johnny_tergo

That light on the face is spill from your background strobe and is overexposed because it is combining with your key. Flag the background light off of your subject. Basically all you have to do is put something in the way of the strobe between the subject and the strobe. Make sure that is you stand at the background you can see the strobe, but if you are standing where the subject is you want to make sure you can't see ANY of that strobe. Let me look thru my on-set roids and see if I have an example for you.

Okay let's try to get you an even background that is a hot white. Tough to do with one

head, and even tougher if you don't have much space. There are a few ways to do it with

one head. The first way requires more width and the second requires more height. First

off light falls off faster the closer that you are to the source, so you need to get the source

as far away as you can from the white so that it will be more even once it reaches the

white. Putting an umbrella on your strobe will also help you to spread out your light, but

will then reqire more power. Take it out on about a 30 - 40 degree angle and meter

across the span you are trying to make white untill you get it as even as you can and then

adjust your strobe to give you the desired F-Stop. Probably going to be really hard to do

with the strobes you have as you will most likley not be able to throw enough light at your

white. You will then need to flag that light off of your subject so that you don't get any

spill hitting them. The other way wich requires more height is to put an umbrella on your

strobe and take it up high so that it rakes your white at about a 30 - 40 degree angle. The

higher you take it, the more even it get's. Again you will have to place a cutter or flag in

place to keep the spill off of your subject, unless you like the way it is hitting the hair and

giving you a little bit of rim light.

 

The bounce issue has to do with the distance that your subject is off of the white. You

can take your meter and measure the amount of bouce by standing at your subjects

position and pointing it at the white when you fire your strobes, Move untill you like what

your meter is tellign you. When you say that the bounce is making the side of your

subjects face blown out it is making me think that you are actually gettign spill from your

strobe and not from the backgound. The background bounces right back at the lens so

the top of the shoulders and rim of the ears and hair start to see it before the side of the

face. So flag your strobe off from the subject and see if that fixes your problem. (I know

you said it was positiond where none of the light would directly hit the subject, but you

didn't say that it was blocked off completly from the subject.

 

Don't set your sights to high with the limitations you have. Make it look the best you can

with what you have. Don't get discouraged when you look at photos in mags and see a

large group of environmentalists in Vanity Fair on hot white or George Clooney in Esquire

on hot white and think, "Man my stuff looks nothing like that." Large budgets, lots of

lights, and a huge studio space are a HUGE help. :) Just to give you an idea here is a gear

list that I usually order when I am doing a basic hot white for sombody ina studi.

 

6 Profoto 7a 2400 packs

6 ProHeads

6 White Profoto umbrellas

2 C-Stands

4 Cardalinis

4 V-Flats

2 Pocket Wizard receivers

4 Phono to phono cords

 

That is just for the backgound lights if I am lighting a cyclorama. Post up a sample so we

can see what is going on.

I don't think that Elinchrom make that adapter, however I know that Flashlights can make

you any adapter that you need. Just be ready to pay dearly for it.

 

Flashlights

1545 North Wilcox

Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tel: 323-466-2065 Fax: 323-466-2360

Email: flashlight@earthlink.net

This is the Elinchrom

Sean,

Personally I prefer the look and design of the Elinchrom. I have sample photos from each. But first a few things... #1) I prefer the highlights from the Elinchrom #2) With the diffusion panel on the Elinchrome is a bit more even. #3) Little thing, but I prefer the way the Elinchrom clicks together to lock itself out and the Profoto works more like an umbrella to lock out. I have friends that prefer the Profoto locking system and it seems to be pretty split. On shoots I see Elinchrom's everyday, but I have only seen 3 Profoto 7' reflectors. Either way you won't be dissapointed.

 

 

Photo 1 Profoto 7'

 

Photo 2 Elinchrom

Now that you have your backdrop up and your piano in place you can start on the lighting. Here is what we used, go ahead and use this information as a refrence point as the things we used are diffrent than what you described you had to use. Equipment list: (GRIP EQUIPMENT) 1 20x20 frame with hardware, 1 20x20 silk, 2 hi-roller stands, misc. flags and nets, and 3 V Flats. (LIGHTING EQUIPMENT) 8 Profoto 7A 2400 packs, 8 pro heads, 6 reflectors, 2 disc grid reflectors.

