high key lighting

[sashanp]

shooting white background, main light softbox umbrella, fill white umbrella

bounce, hairlight softbox and background light, shooting toddler head/body

shots, the key is metered at 6.3, hair 6.3, fill, 3.2 and background at 36 any

way to direct the backlight a bit better so that the light does not spill over

into key, i have barndoors with honeycob grid, doesn't seem to help much. How

far should the light be from the background and at what angle do people

suggest?

[greg_reinacker]

So you're saying you have the key/hair lights at f/6.3, fill at f/3.2, and the background at f/36? That's about 5 stops hotter than your key light - you're going to see a LOT of spill. Take your background down to f/9 or f/11, and things will be a little more under control.

 

I wrote about shooting on a white background on my blog at http://www.gregrphoto.com/blog/2007/01/shooting-with-white-background.html, if it's helpful.

[sashanp]

I thought 5 stops a bit hot, but there are a lot of wrinkles I am trying to clip, will they clip as well at 11? I should probably just try it, can't afford seamless paper, I actually took out my fill and replaced it with two reflectors, one gold for the face and translucent opposite the key, I hope it works. The fill light I put into the background, question regarding metering, I use the sekonic l358 with the dome down when figuring the lights, to properly meter the background, should the dome be pointed at the background or on the background pointing towards the camera axis, or on the background aimed at the individual lights lighting the background. additionally should I take a reading at the subject with all lights off except background to try and compensate some for any spill. I did this previously and at 36 it was only spilling about 2.5 on the subject (yes a really low powered crappy light with 2 settings full and half.) sorry if too much of a post. I am learning a wealth from this website and appreciate all response

[garry edwards]

Sasha,

 

In a perfect world, you would have your subject a mile away from the background. You could then blast the background with literally as much light as you wanted, knowing that by the time the bounced light had travelled a mile to reach the back of your subject, none of it would degrade the edges of the subject or spill on to it.

 

In a less than perfect world, you have to make compromises. With 8 feet or so between subject and background you can overexpose the background by around 2 stops. This will allow the lights on the background to fall off (lose intensity) enough by the time they reach your subject. Again, in a perfect world (or at least in a perfect studio) you would have at least 4 lights on your background and they would come from angled reflectors that light the background very evenly. This would be a big help with wrinkled backgrounds and a big help with preventing unwanted light from the reflectors hitting the subject. As you don't have 4 lights with background reflectors you need to angle them as little as possible (too sharp an angle will emphasise the creases) and you may need to use flags (pieces of black card) or barn doors to stop light spilling on to your subject.

 

Finally, forget all this business about lighting ratios - use whatever gives you the results that work for you, there is no such thing as a 'correct' ratio for fill, hair light etc.

 

Hope this helps

[conraderb]

sasha - if you are getting f36 on your background, I would either try to just turn that down (it should go white much earlier than that if you are exposing your subject at 6.3!), or have a huge separation between subject-background.

 

achieving a white background is easy if you have subject-background separation and don't deal with spill.

 

 

good luck.