First shot with my Bees....!

Ok, my Bees arrived today and I promptly coreced my daughter to help me test them! I set up a back drop in the living room, placed both B800s about 12 feet from the back drop and set them at a height of 6'. Both bees have umbrellas on them, one reflective to the right of my daughter. Camera was at f7.1, 250 and 400 ISO. Both bees were at about 1/4 power.

I think the lighting is good, although I'm seeing some shadow on the bottom right and left...probably because of the heighth of the lights. Critique please?

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Congrats on the Bees. The B800s have plenty of power, use iso100 for now for best IQ. Also the lighting looks a bit flat, try set the fill light a stop or 2 less than the main.

I'd go with a bigger ratio (maybe 1/4 on one and 1/8 on another), that'll make the lighting a little more interesting. Also I can see too much of the background, i'd put hre further away from it and use ISO100, F3.5 (guess), and change your shutter to 1/125th just in case you run into issues some time. Shutter speed's irrelevant when you're in the studio, just for kicks set it to 1/10th and see what difference it makes.

You want the lights as close to the subject as possible -- the closer the lights, the softer the light will look.

I also agree with the others on the flatness of your image -- you need to have one light brighter than the other.

Highlight and shadow are what will give an image dimension and contrast. For right now I wouldn't worry about patches of your background that are slightly bright or dark. I would concentrate on modeling the face, creating highlights and controlling shadow, but not eliminating shadow.

My only suggestion to add to the others is to pull her away from the background. A rule of thumb, can't remember where I heard it, is subject to background at least same as subject to camera.

Jack

Thank you everyone for the comments, I'll put everything back together probably tomorrow night as tonight I'm shooting fireworks. Thank you for the input! I love the Bees!

get some space between subject and the background, use wide f-stop to blur out the background a bit, keep the light very close to subject. low iso, 100 or 200. keep shooting.