Part 5 -- Strip Light Studio Tutorial (How I shot my wife)

[RussHeath]

Thanks for your thoughts about this. I agree the the skin is highly exposed, but I was going for a high key look. If you check the large size on flickr, you'll see there is still good texture to the skin, so it's not completely overexposed (well, maybe the third shot is).

When working close to the extremes like this, it is also very monitor dependent. Yours and mine may be calibrated differently. Either way, the overexposed or near-overexposed look is part of the style I'm trying to get for this one. I think I actually increased exposure on most of these in RAW by about 0.4 before converting to JPEG, because they weren't quite bright enough to me to start with.

If I can get a black background that I'm happy with, then the next series will probably be low-key and verging on underexposed, just to try something different.

Her eyes are certainly close to that blue. (But not exact!) They have a slight unsharp mask over them to bring out the catchlights and a blue colorized hue/saturation adjustment layer to make the blue a little more intense.

[commongrackle]

I also have enjoyed reading your "experiments". I find them to be really helpful and now I will have some things to try out once we get moved. Thanks for taking the time to share all of this with the rest of us!

[Andrew122]

Originally Posted by RussHeath

Her eyes are certainly close to that blue. (But not exact!) They have a slight unsharp mask over them to bring out the catchlights and a blue colorized hue/saturation adjustment layer to make the blue a little more intense.

That is what I suspected. Thank you for your explanations.

[RussHeath]

Originally Posted by commongrackle

I also have enjoyed reading your "experiments". I find them to be really helpful and now I will have some things to try out once we get moved. Thanks for taking the time to share all of this with the rest of us!

Commongrackle -- I'm so glad you're enjoying my ADHD approach to learning lighting! It's fun to share with an appreciative audience, and it keeps me honest.

Originally Posted by Andrew122

That is what I suspected. Thank you for your explanations.

No problem, happy to help.

[lputman]

I've just read through your tutorial series and I must say truly wonderful! Thank you for sharing your teachings with us! When I'm ready, I will be coming back to these tutorials.

[RussHeath]

Originally Posted by lputman

I've just read through your tutorial series and I must say truly wonderful! Thank you for sharing your teachings with us! When I'm ready, I will be coming back to these tutorials.

Iputman -- Thanks for reading through them all! I'm glad you found my rambling helpful. When you start experimenting on your own subjects, be sure to show us the results (or ask lots of questions if it doesn't work at first!)

[slyder0244]

yea i'm kind of thinking about getting a laundry rack for holding backgrounds now looks like it would work nicely wonder how tall some of those things get

but in my opinion i think the background and her face are a little overly bright and lit even though i know you were going for a high key look but i do like the sideways strip light and the way it looks in the glasses

[RussHeath]

Originally Posted by slyder0244

yea i'm kind of thinking about getting a laundry rack for holding backgrounds now looks like it would work nicely wonder how tall some of those things get

but in my opinion i think the background and her face are a little overly bright and lit even though i know you were going for a high key look but i do like the sideways strip light and the way it looks in the glasses

I don't have any shots of it yet, but I have converted another laundry rack into a background holder. I used 3/8' pipe from Home Depot in place of the rods that came with the rack, and it stretches all the way across my spare bedroom. If I can ever get around to doing Part 6, it will be used to hold my backdrop.

When I use the only objective way I know of to test the whites on her face, I find that they are close to overexposed, but not there. I use the RGB numbers and check the values at the most exposed places, and there are no spots that give values greater than 245 (255 is max). So I think I've managed to push the whites so close to the top that it has become VERY monitor dependent. If I get around to reprocessing the shot, I have lots of room to decrease exposure, because this one was actually increased a bit from the original RAW file. Thanks very much for your opinion about this, it seems to be that the general concensus is that her skin is overexposed (despite my attempts to convince myself otherwise).

[jus'learnin]

I went out and purchased two shop lights, and shot this, not great, but better than I've ever done.Thanks for the idea! Question: Can you use one speedlite by itself, detached from your camera. Or do you have to have two?

[RussHeath]

Nice shot, jus'learnin! I like the angle you choose, and the lights seemed to work well for a nice even exposure. I can tell right where you put the shop lights from the catchlights in his eyes.

I'm not sure I understand your question about the speedlights. Are you asking about how many are needed for a specific lighting effect or if one speedlight can be triggered by itself? I have two, and I almost always use them both off the camera. My D80 has the built in ability to remotely trigger the newer Nikon strobes (SB-600 and SB-800), so I don't have to buy any extra gear.

If your camera doesn't have anything like that, then you'll need some method of triggering the strobe. There are lots of options, from using a PC cord to cheap e-bay radio triggers, to Pocket Wizards ($$$), to the newley released Radio Poppers. Head over to Strobist and dig into the lighting 101 and lighting 102 archives for lots of info.