My "far from ideal" lighting setup + white background

[mattrix]

Hi All,Being VERY new to this whole photography thing, I was wondering if anyone could offer me some tips on my "studio" set up at home. I have a shoot coming up soon, it's a freebie for a friend of the business I work for, just to help her out and add some work to my portfolio. Though being a freebie doesn't mean I don't care about the job, I want to make sure I do well.
Anyway, I will be shooting a model wearing dancewear (ballroom gowns and the like) for her to put it on her website. So it's all in front of my white background that I have set up already (though haven't yet mastered). The lights in the room go like this:
a) 2 bright white (so, not yellow) halogen tubes, 300w, 1 on each side to light up the background
b) 23w white fluro coil (the energy saving one - which is apparently the equivalent of 100w normal bulb) that's in the ceiling
c) another 23w fluro coil, down in a lamp below to light up lower parts of the room
d) 150w round halogen bulb (warm coloured), diffused with white cloth, to light up the subject.
I'm only using the onboard flash on my Canon 10D, and have been using a canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. I am expecting a sigma f/2. 24-60mm lens to arrive any day now.Basically, up until now I've run into a bunch of annoying issues.
a) When I stand right back to shoot the subject full body, it's far from sharp. I noticed on a website a diagram that showed that the lens has a fair bit of blur around the outside up until about f/4-f/4.5... I shoot using settings from 2.8 to 5.6 and it makes no bleeding difference, it's still not sharp enough. I've tried AF and MF, with no luck. If I go any wider in aperture, it starts to get too dark. I can *usually* get it to be much sharper when I come in close to the subject...
b) Keeping the background lit up evenly is a nightmare.
c) Keeping the detail in the subject is hard.
d) Fiddling around with metering on the camera makes no difference (I read in the manual that some settings work better than others when you have a lit background)... I shoot on M, not sure how that all works together as yet (I've read the manual heaps but since I've only been doing this for a month I'm still working things out).
So, I'm stuck. Far from spending a zillion dollars on gear, what can I do? It looks mighty bright to me, but the camera seems to have other ideas... or something.
Do I wait and see if the sigma lens behaves better than the canon lens or...?
Do I scrap using the camera flash, and instead just put another light in front of the subject to light them up continuously?
Could i try LEDs, cold cathodes... any other cheap ways of adding tonnes of light to a shot in a controlled studio environment?I've probably been way too vague, it's 15 minutes past midnight and i'm a bit muddled in the head after playing around with this setup for hours tonight. If anyone wants any more info or photos of what I have set up, just ask.
Thanks in advance for any help offered.Matt

[Aszental]

paragraphs please, that wall of text is to much.

[Jim M]

So many issues, so little time.

I suspect your lack of sharpness is from camera shake rather than lens quality, but without a picture to look at, it is hard to tell. The 50mm f/1.8 should be plenty sharp at f/5.6 or even wider (f/4 for instance). What shutter speed are you using?

You have mixed light sources. I suspect the two halogens are almost certainly yellow, despite being labeled "bright white." The fluorescents are more than likely green unless they are marked as daylight or full spectrum. Your flash is daylight colored. That is three different colors of light. Pick just one and use it.

You have your brightest lights on the background and you are shooting a lower watt bulb through a diffusion material. If you are exposing for the diffused light, you are no doubt lighting the background with enough light differential that you could be causing flare. This may be what you are thinking is a lack of sharpness and would explain why things are sharper up close. However, if you are using your camera on board flash, you may simply be contributing a greater amount of flash light compared to the constant light which would freeze motion and eliminate or reduce motion blur as well.

When you say wider aperture, I think you must mean smaller aperture. In the photographic world, f/2.8 is wider than f/11 and conversely, f/11 is a narrower/smaller aperture than f/2.8.

There are no LED lights I am aware of that put out a light suitable for typical studio photography.

The Sigma lens will not help you with this problem.

Pictures would be extremely helpful.

Isn't sleep deprivation a bitch.

[mattrix]

OK, I'm VERY new but I'm not THAT new :) By wider aperture I mean smaller f number.

The bright white halogen tubes are just that... they have a filter that removes the yellowish hue normally associated with hologen bulbs. They cost a fair amount (compared to normal halogen tubes), obviously justifies the price since they are a specialty item. They are very close to, if not exactly, white light (from what I can tell anyway).

The fluro tubes are also daylight (not the warm - yellow - ones you can get... those ones annoy the heck out of me). they emit a very bright white colour.

I have experimented with shutter speeds from 1/50 up to about 1/400, with no change in sharpness from a distance (as in, full body shots).

I'm suspecting that I need to light my subject more... just a thought.

As for pics, do you want pics of what I have taken using the set up, or pics of the set up itself? I can probably sort something out tonight or tomorrow night when I get home, providing my beautiful assistant (girlfriend) is willing to pose :) My sigma 24-60 arrived today, so will try with 50mm and 24-60mm to see if it makes any difference.

