Photography Lighting in Portrait Photography
Content
Photograph y
Lighting in portrait photography
Guillem Costas Castilla 2011
INDEX
Introduction.............................................................................3 Objectives................................................................................4 Introduction.............................................................................5 Basic terminology.....................................................................6 RAW vs. JPG..............................................................................8 RAW...................................................................................................8 JPG......................................................................................................8 Image compression............................................................................8 The differences..................................................................................9 The choice..........................................................................................11 Lighting outside 12
Lighting outside using ambient light..................................................12 Examples...................................................................................13 Lighting outside using artificial light and ambient light.....................16 Examples...................................................................................18 Lighting inside..........................................................................25 Examples...................................................................................27 Astrophotography.....................................................................41 Examples.....................................................................42 Variable light conditions...........................................................44 Examples...................................................................................45 Process of postprocessing.........................................................55 Example.....................................................................................55 Conclusion................................................................................63
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Bibliography.............................................................................65 Annex......................................................................................67
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INTRODUCTION
I started thinking about the subject of my project in the 4th year of ESO. I had one thing very clear: it would have to be about something I liked and I could enjoy doing. Photography was the subject that was always in my mind, but there were other subjects such as “Light” which would have been a physics project. The first year of Batxillerat arrived and I had to decide what I wanted to do. I was in doubt about choosing between three different projects, all of which were related to photography in some way. The first one was about light. I wanted to do some research in the area of light diffraction but it wasn’t appealing enough for me to feel I absolutely wanted to work on this subject so I abandoned this idea. The second idea was to do a time lapse. Time-lapse photography is a cinematographic technique where each frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When it is played at a normal speed, time appears to be moving faster than in reality. The idea I had was to show a day in my life in 15 minutes. I finally rejected this option because something better came to me, and anyway this project would not have had a theoretical part. The third idea, and the one I’ve chosen, was lighting in photography, especially in portrait photography. I had bought some lighting equipment and I didn’t know how to use it correctly so I thought a great way of learning how to use it would be to do my project about it. My life-long passion mixed up with my research project could be a very good mixture. When I finally decided on this subject, lots of ideas came to my mind and I put them together and I did an index which I gave to my tutor. Luckily, he agreed with the project and I started working on it.
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OBJECTIVES
I knew almost nothing about the subject so my main objective was to learn as much as I could about lighting in portrait photography. My project would consist of a theoretical part and a practical part. What I wanted to do was to tell in my own words everything I was learning and show it with my own pictures. It would be very instructive. First, I divided the project into three parts, where every part would have a theory and practice section. The first part would be the introduction, where I would introduce the subject and learn more about the two main kinds of file: JPG and RAW. The second part would be about outside lighting out, where I had to fulfil two objectives: to learn how to shoot outside and get good light results, and to learn how to mix ambient light with artificial light, which is harder. The third part would consist of lighting inside. I knew nothing about that, so I would have to do a lot of research to be able give the best ways to provide illumination in a studio, and to try them. This looked good, and it could have been the project, but my teacher said that I could do some research about astrophotography, which has some specific lighting characteristics. Moreover, he could provide me with everything I needed to do the practical part. It sounded fantastic, so I added this part. I wanted to take some successful shots of galaxies and stars and explain the basis of astrophotography. Furthermore, while I was doing my project a new part came to my mind. This would be about lighting in special conditions such as concerts, “correfocs” or dance exhibitions. This part would be more practical than theoretical, but I thought this was missing in the project, so I decided to add this as well. Summing up, I had five objectives. The first was to do some research about JPG and RAW files. The second was to be able to tell with my own words how to illuminate outside correctly using ambient light or mixing ambient light with artificial light and test it with pictures taken by me. The third was the same as the second but lighting inside, I would just use artificial light. The
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fourth was to explain the basis of astrophotography and take some successful photographies of celestial bodies. And the last one was to show some examples of photography in variable light conditions.
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INTRODUCTION TO DSLR
First of all, I have to say that I’m just going to talk about a Digital SingleLens Reflex camera (DSLR). A DSLR is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror and a pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera. Some aspects of what I’m going to talk about may not be applicable in compact or medium format cameras. DSLRs are often preferred by photographers because they allow the user to choose from a huge variety of interchangeable lenses. Lenses are divided according to their focal range. There are fisheyes, wide angle, standard lenses, telephoto lenses, macro… Furthermore, there are also lenses of a fixed focal, fixed aperture, but I will deal with this point later. Moreover, most DSLRs also have a function that allows accurate preview of depth of field. You will never understand photography if you are not clear about two points - how the light travels through the camera and arrives at the viewfinder, and the way the sensor catches the light.
Illustrations of the path of light inside the camera We have to consider the camera in two parts: the lens and the body. Basically, the lens is formed by several pieces of glass. Its function is to focus the image onto the digital sensor, where it is captured and stored. The
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body contains the components which are responsible for visualizing and creating the image. Some of these components are the mirror, the digital sensor, the pentaprism and the viewfinder.
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BASIC TERMINOLOGY
In this part I’m going to explain some specific photographic vocabulary that appears in the project. Lens: a camera lens works by focusing the light onto the digital sensor. It contains several pieces of glass and other elements. It is the optical component of a camera and it performs automatic and manual functions. Aperture: it controls the amount of light admitted into the lens.
Sometimes it is fixed but usually you can adjust the size of the hole to vary the amount of light. F-stops: the F-number of F-stops are the numbers on the lens’ aperture ring and the camera’s LCD. These numbers indicate the size of lens aperture. The lower the number the larger is the aperture, meaning that the lower value lets more light pass into the camera. Focal length: it is the distance between the sensor and the lens’ centre when the camera is focused on an object at infinity. This distance is measured in millimetres, for example: 70-200mm. There are lenses with a fixed focal length but most lenses can vary the focal length and they are called “zoom lenses”. Shutter speed: this is the speed of opening and closing of the camera shutter. It determinates the amount of time that light can pass through the aperture. Shorter shutter speeds are needed for taking shots in bright conditions while longs speeds are used for taking shots in dark areas. Depth of field (DOF): it is the distance from the focal point at which a photo will be sharp while the rest becomes blurry. The lower F-stop number the shorter your DOF will be and also the other way around. This means that when shooting with a low F-stop you will get an image with a very short distance of sharpness.
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Autofocus (AF): it refers to the ability of some cameras or lenses to get the correct focus automatically. In some models the focus can be continuously maintained. Resolution: The resolution is the amount of pixels that the image has. Normally it’s specified in Megapixels. Pixels are the colour dots that make up an image. A camera with higher resolution will produce better image quality. White Balance (WB): white balance adjust the white colour quantity of your image. This process is used to make white the objects you see as white in person. White balance is measured in degrees Kelvin and usually goes from 1.000K (candlelight) to 10.000K (heavily overcast sky). The sensor: it is the component that replaces the film. It is made of millions of pixels that read the light and colour values which are later reconstructed to create the image. In camera software: the process to create the image from the data of the sensor is performed by this software. It is usually very sophisticated and normally allows the user to edit the photograph in the camera. Memory cards: when the image is reconstructed by the software in the camera it’s stored in the memory card. There are several types of memory cards: SD, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, and xD memory. Strobist (strobe): lighting equipment made up of off-camera flashes. ISO: it is the quantity of light a camera needs to take a photo. Depending on the ISO number you choose it will vary. The higher the number is, the less light you need to take the picture.
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RAW vs. JPG
Raw and JPG are two different kinds of files your camera can produce. For example, when you use Microsoft Word and you save the document it creates a .DOC file, and when you use Microsoft Excel it creates a .XLS file. So, what are the differences between these kinds of files?
