I did my first formal portraits on Saturday night and I would greatly appreciate feedback about what I did right and, more importantly, what I could have done better.
Here's a description of my lighting setup using three alienbees and one speedlight.:
1 AB800 45 degrees up and left of camera as the main light with a large rectangular softbox,
1 AB800 just to the right and level with the camera for fill light with reflector umbrella with white fabric,
1 AB1600 (low setting) on the right to act as a backdrop spot with a 30 degree honeycomb grid,
Speed light above the backdrop pointed down and towards the subjects to provide slight rim light.
One thing that I had difficulty with was the slightly wrinkled canvas backdrop. I don't think that there is much of a solution for storing these without creases from folding, so I live with the irregular wrinkles (preferable) that come with simply balling it up for storage. I intended to rely on it going out of focus but that wasn't possible shooting at f/8 which I believe that I needed to do to keep the ambient light balanced with the flash. In hindsight, I think that I would have cranked up the flash output to allow me to reduce my aperture. Would that have worked? What I ended up doing was softening the backdrop in post processing.
So, what about the rest of the factors? Please let me know what I could have done better.
Thanks |
