Portrait studio lighting advice, please.

[E Thomson]

I'm starting out on a studio portrait project. I'll be shooting 4x5/B&W. Portraits will be head, neck and shoulders only, with a neutral backdrop. Setup will be repeated and indoors. I'm not after anything at all flashy (pun unintended) in the results, I'm not trying to flatter or going for glamour, just honest portraits with good detail and perhaps a little on the gritty side.

I would appreciate anyone steering me to online tutorials or standard texts which give some basic theory and technique on modeling faces with lighting. I'd also like to stick with budget solutions.

Thanks for any help.

[Peter De Smidt]

Check your library for "Light, Science and Magic." It's by Fil Hunter, Paul Fuqua, andSteven Biver. Or see Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Introduction-Photographic-Lighting/dp/0240808193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242946803&sr=1-1

[Michael Graves]

Some of Karsh's best work was done with a single light and a reflector. You might look at his work and give up all hope of ever emulating it. But hey! It'll give you something to strive for.

[Dennis]

If it was me I would use a medium soft box with a strobe in it powerful enough to give me f32 with whatever film I use. Maybe another one to light the background depending on the situation.
Dennis

[Peter De Smidt]

Dennis makes a good point. There's not much depth of field with 4x5 head'n'shoulders portraits. Using a small aperture would help that. On the downside, it would require a lot of light, which could be hard on the sitter. If you go that route, use a fast film and make sure the room lights are bright to keep the sitter's pupils small. Getting the softbox very close to the sitter will help maximize the light. It'll also make the light softer, i.e. there'll be a more gradual transition from highlight to shadow.

[Ron Marshall]

Light, Science and Magic is good, as is the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Master-Lighting-Guide-Portrait-Photographers/dp/1584281251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242965545&sr=1-1

[Ash]

I need to get me those books.

To be honest my portable flash setup consists of some hotshoe flashguns (Nikon SB-27, and a couple cheapo low guide number slave flashes) that mount to Hama flash bracket mounts on lighting stands. One white diffuser brolly to shoot through, and everything on cheap chinese radio triggers to avoid wires.

The guide number of the setup is very low, it's 'just enough' to shoot EI100 on suitable apertures, but I'm working as limited as possible because I don't want to carry pro lights and battery packs. I want something small enough to sling over my shoulder in a tripod bag and a camera bag.

I've not been shooting LF recently, but on 6x6:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y43/second-belated/blad-may-09/img700_copy.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y43/second-belated/blad-may-09/img703_copy.jpg

Those were a single SB-27 with brolly about head-height in the doorway to the right/behind me. The setup is versatile enough though. I can have up to three lights on stands. The whole lot only cost me a few hundred, the most expensive single piece of kit being the main flashgun. f/8 on Kodak Portra 160NC (exposed at 100).


You can see the setup in this thread: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=48546

[dsphotog]

Hi Eric,
Take a look at www.meyerphoto.com click on portraits...
Tim Meyer is head of the portrait dept at Brooks. I just (yesterday) attended his lighting workshop.
The portraits on his site are 1 or 2 lights.
Darken the room to see the effect of your lighting.
use an incident meter at the face ,with the dome pointed toward the light.

Try a softbox at 90 degrees to the camera, move the subject all the way to the front edge of the box for more drama & contrast, farther back for more wrap-around light.
He called that walking the light.
For more drama (harder light) he uses a grid on a large reflector.

Hope that gives some ideas.
Have fun shooting!!
David S

[AFSmithphoto]

If you want gritty, I'd suggest going with slightly harder lights than you might normally. I'm not suggesting that you should use a hard fresnel if you're used to using a soft box, but try just taking it down a notch.

Also, if you want a natural look, I would avoid strong backlights with a neutral background. Though I personally love the look of hot backlights, it tends to give the image a stylized look, and is typically a dead give away that the subject has been lit, even to the untrained eye.

[Peter De Smidt]

Once nice thing about softer light is that the subjects are free to move a bit, turn their heads...without causing really distracting shadows. I really like the classic contrasty look--George Hurrell, Karsh...-- but it does demand more from both the subject and the photographer.

[cjbroadbent]

Get "The Studio" (Life library of photography) by Time-Life Books. Plenty of inspiration, pictures and "how they do it" going from Beaton to Penn. (I'm in there with the leftovers at the end)
The Harcourt style - Key-light, fill-light, hair-light, back-light, cheek-light, flag, veil and gobbo - was from another world.
I would go so far as to suggest just one 1,200Ws flash (does f16 on TMY), shoved deep into an umbrella for no spill, placed close to the side of the camera and pointing straight across, not down, between sitter and camera. That way the background shades off behind the lit side of the sitter and lightens behind the shadow side.
The most important signature possession is a self-painted background (only you can do it right so that it just looks like air).
If a single brolly seems minimalist, the rest is not. The rest is the make-up artist and the hairdresser. They often do a better job than the photographer. And don't forget the fan man and an assistant to load film. But you haven't asked that yet.

[Daniel Unkefer]

I just did some portraits last week, using my Broncolor Hazylight (which is essentially a medium-sized softbox) and an old Broncolor C171 Monolight, which gave me F22 with EI100 film. I gobo the bottom of the softbox, to gradually darken the lower parts of the portrait. Have a handpainted background, the Hazlight 45 left, and a floor-to-ceiling reflector panel 45 right (which I made from two sheets of 4x8 White Foamcore and duct tape). Sometimes I'll use a background light, but I prefer this setup right now. Works good up to 8x10.

[Lee Christopher]

Hi Eric,

I'm trying to visualise wxactly what you mean by "just honest portraits with good detail and perhaps a little on the gritty side."

Since I have no idea what your layouts are going to be like, just going by 'honest', 'detail' and 'gritty', I would look at single, hard light sources with perhaps a hint of reflector and pushing B&W hard with your lens stopped down (or not - it all depends on what you're after).

Just my 2 cents and all the best! ;)

[Peter De Smidt]

Hard light skimming a surface will definitely show more texture, but lighting people that way can be challenging, but effective. "Honest" to me implies using lighting that will allow the subject to be the main interest in photograph without using lighting that calls attention to itself. Something like the the Basic light that William Mortensen advocated. That technique put the main light as close to the lens axis as possible, with the light being just above the lens and to the side. (Mortensen would've liked a ring light, but that hadn't been invented yet.) This will produce a subject with very, very minimal shadows. There will be some modeling as the person's head curves away from the lens. He then used on other light on the back ground at 45*. He complemented this technique by rating the film faster, as there is no important shadow detail, and developing the film a lot to maximize tonal separation in the important tones. Clearly such a technique would require some exposure/development experimentation.

[cjbroadbent]

Peter, you aptly bring up William Mortensen. For anybody who has not read it, here (again) is Ed Buffaloe's article on Mortansen's negative.
http://www.unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html

[Peter De Smidt]

One more thing on Mortensen, if you like photographing people, check out Mortensen's The Model, which has been out of print since the 1960s. Unlike some of his other books, this one can be found for a reasonable (under $20) price. It's a classic. While I don't always agree with him, his opinion is clearly expressed and worth thinking about. In addition, some of it is very, very funny.

[Paul Kierstead]

Wow, how was I unaware of Mortensen? I looked over some of the work, and the nudes are, in particular, superb and hold up extremely well.

[Peter De Smidt]

Hi Paul,

I agree. I'm not a big fan of some of his, um, allegorical (?) work, but his nudes and portraits are great.