RAW The definition of “raw” is uncooked. A RAW file is the unedited image data that a digital SLR camera captures every time you take a photo, so you could say that a RAW file is an uncooked digital photo. The camera doesn’t manipulate the image in any way before it’s saved on the memory card. You can make an equivalence with analog cameras; a RAW file is the same as a digital negative. JPG Unlike a RAW file, a JPG is a processed image. All of the processing takes place inside the camera before the image is saved in the memory card. Some of this processing consists of colour saturation (increase or decrease the intensity of colours), sharpness (can make the image looks crisp or soft) and contrast (affects the range between the highlights and shadows). This seems good if you don’t want or don’t have time to spend on the computer processing the image but it has a drawback: the treatment that the SLR applies to the image can’t be undone. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes to your photo in an editing program after you take it of course you can. It just means that any colour or exposure setting applied when the photo was taken can’t be altered. IMAGE COMPRESSION A digital image is made up of millions of pixels and the camera has two options when it comes to the colour of these pixels:
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1. Leave them the way they were captured by the camera’s sensor. 2. Adjust ones of a similar colour so that they are identical (this reduces the overall file size of your digital photo). The effect of mild-severe compression can drastically reduce the overall quality of the image, producing photos that look unsharp and blocky. This process is applied to every JPG file to some extent (you can control the extent using camera settings). In contrast, no compression is used for RAW files. THE DIFFERENCES Now I’m going to talk about the pros and cons of each kind of file and what you must know before choosing one or the other. Pros of JPG 1. Small file size maximizes memory card space. 2. Easy to view and edit with any editing program. 3. Easy to upload to online galleries. 4. Cons of JPG 1. Less control over the way the final image appears. 2. Compressed files lose some image data. 3. It’s harder of to correct or mistakes exposure. JPG is by far the easier format to work with because you can see the image on any computer. Even if you don’t have an image editing program you can still view your JPG images with just the standard utilities of your computer. Since every JPG is compressed, it doesn’t take up as much space. This also means that it takes significantly less time to upload a JPG to an online gallery. When you set your camera to capture photos as JPG files, you are letting the camera decide how your final images are going to look. Decisions about the colour, tone and clarity of the photo are under your direct control - that's all decided for you. But if you take a portrait and decide after the fact that you don't like the skin tones or capture a beautiful sunset but the colours don't colour
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pop quite as much as you'd like, there's little that you can do about it. The image is (somewhat) set in stone.
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Pros of RAW 1. No image data is lost. 2. You have plenty of flexibility when deciding what the final image will look like. 3. Allows you to correct mistakes made at the time of the exposure. Cons of RAW 1. Uncompressed images create very large files. 2. Requires special programs to convert into JPG format. 3. Requires powerful computer to view and edit. 4. Requires time and effort to develop the image. As you can see, the cons of working with RAW files cannot be solved easily and this is the reason why many people avoid RAW and work with JPG. First of all, RAW files are huge. You need much more memory on your camera’s card or your computer. A RAW file can use up to 4 times more digital space than a JPG. For example, a high quality JPG that uses 6 MegaBytes would use 24 MegaBytes of space in RAW. These enormous file sizes can impact those who want to work with RAW: 1. You need memory cards with more storage space. 2. You need plenty of space on you hard drive. 3. It takes extra time to transfer images from your memory card to the hard drive. 4. You need a powerful computer to view and edit these files. But it’s not so negative as it seems. Nowadays memory is “very” cheap. You can buy good memory cards for about 20-30€. You can also get a 500GB hard drive for less than 100€. Once you’ve got all the storage space ready, you’re going to need a special program to see and edit your RAW photos. RAW files are unique to each camera manufacturer. I mean that a RAW file produced by a Canon won’t be the same as a RAW file produced by a Nikon. But it’s not a big problem
because when you buy your DSLR there is a CD with software for your RAW files. But if you don’t like the software that comes with your DSLR you can use programs such as Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Elements and Apple Aperture. So, summing up, RAW files are huge and they require specific software to view and edit. You will be wondering what’s the point of all this. It’s actually really important: you can manipulate any part of your digital image AFTER the photo has been taken. The choice Why is all this important for my project? It is important because it provides you with the knowledge about the two file formats. So, it’s up to you which one will you choose. Will you choose JPG because of the small file size or will you choose RAW due to all the advantages it has? My choice is for RAW. The flexibility it gives you is stunning. If you fail with the exposure, you can change with the software. If you don’t like the white balance, you can change it. If you feel the image is too sharp or too soft, you can change it. If you think there’s too much noise in the image, you can reduce it.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE
First of all, you have to consider which sort of lighting you are going to use. Are you shooting with ambient light or do you want to shoot with some flashes mixed up with ambient light? Obviously, it is easier to take photos with ambient light, but don’t think it is so easy. You don’t have to have in mind as many things as when you use flashes but you have to think about other relevant aspects. You have to think about the time. If you want to take a portrait in the middle of the day it will have lots of ugly shadows that will attract your attention. Moreover, there will be a lot of high contrast areas. So, I would recommend the first and the last hours of light for taking photographs. You will get better portraits with soft light and low contrast. Portraits will look more natural. But if you want to get striking shots with amazing combination of lights, you must use artificial lighting, taking into account that it will be harder and you must know lots of things before getting good results.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE USING AMBIENT LIGHT There’s not so much to say about this point - you only have to think about the position of the sun. As I said before, the best moments of the day are the first hours of the morning and the last hours of light. That’s because the light is oblique and soft and it will hide imperfections of the skin and make lines softer. As you are working with only one source of light you can’t control the background light and the light of the model. So you have to expose correctly the face of the model and leave the background overexposed, underexposed or exposed correctly. The point is that you will have to choose which is the best position (or the position you want) to take the pictures. You have lots of possibilities: backlighting, sidelight, skylight, headlight… The best lights are sidelight and
backlight (because of the very impressive results you get if you do it nicely). Skylight and headlight will produce worse results and imperfections will stand out a lot. If we use sidelight or backlight there will be areas of the model that will be in shadow, so we have to send fill light to these areas. We are not using artificial lighting, so how can we do it? It’s easy, we only need a big white piece of material or paper to reflect the light. By doing that, the dark areas of the model will be illuminated.
EXAMPLES
1/320s
f/6.3
ISO 100
24mm
1/200s 1/60s
f/8 f/5.6
ISO 100 ISO 100
55mm 250mm
These three pictures are samples of shooting outside without artificial light and without any kind of reflector. I’m going to comment on them all
together because I don’t have to explain any kind of lighting scheme; it’s always the same: light coming from the sun. As you can see, in the first and third photos the shadows are harsher than in the second and fourth. This is because I took this shots a while before sunset, so light was not soft at all. In contrast, the other two photos were taken during sunset or just before sunset, so the light is much softer but harsh enough to create volume and depth in faces. But actually, all of them are technically correct. If you want to give aggression and strength to the picture you will prefer harsher shadows, and on the other hand, if you want to give smoothness and quietness you will use softer light.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE USING ARTIFICIAL LIGHT AND AMBIENT LIGHT When you use flashes while shooting outside you have to control two
exposures at the same time. The reason is that you are working with at least two sources of light: ambient light and artificial light. Ambient light, also called available light, is the light that comes from the sun whereas artificial light is the light that comes from your lighting equipment.
Ambient light is a source that you can’t control so you have to adjust the camera settings to the ambient light for a proper background exposure. Light from our strobe is light we can control so, once we have the ambient light controlled by the camera settings we have to adjust the artificial light to get the perfect lighting on the subject you want to shoot. An important point that you must have in mind is that if you want to shoot outside with or without lighting equipment you have to do it in a moment of the day when the ambient light is not perfect, for example just before sunrise or just before sunset. If you shoot in the middle of the day you will probably get bad results. Since we want to use strobe in our shoots we have some limits about what we can do with our camera. First of all we can’t set the shutter speed faster
that the sync speed. The sync speed is the maximum speed at which the camera and the flash can be synchronized, which is normally around 200 or 250 hundredths of a second. Another limitation we have is that you have to set the camera to the manual mode, you can’t use any automatic mode. Now I’m going to explain how to get the perfect exposure of the image taking into account that we have to control two exposures. It sounds a bit complicated but it’s really not. You just have to follow these steps: 1. The first step is to set your camera to manual mode and make sure your shutter speed is set to your sync speed. 2. The second step is to point your camera at the area just behind your subject and adjust your aperture until you have the correct exposure of the background.
3. Then, the third step if you have a flash meter is to set your flash with the settings it indicates but, as I don’t have a flash meter the third step is to set the flashes more or less as you think they should be set and do some test shots. If they don’t convince you, you just have to change the settings of the flash until the results convince you.
