Lighting Test - C&C Please

I need to set up some lights and do some product shots at work. Please feel free to tear this example apart. In fact go ahead and say the model is ugly if you like. I don't think it will insult his plastic brains. I'm just using him as a stand-in untl the actual live kid models get here tomorrow.

What I would like specifically is advice on light placement and intensity. I have one key light in front of the dummy, high and about a 45 degree angle to his left, a fill light at about his face level farther away and more to his right than in front, and a backlight behind and over his right shoulder. I think the evidence of this backlight is difficult to see with the wild hair style. Also I'm using shoot through umbrellas in front of the key and fill.

Here's a better example at least as far as the back light goes.

I think it looks fine. Your model sure needs to comb his hair though!

I don't know much about lighting, but it looks good to me.

What looks even better is all that beautiful space you have to work in.... Looks to be about 3 times the size of the extra bedroom I laughably call my "studio".

Thanks. The "studio" is pretty nice from a space standpoint. I wouldn't mind higher ceilings and maybe less color on the walls & floor, but I'll take what I can get!

Hey Jeff,

What kind of lights are those?

TMR Design wrote in post #5976468
Hey Jeff,

What kind of lights are those?

Hi Robert!

I KNEW if you saw this post you'd be all over those lights.

Those are some DIY halogen fixtures we use here at work for crash testing. They'll stand up to some pretty serious impact forces. In spite of the fact that we have some pretty serious video and photography equipment here, we really don't have much in the way of strobes and ways to trigger them (At least not yet that is. I'm working on that). So I hacked together some of the lighting we use for testing. I'm not sure exactly what the bulbs are in these, but they do provide a fairly strong and somewhat white light.

The lighting looks solid to me, but way too much skin smoothing. Looks too plasticky.

what a dummy! haaha