First Studio Session 2 Aug 11

First session using the studio lighing. One interesting thing I noticed was that the EXIF info about the camera settings found in Lightroom3 for the first three images indicate the flash "Did not fire" which as we can see from the lighting in the photos and catchlight in the eye that the flash did indeed fire. The last two photos the flash was fired manually with an assistant pushing the fire button when the unit had reset after the previous shot. 

All images are as shot no post production other than conversion from .dng to 72 ppi .jpg.

Single studio flash set high and to the left of camera. Settings 1/200 sec, f/18 ISO 100, focal length 82mm. Attempting to get a 'standard' studio shot with Rembrant lighting. 

Single studio flash set high and to the left of camera. Settings 1/200 sec, f/18 ISO 100, focal length 82mm. Same set up as previous photo this time allowed the sitter to choose her pose. 

Single studio flash set high and to the left of camera. Settings 1/200 sec, f/22 ISO 100, focal length 35mm. We discussed with Julian the possibility of capturing motion when using the studio flash. He suggested we try to capture motion with a hand moving in a slicing action in the air. The best we could do because of the speed of the flash was a slight blur of Kayla's hand and forearm.

Single studio flash set high and to the left of camera. Settings 10 sec, f/8 ISO 100, focal length 45mm. All studio light out including modelling light. Subject spinning around. This is another experiment with motion blur but this time we used a much longer exposure, 10 seconds, and multiple flashes, 5-8 not sure how many we got, set off manually with assistant pressing the fire button. f/8 was chosen as that was the correct setting indicated by the light meter for the exposure. This is not a successful photo for several reasons:

1. image is overexposed because the f/8 although correct for a single exposure was too open for  multiple flashes.
2. the background was too light so there was not contrast with the subject who was wearing a white top. Notice the lower portion of the photo with the darker background was slightly more successful than the top half.

Single studio flash set high and to the left of camera. Settings 10 sec, f/22 ISO 100, focal length 47mm. All studio light out including modelling light. Subject spinning around. We tried the same technich as the previous photo that 10 seconds exposure and multiple flashes, 5-8 not sure how many we got, set off manually with assistant pressing the fire button. f/22 was calculated as the correct exposure. We had the same flash meter reading as before indicating we should us f/8 however we knew that we would have about 4-5 flashes so the f-stop needed to be closed down so that the accumulated exposures would result in the same exposure level as that of a single shot taken at f/8. So we closed down 3 stops to f/22. We would have stopped down more but f/22 was the limit of the lens. The other things that were changed was the use of a black background and model, who unfortunately had a black top on.

The resulting photo which is far from perfect but is much better than the first one and demonstrats the exposure techniques we need to consider in our shoots.