael---I love your creativity. It inspires me. Question about wireless triggering. I see you are using the Speedlight on camera as a trigger. Did you have a problem with the remote flashes hidden away from view of the master flash on this shoot? Frm my viewer's eye, it looked like they were hidden, but you must have had the back open so the master can see the remotes?
Keep up the good work!
Mark
Excellent question Mark! The situation was like this: while I shielded the back of the umbrella completely, I still left a good portion of the front open. That was not because the shield was not big enough to go completely around the umbrella.
However, the line of sight between the master and the slaves was not very direct. There was at least a bit of the black wrap in the way and furthermore the slaves sensors where pointing straight down to the floor.
But they still picked up the master signal absolutely reliable. I had no drop outs or anything. That's because we were in a simple, not too big and not too bright hotel room. The master signal is bouncing off everywhere in the room. Even if I had hidden the slaves completely they would still work reliably because they can get enough trigger signal through the shoot through umbrella.
In other videos on this blog you will often see me hiding the slaves completely behind diffuser material and they still work like clockwork. The important thing for the slaves is that they see a clear difference between "ambient lightl" and "flash master signal". They don't decode the "absolute brightness", they decode the "delta" between flash and no flash. Thus, the darker the ambient light of your set is, the more you can hide your slaves from your master.
I loose control over my slaves the moment that the area is getting very bright. I had to switch to radio in cases where we had a room with a glass roof, letting in bright daylight. Another occasion when the optical triggering failed was when we filmed a photoshoot on bigger video cameras and threw 3000 watt of tungston video light into the scene. That sort of overpowered the master signal.
I wish you good light!
-- Michael
I have done shoots with one slave wedged between a black backdrop and a dark wall and that always fired.
I believe though that it did not pick up the master strobe signal, but the signal from another slave flash, a bit more to the side.
I seldomly have a slave not firing coz of the secluded position it is in
Yes, that's an excellent idea! Use another slave a "relay station". As long as you don't go to short on your shutter speed the speedlights should fire fast enough so that you can even "chain" their firing sequence. Excellent!
You are a lighting genius! I don't have the reflector cover, but i will go to the local discount store and buy black flat sheet. I think that will work almost as well, and if it doesn't, I will have my background for my low key lighting! LOL
How simple can it be :)
Hi Michael, excellent video, I just have one question with the light coming directly from above how come there are no shadows under the eyes especially with the model wearing the riders cap.
Many thanks
Phil.
Excellent point Phil! I directed the models in a way that they turn their faces into the light. I tell them something like "This is your sun, please turn your face towards the sun whenever possible."
The modelwith the riders cap is the one that is closest to the lightsource. That makes the lightsource (the umbrella) quite big relative to her face. So in her case there should be the least problems. But still, she has to look up and point her nose "high into the sky" - otherwise her eyes would sink into complete darkness. See the harsh shadow that the riders cap is throwing onto her forehead? If she lowers her head just a tiny little notch, then her eyes turn into black holes.
Awesome shots. Can I come visit!! Such wonderful models too:)
Hi Joreri!
Sure you can.
Good light!
-- Michael
Fantastic the images so crisp love the idea.
Dave
These are wonderful lightning and the pictures are awesome. I think I will start taking basic photography class to try some.
Leslie
I really enjoyed this how to video. But one question, are the models directly under the light or are they slightly off to the side?
Thanks a lot, Johnny! The models are pretty centered, a little bit backed off. Have a look at the cone of light on the ground, it reveals their exact position in relationship to the light.
The thing that makes this light interesting is, that the light is very close to the models. So the light rays falling onto the center of the model are coming from another angle than let's say the light rays reaching her feet.
The shoot was great. The concept of the photo shoot is horse woman. Thank you.
Yep. I guess that's something for a pet lover like you, Cathy, right?
Thanks a lot!
You are brilliant and I can't wait to try this. Your plan uses a 580EX but I have a 580II EX. Can you explain the difference to me?
No difference. Both versions of this speedlight emit the same light :-)
What if you hang two 430II EX instead? What would the diagram data look be?
The 430 EX is less powerful compared to the 580. you would have to do a little adjustment to the diagram. Either you crank up the ISO of your camera to ISO400, or you dial up the speedlights to 1/2 of their power. Either way is fine. In reality you will anyway have to finetune the light to your models, your location and your exact setting. The settings in the diagram are in order to give an example of what to expect. But you will always need to have a look at the histogram of your cam and check at what setting your light starts singing the way you like it.
I think that was nice. I like the capture of the photo's that you share. It get more attraction in the photo. Thank you.
You've done a great job making the shots so dramatic. It is indeed a good experiment, because it feels so professionally made photos with a lot of edits but yours where normal yet amazing results. Great job.
I like all the photo's that you share. It look realistic the capture. Thank you for sharing on it.
Thanks a lot, cousin Scott!
hi,
Excellent creative work, the light is silk smooth well done.
rgrds
Peter Vooijs
Thanks for your compliments, cousin Peter!
It was a nice idea of using the black side of the reflector as a flag. I was previously using the black side of the 2 in 1 umbrella but yours is even better.
I'm bookmarking your site as one of my references. Keep them coming and again, our gratidue for sharing your knowledge with us.
Cheers.
Jon
Thanks a lot for the nice comment, cousin Jon!
Beautiful light. A bit dangerous having light from above with the models wearing caps, but it turned out fantastic
Yes, I had to ask her to hold her head up high in order to get light into her eyes.
Hi Michael,
this is totally awesome tutorial! I love the way how you have used the disc light reflector to disable the light from hiting the furniture. I enjoyed it very much, so much fun! Thanks for sharing with us!
"no black holes over here!" Hehe!
Cheers from Czech republic
Necrania
Hi Michael
As you shot at F/8 what would the F/stop be for the flash on camera and the overhead flash if I used studio strobes to create these shots.
Great photos.
Thanks
Simply brilliant! I carry all but the grass skirt, and never thought to use a hanger. Well done.