Once you have finished these three steps you are ready to start shooting. As always, if in the middle of the session you want to overexpose the background you just have to slow down the shutter speed or if you want to underexpose you have to close the aperture (remember that you are shooting at sync speed).
EXAMPLES
1/80s 200 18mm
f/7.1
ISO
This picture is a bit complex. I used three flashguns. There are two flashguns through translucent umbrellas in front of the models and one flashgun behind the models to create the halo around the hair. The key light is the flashgun on the left in front of the models and the fill light is on the right. The flashgun behind the models was shot at minimum power because if not, the halo would have been too big. All these are mixed with the ambient light to create a striking photograph.
1/2000s
f/7.1
ISO 100
50mm
This shot was taken just before sunset. As you can see, if I hadn’t used flash the models would be black as in the left corner. In this case I used the external flashgun on the camera. I used it just as a fill light, so I didn’t need to take it off the camera. The use of the flash in this picture is one of the most important uses of flash. In this case, the key light was the sun, and the fill light was the flash.
1/80s
f/8
ISO 400
18mm
Luckily I have a “making of” photo of this picture: As you can see, the strobe settings of this picture are two flashguns through translucent umbrella in front of the models and another one behind them to fill the hair. This time, the key light is the flashgun on the right. The light from this flashgun goes from down to up. The flashgun on the left acts as the fill light, and the light goes from up to down. The third flash is to fill a little bit the hair and shirts of the models.
1/100s
f/5.6
ISO 100
180mm
In this shot I just used one flashgun and it wasn’t the key light. The key light was the ambient light and it was coming from the back, so without flash she would have been very dark. Thanks to the flash I managed to get a beautiful green in the grass and have her well-exposed.
1/200s f/5.6
ISO 200
106mm
1/200
f/5.6
ISO 200
85mm
1/80s
f/6.3
ISO 500 78mm
For this three shots I used the same lighting scheme. I put 2 flashguns thorough translucent umbrella in each side of them. The one on the left was set at maximum power and the other one at ½ power.
1/40s
f/5.6
ISO 640
200mm
This shot is more difficult than what it looks like. The other side of the pool is 5 or 6 meter away. Moreover, I wanted to set the flashes on the right side of the camera to create depth in their faces. I tried with one bare flash at maximum power but I didn’t get enough light, so I set another flash next to the first one. Then, I had to much light, so I finally took the shot with one flash at maximum power and the other one at ½.
LIGHTING INSIDE
Lighting inside is easier than lighting outside using artificial light. To shoot outside using strobe you have to control two sources of light: the ambient light and the artificial light. Shooting inside, you just have to take into account the light from your strobe, because the ambient light is very low. The way to set the flashes is the same as before, with just one difference; as you are not shooting with a lot of light you can slow down the shutter speed. You have to consider that you need a background (it can be a white cloth), something to hold the background (there are specific supports) and enough space in the room to separate the model from the background (minimum 1.5 meters). If you meet all these requirements you are ready to start shooting. First, I’m going to show some pictures with and without light reflector using a window of source of light. So, no flashes were used.
This shot is without a reflector. You can see that the right side of the shot is well exposed while the left part is underexposed.
This is the same shot as the one before but using a silver reflector on the left to reflect the light coming from the window on the right of her face. There’s a big difference compared to the other one. Here the whole face is well exposed and maintains t three-dimensionality. Now, I’m going to demonstrate the difference between shooting thorough a source to soften the light, and not. In this case I used a translucent umbrella.
Witho ut umbrella. Harsh shadows. With umbrella. Soft shadows.
EXAMPLES
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400
50mm
This is a very simple lighting scheme. I only used 2 bare flashguns on each side of the model. The distance between the model and the flashguns was 1’5 meters and they were very close to the background. This way, the background got burnt without using any other source of light.
1/80 f/4.5 1/100 f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm ISO 400 50mm
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm
The scheme of these photos is a little bit more complex. I used three flashguns and a silver reflector. Two flashguns were set behind the model to burn the background. The other one, which was shot thorough a translucent umbrella, was on the left side in front of the model. Finally, I used a reflector on the right side to lower contrast. This is a very common lighting scheme. By varying the height of the flashgun and the reflector you can obtain very different and great results. Moreover, if you change the source of light used as the key light (the flashgun thorough a translucent umbrella in this case) and you do it with a “beauty dish” you will get stunning results and your shots will look like fashion photographs.
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 250
50mm
1/250 50mm
f/6.3
ISO 400
50mm
1/250
f/6.3
ISO 400
This is the same scheme as the one before but there’s a difference. The key light is on the other side of the model. As I said, there are a lot of options with the same kind of scheme.
1/125s
f/5
ISO 250
50mm
This scheme is a slight variation of the last one. I put the key light some meters back. This way, the clapperboard was also illuminated.
1/125s
f/7.1
ISO 250
50mm
In this shot, the reflector I had was not enough to reflect all the light I wanted, so I used another flashgun with a translucent umbrella as fill light. I set the second flashgun at 2 steps less power than the key light. This way I managed to get all the body well exposed without any ugly shadow. The third flashgun was set to burn the background.
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 320
63mm
1/100s 45mm
f/6.3
ISO 250
47mm
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 250
These three pictures were shot with the same lighting setup and there is a big compared to the other ones: the background is black. I only used one flash thorough a translucent umbrella on the right of the model. This is a very simple but effective lighting scheme. You get high contrast images that help you to convey the feeling you want to.
1/25s
f/6.3
ISO 400
191mm
For this shot I used a lighting set up a little unusual. I wanted an image of very low contrast so I decided to put one flashgun on the right behind the model but pointing to the camera. This way the light rays came through the camera lens and reduced the contrast of the image. I also set two flashes with translucent umbrellas in the front to create a soft lighting.
1/50s
f/6.3
ISO 400
160mm
This time I used the usual two lights scheme but with a slight variation. The flash on the right, which was not shot through a translucent umbrella, was set 2.50 metres high and was pointing to her hair. This way I got her hair illuminated as I wanted.
1/100s 100mm
f/7.1
ISO 400
To take this shot I used a very simple scheme. I only used one bare flash on the left of the model to create a high contrast image.
1/80s ISO 400 189mm
f/5.6
Once again, not the most complex one is the better one. This one light scheme is very effective, as you can see.
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
Astrophotography is a mix between photography and astronomy. It consists of taking photographs of celestial bodies. The advantage of mixing photography with astronomy is that using a DSLR you can expose for a long time and get pictures of things that the human eye cannot see even with the help of a powerful telescope. You will probably be wondering how you can take pictures of distant planets. It’s very simple; you just have to use the telescope as your camera lens. In fact, it is not as simple as it seems, but this is the concept. There’s a part of the telescope where you can fit an adaptor to connect your camera body. When you have done this your camera will reflect what the telescope sees. From now on, all you have to do is use the camera as if you were taking a night photo. This means that you might have to take a shot from 2 seconds of exposure to hours. Hours would be silly because your image would be full of noise and you wouldn’t distinguish anything, so what you have to do is take lots of shots for some minutes and mix them using specific software. As you will know, the universe is not still. This is another important point that you must take into account doing astrophotography. If you want to take a photograph of a star’s wake you must use a tripod, but if you want to take a photo of a galaxy or a planet you must follow it. Luckily, telescopes have a system that automatically follows the object you are focusing. Now I’m going to show you some pictures taken by me with the help of an astronomic organisation.
EXAMPLES
Vega star. Exposure time: 30 seconds. ISO: 200 M51. Exposure time: 53 seconds. ISO: 800 You can see the high level of noise due to the high ISO.
