50: Lightsetup – High Fashion

I originally intended to write an article about monitor calibration. However, as this is the (wow, already!) 50th post in this blog, I’m finding a flashsetup being more appropriate.

After I went for a quite simple approach for the „Lifestyle“-theme outdoors last time, you get a little more complex setup for (high) fashion-photography at the studio this time.

Notice: Comments after reading the article would be very appreciated. I would like to know especially if you found it usefull  and if you liked the style of writing/the construction. Besides, feel free to link the article elsewhere, I just want to get a brief notice! 🙂

the camera was dialed to: ISO 100, 1/200s, f 6.3

The main light was a flash in front high up above the model. It was aimed at above chest level and equipped with a Akzent Tube. We adjusted the power to match f6.3.

The Akzent Tube is kind of a modificated Snoot with a narrower, but on the edges softer cone of light. You could easily compare these light shapers and their effects with the hel of my book (in german, chapter 3 – Lichtformer). You can also find a voucher code there which grants you a slight discount at Hensel if you want to buy something there directly.

Two more falshes flanked the model from both sides. I used the Stripboxes as light shapers here which came to be very admired by me in the recent times. I got Aurora Sunbounce Strips (30x180cm) with custom-made honeycomb-grids.

If you ever want to get something similar, I’d advise you to take the 40x180cm-Strips, for that Aurora offers grids directly (or take sth. shorter as alternative). For Aurora products there’s a voucher in the book as well, valid till the end of 2010.

The flash to camera right was dialed to a little more amount of light as the main light, to give the subject some edgelight. It resulted in f7.1 (1/3 stop brighter than ML).

The flash to camera left was adjusted somewhat darker by visual judgement to not give a too dominant edgelight on this side and, above all, to not overblow the hand that was closer to the light.
I’d always adive to measure your flashes very precisely and to work as accurately as possible! However,  because of my experience (and that of my assistant) we also take ourselves the liberty to slightly readjust the lights by gut feeling.
I’d guess the left flash was about 1/2 till 1 stop darker than the main light in this case (resulting in f5.6 to 5.0).

Here’s a (post-processed) result:

At the final result one can see what the lighting achieves: Especially on the background one can recognize the classic „Spot-effect“ quite good, which is well-known from old movies and theater shows.
The face and the shoulders are lit evenly, no distacting shadows in the middle appear, as would have from the strips alone.

In the lower section, where one primarily sees the high quality designers dress, we however use exactely this effect to emphasize structure and lightness of the material. The wrinkles are clearly modelled.

To emphasize the wrinkles and movement even more, we used a wind machine from bottom left (which you could also spot on the topmost making of).