could use some advice on 3-light setup

I'm planning on doing some portraits this coming weekend so I started setting up my lights today. I'm still very new to this and my opportunities to experiment are far and few between.

I'm going to be trying new techniques, especially now that I added a third light, some grids, and a DIY snoot.

My objective is to take some nice seated portraits of my kids for their yearly photo.

My setup is a softbox with grid as key light, reflector for fill, background light with DIY snoot (modeling lamp off!) to get that round highlight in the background, and a hairlight set up high and off to the side with a grid.

I haven't taken any meter readings or test shots yet. I just set the equipment up tonight. It takes quite a while as you know. Before I start playing around with power settings tomorrow, can you please evaluate my setup by looking at the pics below and tell me if I'm doing anything majorly wrong?

Would you change anything? How would you start off with power settings on the lights? I've never worked with a snoot for background or hairlight so I don't even know what to set these at.

Sorry if the photos seem blurry. I shot them real fast handheld just so I could upload them quickly before I had to call it a night.

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OK, I'll start...is my hairlight too far away?

I've used similar setups for portraits. I think your hairlight and reflector are both too far away. But with the hairlight, it depends on the effect you're going for. I'm guessing you haven't done any meter readings with this setup yet...or even had someone (or something) sit on the stool so you could see where the hairlight falls and the ratio of light between main and fill sides.

sdipirro wrote in post #12441306
I've used similar setups for portraits. I think your hairlight and reflector are both too far away. But with the hairlight, it depends on the effect you're going for. I'm guessing you haven't done any meter readings with this setup yet...or even had someone (or something) sit on the stool so you could see where the hairlight falls and the ratio of light between main and fill sides.

That's what I plan on doing tonight. One concern that I have with moving the hairlight closer to the subject is that I'm afraid it may topple over if I place it just over and behind the subject. Its a Manfrotto 420B Combi Boom stand with two 5-lb dumbells in the sandbag holding up a Genesis 200 light with 10x36 strip softbox. You can see that its extended really high and about halfway out. If I extend it more you can see some flex in the boom and I'm worried about damaging it. How do other people do this with no problem? Is this because my lights are bigger than most others?

Also what difference should I expect with a grid on the hairlight vs. without the grid. Does using the grid result in light not spilling out into the path of the main light and background light?

the grid will control your spill.

trust yourself. your hairlight and reflector look a little far away, but if that is your only problem, you will be fine.

your main light also looks to be maybe a little too far away from center. with these kid pics, you arent trying to get too creative, you just want nice even soft lighting. bring it a little closer to the camera. i also cant really tell your distances, but bringing the main a little closer to your subject will soften the light as well.

trust yourself to make changes on the fly. your kids arent paying or your time.

A few observations from my test shoot last night (mostly self-portraits with remote trigger). The wife was too tired and only posed for a few shots.

1) The hair light was definitely too far away. I moved in so that it is directly overhead, slightly behind, and angled at 45 towards the back of the head. In fact, I moved in my main light, reflector, and background light as well.

2) Use of the DIY snoot on the background light looked really nice once I got the position right. I couldn't use the modeling lamp for fear of melting my piece of craft foam so it took a while to find the right position. I tried varying degrees of power and noticed that the higher the power, the better the look. However, the rest of my background looked very underexposed, which wouldn't have looked so bad if it was a light solid color. Any suggestions on how to improve the rest of the background without loosing that dramatic spotlight from the snoot? Maybe I should just eliminate the snoot and instead position the background light behind the subject on a mini stand pointing up at the background with a basic reflector.

3) My subjects weren't as soft as I was hoping for when I looked at the RAW images. The subjects were tack sharp. I was shooting my 24-70L at f/5.6 with 1/250 and ISO 100. Any recommendations on achieving a certain degree of softness without having to do it in post-processing?

4) Because my background is patterned it was too out of focus and drawing attention away from the subject. Should I adjust settings to get a smaller aperture? I really don't want to blind my subjects with the main light that close, so I assume I'd bump ISO to 200 or 400 and decrease shutter speed to 1/125. I had power on my main light set at half of max power. Don't want to go much higher than that.

Thanks!

Nice snoot!

Kechar wrote in post #12445875
Nice snoot!

That's what she said!

All kidding aside, my wife has no concept of photography.

When I told her that I made my own snoot, the following transpired....

She: You made a what?
Me: A snoot
She: A hoot?
Me: No, a snoot
She: Oh, ok. Nice snoot.
Me: Would you like me to tell you what it does?
She: Probably not.
Me: (Laughing) I figured as much.

Get all the light sources closer to the subject.
Just outside the lens view.
gradual transitions from highlight to shadow are caused by a large light source relative to the size of the subject. That means the closer the softbox is to the subject the more gradual the transition.
It also means that the softbox will be closer to the reflector which is closer to the subject so you have more control over ratio with feathering the lights.

Feather the softbox toward the reflector and you may be able to bet close to 2:1 ratio if that is required.
If you want a hot center on background use a reflector and diffusion material with the center cut out. Several layers with increasing larger circles cut in the middle help control the gradation of the transition. Best to use a pinking shear to cut the circles to help diminish sharpness of edge.

If you want to soften the subj and sharpen the backdrop, how about manually back-focusing a bit?

archer1960 wrote in post #12446084
If you want to soften the subj and sharpen the backdrop, how about manually back-focusing a bit?

Will try that. Thanks!

archer1960 wrote in post #12446084
If you want to soften the subj and sharpen the backdrop, how about manually back-focusing a bit?

You could turn off auto-sharpening in your camera also.

Here's a sample of myself.
Posing for self-portraits is tough so this was the best I could do.
Its actually not that bad (for my work).
Obviously I wasn't dressed for the occasion and I didn't check my hair in the mirror before shooting.

I think the hairlight setting was a bit too high for my hair. I didn't even meter it. Am I supposed to? Or is it one of those things that you adjust to personal taste? Also, notice my right ear has a red glow to it from the hairlight passing through it.

Recall what I said about the issues I had with the background. What would you do to improve this?

Any other advice would be appreciated!

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I believe you are off to a great start. I would like to see a little more fill in the shadow area of your face. Possibly bring the reflector in a little closer or change the angle a bit. A lot of times when I am shooting and get a shadow such as this I have a 4th head (AB400) that I will set up on a short stand turned all the way down with a 40 degree grid. That will add great fill exactly where you want it. You could also experiment a little bit with head position. Something else I would try, put your background light directly behind you angled up just a touch. This will give you a more even penumbra (I believe that is the correct term).

If you want to make the background less distracting, you should probably be making it LESS in focus, not more, but I don't have a problem with it the way it is now.