In the interest of improving my skills as a portrait photographer I am embarking on a project, who knows how long, to master every piece of equipment I own and try as many practical tips and ideas as possible from the many books, YouTube videos and Flickr groups I have access to, as well as my own.
I will appreciate any and all practical comments on what works and does not work in these tests, what I can improve and what new techniques I should try.
This is the second single-flash setup that I know of and don't use often. I heard it being referred to as the beauty lighting setup. The softbox (medium size Neewer octagonal umbrella softbox in my case) is placed on the axis from the camera to the subject and raised above the subject, not too high. In my case, it is slightly off axis because it is next to, not above the camera. This is because I want to shoot at 105mm to compress my facial features (feature really), but I want the softbox as close as possible to eliminate shadows. So the camera moves back, and the softbox moves forward trying to stay out of sight. I would say it is about a meter away, although I should really measure it. There is a useful technique for setting up repeatable lighting solutions. Once you get the light perfect, you tie a string around the light stand, cut it where the model sits, and next time you let the model hold one end while you move the light until the string reaches its full length. You can have several colored strings of different lengths, each one associated with a particular flash output power. I have not tried this, just something I heard in a class.
Shot at 1/60s, f/5.6 ISO 400 and 1/16 power. I was trying out a new S-type bracket for the flash and softbox. It is said to allow mounting the flash in a way where it hits the middle of the umbrella giving even lighting across the softbox. My old traditional cold shoe bracket with an umbrella holder below holds the flash in a position where it hits the top portion of the umbrella making the bottom portion of the photo lit more dimly. This may not me a terrible thing for example as I try to change up the pose and incorporate the hands. I doubt the hands need to be as brightly lit as the face, and, since they are closer to the light, possibly even brighter. I did not like my original experience with the S-type bracket. I believe I got a defective copy: the screw that is supposed to hold umbrella in place is loose, and the umbrella moves freely in the hole until it hits something, namely the flash. This probably does not allow the light from he flash to dissipate correctly. The first few shots were very dim until I 1)changed the zoom factor on the flash from 24mm to 105mm, 2)moved umbrella back away from the flash (I had to eliminate the downward angle of the bracket to achieve this, otherwise the umbrella just slid down until it rested against the flash and 3)increased the power. I did not expect to have to use 1/16 at ISO 400 and f/5.6 and 1/60s, but ended up doing it.
I was also testing the new $9 remote IR trigger amazon.com/gp/product/B00BCEJ0... by Amazon Basics. It barely worked, and I had to point it directly at the IR sensor in the camera, meaning I had to raise my hand, point it, trigger the shot, then I had 2 seconds to get rid of or palm the trigger (which is very small and flat) if I wanted to use my hands in the shot. What made it even more comical, since I was shooting in the dark because I did not want to deal with the warm ambient light, I was using my other hand to shine an iPhone light at my face to allow camera to focus. That meant getting rid of two items in two seconds and was very awkward. Hence my face looks worried in most shots. I need a better way of triggering and focusing the camera if I am going to continue this project. In more professional set ups, there is a modeling light included with the strobe, which turns on for the focusing and turns off for the shot. Another option is to use constant LED light panel, which I will try next
The good: different pose, no post processing was needed, this is straight from the camera, just converted from RAW to Adobe Portrait profile. I switched my in-camera preview to histogram and noticed that the shots that appeared well lit on the LCD did not have a good histogram, so I kept adding power to the flash until the histogram looked good, which is how I got this shot. Later same night I read the part of Joe McNally's book on using flash where he suggest reducing the brightness of the camera LCD to match the look of the photos on the computer. How many times did we see an LCD preview that looked legit only to find in post that the photo was underlit? Me -- all the time.
The bad: because the camera focuses while I am holding the trigger and the light to my face, and I then move around getting rid of the items and assuming the pose I want, the focus can miss if my face ends up in a different focal plane -- especially at 105mm and f/5.6. This is exactly what happened here: the eyes are out of focus, and the ears are tack sharp.
Next steps: return the defective bracket, figure out a better way to trigger and focus the camera, try the same setup with the shoot-through white umbrella -- should need less power, will get smaller, rounder catchlight. Shave and wash hair. Review wardrobe. Start practicing waist portraits, not just headshots. Continue exploring beauty lighting, check if it really is called beauty lighting, see what happens if the softbox is moved back with the camera and raised.
