First 'proper' go at a white floor/BG (FITP hilite)

Hodders

Hodders

Suspended / Banned
Messages
951
Name
Ben
Edit My Images
Yes
Right,

Doorbell rang this morning with a bloke carrying a 3m x 2.5m roll of white vinyl from Tony Beals (they sell tarps for the haulage industry). Total cost £40 odd quid. As opposed to £100+ for the lastolite equivalent (smaller as well).

I have played around extensively with lighting the hilight using the two Yongnuo YN460-II leaving me with my 430EX-II and SB28 to use for lighting the subject.

The vinyl floor is great - very very slightly off white (creamish) with a slight shine on one side.

So the basic setup was hilite lit with the YN460s. The SB28 was aimed at the floor/hilite join and last light aimed at the subject above and just off to camera left. Wall was at f10, subject at f7 - so about a stop difference.

All shots are straight out the camera, resized and saved with a tad of sharpen. Subject was about 3 feet in front of the hilite.

ONE:

hilite-1.jpg


Pretty pleased with invisible join. Nice shadow but so much spill onto the dolls head which saps all the contrast and 'snap' from the image.

Next go:

Moved the 'join' flash and tried to shield the main subject from it. This resulted in:

TWO:

hilite-4.jpg


Not too bad, but you can see the join on the RHS where the fall off from the 'join' flash has fallen off - I might try a reflecter here to bounce a bit of light back.

Still loads of spill (look at either side of my face). If I turn the main llight off, you can still see how much illumination is wrapping round.

THREE:

hilite-3.jpg


But this last but one shot is usable with a bit of PP:

FOUR:

hilite-pp-1.jpg


The next game is to try and get some black fabric and build a 'tent' in the stylee of EdinburghGary. This should help loads with the spill but might also make the floor trickier. Reflective flooring is not an option here as it need to be portable.

Comments and ideas will be VERY gratefully received.
 
It's very difficult when you add the train isn't it. If you have to use a third/fourth light on the floor to kill the join, then you are largely defeating the object of the High-Light which is to save space (although it helps a lot to reduce the uneveness in the background shown in the images you posted previously). If you have to leave several feet behind the subject to get the extra lights in, you might as well use a paper background where the smoother join makes things at least a bit easier, and put all the lights on that. The High-Light isn't actually doing much.

What you have there is similar to the set up I have used with a regular paper backdrop, where I had two lights on the background and also one each either side of the floor. To make that work you need space or you get bright hot-spts, spill on the subject and conflicting shadows making life even more difficult. If you scan the background with a flash meter the readings will be very uneven and to get everything white some areas will be badly over exposed, bleaching the subject outline and lens flare sapping contrast. You seem to have got both issues going on. Another way to see what is happening is to shoot with blinkies enabled and keep raising the f/number until only the very brightest areas are flashing, then compare that exposure to your shooting aperture. There will probably be about three stops in it. You can recover two stops at a push, but it's not ideal; getting much better than one stop is almost impossible in a domestic set up, but that is good enough in practise. I ended up chasing my tail with the best result being a compromise between doing what I could with lights and then finishing off in PP.

I'm sure you have read all the other threads about this, and how you can only get so far with whatever lighting you use. Then it is tricks like the reflective floor, tweaking the picture styles (contrast, saturation), a bit of over exposure and final mopping up in post. No easy answers regardless of set up.

BTW I am only commenting on the problems of lighting a pure white train, not making any particular reference to the performance of the FITP High-Light.
 
Thanks for your input.

I think my problems are not being helped by the white ceiling and walls surrounding the hilite. Inevitably this will not help with controlling the light bouncing around the edges.

I think that some black cloth around the sides will help here but I still want the set up to be portable so I guess I'm looking at a 'wendy house' type frame to support the material.

I am also waiting for news back from the planning department about a garage conversion to a studio which would make this a lot easier as I could use a reflective floor as well as not having to take it down when we want to use the living room for something else !

I am enjoying the challenge of controlling the light as it is good fun.
 
Hodders said:
Thanks for your input.

I think my problems are not being helped by the white ceiling and walls surrounding the hilite. Inevitably this will not help with controlling the light bouncing around the edges.

I think that some black cloth around the sides will help here but I still want the set up to be portable so I guess I'm looking at a 'wendy house' type frame to support the material.

I am also waiting for news back from the planning department about a garage conversion to a studio which would make this a lot easier as I could use a reflective floor as well as not having to take it down when we want to use the living room for something else !

I am enjoying the challenge of controlling the light as it is good fun.
Click to expand...

Do you need planning for a garage conversion? Or are you enlarging the size of it?

I use two of these for the background:

http://www.lencarta.com/light-shaping-tools/mod005-background-reflector/index.php

It gives a more even throw of light.
 
The vinyl is only being used as a train Martin.
The background is a hilite.
 
I would be really pleased with results like that Ben.

It shows that this can be done with a sensible budget. I think some fine tuning will get you there.

I don't know if this is possible, but could you do away with the flash on the join, and maybe use two
reflectors, one either side, to bounce some of the background light down to the join?
 
I have a 8x7 Hilite and have been wondering what to do about the floor.

How portable is the vinyl, does it need to be rolled for transportation, or can it be folded in some way?

Thanks
 
Vinyl can come in any size (www.tonybeal.com - Morag was really helpful). Mine is on a roll (3m x 2,5m) but I am going to trim it to size to make it a tad more manageable.