M13. Exposure time: 30 seconds. ISO: 800
VARIABLE LIGHT CONDITIONS
In this part I’m going to talk about those situations in which the light is always varying, such as concerts, “correfocs” or dance exhibitions. I am going to use these three situations as examples because they are the ones I know the best. I am also going to show you an example of a match burning. As with everything in your life, common sense is your best friend. You cannot be changing the shutter speed or the aperture all the time so, what can you do? Fortunately DSLRs have two semi-manual modes called aperture-priority and shutter-priority. These modes give priority to the aperture or the shutter. This means that when using aperture-priority mode you set the aperture you want and the shutter speed varies. The other mode acts the same way with shutter-priority. Now that you know which mode you have to use (it depends on if you prefer to choose the shutter speed or the aperture) you only have to worry about the ISO. You have to choose the correct ISO depending on the light at every moment. If there is not much light you will have to choose a high ISO, if there is enough light ISO 400 or less will be okay. In the following part I’m going to show you some examples of photographs where the light conditions are variable.
EXAMPLES
1/60s f/2.5 ISO 1600 50mm 50mm
1/60s f/2.5 ISO 1600
1/50s f/2.5 ISO 800 50mm 50mm
1/60s f/2.2 ISO 1600
1/100s f/4.5 ISO 1000 39mm 35mm
1/200s f/4 ISO 1600
1/80s
f/4.5
ISO 2000 72mm
0’5s f/9 ISO 200
50mm
1/250s f/9 ISO 200
55mm
1/125s f/3.2 ISO 2500 50mm
1/15s
f/4.5 ISO 1600 55mm
Finally, I wanted to show you this shot. A match starting to burn. I had to take 2 photos because the exposure time was too different and then I mixed and retouched them using Photoshop. Here you have the two shots and the final image:
Smoke
Match Final image
Due to the postprocessing EXIF data have been removed
PROCESS OF POSTPROCESSING
The process of postprocessing is something every photographer must do. Some years ago it was done in the laboratory but nowadays it’s done using a computer. Because I always shoot in RAW this process will consist of two parts. First you have to develop the photograph. You have many options to do this, such as using the specific software of the camera, a Photoshop plug-in called Adobe Camera Raw, or software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I’ve tried all of them, and my choice is the last one. I always use Lightroom because it allows you to do many more things than the others but at the same time if you don’t want to complicate matters it is very simple and intuitive. The second parts consist of importing the photograph to Photoshop (or any other similar software) and starting the retouching part itself. In Photoshop you are able to do whatever you want with your photo and here is where the magic begins. Finally you only have to export the file as a JPG or any other kind of standard image format and you will be able to share your picture with the entire world.
EXAMPLE I’ve chosen a black and white high key portrait to show you the whole process of postprocessing. I chose this image because in RAW you can see some imperfections in the model’s face which will be removed and the lighting is perfect for a high key image. A high key image is a lighting style which aims to reduce the lighting ratio and focus it towards the high lights.
First of all you have to import the folder where you have the pictures to Lightroom’s library, where you can see all the images without having to save them as JPGs. Now, when you have chosen the image you want to process, you have to click on the second tab in the right corner of the screen and you will go to the “develop zone” where you will start processing your picture.
In this part you are able to change the colour temperature, the hue, the intensity and saturation, the sharpness, you can vary the lights and shadows and change its tones, reduce the noise and chromatic aberrations and many more things, but these are the ones that I always use when I develop a RAW file. In this case I increased the exposition and I softened the shadows. Moreover, I added warm colours to reduce the global contrast. I also increased the sharpness of the picture and reduced the noise in dark areas. Finally, I did a copy of the original RAW and exported the processed image as a PSD (Photoshop file format) to Photoshop CS3.
This is the step where you must spend most of the time taken up by the process. When you have your picture in Photoshop you can start doing what you want to do with your picture. In this case, I’m going to do a black and white high key portrait so, first, I have to remove all the main imperfections of the skin and soften the whole face a little bit.
The next step is to turn the colour image into a black and white image. There are many options for doing this. The simplest is to desaturate the picture but you won’t get good results. Another option is using “colour channels” but it’s too difficult and not worth it for the results you get. In my opinion, the best option is to create a black and white adjust layer. It’s easy and you can modify each colour as you want; if you want to give more relevance to red, for example, you increase your “reds”. Moreover, you can vary the hue.
Once I had the black and white picture I had to change the lighting a little bit to give importance to the lights and reduce the shadows. Then I erased all the little imperfections I didn’t like in her face and I cloned a hair that was over her eye and attracted too much attention. After that, I gave contrast and strength to her eyes and I softened the rest of the face again. Finally I increased the sharpness of the eyes.
1/80s
f/4.5
ISO 400
50mm
The last point is to save the picture as a JPG and enjoy the results!
CONCLUSION
When I started my project lots of questions and doubts came to me. Will I have time enough to take all the pictures I need to show everything I tell in the theoretical part? Will I find all the information I need? Will I fulfil my objective of learning as much as I can about this subject? And what about the technical part? Will I be able to finish the whole project in English? And the main technical doubt: Will I be able to manage the ISO, the diaphragm and the shutter speed? Because when you shoot with continuous spotlights it is easier, you just have to set your camera according to the light at each moment; but using speedlights you don’t see how much light will be when you shoot. Fortunately, the answer is: absolutely yes! I have fulfilled all the objectives I had and, moreover, I’m really proud I have been able to complete the project in English. For me, it was like a goal I had to reach and due to this reason I have not had any lack of motivation. Moreover, I have been able to manage the speedlights without having a flash meter. I have had to do it by the method: test-error and repeat it until I had the light I wanted. I didn’t start from any hypothesis; it was just a personal challenge. I wanted to learn about lighting in photography in an autodidact way and now, I can say that I’ve overcome my objectives. During the project I have been able to extend my knowledge of photography, specially in lighting and astrophotography. I also have to say that it has not been as easy as it looks like. I’ve had to have it finished before December due to personal reasons, so I’ve been under stress the last days, which have been exams days. But the most important problem I’ve had to face has been the fact of doing it in English. I’ve thought many times to change the language because I realized that if I did it in Catalan I would express myself so much better and a lot faster. But on the other hand, if I had changed the language I wouldn’t have reached my goal so I tried to keep motivated and going on writing.
From every hard challenge you can always learn something, with perseverance and will you can do whatever you want. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me, and special thanks to Natàlia Caimel, Jaume Casals, Isi Vila, Cristina del Río, Sofia Ratia and the tutor of my project Xavier Gimeno.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEBSITES PHOTOGRAPHY IN GENERAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_single-lens_reflex_camera http://photography.lovetoknow.com/Parts_of_a_Digital_Camera http://www.digicamland.org/How_a_Digital_Camera_Works.html http://www.pctechguide.com/56DigCam_Features.htm http://www.fluffbucket.com/general/multimedia/camerafacts.htm http://www.digicamhelp.com/camera-features/camera-parts/dslr-parts/ http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm LENSES http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-choose-the-lens-thats-right-foryou/step4/The-Kinds-of-Lenses/ LIGHTING http://ericgibaud.wordpress.com/category/tecnicas/iluminacion-exterior/ http://www.fotorevista.com.ar/Tecnica/FotoTaller/index.htm LIGHTING SCHEMES http://www.pbase.com/mcmomo/technique_eclairage http://www.aulafoto.com/apuntes.htm http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-esquemas-de-iluminacion-explicadosiluminar-la-cara_140 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-esquemas-de-iluminacion-explicados_60 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-iluminacion-de-retrato-en-estudio_14 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-la-tecnica-del-retrato_65 VIDEOS It’s a channel on YouTube full of photography videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/snapfactory http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=cwISm7C6fiY&playnext_from=TL&videos=rTsqkGowb5s&feature=sub
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrofotograf%C3%ADa
BOOKS - Christopher Grey. “Lighting techniques for beauty and glamour
photography”. Amherst Media, INC. - Billy Pegram. “Posing techniques for photographing model portfolios”. Amherst Media, INC. - Calvey Taylor-Haw. “La iluminación en el estudio fotográfico”. Omega. - Nigel Atherton and Steve Crabb. “Fotografía digital de la A a la Z”. Omega. - José B. Ruiz. “El fotógrafo en la naturaleza”. JdeJ Editores.
ANNEX
I attach a DVD which contains all the pictures that appear in the project in high resolution, a video with the “Behind the scenes” of the photoshoot with Jaume Casals and another video with the whole process of postprocessing.
