Exposure using hilite

[Dom7]

Hi guys. Very new to portrait/home studio work. I've got a 6x7 hilite, 3x lencarta smartflash heads and a white vinyl train.

I was taking a few shots of the kids and their new pet rabbits last night. My main problem was I was over exposing a bit. I have 2 of the flash heads set fairly low powered and fired into the back of the hilite. I have my subject light with a large soft box raised up, around 10 feet from the subject at a 45 degree angel. Settings On the camera were set to around 1/125, f4, iso 100. The subject light was at 2.2.. But I found that the flash was just too bright, my subject was harshly lit and it didn't give me the natural look I was hoping.

Any ideas?

 

[Phil V]

Why is the softbox 10 feet away?

You're making it 'effectively smaller', the closer you can get it, the softer will be the light.

 

[simonbarker]

I'm going to guess you're just using too wide an aperture for that power setting, in a normal room you're going to get a lot of light bouncing around so 3 lights is a lot. Use a light meter to tell what's actually hitting your subject as that will allow you to quickly get things dialed into where you want but the quick solution is to either drop to the lowest power settings or use a smaller aperture.

You can (and should?) move the octa closer to have a softer light but that will also make it brighter. Try turning off all the other lights bar your main, once you have that right then you can try just the others and then combine them for the end result.

 

[Dom7]

Thanks guys. Like I said it was my first attempt so I put the box quite far away. But if bringing it closer will soften the effect then that's brilliant.

 

[Phil V]

Thanks guys. Like I said it was my first attempt so I put the box quite far away. But if bringing it closer will soften the effect then that's brilliant.

Bigger lights make softer shadows. But the size of a light is relative, the sun is massive, but it's a long way away, so on a cloudless day it produces very hard shadows (it's a point light source in the sky). Make the sky overcast and you have effectively created a wrap around softbox, so you get hardly any shadows at all.

Like Simon says though, start simple. Switch off all other light sources and just put the modelling light on in the softbox, you'll be able to move it around and see what it's doing. Once you're happy with the light, you can turn on the flash and measure and adjust it, when you're happy with that, light up your background, again, adjust as necessary.

 

[EOS_JD]

The closer you get it the more light will hit the subject to you may need to close the aperture a air bit. I generally shoot at the sweet spot of my lenses (f8-f11) in the studio.