Studio Portraits with Large Format

[seezee]

A tracking modeling light is one that changes brightness when the strobe settings are changed. My 4803 pack has no provision for changing the level of the modeling lights. They're always full on or off, no matter how many watt-seconds will be used during the flash. My 805 packs allow me to manually turn down each modeling light according to the power that the flash will be for that head. Fancier lights do this automatically. The advantage of tracking lights is that you can set them by eye, taking only a reading for the key plus fill. If the modeling lights don't dim in sync with the strobe settings, then you have to take reading of each light, and the image might not look like it does on the back of the camera.

The Paul C. Buff Einstein E640s are are an example of an entry level light with this feature.

[MAubrey]

The Paul C. Buff Einstein E640s are are an example of an entry level light with this feature.

Buff's even cheaper AlienBees, too!

[Tobias Key]

These are the things that I have found really useful when I shoot people (which is pretty much all I do with a large format camera).

A tall stool really helps people stay in the same plane of focus, and was one of the best and cheapest investments I made in my portrait photography.

Where possible I have gone for blacking out as much of the ambient light as possible in the studio, so that the modelling lights are the main or even only light in the studio. This makes it much easier to compose on the ground glass without necessarily using a dark cloth, although I still use one for fine focusing. If I'm in my house I make sure I draw the curtains or even black out the windows with newspaper. This does make your living room look like a serial killer's lair so make sure you explain why you've done this to your subject!

I use quite a strong loupe, a 8x nikon. I did use a 4x Schneider but found it did not magnify the eye enough in most of the shots I composed.

I shoot with conservative f-stops, f16 or f22 usually. I have found that shooting close to wide open makes the whole exercise much more frustrating, and places much more pressure on your subject. Everything gets much more static and slower the wider the stop you use, not to mention you'll have to accept a proportion of wasted sheets from focus issues.

I have proportional modelling lights which I use for trying to work out lighting ratios, but I put them to full power once I have worked that out to make focusing easier. I save them when I can to avoid blowing the bulb though.

Patterned or tie-dyed muslin backdrops work well with large format, they blur off quite pleasingly and can hide uneven development that be painfully obvious with a paper backdrop. Make sure they are back far enough from the subject and lit separately from the subject though, unless you want everything you do to look like a mall portrait from 1985!

Here are two examples from my last shoots which have put all of the above into practice. It's cost me a fair old bit in film and processing, not to mention a few frustrating days of reviewing processing/focusing mistakes, but I think I have a consistent, repeatable method now.

Arielle Fox 3 by Toby Key, on Flickr

angel 2 by Toby Key, on Flickr

[richardman]

re: thin DoF
He has to put blood on his teeth right before the exposure, meaning he has to turn his head etc.

Paper backdrop, F8 withe the PS945. I have done a couple hundred sheets now...

[mdarnton]

As I've worked on my portrait project, my lighting has gotten more and more simple. Currently I'm down to one light, and a 2x3 foam core reflector on a stand, with middle-dark grey background paper. Once in a while I'll use a small hair light if I think the concept needs it. This makes the fill a lot easier to handle without it looking fake, or without getting double highlights in the eyes. This is traditional portrait ban that I see often now in other people's photos, and it really bothers me because it makes eyes look nervous and chattery. I'm sensitive to this now, am not above touching out extra highlights. I often will add or change them so that they make more sense, especially if one's missing on the shadowed side.

Mostly I use a 2x3 gridded softbox, and that's certainly the most useful, but sometimes an umbrella, or even one small gridded reflector. I go through lighting phases, and for a while now I've been using a very high key light, which started when I had several subjects in a row with glasses, and liked the resulting mood. The more I work with the reflector the more I like it. I've learned that just as with fill lights, there are several ways to use reflectors, and I'm starting to think about expanding my reflector collection. Using a reflector helps me not overlight, and I think the results are more natural.

For focus, I have active people settle into a comfortable old oak office chair with arms so they don't move around. For the calmer ones I have a small adjustable-height table that they can lean against, and that keeps them from wobbling around. I have only 300WS strobes now, but have been considering getting one big one so I can stop down a bit. I'm going to try a bare reflector, closer, first to see if I can pick up a couple of stops that way.

The biggest problem I have is with composition. I don't feel comfortable composing upside down. My personal style of framing depends heavily on balance, and I can't sense that well in such darkness and wrong way up, worse with 8x10. On 8x10 I find myself rarely filling the frame, to the extent that I'm considering falling back to 5x7 all the time. In 35mm I never crop, so I'm irritated by my inability to do this in 8x10. To compose, I have to flip the image in my mind and look at it subjectively in my imagination, which is not my style, intentionally considering things such as is the subject looking into the picture or out. These are things I would naturally sense when right side up. I suppose I will get better at it with practice.