Lighting in portrait photography
Guillem Costas Castilla 2011
INDEX
Introduction.............................................................................3 Objectives................................................................................4 Introduction.............................................................................5 Basic terminology.....................................................................6 RAW vs. JPG..............................................................................8 RAW...................................................................................................8 JPG......................................................................................................8 Image compression............................................................................8 The differences..................................................................................9 The choice..........................................................................................11 Lighting outside 12
Lighting outside using ambient light..................................................12 Examples...................................................................................13 Lighting outside using artificial light and ambient light.....................16 Examples...................................................................................18 Lighting inside..........................................................................25 Examples...................................................................................27 Astrophotography.....................................................................41 Examples.....................................................................42 Variable light conditions...........................................................44 Examples...................................................................................45 Process of postprocessing.........................................................55 Example.....................................................................................55 Conclusion................................................................................63
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Bibliography.............................................................................65 Annex......................................................................................67
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INTRODUCTION
I started thinking about the subject of my project in the 4th year of ESO. I had one thing very clear: it would have to be about something I liked and I could enjoy doing. Photography was the subject that was always in my mind, but there were other subjects such as “Light” which would have been a physics project. The first year of Batxillerat arrived and I had to decide what I wanted to do. I was in doubt about choosing between three different projects, all of which were related to photography in some way. The first one was about light. I wanted to do some research in the area of light diffraction but it wasn’t appealing enough for me to feel I absolutely wanted to work on this subject so I abandoned this idea. The second idea was to do a time lapse. Time-lapse photography is a cinematographic technique where each frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When it is played at a normal speed, time appears to be moving faster than in reality. The idea I had was to show a day in my life in 15 minutes. I finally rejected this option because something better came to me, and anyway this project would not have had a theoretical part. The third idea, and the one I’ve chosen, was lighting in photography, especially in portrait photography. I had bought some lighting equipment and I didn’t know how to use it correctly so I thought a great way of learning how to use it would be to do my project about it. My life-long passion mixed up with my research project could be a very good mixture. When I finally decided on this subject, lots of ideas came to my mind and I put them together and I did an index which I gave to my tutor. Luckily, he agreed with the project and I started working on it.
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OBJECTIVES
I knew almost nothing about the subject so my main objective was to learn as much as I could about lighting in portrait photography. My project would consist of a theoretical part and a practical part. What I wanted to do was to tell in my own words everything I was learning and show it with my own pictures. It would be very instructive. First, I divided the project into three parts, where every part would have a theory and practice section. The first part would be the introduction, where I would introduce the subject and learn more about the two main kinds of file: JPG and RAW. The second part would be about outside lighting out, where I had to fulfil two objectives: to learn how to shoot outside and get good light results, and to learn how to mix ambient light with artificial light, which is harder. The third part would consist of lighting inside. I knew nothing about that, so I would have to do a lot of research to be able give the best ways to provide illumination in a studio, and to try them. This looked good, and it could have been the project, but my teacher said that I could do some research about astrophotography, which has some specific lighting characteristics. Moreover, he could provide me with everything I needed to do the practical part. It sounded fantastic, so I added this part. I wanted to take some successful shots of galaxies and stars and explain the basis of astrophotography. Furthermore, while I was doing my project a new part came to my mind. This would be about lighting in special conditions such as concerts, “correfocs” or dance exhibitions. This part would be more practical than theoretical, but I thought this was missing in the project, so I decided to add this as well. Summing up, I had five objectives. The first was to do some research about JPG and RAW files. The second was to be able to tell with my own words how to illuminate outside correctly using ambient light or mixing ambient light with artificial light and test it with pictures taken by me. The third was the same as the second but lighting inside, I would just use artificial light. The
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fourth was to explain the basis of astrophotography and take some successful photographies of celestial bodies. And the last one was to show some examples of photography in variable light conditions.
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INTRODUCTION TO DSLR
First of all, I have to say that I’m just going to talk about a Digital SingleLens Reflex camera (DSLR). A DSLR is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror and a pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera. Some aspects of what I’m going to talk about may not be applicable in compact or medium format cameras. DSLRs are often preferred by photographers because they allow the user to choose from a huge variety of interchangeable lenses. Lenses are divided according to their focal range. There are fisheyes, wide angle, standard lenses, telephoto lenses, macro… Furthermore, there are also lenses of a fixed focal, fixed aperture, but I will deal with this point later. Moreover, most DSLRs also have a function that allows accurate preview of depth of field. You will never understand photography if you are not clear about two points - how the light travels through the camera and arrives at the viewfinder, and the way the sensor catches the light.
Illustrations of the path of light inside the camera We have to consider the camera in two parts: the lens and the body. Basically, the lens is formed by several pieces of glass. Its function is to focus the image onto the digital sensor, where it is captured and stored. The
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body contains the components which are responsible for visualizing and creating the image. Some of these components are the mirror, the digital sensor, the pentaprism and the viewfinder.
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BASIC TERMINOLOGY
In this part I’m going to explain some specific photographic vocabulary that appears in the project. Lens: a camera lens works by focusing the light onto the digital sensor. It contains several pieces of glass and other elements. It is the optical component of a camera and it performs automatic and manual functions. Aperture: it controls the amount of light admitted into the lens.
Sometimes it is fixed but usually you can adjust the size of the hole to vary the amount of light. F-stops: the F-number of F-stops are the numbers on the lens’ aperture ring and the camera’s LCD. These numbers indicate the size of lens aperture. The lower the number the larger is the aperture, meaning that the lower value lets more light pass into the camera. Focal length: it is the distance between the sensor and the lens’ centre when the camera is focused on an object at infinity. This distance is measured in millimetres, for example: 70-200mm. There are lenses with a fixed focal length but most lenses can vary the focal length and they are called “zoom lenses”. Shutter speed: this is the speed of opening and closing of the camera shutter. It determinates the amount of time that light can pass through the aperture. Shorter shutter speeds are needed for taking shots in bright conditions while longs speeds are used for taking shots in dark areas. Depth of field (DOF): it is the distance from the focal point at which a photo will be sharp while the rest becomes blurry. The lower F-stop number the shorter your DOF will be and also the other way around. This means that when shooting with a low F-stop you will get an image with a very short distance of sharpness.
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Autofocus (AF): it refers to the ability of some cameras or lenses to get the correct focus automatically. In some models the focus can be continuously maintained. Resolution: The resolution is the amount of pixels that the image has. Normally it’s specified in Megapixels. Pixels are the colour dots that make up an image. A camera with higher resolution will produce better image quality. White Balance (WB): white balance adjust the white colour quantity of your image. This process is used to make white the objects you see as white in person. White balance is measured in degrees Kelvin and usually goes from 1.000K (candlelight) to 10.000K (heavily overcast sky). The sensor: it is the component that replaces the film. It is made of millions of pixels that read the light and colour values which are later reconstructed to create the image. In camera software: the process to create the image from the data of the sensor is performed by this software. It is usually very sophisticated and normally allows the user to edit the photograph in the camera. Memory cards: when the image is reconstructed by the software in the camera it’s stored in the memory card. There are several types of memory cards: SD, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, and xD memory. Strobist (strobe): lighting equipment made up of off-camera flashes. ISO: it is the quantity of light a camera needs to take a photo. Depending on the ISO number you choose it will vary. The higher the number is, the less light you need to take the picture.
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RAW vs. JPG
Raw and JPG are two different kinds of files your camera can produce. For example, when you use Microsoft Word and you save the document it creates a .DOC file, and when you use Microsoft Excel it creates a .XLS file. So, what are the differences between these kinds of files?
