Originally uploaded by CrazyDave53
On the 8th and 9th of October, I attended a Studio course with Tom Charlton Photography in Wallsend. I didn't really know what to expect, but it was one area of photography that I wanted to explore. The first thing that surprised me was the size of the studio, although not overly large it was surprising big. At one end of the room was all the backdrops and the lights, the top part was a large table with a lot of equipment laid out. The first hour of the course was spend going through the equipment leaning what each one was and what function it did. Next we went down to the studio part as I was introduced to the various backgrounds and the lights. After nearly 2 hours still not a shot taken in anger. At last we picked up our cameras and set them up to work with the studio lights, for the technically minded we shot in Manual mode with a shutter speed of 1/125 and an aperture of f8. The first few shots were used with the on camera flash to demonstrate how harsh the flash can be and the sort of shadows it casts.
After a few shots using a plain white background and the on camera flash at long last we moved into the studio area to use a blue background. Fitting a Radio Flash trigger to the camera, we set up the first shot. A single light with shoot through umbrella and reflector. Before shooting you need to use a light meter to set up the light so it is in sync with your camera. Again we took a few practice shots
Still not perfect and a horrible shadow in the background. This time we added another light to the right had side and fitted a snoot to it. A snoot is like a long tube, which you use to create a hair light.
A definite improvement, The next set up we took away the hair light and set up a light just behind the model and fitted a honeycomb grid, a honeycomb grid controls the overspill of light similar to the way a snoot would, but on a much larger scale, an interesting note here when you are adding and taken away lights you have to keep on checking with your light meter to make sure all the lights are in sync with your camera.
As you can see this is a good portrait, but we didn't stop there with the colour background, we added another light fitted with a silver reflector umbrella, so now
we were using 3 light and again each one had to be set.
A nice evenly lit portrait. We put away the coloured background to prepare to work on a black background. We were back to using one light again but with a softbox fitted this time. The main light needs to be higher than the camera.
For the next part of the background set we added some diffusers to the softbox and added a hair light to the right of the model.
For the last setup of the day we introduced a trireflector, as the name suggests its 3 reflectors in one, this was placed underneath the models chin and about chest height.
So that was the day finished, if anybody says that taken photos of models in a studio is easy, its not. Its enjoyable but hard work, and I still had tomorrow to go, where I would learn how to use 6 lights together.
