lensandlumen

I’ve been fooling around with an old compact recently to see if I’ll

really use a go-everywhere “street camera”, before spending more money

on that fab-sounding Fuji X100.

I am doing publicity shots for our local theater company’s production

of “Wait Until Dark”. The story is a thriller featuring a blind woman,

and this is the lead actress in-character. Since the character is

supposed to be blind, we can’t have her peering straight into the

lens. We also can’t have her grinning ear-to-ear, because that would

ruin the dark mood of the show.

There was an Alien-Bees B-800 camera-right at ¼-power into a 64-in.

PML umbrella with diffuser panel (poor-mans soft-box). There was also

a Canon 580EX-II camera-left at 1/32-power with Sto-Fen cap for fill.

Both lights were fired with Cactus-V4 RF triggers.

I am sometimes asked by a local community theater group to take

headshots of actors for a lobby board that they put together for their

productions. This is an example of a recent effort, and I would love some

advice on how to improve.

I have this shot lit with four flashes. I have two primary flash units on

light-stands with umbrellas on camera-left and –right about 5-ft from the

subject. The camera-right light was high and at a 2:1 ratio to the camera-

left light, which was about even with the head. These were using the

camera’s TTL flash exposure and triggered by an on-camera IR

controller. I also had an inexpensive manual flash on a ladder lighting

the background cloth, which was about 7-8ft away from the subject.

This had a snoot to limit the light throw and a blue gel to colorize the

light and make it interesting.

Also, as a first-time experiment, I used a rim-light. This was an ancient

30-year-old flash unit that I had from my film days. I set this up on a

small tripod on the floor behind the subject and had it pointed up and

back at the subject’s head. The background and rim-light were triggered

with 30-ft sync-cords plugged into the camera