Quick help with lighting, shooting SR, family Pics

I took a SR recently that no matter what I did my Alien Bee was causing highlights on her face. Do most of you shoot with light when you can or only when you have too? Seems to me I like light on the face to bring out facial features. Any feedback would help, as I seem to be shooting more family and Sr. Pics than action shots.

I'm guessing the light was fairly distant from the subject, and lacked a modifier, or a very small modifier?

Those highlights are spectral highlights due to small apparent light source. Remove them by getting the light closer and using a larger modifier.

I use lights almost all the time, especially in the sun. I like controlling fill light and beating down the sun.

Very best,

Yes, this was direct flash with no filter, it was set on a 1/4 power about 10' away. So you saying shoot through an umbrella, or maybe bounce the light? I love shooting with light. A lot of people love shooting without, just need my setup right, don't want to run people off...

Here's another that the light didn't do as bad same setup, just didn't highlight as bad....yeah I know the hair was bad here, dont want to hear that.

10 feet away with no modifier is why you have those spectral highlights.

Move the light a lot closer (it will require less power for the exposure due to inverse square law) to the subject.
Put a modifier on it that is larger. As large as you can suffer and manage (this may soak up some light, so you may increase power output to maintain exposure a little bit).

Also, if you're shooting with the light as fill, it will not show highlights as pronounced either.

Big umbrellas and softboxes give you that large apparent light source look (no spectral highlights like you see in your image) when they're used close to the subject, because they're big and close. However, they're also windsails in the outdoors. My biggest is a 60" that I use, but frankly, I shy away from using my umbrellas and softboxes outside anymore and instead I use large all-metal reflectors. My favorite is a big 10 inch reflector bowl. I use it to beat down the sun. You can also explore beauty dishes that are not too huge, they catch less wind than huge umbrellas do. A nice 16", 18" or 22" beauty dish can be a great way to do light outdoors without too much wind problem.

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Here's some quick examples:

Larger modifiers (48~60") (tough to use in wind):

https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=17986281
https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18329097
https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18000500
https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18061723

Large reflectors (10") (better when there's wind):

https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18374939
https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18455766

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Soak up a lot of info from this thread (start at the latest stuff and go backwards):

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=984150

Very best,

Thanks for the info, I'll go looking for some of those.. Do you ever use any shoot through's, or just reflection? the other problem is shadows sometimes on certain pics like below, Guessing I need to get the light higher here, or does the reflection make it not as harsh?

tadams17 wrote in post #18490360
Thanks for the info, I'll go looking for some of those.. Do you ever use any shoot through's, or just reflection? the other problem is shadows sometimes on certain pics like below, Guessing I need to get the light higher here, or does the reflection make it not as harsh?

I rarely use shoot through umbrellas outdoors. They're windsails. I use brolly boxes (umbrella that is black backed and has a sock or diffuser panel; they're light weight, cheap, and function like a big softbox; you can get them up to 47" and they're octa shape). With the 60" umbrella, or larger, I use them as bounce surfaces, or reflective surfaces to eliminate the hot spot if you were to shoot through them. This gives you a huge apparent light source and allows more distance to subject while keeping the light soft.

Shadows like you're referring to are because you had the subjects right up against a background, so there was something for the light to cast shadow on. You should have had them a few feet in front of the barn to eliminate seeing shadows. I see you had them standing in a shadow to begin with, and had bright harsh sunlight hitting your foreground, so I imagine that's why you had them hugging the barn wall anyways. Getting your light higher wouldn't have changed this. It would have just changed the angle of the cast shadows. In reality, in this photo, this was really not a good time of day likely to do this kind of photograph (too sunny, and you were not setup to beat the sun). Also, if you have no choice, putting them in shade is good, but you need to have shade every where else too or you get this split exposure where it's really bright in one area (ambient light) and obvious shadow in another (like your foreground vs the barn wall).

Bigger modifier wraps light around the subject, you get less pronounced shadow cast.
Bigger modifier is a larger apparent light source and reduces appearance of spectral highlights.
And get the light as close as you can while keeping exposure even on the edges of your subjects.

For processing it looks like you dragged highlights so far down that there's a weird warm hue on everyone but not the ambient. Do you have unprocessed versions of these?

Very best,

You are correct about backing them up into the shade, this was a site they picked, I'd never seen it until that day, and the side I wanted to shoot was all grown up.. Here is the non processed pic.

Also where do you buy your brolly boxes, I have Alien Bee 800's and 400's. But Paul C Buff's stuff is pretty expensive. Is there a cheaper alternative?

Your unprocessed image looks better to me.

The brolly boxes are just umbrella mounts, you can get them on Amazon.

You have to check shaft diameters. Some use smaller/larger. I'm sure you can dig up info on Alienbees since they're widely known and used.

I will warn you against just using a big modifier outdoors though. Unless you have it really, really well anchored, a small wind gust will send your whole light setup to the ground.

You may want to look into something like a reflector (as big as you can find, I've seen 16" reflectors by Elinchrom), or a big Beauty Dish (22 or 28"). These will handle outdoor wind a lot better.

If you think a PCB umbrella is expensive, replacing your whole setup due to it crashing into the ground from a gust is even more expensive.

I literally stopped using my 47" & 60" modifiers outside. I use reflectors pretty much exclusively outdoors now and fear no wind.

If you have an assistant who can hold the lighting stand with a huge modifier, that is a good way to go. I don't use an assistant, so, doesn't work for me.

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https://www.paulcbuff.​com/reflectors.html

That 18" will handle wind great.

Very best,

I'll check into some 28" beauty dishes, that seems like that's what your suggesting because of the wind. I'll try that and of course do some practice before I go out!

Thanks for the info!

I do have a soft box but It's to big to take with me on all shoots. it works really well.

I looked at the 18" so do I need just that or something to shoot through to soften the light?

tadams17 wrote in post #18490415
I looked at the 18" so do I need just that or something to shoot through to soften the light?

You can put a sock on it, if you want. I wouldn't though.

When shooting outdoors, you have two common options:

1) Big modifier, close to subject, to get the softest light you can. This is hard without an assistant and you're at the mercy of the wind.

2) Smaller modifier, close to subject, harder light, but if you expose the output as fill light, it will be soft enough to not be disruptive. You can take on the wind no problem.

The 18" reflector is going to be softer than the bare bulb will be, because it's a larger apparent source of light relative to the subjects. And if you get it closer to them, it will be softer still. But, it will not provide the soft light that a 7 foot parabolic would. But, using a 7 foot parabolic outdoors without help with any wind at all is an exercise in suffering. My 60" umbrellas have turned from wind gusts. Some have went down. Even with weights and anchors. It's just a lot of surface area. So I use reflectors these days and I expose them as fill or near-key.

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Here's an example of a 10 inch reflector without any sock or anything. It's at close proximity to the subject. It's considered "hard light" but because it's 10" and closer to the subject, it's soft enough to not show big obvious spectral highlights:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Upxm​iT

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/JnoP​qZ

Thanks for the help, I'll start trying this.. I'll update on some shots.

To me these are quite under-exposed. Even when I was using Alien Bees where I couldn't do high speed sync, I guess I never shots slower than f2.8. I care less for the bg so if it gets over blown, so be it. Modifiers wise, PB stuff is good and foldable. And you can get grids for them. Don't get PB high output beauty dish, older dish used to be good.