RAW The definition of “raw” is uncooked. A RAW file is the unedited image data that a digital SLR camera captures every time you take a photo, so you could say that a RAW file is an uncooked digital photo. The camera doesn’t manipulate the image in any way before it’s saved on the memory card. You can make an equivalence with analog cameras; a RAW file is the same as a digital negative. JPG Unlike a RAW file, a JPG is a processed image. All of the processing takes place inside the camera before the image is saved in the memory card. Some of this processing consists of colour saturation (increase or decrease the intensity of colours), sharpness (can make the image looks crisp or soft) and contrast (affects the range between the highlights and shadows). This seems good if you don’t want or don’t have time to spend on the computer processing the image but it has a drawback: the treatment that the SLR applies to the image can’t be undone. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes to your photo in an editing program after you take it of course you can. It just means that any colour or exposure setting applied when the photo was taken can’t be altered. IMAGE COMPRESSION A digital image is made up of millions of pixels and the camera has two options when it comes to the colour of these pixels:
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1. Leave them the way they were captured by the camera’s sensor. 2. Adjust ones of a similar colour so that they are identical (this reduces the overall file size of your digital photo). The effect of mild-severe compression can drastically reduce the overall quality of the image, producing photos that look unsharp and blocky. This process is applied to every JPG file to some extent (you can control the extent using camera settings). In contrast, no compression is used for RAW files. THE DIFFERENCES Now I’m going to talk about the pros and cons of each kind of file and what you must know before choosing one or the other. Pros of JPG 1. Small file size maximizes memory card space. 2. Easy to view and edit with any editing program. 3. Easy to upload to online galleries. 4. Cons of JPG 1. Less control over the way the final image appears. 2. Compressed files lose some image data. 3. It’s harder of to correct or mistakes exposure. JPG is by far the easier format to work with because you can see the image on any computer. Even if you don’t have an image editing program you can still view your JPG images with just the standard utilities of your computer. Since every JPG is compressed, it doesn’t take up as much space. This also means that it takes significantly less time to upload a JPG to an online gallery. When you set your camera to capture photos as JPG files, you are letting the camera decide how your final images are going to look. Decisions about the colour, tone and clarity of the photo are under your direct control - that's all decided for you. But if you take a portrait and decide after the fact that you don't like the skin tones or capture a beautiful sunset but the colours don't colour
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pop quite as much as you'd like, there's little that you can do about it. The image is (somewhat) set in stone.
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Pros of RAW 1. No image data is lost. 2. You have plenty of flexibility when deciding what the final image will look like. 3. Allows you to correct mistakes made at the time of the exposure. Cons of RAW 1. Uncompressed images create very large files. 2. Requires special programs to convert into JPG format. 3. Requires powerful computer to view and edit. 4. Requires time and effort to develop the image. As you can see, the cons of working with RAW files cannot be solved easily and this is the reason why many people avoid RAW and work with JPG. First of all, RAW files are huge. You need much more memory on your camera’s card or your computer. A RAW file can use up to 4 times more digital space than a JPG. For example, a high quality JPG that uses 6 MegaBytes would use 24 MegaBytes of space in RAW. These enormous file sizes can impact those who want to work with RAW: 1. You need memory cards with more storage space. 2. You need plenty of space on you hard drive. 3. It takes extra time to transfer images from your memory card to the hard drive. 4. You need a powerful computer to view and edit these files. But it’s not so negative as it seems. Nowadays memory is “very” cheap. You can buy good memory cards for about 20-30€. You can also get a 500GB hard drive for less than 100€. Once you’ve got all the storage space ready, you’re going to need a special program to see and edit your RAW photos. RAW files are unique to each camera manufacturer. I mean that a RAW file produced by a Canon won’t be the same as a RAW file produced by a Nikon. But it’s not a big problem
because when you buy your DSLR there is a CD with software for your RAW files. But if you don’t like the software that comes with your DSLR you can use programs such as Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Elements and Apple Aperture. So, summing up, RAW files are huge and they require specific software to view and edit. You will be wondering what’s the point of all this. It’s actually really important: you can manipulate any part of your digital image AFTER the photo has been taken. The choice Why is all this important for my project? It is important because it provides you with the knowledge about the two file formats. So, it’s up to you which one will you choose. Will you choose JPG because of the small file size or will you choose RAW due to all the advantages it has? My choice is for RAW. The flexibility it gives you is stunning. If you fail with the exposure, you can change with the software. If you don’t like the white balance, you can change it. If you feel the image is too sharp or too soft, you can change it. If you think there’s too much noise in the image, you can reduce it.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE
First of all, you have to consider which sort of lighting you are going to use. Are you shooting with ambient light or do you want to shoot with some flashes mixed up with ambient light? Obviously, it is easier to take photos with ambient light, but don’t think it is so easy. You don’t have to have in mind as many things as when you use flashes but you have to think about other relevant aspects. You have to think about the time. If you want to take a portrait in the middle of the day it will have lots of ugly shadows that will attract your attention. Moreover, there will be a lot of high contrast areas. So, I would recommend the first and the last hours of light for taking photographs. You will get better portraits with soft light and low contrast. Portraits will look more natural. But if you want to get striking shots with amazing combination of lights, you must use artificial lighting, taking into account that it will be harder and you must know lots of things before getting good results.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE USING AMBIENT LIGHT There’s not so much to say about this point - you only have to think about the position of the sun. As I said before, the best moments of the day are the first hours of the morning and the last hours of light. That’s because the light is oblique and soft and it will hide imperfections of the skin and make lines softer. As you are working with only one source of light you can’t control the background light and the light of the model. So you have to expose correctly the face of the model and leave the background overexposed, underexposed or exposed correctly. The point is that you will have to choose which is the best position (or the position you want) to take the pictures. You have lots of possibilities: backlighting, sidelight, skylight, headlight… The best lights are sidelight and
backlight (because of the very impressive results you get if you do it nicely). Skylight and headlight will produce worse results and imperfections will stand out a lot. If we use sidelight or backlight there will be areas of the model that will be in shadow, so we have to send fill light to these areas. We are not using artificial lighting, so how can we do it? It’s easy, we only need a big white piece of material or paper to reflect the light. By doing that, the dark areas of the model will be illuminated.
EXAMPLES
1/320s
f/6.3
ISO 100
24mm
1/200s 1/60s
f/8 f/5.6
ISO 100 ISO 100
55mm 250mm
These three pictures are samples of shooting outside without artificial light and without any kind of reflector. I’m going to comment on them all
together because I don’t have to explain any kind of lighting scheme; it’s always the same: light coming from the sun. As you can see, in the first and third photos the shadows are harsher than in the second and fourth. This is because I took this shots a while before sunset, so light was not soft at all. In contrast, the other two photos were taken during sunset or just before sunset, so the light is much softer but harsh enough to create volume and depth in faces. But actually, all of them are technically correct. If you want to give aggression and strength to the picture you will prefer harsher shadows, and on the other hand, if you want to give smoothness and quietness you will use softer light.
LIGHTING OUTSIDE USING ARTIFICIAL LIGHT AND AMBIENT LIGHT When you use flashes while shooting outside you have to control two
exposures at the same time. The reason is that you are working with at least two sources of light: ambient light and artificial light. Ambient light, also called available light, is the light that comes from the sun whereas artificial light is the light that comes from your lighting equipment.
Ambient light is a source that you can’t control so you have to adjust the camera settings to the ambient light for a proper background exposure. Light from our strobe is light we can control so, once we have the ambient light controlled by the camera settings we have to adjust the artificial light to get the perfect lighting on the subject you want to shoot. An important point that you must have in mind is that if you want to shoot outside with or without lighting equipment you have to do it in a moment of the day when the ambient light is not perfect, for example just before sunrise or just before sunset. If you shoot in the middle of the day you will probably get bad results. Since we want to use strobe in our shoots we have some limits about what we can do with our camera. First of all we can’t set the shutter speed faster
that the sync speed. The sync speed is the maximum speed at which the camera and the flash can be synchronized, which is normally around 200 or 250 hundredths of a second. Another limitation we have is that you have to set the camera to the manual mode, you can’t use any automatic mode. Now I’m going to explain how to get the perfect exposure of the image taking into account that we have to control two exposures. It sounds a bit complicated but it’s really not. You just have to follow these steps: 1. The first step is to set your camera to manual mode and make sure your shutter speed is set to your sync speed. 2. The second step is to point your camera at the area just behind your subject and adjust your aperture until you have the correct exposure of the background.
3. Then, the third step if you have a flash meter is to set your flash with the settings it indicates but, as I don’t have a flash meter the third step is to set the flashes more or less as you think they should be set and do some test shots. If they don’t convince you, you just have to change the settings of the flash until the results convince you.
