Welcome back … Wishing you a very happy Diwali…
I have been thinking of doing this article for a long time; finally I have the images to show some experiments with different lighting techniques.
I have a basic lighting gear – prolinchrome 23 (its basically elinchrome marketed with a different name) studio strobe, a 22″ softbox, 5′ octa and a small 22″ reflective umbrella and my 580EXII. The only problem with the strobe being its power setting – it has only a full and half switch. So mostly I have to damp it down by almost 2-4 stops using a white bed-sheet. The bed-sheet fortunately happens to be very close to day-light balanced – it gives a very slight blue cast but thats not an issue at all.
This series of pictures are all with just 1 light setup – either the strobe or the flash off camera. Will leave the 2 and multi light setups for another article.
Heres the first image. The idea was to get the key light to mimic window light on a cloudy day. The key light would be strong enough to take it to the extent of making a high-key, but just under it.
Blue Iris
Spend a few hours doing some table top stuff. The first subjects were a crystal vase and a small glass. Both being highly reflective. The important thing was to avoid any of their surfaces from reflecting any objects (including the light source) and giving away the shoot.
I got a large white mounting paper sheet for the ‘white seamless’ background and added another one at the base. The table was of rubber-wood which has a natural yellowish brown texture. Added 2 black sheets on either sides for negative fill (I could have added white sheets as well but after exprement, that wasnt working to my taste).
Canon 7D. EF 85 1.8 at f2.5, 1/125