Lighting the join is - I'm sure - doable but the lighting will need to be controlled to prevent it getting onto the subject. The test shots above were with a bare strobe. Shielding the subject with a gobo of some sort will help loads.

That plus some black material to prevent light spilling around is my next priority. I don't think that I can expect to achieve out of the camera perfect with a portable set up but I do think I can achieve better separation of the subject from the background.

So that - with a little mopping up in PP is my current aim.
 
Hodders said:
Vinyl can come in any size (www.tonybeal.com - Morag was really helpful). Mine is on a roll (3m x 2,5m) but I am going to trim it to size to make it a tad more manageable.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I think the Lastolite train has velcro, have you just leant the vinyl up against the bottom of the HiLite to hide the black edge?
 
At the moment, I just lent it up. I have got some velcro to go on it once I have trimmed it to size.
 
Hi Hodders, looks like you're making some progress - I've got the FITP hilite with the lastolite train but it sounds like you've done well ordering your own vinyl.

I hope you don't mind me jumping on your thread but I've got a question thats kind of related - I have the background set up pretty much as you do - without the light on the join between train and background as i don't mind having to PP that.

I've got two lights left after lighting the background and have a small softbox, small shoot thru brolly and a large shoot thru/reflective brolly as modifiers. I was wondering if anyone could suggest suitable key and fill light placements (and appropriate modifiers) as a good starting point - I will be doing some pics of a 1 yr old and his parents soon and wanted to get something set up that would be fairly flexible wherever they were on the train. Any one any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jeremy.
 
In order to get some flexibility in movement you need to make sure that the light fall off is not too dramatic.

The main/fill lights well lose one stop between 1m and 2m and then another between 2m and 4m, and then between 4m and 8m. As you can see the further back you get the lights the more leeway you get with fall off. But then you need bigger soft boxes to preserver the effective light size. Why does better always equal more expensive ?

Or get some one to follow the kiddy around with the main light and keep it a constant distance/height/angle.
 
Thanks Hodders - what positions for each light would you suggest - I see some people say NOT to have the fill opposite the key and others recommending it so I'm a little confused!
 
To be honest I am not the most qualified to answer this. Plus in all but a well set up studio you will get so much light bouncing around from the hilite that the positions of the main/fill are going to be less obvious.

If you look at image THREE above you will see how much light is getting around the front of the subject. A subtle fill light would get very easily lost. Lots of people shot with a hilite and just one main light because they can when there is this much fill light. Certainly this was the case with image FOUR above.

Main was off to camera left and about 6 feet away from the subject and about 2 feet above the subject.

One of the problems with using speed lights is the lack of a modelling light. I have in the past gaffer taped a small desk light to a light stand and used it to experiment. It certainly helped me visualise how light will hit a face/torso.

If you can get someone to wander around with the main light whilst you shoot then see what works. Just make a list of what shot was taken with what position or you will forget (like I always seem to).
 
Thanks Hodders I'll have a play then! Be interested to hear from Hoppy if he has any views on this one ***?
 
Jchaplin said:
Thanks Hodders I'll have a play then! Be interested to hear from Hoppy if he has any views on this one ***?
Click to expand...

Happy to help where I can Jeremy, but all I can really say is that shooting with a pure white background is difficult, and getting a white background and train is extremely difficult.

There is no perfect solution. Basically you just have to get it as close as you can and then push it over the edge to pure white with a few fudges and cheats, as described above. The problem is that to get pure white you have to over-expose and while you can do that with the background, because you can light it separately, you can't do that on the train because the subject is standing or lying on it so they would get over-exposed too. If you are handy with post processing, that is a big start.

For your upcoming shoot, you need to get something in the bag and TBH most parents are not that critical of the technical stuff. So long as you get a good capture of their little one, then they'll not worry how you did it. I guess that's how it should be actually ;)

I would use your biggest shoot-through brolly and stick it right next to the camera, slighly above. Not the most creative light, but the easiest and most versatile, allowing the little one to move around without having to reposition things so much. Put a big reflector on the opposite side. No more lights on the subject. You will have light spilling about everywhere but it will look okay and you'll get a nice bright highlight in the eyes. Get down low with toddlers, position the light low and shoot from their level.

Obviously have a practise session. Start by getting the High-Light as even as you can, and set the front subject light to the same exposure level. Then start to reduce the power of the front light (or increase the background level) until you get the best looking ratio. Ideally, you should get pure white on the background with the front light only half a stop down on that but the reality will probably be considerably more. I would suggest getting it right only where you need it most, ie directly behind the subject, and sort the rest in PP.

I'm guessing that you will still have a pretty grey train at this stage, and there's only so much you can do in PP without the whole thing looking like a cut-out image floating in space. You need to get more light on the train and the easiest way to do that is by turning up the High-Light (or turning down the front light). It will destroy those carefully set ratios but that is one of the compromises you might have to make.

It think this is the reason why some people suggest setting the background two stops higher than the front as it also floods light on to the train. There are all sorts of downsides to that, ie subject outline bleaching and lens flare, but you just have to strike the best balance you can and live with it. Positioning the subject close to the High-Light will maximise light on the train as it will fall away closer to the camera.

HTH and good luck! Post some pics up :)
 
Thanks Hoppy I will give that a try - I think sometimes that having more lights makes me want to use them all - but starting simple should help me iron out any issues. I'm of the mindset that I'd rather post process the background than have some low contrast image with loads of spill on the subject which would be exponentially harder to fix in PP! I'll let you know how I get on.

Cheers,
Jeremy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top