This is done with a gridded soft box, feathered towards the reflector so strongly that the subject asked if I knew that the light wasn't pointed at him:




Larry N
by Michael Darnton, on Flickr

[Peter De Smidt]

Thanks for the write-up, Michael.

I have a fairly small space to photograph in, and I prefer to use light modifiers with grids. I have a 28" Fotodiox dish reflector with grid that I use a lot for the key light. I have a bigger Octobox, which is a great source, but I don't have a grid for it, or I'd use it more. For hair lights, I've been using 11.5" reflectors with 20* grids.

[jnantz]

i trained with a lady who was doing it since the 20s / 30s. all lf ( 5x7 by the time i was there )
it was all about knowing your gear, and being good with barn doors. she had simple lights
first they were continuous lights until she couldn't get bulbs anymore ( no internet back then )
then she went to the vacuum cleaner looking photogenics. her modeling lights didn't track but that is OK
she had a key and fill ( and hair /background lights for that 3-d effect ). that's all she used, whether it was a
pr/newspaper promotion social advancement portrait, a head to toe with the american flag of the governor, or a full on
rembrandt lit karsh-esque portrait. sometimes too much just gets in the way of the portrait and simple is good.
I've been thinking of putting my strobes ( 2 300WS monoblocks that i use with soft boxes) in storage and ...just using L lights i have
they are just barn doors and a flood light, the original lowel lights ( and available light )
continuous really lets you see what you are doing so much better than trcking strobes. you understand the lights better, see if you use barn doors or
a soft box/louvers/honeycombs what they do, better, and when you move a light 2x the distance away how it effects what you are doing.
while it is nice to have a stable of assistants feeding you loaded film holders, and moving lights around and directing everything
sometimes just simple lights you set up and a camera you know like the back of your hand, and 5-10 film holders you pre-loaded with film is all you need.
nothing's worse than fumbling around, being nervous.

i agree it does feel like cheating when you use a graflex slr. it makes it a lot easer not to have to hope the person didn't move
by the time you loaded the film, or stopped the lens down or ? and bag mags make it easy to just cycle through a lot of stuff before having to reload.
i think they made a 8x10 version, didn't they maybe a mythic 1 or 3 of them?
or maybe i am thinking of the TLRs made by peter gowland...

[Peter De Smidt]

Tungsten light are great to use. Hurrell especially liked that his subjects didn't know when he was taking the pictures. The downside, though, is heat, which can also be a safety issue. Eventually, I'll look at some of the focusing LED spots...

[Noah A]

I've been doing quite a bit of studio (or portable makeshift studio) work on 4x5. I think the key is practice. Having an assistant to work with is great, but often that's not in the budget, and it's not really necessary most of the time.

I find it helps to explain to the subject how everything works, for example in the past I've had people move after I pulled the dark slide because they thought that was the photo. So by explaining the process they're more likely to stay still. Also, at lest for the first few photos, I quickly re-check the focus and composition after I take the photo.

I normally shoot at f/22 with a 210mm lens on Portra 160 or FP4, both of which I shoot at 100.

This is probably obvious, but I've found that it's important to be somewhat fast so you can shoot as soon as possible after you get the focus nailed down, since people tend to move slightly. I recently came up with the idea to place a small piece of gaffer's tape on the shutter to limit the aperture lever to whatever setting I'm using. That way I can stop down the lens very quickly without looking.

I tend to prefer small-to-medium, directional light sources. I often use a profoto beauty dish as a key light, but more recently I've been playing around with strip banks too. And I often use a harder source, like a profoto magnum reflector, as a fill placed close to the camera lens. It gives a great catchlight and since the power is relatively low, it doesn't make it's own shadows. Occasionally I'll use a 7-foot parabolic reflector as a fill, placed directly in line behind the camera. It's more forgiving and does a nice job of generally opening up the shadows. It can light up the background a bit, which can be nice But I don't like the catchlight as much, and even as a fill it needs a decent amount of power.

Don't forget bellows factor if you're shooting close.


Some cool videos for inspiration. For the second one, the actual shoots start around the 10 minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZTGXhWjAf4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mL1gIW_gg

[Peter De Smidt]

Here's the Speedotron 8" Fresnel 8 feet from the backgroud.

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