Mishka's Studio - October

Hi Folks, and aspiring photographers. This month I am going to go over how I light up my scenes for both outside and indoor studio lighting.

As many of you know, I do mostly portrait photos, and focus of both indoor and outdoor settings.

First of all, you will need this kit from amazon.com. It's a simple 2 light 5500K kit that will light up your scene beautifully. It's the lower kelvin kit

I use because it mimics natural sunlight better, and does not give that blue tint high kelvin lights give. You can also mix it with a incandescent light if you wish.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017D7W57S/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1...

Click on image above for full size and gallery

In the above semi outdoor setup, I have the sun shining and it provides most of the fill light, and the two direct lights balance the light.

One thing to be aware of is to use the white diffusers to soften the light and reduce hard shadows. Use them when hard shadows are present.

Check out the shots I got from this setup - notice the soft shadows between the breasts.

In this next part, I show you how I do outdoor shots. There are not extra lights in these shots, just a balance of sun and shade. Now some say that's a bad combination,

but I only film in early mornings and when sun is at a low angle. Also I tend to underexpose by 1 stop and save all pictures as raw img.

Remember shooting as a jpg is the worst thing you can do as it's only 8 bits per color, and permantly writes lighting and color balance which is not what you want.

Also raw will allow under and over exposing to fix pictures, whereas jpg will not allow this.

Notice the pictures are not overexposed, but are set at 2/3 of a stop over to yield a hight brightness level.

Typically, I shoot all pictures twice - over and over expose each picture (2/3 stop), then manually layer them in photoshop.

This takes a long time, but yields very nice pics. Next month I will go over this in detail.

Now, let's look at indoor setups. I use the same lighting, but this still requires lots of natural light. In my home, this occurs around noon,

and gives me a 3-4 hours window max of shooting. Look at your setup, and angle of the lights and sun angle. Again, I take shots to test setups and look

for shadow angle, hardness of shadow, and amount of light needed to obtain a focused shot. If lighting requires < 1/60 shutter speeds, I will increase ISO to a max of 400,

Remember each doubling of the ISO doubles the effective light and shutter speed. If lighting requires >400 ISO, then increase the lighting or place lights closer.

Once my exposures fall to < 1/60 in the best conditions, I call it quits. Also notice, I never use flash - ever - no exceptions.

There are people out there who use them off camera to sucess, but I don't like the results. I only like natural light.

RAW vs JPG (courtesy of http://www.arcsoft.com)

RAW file is basically an image preserves most of the information from camera, such as sharpness and contrast,

without processing and compressing. However, RAW format need to be converted to JPEG and other image formats which are more convenient for printing and sharing.

JPEG file is a commonly-used image file format, which will be processed and compressed by the capture device according to the settings made by the user before archiving.

It is a very popular image format, and can be easily opened in most computers. The users can freely set the compression level to preserve the quality for their JPEG files - easy to use and convenient!

So let's summarize what you do prior to filming

0. Look at reference pictures to know what poses you want. (Always prepare the scene, then dress the doll lady last)

1. Study the scene setup and lighting like sun angle and where you want lights placed

2. Make sure ISO and exposure parameters are setup right. Shoot aperture or shutter priority - or just manual - it's your choice.

3. Make sure camera metering and focus is correct for subject. (you're not taking pictures of fast F1 cars!)

4. Check white balance by using 5500K on camera. Take a shot and look for color. (This can be corrected in photoshop later)

6. Set exposure to desired amount. Is your shutter speed within something you can take without blur? -  if not use a tripod

7. Take a picture and look for all of the above. Fix what's wrong

8. Take many shots per pose. Under and over expose. See the results and learn from this exercise.

9. Take shots with different camera angles. Sometimes there's one that will be just right!

10. Learn from the lesson. Experiment and try different ideas.

11. Always use camera .raw! (Try save as jpg and raw and compare!)

Depth of Field (DoF)

To get a nice depth of field, you will need to use a low F-stop like 1.6, 1.8 and if you have a zoom lens like a 28-200mm, zoom in to 200mm and use a lowest F-stop. Stand back 12 feet or so, and take your picture.

You can also get a nice DoF with just a low F-stop, but use it in zoom mode as well makes it look so much nicer. Bokeh is just beautiful when executed well. It makes the subject the focus matter, and not distracting things

in the background. Experiment and see your results!

Enjoy Mishka