Still practicing with these lighting setups. The speed lite and trigger combo that I had originally purchased turned out to be a dud! So I did some research and came across another brand of lights that seem as plug-and-play as it gets. After combing through amazon for a good deal I made a purchase but then it hit me, hours later that I could search eBay and craigslist for the new speed lite I had just ordered from amazon. Of course it would be used, but I knew the lights were sturdy and I also knew what to look out for when buying things from sites like eBay and craigslist.
Lo and behold I found two speed lites that are of the same brand but, double the quality of the brand new light I had just purchased off amazon. So I canceled my order and started contact with the two sellers, and locked in some pretty sweet deals! Luckily everything worked out and I got whole lot more than what I bargained for, in a good way! Not only did I get two stellar lights for essentially half the price, but I got a trigger as well for lights! I couldn’t contain my excitement throughout the day. I was ecstatic!
Anyway, so today’s lighting exercise was done primarily with two speed lites(Lite A & Lite B) and a softbox. Later on in the exercise I threw in my led wand light, just to see what it did when combined with the speed lites and it did not disappoint. I was more curious to see if the speed lite would overpower the wand, to the point in which I wouldn’t see any of the RGB output coming from the wand. Turns out the speed lites, combined with the wand still kept some of the color and just gave a really nice contrast. Obviously I still need to work more on incorporating color lighting with the speed lites but that will come with time.
My primary focus was playing with contrast today. I had the Lite A, off to the side of me about 1-2 feet away from me, pointing directly at me. The purpose of the light position was that I wanted to experiment with how much the light could wrap around my face without being a directly or squarely in my face. I learned from this exercise that this effect is nice however I would need to incorporate a bounce card of some kind, whether it’s a silver, white or black reflector, so some light is present on the side of the face that is not being hit with the light. This is important because I need some detail on that side of my face, a completely black side isn’t ideal. And rather than attempting to boost the shadows in post, I’d rather get as close to a desired look in camera as possible.
My B lite served as a light for the background. Some of the B lite spilled out and gave me some silhouette lighting or lens flare depending on the positioning of myself in frame or the light. Not totally happy with my use of the B lite here as I could have experimented more with the output and positioning but just got lazy and relied too much on my post editing capabilities and ultimately failed.
Overall not as dramatic or stellar, in my humble opinion, as my first exercise but that was not the point of this shoot. I got some learning experience in today and I’m happy about that. I’m learning how to make tight spaces work for photography which is something I want to get great at because if I can make an unideal situation work, imagine what I can do with an ideal studio setup insert diabolical laugh.
This was done with the Tamron 28mm with a 1/4 black pro-mist filter on my trusty Panasonic Lumix GH4
Maybe one day I'll shave my face before taking photos.
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Tech Specs:
Camera - Panasonic Lumix GH4
Lens - Rokinon 12mm
Lens - Tamron 28mm
Lens - Konica Hexanon 40mm
Lens - Konica Hexanon 50mm
Lens - Jupiter 85mm
Lens - Jupiter 135mm
Editing - Adobe Lightroom
