Lighting & processing for 80's style Glamour Shots

Hi,

We're throwing a "Glamour Shots" party for a friend, with all the girls getting dressed up in denim jackets and giant feather boas and White Rain hairspray, and the guys wearing tacky sweaters and slick-parted hair and Coke-bottle glasses. We're putting together some bad backdrops as well, and collecting silly props. I'm sure we'll have some of those goofy two-look composites, and maybe a "family portrait" holding the unwilling cat.

I'm pretty competent as a portrait photographer, I've got a pretty decent amount of lighting gear, all the lenses that I need, and I'm pretty sure I can pull this off - but I'm just looking for any advice, tips, dos-n-don'ts from anyone who has done this digitally before. I would prefer to do as much in-camera as possible, though I'm not averse to some post-processing. If I can do it all with a combination of camera, lens, lighting, and Lightroom, then I'll be super happy. One main light with a reflector, one or two hair lights, zero to two background lights depending on the backdrop(s) we choose.

Canon has made a soft-focus lens, but I don't think any of the rental companies have it, and I don't want to spend $600+ to buy it. (although a 135mm f/2.8 would be nice, even without the soft focus, I don't need another lens right now!) I don't mind sacrificing a cheapo filter if it would make sense to smear one with a little Vaseline. I've also read that putting a bit of stretched nylon stocking over the lens can give a similar soft-glowy effect.

If I have to take it into Photoshop, then I'm thinking maybe duplicating the image into a new layer, giving the new layer way too much blur (I think Gaussian only goes up to 250px? that might be enough), then setting it to Overlay (or Screen?) with a medium-low opacity.

Any other thoughts? We've got about a dozen girls and half-dozen guys. We don't really have a time limit (it's a combination photoshoot, birthday party, sleepover, etc etc) but even 15 minutes per person means it's gonna take 4+ hours to move through us all.

Thanks for any insight.

Depends on what you want to achieve. A Gaussian Blur layer set to blend mode overlay, lighten or darken might work. A piece of nylon in front of the lens might as well.
Old skool: Black (or white) frost: http://www.adorama.com​/SR4XBF1.html

Thanks for the suggestion. That example shot is pretty close to what I want to achieve.

Unfortunately, this isn't the kind of thing I want to drop $200 on, since we're just doing it for fun. I don't expect to make this into a regular part of my portraiture

I'll do a little testing this weekend. The wife has some relatively sheer nylons that we can sacrifice, and I've got some other netting material that might work.

Negative clarity slider might do the job if you do not want to leave LR.

I've seen images where the photographer smeared a light coating of Vaseline on a uv filter in front of the lens to get the soft blur look.

Totally for sure this shoots sounds totally awesome.

Kirk

Watch some classic John Hughes movies to get you in the mood. 16 candles. Pretty in pink, ferris bueller's day off, breakfast club.

Totally.

Kirk

You can, like, stretch some groady panty hose over the lens, dude, to take your blur to the max

Or use a little hair spray on an old gnarly uv filter.

cutwater wrote in post #16219098
You can, like, stretch some groady panty hose over the lens, dude, to take your blur to the max

Gonna totally try this first.

kirkt wrote in post #16218747
I've seen images where the photographer smeared a light coating of Vaseline on a uv filter in front of the lens to get the soft blur look.

And try this second. I have a cheapo UV filter that I don't mind sacrificing. It'll only fit my 50mm but that focal length should be fine for this.

kirkt wrote in post #16218747
Negative clarity slider might do the job if you do not want to leave LR.

I've thought about that too. The look is pretty close but not quite there. Worth experimenting, though.

You can apply a Clarity (or any other) graduated filter as many times as you want if a single application isn't strong enough, and it doesn't have to be "graduated" if you start and finish applying it on the same side of the image (hope that's clear -- easier to do than to descirbe). Maybe the attached image will help to explain; I have applied the filter three times, all starting outside the right side of the image and ending almost immediately just to the right of the starting point.

-----

nathancarter wrote in post #16222019
Gonna totally try this first.

And try this second. I have a cheapo UV filter that I don't mind sacrificing. It'll only fit my 50mm but that focal length should be fine for this.

I've thought about that too. The look is pretty close but not quite there. Worth experimenting, though.

No 3rd try using hair spray on an old uv filter?

We need all the hair spray for our hair, man.

(OK, I might try that too)

Little update. Shot 'em last night. It was pretty nuts, as it was also an (adult) birthday party with lots of drinking and dancing and food and swimming. Technically, they're not as good as I would have liked, but in the barely-controlled chaos I think they turned out OK. Shot 18 different people (plus lots of pairs & groups) in three different styles - in addition to the Glamour Shots, I did a new set of standard beauty-style headshots for our dance troupe, and some Halloween styles promo shots for the flyer for our upcoming show, and just played around a bit since I had a lot of willing models in makeup and hair.

For the Glamour Shots, I wound up not using the lubed filter or the nylons. I had some other stuff come up over the week and just didn't have as much time as I would have liked to prep and practice. I had everything on hand but just didn't get it set up right, as I was also shooting two other styles that same night. A little failing on my part due to lack of preparation.

On to the processing. A lot of this is just an "in-progress" thread, hoping that someone else can learn from my process. For now I'm staying in Lightroom, but I'll make some more updates as I test and learn a little more.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/9​592815352/