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It has been a longer time when we took the shots of this setup. Nevertheless, we could have waited twenty or fourty years more with the publication of this post. The setup would have been as modern an good as it is today… as it was twenty years ago. This is the reason to call this post: HALL OF FAME SETUP. Let’s see why.

The setup is as simple and perfect as genius. You simply place your lightsource about 30-40cm above the camera. Exactly above the camera. The specialty about this setup is additionally the arrangement of modell, camera and lightsource in one and the same axis. You can move the camera away from the modell but always stay on the axis in the middle.

As with this setup there is no concern what type of light you are using, the distance between the modell and the lightsource does not matter as well. The distance goes hand in hand with the type of light you are using. If you are using a hard light, the distance could be a lot bigger than when using a soft light. In the setup down below, we used a 85cm umbrella about 1m away.

And what is the result of the setup? A very natural portrait with nice and flawless shadows. Perfect for our modell Nicole.

Really, there is only one thing to take care of. It is the exact arrangement. You really do have to stay right below the lightsource. and with “right below” I really do mean “right below”. Not 10cm and not 5cm away from the middle. And if you do not have a boomstand, you have to hug your stand… kisskiss

Well, let’s end with the final photos. I do like the smiling a lot better than the “anger”-photo. But that are just my 2cents…

As a matter of fact, the setup is perfect because of the simplicity. It leave enough space for the modell to fill the character of the photo.

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Nothing is easier than working with no artificial light at all. Ok, that’s not 100% correct. But it can be true. All I really want to say is that sometimes you don’t have to do a lot to get a beautiful light because it is already there. It is hard to see those spots at a certain time but this setup-tutorial will tell you something about a specifique photo shot with no extra lighting equipement.

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What can we see on the photo. What clues does the photo give us???

• There is a nice lighting from the left side. You can clearly see some shadows on the black jacket.
• The light is unbelievable soft but still there is a slight dominance from the top (shadow under his chin)
• You do have a slight wide angle look but still a big blurred background.
• The photo does have a very intense vignettation.

Let’s get this straight out. How do we get this lighting?

• 50mm
• ISO 200
• Highlight Tone Priority
• 1/4000
• !!! IMPORTANT !!! f1.2 (YES 1.2)

And now, the blurred background makes sense. It is the natural result of the extreme open lense. When taking the picture, you should pay attention on the distances shown in it. Without the proper distances you can never show the effect of the open aperture. Take a look at the picture. We tried to use the car for the effect in the front and the wall/trees as the background. The distance between the car and the wall was about 30 feet (10m). Just perfect to keep it visible.

But how do you get that crazy lighting? Take a close look again. The car throws a slight shadow on the ground, you do have a dominance from the left and still, everything is visable.

The answer: It is all about the right moment. The shot was taken short before dusk, the sky was covered in thick clouds but just when we took the shot, the sun was coming out through some little slit between the clouds. It was the perfect moment to get a dominance from the left side but still keep the light very soft.

That’s about all it was. We got the fortune to have the location flooded by soft light with a slight dominance from the left. LUCK!!!

And now to the post-pro. It was done in about 3 minutes.

Here are the steps.

1. Convert the photo from the RAW file with a slightly cooler WB. A couple of hundreds of Kelvins lower than it would be correct.
2. Use a layer of “desaturation” on the background, to get rid of the colors and slide the colors to white. Not to grey!!! This way, it doesn’t look “desaturated”. It is going to look more natural.
3. Open up a layer of desaturation and lower the yellows on the surroundings, but not on the skin.
4. Now you have to change the color of the skin. Use the layer option and click on “selective color”.
5. The last step is to get the blue tone on the image. You achieve this with a layer of solid color (CYAN/BLUE) and setting the layer mode to “SOFT LIGHT”…
6. VOILA… it’s done!

Ok, that’s all.

BYE

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Hey folks, today it’s about yesterdays photo. Let’s take a short, very short, look at how it was made! We already told you, that we only used ON-CAMERA-FLASHES to light the photo.

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Well, here you go with some visual proofs of the setup. Can you find the setup within this huge studio???

And now you know how the photo really was made. One flash from above her face, a simple reflector from down below.

• ISO 400 (IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR FLASH :-))
• 1/200s
• f1.4 at 85mm
• the flash was set to 1/128 +0,7 / 580 EX II

And hell, we don’t really know why the EXIFs of that photo shows A-MODE. We totally used M for the whole shooting. Here you go with a little photo of the radio trigger… no ettl, cls or whatsoever automatic!!!!

BY THE WAY… THAT COOL STUDIO BELONGS TO MICHAEL QUACK.

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On the “EXPLAIN-TODAY-LIST” is the one setup we currently use the most… sounds a bit like “boring-because-normal” but you will soon see the reason, why this setup is so fantastic. Have a look at the photo first, than try to separate the photo into several lighting aspects.

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• Relativly soft and natural light on our model
  -> YOU CAN SEE ALL THE CLOTHING SHE IS WEARING.
• Background is nicely lit, shadows, sky, contrasts…
  -> LOOK NICE
• The model is nicely separated from the slightly underexposed background
  -> FOCUS ON THE MODEL

To get it straight out… this setup is so perfect, because it gives you all you need as a fashion & commercial photographer. The setups looks really cool but still is still pretty natural. The lighting is creative but still “normal” enough to present the fashion or the dressing of the model. And last: You don’t need very much to light up this setup.

You have probably noticed the big SHADOW on the ground. As you can imagine, such a big shadow can only be produced by a big tree or something even bigger. And this shadow is also the reason why this setup is so “cheap”. Under the tree in the shadow, there is less light. Less light means a open aperture. This means less power is needed to light the scene. Less power needed means less money is needed.