Once you have finished these three steps you are ready to start shooting. As always, if in the middle of the session you want to overexpose the background you just have to slow down the shutter speed or if you want to underexpose you have to close the aperture (remember that you are shooting at sync speed).
EXAMPLES
1/80s 200 18mm
f/7.1
ISO
This picture is a bit complex. I used three flashguns. There are two flashguns through translucent umbrellas in front of the models and one flashgun behind the models to create the halo around the hair. The key light is the flashgun on the left in front of the models and the fill light is on the right. The flashgun behind the models was shot at minimum power because if not, the halo would have been too big. All these are mixed with the ambient light to create a striking photograph.
1/2000s
f/7.1
ISO 100
50mm
This shot was taken just before sunset. As you can see, if I hadn’t used flash the models would be black as in the left corner. In this case I used the external flashgun on the camera. I used it just as a fill light, so I didn’t need to take it off the camera. The use of the flash in this picture is one of the most important uses of flash. In this case, the key light was the sun, and the fill light was the flash.
1/80s
f/8
ISO 400
18mm
Luckily I have a “making of” photo of this picture: As you can see, the strobe settings of this picture are two flashguns through translucent umbrella in front of the models and another one behind them to fill the hair. This time, the key light is the flashgun on the right. The light from this flashgun goes from down to up. The flashgun on the left acts as the fill light, and the light goes from up to down. The third flash is to fill a little bit the hair and shirts of the models.
1/100s
f/5.6
ISO 100
180mm
In this shot I just used one flashgun and it wasn’t the key light. The key light was the ambient light and it was coming from the back, so without flash she would have been very dark. Thanks to the flash I managed to get a beautiful green in the grass and have her well-exposed.
1/200s f/5.6
ISO 200
106mm
1/200
f/5.6
ISO 200
85mm
1/80s
f/6.3
ISO 500 78mm
For this three shots I used the same lighting scheme. I put 2 flashguns thorough translucent umbrella in each side of them. The one on the left was set at maximum power and the other one at ½ power.
1/40s
f/5.6
ISO 640
200mm
This shot is more difficult than what it looks like. The other side of the pool is 5 or 6 meter away. Moreover, I wanted to set the flashes on the right side of the camera to create depth in their faces. I tried with one bare flash at maximum power but I didn’t get enough light, so I set another flash next to the first one. Then, I had to much light, so I finally took the shot with one flash at maximum power and the other one at ½.
LIGHTING INSIDE
Lighting inside is easier than lighting outside using artificial light. To shoot outside using strobe you have to control two sources of light: the ambient light and the artificial light. Shooting inside, you just have to take into account the light from your strobe, because the ambient light is very low. The way to set the flashes is the same as before, with just one difference; as you are not shooting with a lot of light you can slow down the shutter speed. You have to consider that you need a background (it can be a white cloth), something to hold the background (there are specific supports) and enough space in the room to separate the model from the background (minimum 1.5 meters). If you meet all these requirements you are ready to start shooting. First, I’m going to show some pictures with and without light reflector using a window of source of light. So, no flashes were used.
This shot is without a reflector. You can see that the right side of the shot is well exposed while the left part is underexposed.
This is the same shot as the one before but using a silver reflector on the left to reflect the light coming from the window on the right of her face. There’s a big difference compared to the other one. Here the whole face is well exposed and maintains t three-dimensionality. Now, I’m going to demonstrate the difference between shooting thorough a source to soften the light, and not. In this case I used a translucent umbrella.
Witho ut umbrella. Harsh shadows. With umbrella. Soft shadows.
EXAMPLES
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400
50mm
This is a very simple lighting scheme. I only used 2 bare flashguns on each side of the model. The distance between the model and the flashguns was 1’5 meters and they were very close to the background. This way, the background got burnt without using any other source of light.
1/80 f/4.5 1/100 f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm ISO 400 50mm
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm
1/50s
f/4.5
ISO 400 50mm
The scheme of these photos is a little bit more complex. I used three flashguns and a silver reflector. Two flashguns were set behind the model to burn the background. The other one, which was shot thorough a translucent umbrella, was on the left side in front of the model. Finally, I used a reflector on the right side to lower contrast. This is a very common lighting scheme. By varying the height of the flashgun and the reflector you can obtain very different and great results. Moreover, if you change the source of light used as the key light (the flashgun thorough a translucent umbrella in this case) and you do it with a “beauty dish” you will get stunning results and your shots will look like fashion photographs.
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 250
50mm
1/250 50mm
f/6.3
ISO 400
50mm
1/250
f/6.3
ISO 400
This is the same scheme as the one before but there’s a difference. The key light is on the other side of the model. As I said, there are a lot of options with the same kind of scheme.
1/125s
f/5
ISO 250
50mm
This scheme is a slight variation of the last one. I put the key light some meters back. This way, the clapperboard was also illuminated.
1/125s
f/7.1
ISO 250
50mm
In this shot, the reflector I had was not enough to reflect all the light I wanted, so I used another flashgun with a translucent umbrella as fill light. I set the second flashgun at 2 steps less power than the key light. This way I managed to get all the body well exposed without any ugly shadow. The third flashgun was set to burn the background.
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 320
63mm
1/100s 45mm
f/6.3
ISO 250
47mm
1/100s
f/6.3
ISO 250
These three pictures were shot with the same lighting setup and there is a big compared to the other ones: the background is black. I only used one flash thorough a translucent umbrella on the right of the model. This is a very simple but effective lighting scheme. You get high contrast images that help you to convey the feeling you want to.
1/25s
f/6.3
ISO 400
191mm
For this shot I used a lighting set up a little unusual. I wanted an image of very low contrast so I decided to put one flashgun on the right behind the model but pointing to the camera. This way the light rays came through the camera lens and reduced the contrast of the image. I also set two flashes with translucent umbrellas in the front to create a soft lighting.
1/50s
f/6.3
ISO 400
160mm
This time I used the usual two lights scheme but with a slight variation. The flash on the right, which was not shot through a translucent umbrella, was set 2.50 metres high and was pointing to her hair. This way I got her hair illuminated as I wanted.
1/100s 100mm
f/7.1
ISO 400
To take this shot I used a very simple scheme. I only used one bare flash on the left of the model to create a high contrast image.
1/80s ISO 400 189mm
f/5.6
Once again, not the most complex one is the better one. This one light scheme is very effective, as you can see.
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
Astrophotography is a mix between photography and astronomy. It consists of taking photographs of celestial bodies. The advantage of mixing photography with astronomy is that using a DSLR you can expose for a long time and get pictures of things that the human eye cannot see even with the help of a powerful telescope. You will probably be wondering how you can take pictures of distant planets. It’s very simple; you just have to use the telescope as your camera lens. In fact, it is not as simple as it seems, but this is the concept. There’s a part of the telescope where you can fit an adaptor to connect your camera body. When you have done this your camera will reflect what the telescope sees. From now on, all you have to do is use the camera as if you were taking a night photo. This means that you might have to take a shot from 2 seconds of exposure to hours. Hours would be silly because your image would be full of noise and you wouldn’t distinguish anything, so what you have to do is take lots of shots for some minutes and mix them using specific software. As you will know, the universe is not still. This is another important point that you must take into account doing astrophotography. If you want to take a photograph of a star’s wake you must use a tripod, but if you want to take a photo of a galaxy or a planet you must follow it. Luckily, telescopes have a system that automatically follows the object you are focusing. Now I’m going to show you some pictures taken by me with the help of an astronomic organisation.
EXAMPLES
Vega star. Exposure time: 30 seconds. ISO: 200 M51. Exposure time: 53 seconds. ISO: 800 You can see the high level of noise due to the high ISO.
