My Gangsta Daughter

[MOmilkman]

wearing her Baby Phat clothing line. She seems to be quite a ham for the camera.

This is my first shot at using my new white vinyl BG, my new Westcott umbrella and stand. I know her face looks a little underexposed. I was wondering what other areas I need to improve on.

What is your overall impression of this image. Please click the photo to see more.

Please tear me apart. I have thick skin and I need to hear the truth.

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Lighting setup:

Umbrella left of camera with 580EXII on manual (powered by V4) at 1/32
430EXII overhead of subject pointing down towards BG. It looks like it caught too much of her hair. In hindsight now it looks like I should move her further away from the BG. It was powered at 1/2 on Manual.

Exif data
Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 320
Exposure Bias 0 EV

[MrJones]

when lightning a white background you need to be carful that the light does not spill into your subject as it did in this photo. look at her arms - they are disappearing into the background.
regarding the hair light - you are right, it was too strong an so you've overexposed her hair.
basically you need your light to be balanced. you need to use the lightning in such way that if your main light reads, let's say f/11 at 1/200 then you need all the other lights to read the same way. you can achieve that with bumping or reducing the power of the lightning units.
if you don't have a light meter (and I think you don't) - just try and learn by doing a few experimental shots before posing your model.

[MOmilkman]

Originally Posted by MrJones

you need to use the lightning in such way that if your main light reads, let's say f/11 at 1/200 then you need all the other lights to read the same way.

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate all of your constructive criticism.

This is one of the things I can't understand. I've read other posts and articles where it says to set your strobe to the same settings as your camera exposure. I don't understand this. I don't recall ever seeing anything on the back of my flash that indicates aperture or shutter speed. Only flash output (1/32, 1/16 etc) or ETTL which is not a option for me with Cactus triggers.
I'd be grateful for help understanding this.
Thank you

[MrJones]

never heard of such a thing. I think it means that you need to set the power of your lightning to match the settings on your camera.
I believe they all work together, but you do need leveled lightning, you need the power of all strobes to match in such a way that nothing in the photo get's overexposed.
this doesn't mean you need to set all of your strobes to the same power, as they are placed different in position to the model.

[tyasa81]

the only time when ppl are saying strobes should be matched to aperture and iso is when you are using a light meter... you pop your flash, and the light meter will give you an aperture and iso that is around 50% gray... and then you can adjust by putting more power to your flash (by going from 1/16 to 1/8) or by opening up your aperture (by going from f4 to f/2.8)...

this pop of flash are done to each flash (1 main, 1 bg, etc)... usually when you want a washed out look, you'll go more than 2 stops of light in your bg (might be 3)... and for your subject you'll probably stay around the reccomended aperture by the light meter or more by 1 stop maybe.. hence you get 1:2 ratio or any other ratio you see...

i personally dont use lightmeter and does it by chimping... but i've seen other ppl work with light meter and tried popping a few myself... the flash itself NEVER has a f stop on it... since the f stop depends on a lot of factors, #1 power, #2 distance from flash to object, #3 zoom head, #4 modifiers placed on the flash, etc etc... so it's always in power scale usually 1/1 to 1/128 or 1/64...

Umbrella left of camera with 580EXII on manual (powered by V4) at 1/32
430EXII overhead of subject pointing down towards BG. It looks like it caught too much of her hair. In hindsight now it looks like I should move her further away from the BG. It was powered at 1/2 on Manual.

#1... pull her away from the background... and at least gobo your bg light so it doesn't hit the top of her hair... power down your light some, and see if you still get a consistent white bg... dont go more for more power just because you can since the flare and the spill will be harder to handle... in other words if you need 1/4 to blow out the bg, dont use 1/2

#2... strange that the shadow from the umbrella is so black... how far away is the umbrella? put it closer... as close to the subject but still out of camera frame as possible...

#3... this is what i usually do... light the bg to give consistency you like... put a stand in as the subject and see what the bg spill looks like... if it's managable (i never get silhoutte with a totally blown bg since i dont have enough space, but if you can, then it should be easier for you) then add the umbrella to shape the light on the subject... at each point, change your settings and location of flash and camera...

experiment, experiment, experiment... soon you'll be able to eye ball it...good luck