Ok, now we can have a look at our usual sketches…

Together with the natural sunlight, the shadow from the tree, we only need two more lightsources. A let’s get the infos straight out…

• Main light with UMBRELLA, 1m in size…
• The effect light was not modified, simple light out of the strobe…
• f8 at ISO100
• Fastes exposure-time possible…
• Main light 1,5m away from the model (the closest distance possible to light the whole model uniformly)
• Effect light about 2m away (a good distance to still give some of the effect onto the surrounding)

Now matter what kind of gear you are using… the really important stuff is the thinking behind a setup. In this case, it wouldn’t matter whether you are using a 1m softbox, a umbrella or any other stuff to get a soft light. Think about what you really want, what type of lighting you need. Why you need it… everything you do, you do it with purpose!

By the way… this setup was done with 2 on-camera-flashes. We used two Nikon Sb-26 from 20 years ago!

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Today, we are going to present a slightly different type of blogpost. We have noticed, that there has been quite a lot of theorie, setups, how-tos and other “boring” stuff. This time, we want to show you the other side of photography. Having nothing todo with techniques.

Some time ago, we showed you a very special photo. And short after, we explained to you, how the photo was done. Here you go with the photo…

(ATTENTION: PHOTO CHANGED)

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…and HERE you go with the Setup-Tutorial.ist der Link.

Short summary: one-light, strobist, umbrella, reflektor, white studio, ISO400, f1.4, 1/200s at 85mm.

But hey, we won’t explain that photo once again. We already did! So what is this all about?

It’s about the actual reason of a lighting setup when doing photography. Light is the one way for a photographer to get his model in focus. To create a szenery. We can do a lot with lighting but we can’t do miracles.

We recieved a lot of questions. How did you do that cool photo, how was it lit, what type of lense did you use, what camera, how do I have to photograph my model to get a photo like this… and every single time we answered this way:

It’s not about the light, not about the lense, not about the camera, it’s all about the model.

We didn’t do a lot of “magic” with this photo. Simple lighting, simple posing, simple make-up… the photo is the way it is, only because of the model. And this is the big learning of today’s posting:

It’s all about the model.

With some models, you can’t do anything wrong. Have a final look at the photo. After reading this post ,you will hopefully see that we didn’t do a lot of great work on this photo. The main work was done by our Model RAHEL… :-) CHEARS TO HER!!!

(ACHTUNG: FOTO WURDE GETAUSCHT MIT EINEM ANDEREN AUS DER SERIE)

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Photos go first!!!! :-) This time again!

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As you could see! Very simple and clear fashion shots! And you will be astonished how simple the setup is! EASY is not the right word for that!!!
That’s how we did the photo!!! Only ONE!!!!!!!! O-N-E lightsource. One strobe. A 135cm Elinchrom softbox attached and a photographer in front of the softbox!

You will probably aks yourself at once: WHAT??? PHOTOGRAPHER IN FRONT OF THE SOFTBOX???? BUT IS THERE ANY LIGHT COMING TO THE MODELL???? DOESN’T MARTIN BLOCKS ALL THE LIGHT OF THE MODELL?

No, Martin doesn’t. Martin is big, but not big enough :-)…

There is still so much softbox left…

And here comes the FIRST!!!!! not hand-painted-drawing! :-) This time I had to show you the dimensions! And this time, it more usefull to use straight lines!

Just have a look at two things:

• The characteristic of the light emitted
• The dimension of the area blocked by the photographer

As you can see, the photographer takes away something a bit more than 1/8th of the softbox. He could block half of the softbox and still only loose one f-stop of power! So even if 2/8th of the softbox would be covered, there is still a very big area free.

The photographer is blocking the lower part of the softbox. This creates a dominance of the upper part. ERGO: The shadows (if even visible) are projected towards the the bottom. There will be a dominance of the upper part of the softbox. Above the camera there will be more light than below the camera!!!!

We don’t really get a kind of ringlight. What we do get is the following:

WE DO GET A VERY SOFT LIGHT FROM ABOVE, FILLED UP FROM BOTH SIDES EQUALLY!!! :-)

It really looks a bit like a ringflash… but it is NOT!!!

The Ranger RX has 1100Ws at MAX! Then there is a 7.5 on the display! Just take 4.6 as 4.5, that would make a exact difference of about 3 f-stop (7.5-4.5=3) We only used about 1100ws goes down to 550Ws goes down to 275Ws goes down to 138Ws!!! We only used not more than 150Ws of strobe-power!!!! There is a very low need of power!!!

The Rest is fairly simple. Just start to make some cool photos! But keep following points in mind:

• Use a ZOOOOOOM-lens in order to stay absolutly in front of the softbox! Every move you make changes the light!!!
• DON’T EVER CHANGE DISTANCES!!!
• Mark the spot the modell has to stand! (BIG CROSS!!!!)
• The bigger the softbox is, the cooler it gets. But we used 135cm… 100cm is close to beeing to small but still is possible.

Have a look at the following photos. A close and detailed look!!!

What is the exact difference between the two photographs? Well, it’s the position of the kamea. One time, it is about the height around the chest, the other time, it near belt-height! And now, take a look at the position of the softbox! Both times… it is exactly behind the camera.

Don’t think, that it doesn’t count, whether you stand 20cm above or below the softbox! IT DOES MATTER! TRUST ME!

Photography is about details and the moment you start to work on details in your light, the moment your light really improves!

As usual, we also give you the actual RAW-Material! HAVE FUN! That’s what we get out of our camera!!!

And by the way… we really do put the camera AND the 70-200 2.8 IS on the SUN-SNIPER! Everytime again and it still is absolutly perfect!

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