M13. Exposure time: 30 seconds. ISO: 800
VARIABLE LIGHT CONDITIONS
In this part I’m going to talk about those situations in which the light is always varying, such as concerts, “correfocs” or dance exhibitions. I am going to use these three situations as examples because they are the ones I know the best. I am also going to show you an example of a match burning. As with everything in your life, common sense is your best friend. You cannot be changing the shutter speed or the aperture all the time so, what can you do? Fortunately DSLRs have two semi-manual modes called aperture-priority and shutter-priority. These modes give priority to the aperture or the shutter. This means that when using aperture-priority mode you set the aperture you want and the shutter speed varies. The other mode acts the same way with shutter-priority. Now that you know which mode you have to use (it depends on if you prefer to choose the shutter speed or the aperture) you only have to worry about the ISO. You have to choose the correct ISO depending on the light at every moment. If there is not much light you will have to choose a high ISO, if there is enough light ISO 400 or less will be okay. In the following part I’m going to show you some examples of photographs where the light conditions are variable.
EXAMPLES
1/60s f/2.5 ISO 1600 50mm 50mm
1/60s f/2.5 ISO 1600
1/50s f/2.5 ISO 800 50mm 50mm
1/60s f/2.2 ISO 1600
1/100s f/4.5 ISO 1000 39mm 35mm
1/200s f/4 ISO 1600
1/80s
f/4.5
ISO 2000 72mm
0’5s f/9 ISO 200
50mm
1/250s f/9 ISO 200
55mm
1/125s f/3.2 ISO 2500 50mm
1/15s
f/4.5 ISO 1600 55mm
Finally, I wanted to show you this shot. A match starting to burn. I had to take 2 photos because the exposure time was too different and then I mixed and retouched them using Photoshop. Here you have the two shots and the final image:
Smoke
Match Final image
Due to the postprocessing EXIF data have been removed
PROCESS OF POSTPROCESSING
The process of postprocessing is something every photographer must do. Some years ago it was done in the laboratory but nowadays it’s done using a computer. Because I always shoot in RAW this process will consist of two parts. First you have to develop the photograph. You have many options to do this, such as using the specific software of the camera, a Photoshop plug-in called Adobe Camera Raw, or software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I’ve tried all of them, and my choice is the last one. I always use Lightroom because it allows you to do many more things than the others but at the same time if you don’t want to complicate matters it is very simple and intuitive. The second parts consist of importing the photograph to Photoshop (or any other similar software) and starting the retouching part itself. In Photoshop you are able to do whatever you want with your photo and here is where the magic begins. Finally you only have to export the file as a JPG or any other kind of standard image format and you will be able to share your picture with the entire world.
EXAMPLE I’ve chosen a black and white high key portrait to show you the whole process of postprocessing. I chose this image because in RAW you can see some imperfections in the model’s face which will be removed and the lighting is perfect for a high key image. A high key image is a lighting style which aims to reduce the lighting ratio and focus it towards the high lights.
First of all you have to import the folder where you have the pictures to Lightroom’s library, where you can see all the images without having to save them as JPGs. Now, when you have chosen the image you want to process, you have to click on the second tab in the right corner of the screen and you will go to the “develop zone” where you will start processing your picture.
In this part you are able to change the colour temperature, the hue, the intensity and saturation, the sharpness, you can vary the lights and shadows and change its tones, reduce the noise and chromatic aberrations and many more things, but these are the ones that I always use when I develop a RAW file. In this case I increased the exposition and I softened the shadows. Moreover, I added warm colours to reduce the global contrast. I also increased the sharpness of the picture and reduced the noise in dark areas. Finally, I did a copy of the original RAW and exported the processed image as a PSD (Photoshop file format) to Photoshop CS3.
This is the step where you must spend most of the time taken up by the process. When you have your picture in Photoshop you can start doing what you want to do with your picture. In this case, I’m going to do a black and white high key portrait so, first, I have to remove all the main imperfections of the skin and soften the whole face a little bit.
The next step is to turn the colour image into a black and white image. There are many options for doing this. The simplest is to desaturate the picture but you won’t get good results. Another option is using “colour channels” but it’s too difficult and not worth it for the results you get. In my opinion, the best option is to create a black and white adjust layer. It’s easy and you can modify each colour as you want; if you want to give more relevance to red, for example, you increase your “reds”. Moreover, you can vary the hue.
Once I had the black and white picture I had to change the lighting a little bit to give importance to the lights and reduce the shadows. Then I erased all the little imperfections I didn’t like in her face and I cloned a hair that was over her eye and attracted too much attention. After that, I gave contrast and strength to her eyes and I softened the rest of the face again. Finally I increased the sharpness of the eyes.
1/80s
f/4.5
ISO 400
50mm
The last point is to save the picture as a JPG and enjoy the results!
CONCLUSION
When I started my project lots of questions and doubts came to me. Will I have time enough to take all the pictures I need to show everything I tell in the theoretical part? Will I find all the information I need? Will I fulfil my objective of learning as much as I can about this subject? And what about the technical part? Will I be able to finish the whole project in English? And the main technical doubt: Will I be able to manage the ISO, the diaphragm and the shutter speed? Because when you shoot with continuous spotlights it is easier, you just have to set your camera according to the light at each moment; but using speedlights you don’t see how much light will be when you shoot. Fortunately, the answer is: absolutely yes! I have fulfilled all the objectives I had and, moreover, I’m really proud I have been able to complete the project in English. For me, it was like a goal I had to reach and due to this reason I have not had any lack of motivation. Moreover, I have been able to manage the speedlights without having a flash meter. I have had to do it by the method: test-error and repeat it until I had the light I wanted. I didn’t start from any hypothesis; it was just a personal challenge. I wanted to learn about lighting in photography in an autodidact way and now, I can say that I’ve overcome my objectives. During the project I have been able to extend my knowledge of photography, specially in lighting and astrophotography. I also have to say that it has not been as easy as it looks like. I’ve had to have it finished before December due to personal reasons, so I’ve been under stress the last days, which have been exams days. But the most important problem I’ve had to face has been the fact of doing it in English. I’ve thought many times to change the language because I realized that if I did it in Catalan I would express myself so much better and a lot faster. But on the other hand, if I had changed the language I wouldn’t have reached my goal so I tried to keep motivated and going on writing.
From every hard challenge you can always learn something, with perseverance and will you can do whatever you want. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me, and special thanks to Natàlia Caimel, Jaume Casals, Isi Vila, Cristina del Río, Sofia Ratia and the tutor of my project Xavier Gimeno.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEBSITES PHOTOGRAPHY IN GENERAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_single-lens_reflex_camera http://photography.lovetoknow.com/Parts_of_a_Digital_Camera http://www.digicamland.org/How_a_Digital_Camera_Works.html http://www.pctechguide.com/56DigCam_Features.htm http://www.fluffbucket.com/general/multimedia/camerafacts.htm http://www.digicamhelp.com/camera-features/camera-parts/dslr-parts/ http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm LENSES http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-choose-the-lens-thats-right-foryou/step4/The-Kinds-of-Lenses/ LIGHTING http://ericgibaud.wordpress.com/category/tecnicas/iluminacion-exterior/ http://www.fotorevista.com.ar/Tecnica/FotoTaller/index.htm LIGHTING SCHEMES http://www.pbase.com/mcmomo/technique_eclairage http://www.aulafoto.com/apuntes.htm http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-esquemas-de-iluminacion-explicadosiluminar-la-cara_140 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-esquemas-de-iluminacion-explicados_60 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-iluminacion-de-retrato-en-estudio_14 http://www.fotopunto.com/articulo-la-tecnica-del-retrato_65 VIDEOS It’s a channel on YouTube full of photography videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/snapfactory http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=cwISm7C6fiY&playnext_from=TL&videos=rTsqkGowb5s&feature=sub
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrofotograf%C3%ADa
BOOKS - Christopher Grey. “Lighting techniques for beauty and glamour
photography”. Amherst Media, INC. - Billy Pegram. “Posing techniques for photographing model portfolios”. Amherst Media, INC. - Calvey Taylor-Haw. “La iluminación en el estudio fotográfico”. Omega. - Nigel Atherton and Steve Crabb. “Fotografía digital de la A a la Z”. Omega. - José B. Ruiz. “El fotógrafo en la naturaleza”. JdeJ Editores.
ANNEX
I attach a DVD which contains all the pictures that appear in the project in high resolution, a video with the “Behind the scenes” of the photoshoot with Jaume Casals and another video with the whole process of postprocessing.