Matt

[mattrix]

paragraphs please, that wall of text is to much.

strange, my original post did have paragraphs in it... for some reason it removed all the formatting when it posted. strange strange thing

[mattrix]

Just did some more reading (during work time, woops) on another thread in here re: continuous lighting. Didn't realise that there was so much difference between strobes and continuous in terms of shutter speed etc. I assumed that strobes were used mainly because a) you don't want a really bright light blasting at your subject over a long period of time as they might get annoyed, and b) a short blast of light prolongs the blub and reduces heat. (These are both just assumptions though).
So would I be better off buying an external flash unit for the camera, and still run the hologen tubes on the background, but no other lights out front to light the subject? Budget is tight, particularly since I just bought the sigma lens... any ideas?

Matt

[Jim M]

OK, I'm VERY new but I'm not THAT new :) By wider aperture I mean smaller f number.

The bright white halogen tubes are just that... they have a filter that removes the yellowish hue normally associated with hologen bulbs. They cost a fair amount (compared to normal halogen tubes), obviously justifies the price since they are a specialty item. They are very close to, if not exactly, white light (from what I can tell anyway).

The fluro tubes are also daylight (not the warm - yellow - ones you can get... those ones annoy the heck out of me). they emit a very bright white colour.

I have experimented with shutter speeds from 1/50 up to about 1/400, with no change in sharpness from a distance (as in, full body shots).

I'm suspecting that I need to light my subject more... just a thought.

As for pics, do you want pics of what I have taken using the set up, or pics of the set up itself? I can probably sort something out tonight or tomorrow night when I get home, providing my beautiful assistant (girlfriend) is willing to pose :) My sigma 24-60 arrived today, so will try with 50mm and 24-60mm to see if it makes any difference.

Matt
I was thinking pics of what you shot. The actual unsatisfactory images. We should be able to figure out what kind of blur you have by looking at the images. I have to admit that the images shouldn't be blurry from camera shake at those shutter speeds.

As for aperture and opening up, it was this statement that made me think you had it backwards: "If I go any wider in aperture, it starts to get too dark." A wider aperture would lighten the image, not darken it. I'm guessing you mistyped yourself or I just don't understand what you meant.

Most halogen work light bulbs are about 2,000K-3,000K color temperature from what I can find. The highest color temperature halogen lights in the 300W range that I could find anything about brought it up to about 3,400K. That's still a ways from 5,500K. So, I'm interested in the brand, model number, and source for your bulbs. I haven't used hot lights for years and years, but it might be info worth having in the old memory bank.

Rereading your original post, I noticed that the image is sharper as you approach the model. Is it possible that your autofocus just isn't working right and the focus is stuck at some closer distance? Sometimes when I am careless about fully locking the lens in place, the autofocus doesn't work. Try taking the lens off and putting it back on making sure you turn it all the way on. It is also possible that there are dirty contacts on the camera or lens. Of course, you also said you've tried manual focus and that didn't work. Hmmm.

There a many good reasons for using flash, but I think if your bulbs truly do match in color temperature, you should be able to pull this off with what you have.

[Jim M]

Just did some more reading (during work time, woops) on another thread in here re: continuous lighting. Didn't realise that there was so much difference between strobes and continuous in terms of shutter speed etc. I assumed that strobes were used mainly because a) you don't want a really bright light blasting at your subject over a long period of time as they might get annoyed, and b) a short blast of light prolongs the blub and reduces heat. (These are both just assumptions though).
So would I be better off buying an external flash unit for the camera, and still run the hologen tubes on the background, but no other lights out front to light the subject? Budget is tight, particularly since I just bought the sigma lens... any ideas?

Matt
As I said in the earlier post, there are many reasons for using strobes. They are capable of much more light output than continuous lights, they freeze the action, they operate at much cooler temperatures overall, and they are very close to daylight color balance. The only disadvantages I can see are cost and the fact that it is a little easier to get a WYSIWYG from real life to the captured image with hot lights, even when you have modeling lights on the strobes. The instant feedback of digital has made that last one pretty much a non-issue these days and neither one is perfect as far as seeing the highlights and shadows of what is recorded since neither film nor a digital image actually records a scene exactly as the human sees it.

[mattrix]

Yeah sorry, I meant any narrower in aperture. shows how "out of it" I was at the time of posting :)
I had a look at the packet for the tubes, and yes you are right, they are rated to 3200k. I didn't actually know that 5500k is daylight temp...
I'm seriously thinking that I'm just not blasting enough light onto the subject, in comparison to the amount of light i'm blasting onto the background. It's hard to test this, but when I get back from my few days down south (well earned holiday) i'll be able to test properly, with both lenses, and really get to the bottom of this. I'll post up some images then as well, so that you know exactly what i'm talking about.
thanks again for the advice.
Matt

[davidseaton]

Your brain is very very good at automatic white blance, so those halogens that LOOK bright white still have a much warmer color temp that straight sun. Your eye does a great job of compensating... maybe a better name would be Closer to Bright White. You will see the difference in a photo tho.