Studio light - advice needed please

shabba

shabba

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Hello all,

Looking for some studio lighting advice, I will be honest and say I’m not a fan of studio shots as I generally find them a bit boring – however I take all our marketing shots at work, i.e basic headshots of people in the company for our website.

I hired some kit as we had ordered a simple setup but it didn’t arrive in time, the hired kit was pretty decent but I’d never used studio kit before. Anyway the stuff we bought arrived, was a cheap couple of lights with stands and silver backed brolly’s and a wireless sync for the camera.

I positioned the brolly’s in this way, imagine a square of 6ft by 6ft, the subject stands in the middle and the two lights are in the front corners pointing towards the subject. Obviously the lights are firing into the brollies. I raised them up to just over head height.

Anyway first issue is that it seems touch and go to get the unit without the remote trigger connected to fire, the unit with the controller always fires. ! These are basic units (Neewer 250DI)so there is no channel to select, there is a slave button with 3 settings, ‘off, Pref, Nor’ – doesn’t seem to make much difference.
Can you buy a multi-way cable box as I think I’d just prefer cables?

I was shooting using my 40D and 50mm 1.8 lens, manual mode, 1/160sec, F6.3 and ISO200. Even with the power turned right down on both lights the shots were still a bit over-exposed, should I position them further away or use a lower ISO and maybe slightly higher aperture? Also they never seem mega sharp to me, is this again caused by too much flash?

Generally speaking what is a good WB to work with?

Any tips would be appreciated, the shots I get are ok but I know they could certainly be better, they are fine for small mugshots on a website but I think I will take the kit home one weekend and do a proper shoot with someone.

Thanks for any helpful replies.
 
It seems that the kit you hired, or at least the radio trigger you used was... less than good. Decent equipment will fire every time, good quality flashes will also produce the same power flash every time, so those problems shouldn't put you off of studio lighting or radio triggeres, just off of crap gear.

An umbrella either side is pretty poor lighting, it gives everyone a fat face and creates a false look by having 2 suns instead of the 1 that actually exists. It does work, up to a point if there are a large number of shots that need to be taken, but you can get much better results with a better lighting arrangement.

White balance should always be set using a custom white balance. Failing that, setting it to 'flash' or to 5500K usually works reasonably well, but with poor flashes the colour would probably be different every time, so would vary from shot to shot whatever you did, especially when the lights were used with them turned right down.

Adjust exposure by changing either aperture or ISO. Moving the lights further away also adjusts the effective exposure, but also changes the quality of the light, making it harder.
 
Thanks Gary, most appreciated.

Got an example of the best setup with 2 lights? I just read another thread where it implied a good way is one light up above the camera, and then one (from what I can gather) sort of where the camera is.

Is there a typical settings range that works best for studio work? I assume I should turn off the ligthing in the room and try and get a little natural light in too.
 
Got an example of the best setup with 2 lights? I just read another thread where it implied a good way is one light up above the camera, and then one (from what I can gather) sort of where the camera is.
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That's a good starting point, but lights are tools like any other tool, so you use them in diffferent ways to get different results.
I assume I should turn off the ligthing in the room and try and get a little natural light in too.
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The normal room lighting is insignificant and won't affect the results if you use a normal shutter speed (say 1/125th second). Whether natural light is a good thing or not depends on what you want to produce. The problem with natural light coming into the studio is that you can't control it's effective power except by changing the shutter speed, and you can't change it's direction at all. Control freaks like me tend to exclude all natural light so that we can control the light properly, some people though like to combine natural light with flash.
 
Again thank you, appreciate the advice.

Im doing a shoot for a friend in a couple of weeks, a bunch of 13 year olds - I will mainly be outside as I prefer it, however I was going to bring along the lighting kit and have a go at some studio shots too - just seeking advice for this type of shoot.

Is it possible to get a box with 2 flash sync cable entry points and then one exit point which goes to the camera?
 
I used to use these T connectors about 30 years ago, don't know whether they are still available or not.

They have no real function now as studio flash heads have slave sensors which make them redundant, and synch cords are just a backup now as we all use radio triggers
 
I just cannot figure out why one was not always firing, the one without the controller. As I say they are cheap units, but still.....
 
shabba said:
I just cannot figure out why one was not always firing, the one without the controller. As I say they are cheap units, but still.....
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There could be various reasons, other than the fact that they are cheap and cheerful...

The sensor might be in a stupid place (like the back or the side) and it isn't seeing the flash

If it is seeing the flash, there might be a bright light such as a modelling lamp or sunlight from a window shining on it - sensors work by detecting a sudden increase in light levels, so if the level of light hitting them from ambient light is too high they don't always 'notice' the light from the other flash
 
The sensor is on the top at the bottom end (i.e near the controls) shouldnt be a major issue but will have a play, thanks for the reply.
 
If I've understood your firing problem.....the light with the radio attached to it is firing and the one on the slave isn't?

1. Switch should be set to Nor (off is off, pref is "trigger on second flash" to cope with preflash)

2. Sounds like it either doesn't work well or it's being shaded from the main light and so not always firing.

>> Is it possible to get a box with 2 flash sync cable entry points and then one exit point which goes to the camera?

Kind of. You can use mono audio splitters to achieve that. But radio triggers are pretty cheap. RF602 and 2 receivers should be less than £30 all up.

With teenagers around the fewer cables the better.
 
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