Need Help Reverse Enginering Natural and Flash Light Shot

[allergyking]

I have been hired to shoot multiple location bedding spreads later this week. I've been looking through magazines for examples and I found this one I like.

Can you help me reverse engineer the lighting setup? Is the outside light natural or staged?

The home I am shooting in has nice natural light / windows, like this picture, and I would like to get the same effect.

But how in the world am I going to merge natural and flash at F11? The window light is going to be so much less than the AB's.

I practiced yesterday at my house, and to get F11 with the AB's makes the light outside look dark like night.

I've got 4 AB 800's to work with and a plethora of diffusers.

Appreciate your help, nervous, another example to follow,

[allergyking]

Here is another image from the same catalog, this light looks all natural to me, coming from the back.

They could have a strobe outside firing at the window to produce the light???

Thanks for any suggestions.

Nervous,

[highbarger]

If the flash is overpowering the outside light then you need to use a slower shutter speed. Meter the light coming in the windows and with the exposure mode on M (manual) set the shutter speed at the appropriate setting for f11, balance your lights to f11 and fire away. Hope that helps.
Craig

[SkipD]

I find it quite easy to use studio flash indoors and match up the exposure to outdoors. It does, however, require a good light meter that can measure natural and flash light levels.

Here's one way to do the setup:

1. Measure the aperture for the flash setup using a light meter in incident mode and determining the level of light falling on the subject from the flash source.

2. Assume that the meter suggest using f/11 for the light from the flash source(s) and the ISO value you have chosen.

3. Now, measure the outside scene using the meter in reflected mode. Use the same ISO setting and aperture as you chose for the flash lighting. Select the shutter speed based on these fixed values.

4. Shooting in purely manual mode, set the camera's ISO, shutter speed, and aperture based on the above. You will be quite pleased with the results.


There are a couple of details you need to be aware of:

First, the flash exposure cannot be made with a shutter speed faster than the "max sync speed" of the camera.

Second, you may have to modify things (such as flash intensity, ISO selection, etc.) to be able to keep the natural light exposure proper if the meter indicates a faster (than "max sync speed") shutter speed for the outdoor scene.

[taygull]

It is very simple.

Meter the light coming in so you get a shutter speed around 1/100 at your f/11 (adjust ISO to get you to this point). Now you can set your lights to the same f/stop you get off your light meter. If you want one stop more light from your flashes shoot at the appropriate f/stop and 1/200 (if sync speed allows this.) If you want it more back lit then shoot at the same f/stop only use 1/50 on your shutter speed and you will have about a stop more back light (with a touch of over exposure).

In order to get the f/stop you want play with the ISO so you get the f/stop and shutter speed you desire.

Also in those last shots it would not suprise me if they were shot in a studio and the windows were added later.

[allergyking]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I am nervous and excited. Will post my results for your review and others learning. We shoot on Wednesday

[allergyking]

Wow, that was relatively easy (since we hooked the 5D straight to the laptop and we could see what we were doing). And since I knew about this forum from the master flasher telling me about it.

I'm not good enough with the flash meter to really trust it, I have my doubts about its accuracy. It's an older Minolta and I've yet to calibrate and verify it. Still used it to measure the ambient, and it was pretty close. From there just dialed in the strobes and the shutter speed at F11 and kept an eye on the histogram as the images came up for preview in ZB. No way I could have done this with film.

The gap in the picture is for the fold in the catalog.

This is untouched except for slight sharpening and cloning (over dust on the sensor I think). The graphic designer got the file on a disc this afternoon. Typeset will overlay in the foreground.

Hope the next guy trying to learn how to mix indoor strobes with natural light coming in the windows learns something from this thread. I was confused thinking the longer shutter time coupled with the use of strobes would blow out the picture. Now piecing together that the flash only goes off for a small duration of the exposure time.

We had a lot of fun, took 5 other shots, all of completely different stuff in less than 6 hours.

Two AB 800s with giant softboxes at 45 degree angles on each side of camera pointing down. One kicker with a grid on the left most black unit. Tough shooting really dark and light things together.

Hard, fun, rewarding work.

Camera Model Canon EOS 5D
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/4
Av( Aperture Value ) 11.0
ISO Speed 50
Lens EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Focal Length 35.0 mm
Image Quality RA
White Balance Mode Flash

[Nortelbert]

Looks perfectly balanced to me... good job, and glad you were able to apply something form this forum (I got some good hints out of this thread too)

[Consensus Trance]

I haven't lit a product advertising shot for 10 years. And back then I used a 4x5 and sheet film for everything so digital could be a bit different.

But, if you run into DOF issues and your lights aren't powerful enough to use a smaller aperture, then it's possible to pop the strobe multiple times and extend the DOF.

SO let's say your shot is at F11 and 1/250th of a second....you could shoot two exposures at F16 at 1/500th if you pop the flash at exactly the same power for both exposures.

If one flash pop will get to F11 then 2 flash pops will get to F16....4 flash pops will get to F22...hope that makes sense. I used this all the time for balancing architectural interiors with flash. Often I'd have to use 4 or more exposures on a single piece of film to get enough DOF...and that was with norman 4000 packs...Some rooms just sucked a lot of light. In the studio I would just blackout the room and set the camera to bulb...then program radio slaves for multiple pops.

[g-money]

Nice work, Now I will ask this question as it applys to many other things as well. When shooting a group of items seperated like this or even a say a large group of people where no one is more important than the next. How do you kow where/what point to use as your focus point?

Sorry if this is silly but I honestly don't know

Greg

[Consensus Trance]

Nice work, Now I will ask this question as it applys to many other things as well. When shooting a group of items seperated like this or even a say a large group of people where no one is more important than the next. How do you kow where/what point to use as your focus point?

Sorry if this is silly but I honestly don't know

Greg

general rule of thumb is to focus 1/3 of the way into the part of the scene that you want to be sharp. But every lens and digital camera is going to be different. It really requires testing and a thorough knowledge of your own equipment...there is no one-size-fits-all rule.

Also, most product shots really need to be done with view camera movements. There is only so much that can be done using a regular canon SLR with no ability to manipulate the focal plane or correct perspective.

[highbarger]

Nice job on the shoot Allergyking. Thanks for posting the pic so we can see how successful you were :)

[allergyking]

Thank you very much, we were pleasantly pleased. Again, I want to stress our reliance on being able to truly WYSIWYG with the remote camera setting and camera coupled together. We all had fun taking turns hitting the "shoot" button on the remote window. Lighting aside, just the product arranging alone took a good bit of time. Will post the final spread once the designer is done adding to catalog.

[allergyking]

Here is the final that went to the printer. The customer was very happy. Thanks again to POTN for the advice and direction.

[Curtis N]

Hmmm.

I give you a link to this forum, you come here and learn from all these smart people, and all of a sudden you're getting commercial work. Seems like I outa get a cut or something! ;)

The technical side of mixing flash and ambient to get the exposure right is really not so complicated and you figured that out pretty quick. The aesthetic part of creating a commercially pleasing ad image can be quite a challenge though, and you have done very well at that also.

Nice work!

[allergyking]

Thanks Curtis, I'll be sure to send you a catalog.

It was really fun learning.