 

We set-up the 20x20 silk on hi-rollers in the spot where we wanted our key light to come from. Then we set-up 6 packs and heads behind the silk shooting thru it. In essence we created a HUGE soft source. You want this to be fairly close to the subject. As close as possible without getting it into the frame. The heads behind the silk need to be staggered evenly... one up high, one down low, one up high, one down low and so on. Once you have your soft source set-up you can start metering the light. You will have to go in and net off certain heads in certain spots to get it to be even. That is a little tricky the first time you do it. But when you figure it out you can get it to be within 1/3 stop across the entire 20x20 silk with 6 heads. Not too bad. You will most likley have to flag off your camera from the light source so keep that in mind. Now you want to add a rim light and that is what you use the grided heads for. That should be pretty obvious how to do, so I will leave that up to you. The v flats are used to fill or negative fill areas of the piano. That is pretty much it. You have to go in and do some fine tuning and tweaking but the final result will be very pleasing.

Hey Steve,

We recently lit a piano on a seamless. Fisrt for a large piano you will need a large backdrop. We used 2 12ft. seamless double-stick taped together that gave us a seamless a little smaller than 24'. The backdrop was held up with 2 hi-roller stands, 2 c stand arms, 1 c-stand w/arm fitted with a cardalini, 1 20ft speedrail, 1 10ft speedrail, 1 sleeve, and 2 speedrail ears. this may be a bit difficult to describe so bear with me. After the backdrop I will explain the lighting we used. Okay so for the backdrop...

 

Place the seamless on the speedrail as you normally would and raise it to the height you will want it when you work. Roll out the paper and sweep it out to where you want it. Now when it is where you like, place a mark on the paper up top and roll that paper back up onto the roll. Now bring the roll back down and take it off the speedrail. make sure the area you are working in had a freshly swept clean floor so that you don't ruin the seamless. Next unroll the seamless on the ground till you get to the mark you made on it while it was up on the speedrail. When you get to that point cut the seamless. You will now have one huge pice of seamless paper on the ground. Take the seamless roll and roll it out ontop of that large piece of seamless. When it matches the same length give it a cut. You know have two large pieces of paper one ontop of the other. Take the top piece of paper and slide it out to the side of the other so that the seams match up. Take your shoes off and walk out onto the paper. Now take your double sided tape and stick it to the edge of the bottom sheet. All along the whole edge of the paper. Don't peel back the paper to expose the adhesive yet! Line up the sheet of paper that has no double sided tape to stradle the edge of the paper that has double sided tape. When they are overlapped slowly go along the edge starting from one side and as you peel back the adhesive cover stick the two sheets together and work your way along the whole thing. You now have a HUGE piece of seamless. Great! Now to hang it. Join your 20ft. speedrail to your 10ft. speedrail with the sleeve. Now slide the ears onto the ends of the speedrail. Now take the seamless and tape it to the speedrail set-up. You need to tape it really, really well. You don't want the seamless to come off the rail. Stick the c-stand arms into the nuckle on the hi-rollers. Now take the ears from the speedrail and slide them into the nuckles on the arms. This is so that the speedrail and seamless stand out from the edge of the hi-roller. You should now have a long piece of 30ft. speedrail suspended from 2 hi-rollers. There is a problem that becomes apparent at this point. The speedrail will sag! That is why we have the c-stand with a cardilini clamp. Attatch the cardilini clamp to the speedrail in the center and this will raise along with the rest of the system to hold up the center. Now that you have a nice solid set-up you want to bag the crub out of the hi-rollers and c-stand. Don't want anyhting topling over! Go ahead and raise up your backdrop. Obviously you will need 3 people to do this. Once you are at your pre determined height, lock off the stands and stand back and look at the massive seamless that you just created! LOOKS NICE! I will start another reply to talk about the lights...

The best way to do this is with neutral density gel. Figure out how much you need to knock off of the windows and then apply the correct amount of ND.

If you want to use strobes you can. There is no reason you can't. Just meter the light and make sure it is at a comfortable place. If you meter window light at f5.6 and set your strobe to f5.6 there is no diffrance in intensity.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your question. What is floresce?

