Strange? Will it work? Guess I am going to find out and look forward to any and all comments, suggestions and critiques.

Here is what I am going to try.

Three models

1. Female, 18 yrs old, long brown hair, light tan complexion and brown eyes

2. Male, 12 years old, medium length brown hair, fair complexion, blue eyes

3. Male, 18 years old, long auburn to red hair, very light complexion, large nose, and brown eyes.

All three are coming in at the same time. The 12 year old has been doing modeling for over 4 years and is helping the other two learn to pose and help me with composing shots the talent agents will go ga ga over.

Composition will be upper body, head shots and close kneeling or sitting profiles. Prime colors (reds, greens, blues) in clothing with a mixture of black and whites for contrast.


Equipment:

Key Light - Photoflex 500w with a 5' Octogone softbox with a grid.
Fill - Spider Light with a 36" X 48" softbox and tungston bulbs.
Hairlight - Novatron dual bulb 250w with a 36" strip light
Backlight - Tungston
4 ft. Reflector for fill and highlight
Backdrops - True white, Chromographic Green, Gray, and faded black
50, 85, and 17-40 canon lenses


The purpose of this excercise to see if I can find the right combination of constant light for hair, back light and fill that will allow me to provide the added control of a strobe for a key light.

Hi Richard,

It sounds like an interesting experiment. Here are some issues to be aware of if I understand your set-up:

Exposure times--the bulbs will require a slow shutter speed so you'll have to keep your models still to avoid ghost images.

Color temperature--Tungsten bulbs have a much lower color temperature than strobes. The light will appear 'warmer'--more amber--from the tungsten if your WB is set for the strobes--not necessarily a bad thing, but something to be aware of.

Power--are the bulbs going to be powerful enough to give you anything out of your softboxes?

Profiles--watch profiles with large noses!

Good point on the slower shutter speed. I will be starting at 1/60 and adjusting from there.

The warmer softer tones is one of the things I am hoping to accomplish. The third model (large nose and fair complexion) is what prompted the experiment. Every time I have tried to do candid shots of him his face washes out because of his hair tone.

Since I will be doing stationary poses for this first session I'll make sure they hold still for the shots. The only one that should have any movement will be one I am going to try with a fog machine running. It is a heavier low lying fogger so it will be placed above the model, allowing it to drift down over the shot.

Hi Richard,

My guess is that you will be in the 1/15th of a second range or slower. I am a little confused by the comment that your subject's face washes out because ofhis hair tones. Hair color shouldn't have anything to do with it. You mentioned that this happens in yuor candid shots. How are you metering these photographs? It sounds more like an issue of exposure control.

The easiest way to explain is that he was playing a ghost and needed almost no make-up. The candid shots I was doing was with a 28-300L IS f/3.5 set at 1/125 and f/4.0 - 6.3 depending on the background. I was typically 40 to 50 feet away from anyone I was taking shots of and using center spot focusing with CWB.

His hair would come out perfect and his face would have very little detail and extremely shallow depth. The exposure idea is very likely my problem as I am still learning to spot what settings are the best to start with. Since most of my work is darker tones and low f/stops to wash out the background and give depth and motion, the other problem is very likely that I am too critical of my own work with fair complexions.

BTW.. Thank you for the tip on the 1/15 setting.

You may have picked up some [dark?] backdrop at 40 to 50 feet even with a center spot metering. The dark may have fooled the meter and overexposed the skin tones. Try a hand held incident meter. I'll bet you'll notice a huge difference in control.