8X10 Portraits

[Tin Can]

I never consider POWER

I set up and test with flash meter at a few key points of interest

Many brag about power but distance and coverage is the point

The meter tells no lies

[acrobatic_citron]

With HP5 at ISO 400 you need less power than you might think. Each softbox was set for only 300 joules of power, so 600 total for an f/stop of f/32. Bear in mind that the light is only about three feet away from me, just out of camera range. Hence the soft, wraparound quality to the light, no different than a window. A softbox is best used at a distance about equal to the size of the box itself, or just slightly further. This gives the "wraparound" effect of a windowlight. If you use the softbox at a distance, the light quality is little different than a standard reflector. In thirty years of commercial shooting, I made a lot of money with a single 36-inch square softbox, placed about three feet away from products or people, with a fill reflector on the other side of the subject. Of course, it took me many, many years to know exactly where to place that single light.

excellent thanks!

I never consider POWER

I set up and test with flash meter at a few key points of interest

Many brag about power but distance and coverage is the point

The meter tells no lies

sometimes I need a starting point though, would be no good if I metered and the light I had was not powerful enough!

[Tin Can]

Move light closer

When I do LF Macro I get my lights VERY close

excellent thanks!



sometimes I need a starting point though, would be no good if I metered and the light I had was not powerful enough!

[Daniel Unkefer]

Tin Can,

Sometimes you are lighting a bigger area! So you can't move closer, (the strobe gets in the photo) ONLY option is going to a strobe with more poke, or using multiple pops. Popping multiple times (recently I popped a set eighteen times for a shot) obviously won't stop action, and there are other issues that come to bear. Shooting small area sweep table setups are easy-peasy to do even with 200J or so. Slooooooow film (and needing to use smaller stops) requires more light, no way around that I have learned in my work. Obviously you need a strobe meter, I have four different ones in my studio. The most accurate of all is the Broncolor Sinarsix series, which reads the light through the lens (TTL), taking many multiple variables into account, which can compound exposure errors. With the Sinarsix strobe meter I can shoot without bracketing, once it is fully tested and dialed in. It's simply a matter of moving up to commercial grade units intended for large format, versus smaller units intended for smaller format and digital uses.

Adox Ortho PL25 5x7 Norma MicX 360 Apo Ronar by Nokton48, on Flickr

5x7 Sinar Norma #2 360mm F9 Rodenstock Apo Ronar barrel at F11 Adox 5x7 Ortho PL25 Yellow filter Broncolor C200 1500WS Monolight popped eight times into Broncolor Octobox 150 with supplemental diffusion. 4x6 foot foamcore fill right just out of the frame. Legacy Mic-X straight replenished mixed in 2019. 5x7 Contact Print on Arista RC #2 Dektol 1:2 . I shot one frame at four pops, and one at eight pops. The denser neg looks better to me.
Canvas background is "Tim Kelly Gold Plaster" painted for me by Artist David Maheu.

[Tin Can]

None of your images needed high power

Yet

Show the way

Please

Tin Can,

Sometimes you are lighting a bigger area! So you can't move closer, (the strobe gets in the photo) ONLY option is going to a strobe with more poke, or using multiple pops. Popping multiple times (recently I popped a set eighteen times for a shot) obviously won't stop action, and there are other issues that come to bear. Shooting small area sweep table setups are easy-peasy to do even with 200J or so. Slooooooow film (and needing to use smaller stops) requires more light, no way around that I have learned in my work. Obviously you need a strobe meter, I have four different ones in my studio. The most accurate of all is the Broncolor Sinarsix series, which reads the light through the lens (TTL), taking many multiple variables into account, which can compound exposure errors. With the Sinarsix strobe meter I can shoot without bracketing, once it is fully tested and dialed in.

[Daniel Unkefer]

The one directly above did! Shooting effectively at EI 12 (Yellow Green Filter and 25 EI Ortho film). Took eight pops at F11, that's only one stop down from max aperture. If I needed more DOF I would need more light.

When I shoot portraits I used 8x10 HP5+, smaller lights work perfectly in those situations; much more tolerable for the sitter

Horses for courses. I have no desire to argue with you; it is what it is

[Tin Can]

My bad, I apologize

BTW we may have been in the same room long ago

The one directly above did. Shooting effectively at EI 12 (Yellow Green Filter and 25 EI Ortho film). Took eight pops at F11, that's only one stop down from max aperture. If I needed more DOF I would need more light.

When I shoot portraits I used 8x10 HP5+, smaller lights work perfectly in those situations; much more tolerable for the sitter

Horses for courses. I have no desire to argue with you; it is what it is

[Daniel Unkefer]

My bad, I apologize

BTW we may have been in the same room long ago

Apology accepted

[Daniel Unkefer]

One more point regarding large format portrait photography, is the -quality- of the light you use, not just the quantity. Compare TC's Welder 8x10 B&W, which has a very SHARP SPECULAR quality to the lighting of the shiny face. Quite in keeping with the subject, very effective IMO. Well done.

Contrast that to my 8x10 B&W of Alice, shot with a 4 foot by six foot softbox, and a four foot by three foot softbox, both on the same camera left side? See how utterly SOFT the lighting is? Quite a contrast to the shot of his welder friend. At opposite ends of the lighting spectrum, actually.

The flower still life was shot with my new Broncolor Octobox 150, it's named as such because it's 150 CENTIMETERS across, it's a -huge- light bank. My studio is very small, yet I can shoot full length portraits, even group shots with ease. It's quite liberating and I love it. It's the commercial crowd's preferred lighting for still lifes, fashion (I'm going to start doing some this year), and the "wrap-around" qualities of the Octobox 150 are just lovely to my eyes. Bernice and I were chatting about this in my Broncolor thread, we both like this "look" a lot. I use mine with the supplemental diffuser, which cuts the light intensity about another stop or so.

Anyway it's a lot more than just getting the proper exposure and area on the meter. Just sayin'.

Look Here. See how big it is? Produces gorgeous soft -wrap-around- lighting:

https://broncolor.swiss/products/octabox-150-cm-4-9

[bevdig]

The advantage of softboxes is that they "recycle" the light from the flashtube by trapping it inside the box, where it eventually finds its way to the diffuser on the front. You can get the same general light quality by throwing a hard reflector into a diffuser scrim, backed off enough to avoid a hot spot in the center. However, about half the light is going to bounce off the diffuser surface and wind up scattered to the corners of your studio somewhere. In other words, you are going to lose perhaps a half to one full stop of light, not to mention losing control of those reflections going around the studio. I have also used a small "beauty light", really just a softbox without the front diffuser, but with a grid over the front. This gives you a "soft" light but without any real spill to the sides. This can be highly useful shooting table top stuff where you want to avoid lighting a background, or wanting to light the background separately.