Just hang out and wait for a good deal on the bay... I got this deal recently, and the camera looked like it was shipped to me directly from the factory.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7516283701&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

:) Nice! That works REALLY well!

Olivier Koning has the best answer so far. I have assisted on allot of shoots that strive for the same look. I can tell you with 100% confidence that this production is not just huge, but MASSIVE! The last shoot I worked on of this type (actually, easily smaller than a LaChapelle shoot)had 8 photo assistants and we set-up ALLOT of lights. We where trying to light a bar scene. The art dept. built a full bar down to the roll out linoleum hardwood floors :) lol The lighting to set the bar feel was the following 1 20x20 silk with 4 Profoto bi-tube heads firing into umbrellas and back down thru the silk to give an even, fully controlable overhead light (so that is 8 Profoto 7a 2400 packs already) , then rigged below that where 6 Profoto heads with 20 deg. grids firing straight down to give off a ceiling light look, (up to 14 packs now) swung out from the bottom where 2 Chimera medium bowes with 40 deg grids (16 packs), 6 heads with grids for spot lighting certain parts of the set, (22 Profoto 7a 2400 packs now), then 4 Dyna-lite 1000 packs with 1 sticklight each to light the plexiglass top of the bar,and 6 dyna-lite packs with sticklights to light the area that held the bottles... Something like that. You will be able to see the shot on the poster for a Universal movie comming out called "40 Year Old Virgin". Can't recall every single specific light, lets just say that it was ALLOT, and I know assistants that have worked on even larger sets.

 

All that said, you can have somewhat of an easier time with the outdoor shots and a strobe. Meter for the outdoor light and balance or fire your strobes 1-2 stops closed down on ambient. Cheap version of that "FAKE" look Canon 10D, 15mm fisheye and Q Flash

As Paris would say, "That's Hot!" Seriously bro, great job with that. Well executed, I

absolutly love it. Ha ha NICE!

Lee,

You are happy that they replaced the unite, as I would be, but what about the fact that

that one of the units was DOA. Not a good thing!

The Elinchrom is definetly superior to anything that Pual C. Buff has to offer and he is

not JUST trying to sell what he has in the store. Although that is part of his pitch. I have

only used 2 White Lightning lights ever. I used to own a 1200 WS one a few years ago, and

one of the local wedding photographers used to use one awhile ago. I only worked with

him a few times and that was years ago. All we ever used his for was backlighting a large

room, so anything is good for that. I used mine for awhile and it was alright. I DEFINETLY

noticed problems with it holding a true power level, don't recall if it was only at low levels.

If you are looking for something that works fine and will get you going then the AB's or

White Lightning will be fine. The Elinchrom will serve tou better in the long run.

Persoanlly if I was starting out I would get a Dyna-Lite system and then work my way up to

Profoto from there. My kit is filled with Dyna-Lite packs, and a dew Profoto packs. EVERY

pro I assist works with Profoto, many mix Profoto with Dyna-Lite and a few use Broncolor

and Elinchrom. Playboy shooters use Balcar LOL Not one pro I have worked with has ever

had AB's or WL's on set. Please feel free to send me an E-Mail if you have any specific

questions. johnny@johnnytergo.com<div></div>

I beleive that a great fashion shot is a little bit of art and a little bit of commerce... therefore www.artandcommerce.com

Ellis's answer is the best yet!

Not particularly drawn to this photograph, but even less so in B&W. In B&W it is hard to distinguish the arm around the neck from the sweatshirt.

It's cool Jim, I was just being an idiot... :)

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Maya... That is a great portrait lens and it would be good for filling the frame if you couple it with the approprite extension tube. I am not sure what size you would need, but I am sure that somebody will chime in quickly with the answer. Actually, I will be surprised if there is not already an answer by the time I finish typing this out... :)

John...

 

I already have 4 rolls of 120 stashed there, any other suggestions?

Ronald...

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009TlK

 

:)

William,

 

Move your lights closer to your subject and step your subject away from the background if possible. Even if you can't move your subject away from your background, moving the light closer to the subject will help. I know it seems incorrect that moving your light closer to your subject (and your background) will cause the backdrop to look darker, but it does. What happens it that the light falls off faster at that shorter distance. If you just try it you will see what I am talking about...