Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hey everyone,

I have a mini-shoot coming up and for circumstances that'd be too long-winded to go into, I need to be shooting portraits against a white background and add in the funky backgrounds in post-processing. Think stock photos.

Problem is, I don't have access to any studio equipment. The location is going to be a white wall and the floor is hardwood =/

What I plan on doing for the shoot is use as many diffused white light source as possible to get rid of shadows against the wall. Currently I have my 430 EX + lightsphere, a camping tent lamp, a desk lamp, and some dim ambient light in the room. I will see if I can get something white to layer onto the hardwood floor too.

So my questions are,

Do you think this will work?
What can I procure to improve the chances of success?
Any tips on placement of the lights?
Or tips in general?

Thanks thanks thanks...

Problem I see with the light sources that you have are the following:
480 flash is mostly daylight balanced = white light
camping tent lamp = i'm guessing yellowish tungsten
dim ambient light = i'm guessing yellowish tungsten again

mixing all of them would not give you white at all...it would give you a mix that would be quite tedious work to correct in Photoshop.

The most I can suggest is for you to have something reflective, like a foamcore, white or better yet silver one, that would bounce more light from your 480EX. Keep the correct exposure on your 480EX flash to keep the foreground correctly exposed and overexpose the settings on your camera for the background to be as close to white as you can get it.

Goodluck on your minishoot

1. Forget the floor.
You don't really have enough lighting to do this properly, properly exposing the whole person, floor and background is even harder. Just focus on head, shoulder and up.

2. Expose the BG about 1.5-2 stops higher than subject.

3. Go rent some lights.

Thanks for the tips so far!

Ok, I will forget the floor and go for the upper body only... I wasn't able to find anything that can even remotely work with the floor.

The lights I have right now are pretty white, took a few test shots and I couldn't see any hints of yellow. Trouble is, I don't think they will be bright enough or balanced enough, but I supposed I can play with their distances to the subject if there are balance issues.

Oh, I just found a heat deflector from my car (the ones you put in front of your windshield in the summer that looks like aluminum foil)... can that work as a silver reflector?

lol, this is feeling like a high school project all over again... scrounging stuff up from the house. Wish I had time to go find/rent some lights before the shoot...

This is exactly it, you won't realize how little light they will provide or rather, how much you'll actually need to produce a pleasing photo.

I would really recommend you consider borrowing off someone or even renting 1 of these and a reflector or 2 of these and use your flash to blow out the background for a white wall.

http://www.vistek.ca/rentals/details/40/R302047/elinchrom-style-300rx-head-std-reflect/Specs.aspx

If you don't get any additional lighting, then I would definitely recommend that you don't handhold your shots and turn up the ISO a bit, shoot RAW if you're using mixed lighting and get reference grey card to do whitebalance in post.

Or you could ask for a collaboration with members here that do have lighting gear .. there are plenty .. trust me.

HAh ah , I was just about to suggest the same as SD

all depends on where bouts you're located I guess

It'll save you on the duct tape and glue work

One thing you can do if you want to preserve the white background is to aim light at it and blast it with full power.

Just make sure the subject is at least 5ft away from the wall.

That's a great suggestion, but it would be kinda hard with only 1 strobe..

if you had one more, it would be ideal.

If you are in the Guelph area, let me know and I can hook you up with 3 flashes.

Here's a picture I took last year by accident. The flash faced the wall and it turned it white.
The wall is actually a dark obnoxious pink....

If its a really bright day you could take a see through shower curtain and put it over a very very bright window and then just meter that and make sure its a stop brighter then whatever your lighting your subject with

Guys, thanks for all the tips...

So I went on my minishoot the other day armed with all the aforementioned 'equipment'. I quickly found that most of them were pretty useless =p

As you guys predicted, the lights I brought weren't bright enough unless I slow down the shutter speed. I was reluctant to do that because the subjects were figgity. I think the car reflector would have helped had it been a sunny day and we were shooting outside and/or I had a remote flash.

Had to experiment for 30 mins before finding the right balance between the sunlight and my flash. Even though it was a cloudy day, the sun coming in from the window was too strong so I had to decrease the light with some transluscent curtains. Then I cranked my flash to full power along with fitting it with a lightsphere in order to diffuse even more light and make sure the white walls are white and shadows are gone. On some of the pics, there are still a bit of shadow, but they can easily be removed in post-processing.

So overall, I am pretty satisfied with the results. As per usual for me the setting up and finding ways to conquer the environment to fit your shoot goals is so much more fun than the actual shoot itself =D