Amature needs feedback on portrait lighting

Ok, aside from the dinner around her face, and spilt on her sweater,
and the generally unprepared I-just-dont-care hairstyle, can some here
take a look at the lighting in this portrait and tell me what you
think?

http://i11.tinypic.com/2colx5e.jpg

I had the flash (sb800) pointing up around 45 degrees and around to
the right also 45 degrees, so there was no direct flash onto her face.
Above the flash was a 2' reflector, about 2 feet above the camera and
to the right, angled to reflect onto her.

This is my first ever evening with the flash and reflector, so I
openly welcome all criticism.

50mm f/1.4 @ f4, distance 4', wb(flash), ev 0.0

Dean

DeanB wrote:
Ok, aside from the dinner around her face, and spilt on her sweater,
and the generally unprepared I-just-dont-care hairstyle, can some here
take a look at the lighting in this portrait and tell me what you
think?

http://i11.tinypic.com/2colx5e.jpg

I had the flash (sb800) pointing up around 45 degrees and around to
the right also 45 degrees, so there was no direct flash onto her face.
Above the flash was a 2' reflector, about 2 feet above the camera and
to the right, angled to reflect onto her.

This is my first ever evening with the flash and reflector, so I
openly welcome all criticism.

50mm f/1.4 @ f4, distance 4', wb(flash), ev 0.0

First of all, definitely underexposed.

If you get her further from the backdrop, the shadow there will be
thrown further from her (probably out of the photo entirely, which is good).

See how sharp a shadow the chin is casting on the neck? *Something* is
sending hard light her way; quite possibly the head is spreading the
beam wider than you expect, or something, and it's reaching her direct
in addition to off the reflector. (That's the first, very dark, shadow,
not the second, larger, lighter, softer-edged one.)

Aside from the strictly technical, I like her expression and head
position. The contrast of the relatively formal pose and relatively
careful lighting does contrast somewhat strangely with the amount of
dinner visible :-).

On Mar 23, 12:20 am, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
DeanB wrote:
Ok, aside from the dinner around her face, and spilt on her sweater,
and the generally unprepared I-just-dont-care hairstyle, can some here
take a look at the lighting in this portrait and tell me what you
think?

http://i11.tinypic.com/2colx5e.jpg

I had the flash (sb800) pointing up around 45 degrees and around to
the right also 45 degrees, so there was no direct flash onto her face.
Above the flash was a 2' reflector, about 2 feet above the camera and
to the right, angled to reflect onto her.

This is my first ever evening with the flash and reflector, so I
openly welcome all criticism.

50mm f/1.4 @ f4, distance 4', wb(flash), ev 0.0

First of all, definitely underexposed.

If you get her further from the backdrop, the shadow there will be
thrown further from her (probably out of the photo entirely, which is good).

See how sharp a shadow the chin is casting on the neck? *Something* is
sending hard light her way; quite possibly the head is spreading the
beam wider than you expect, or something, and it's reaching her direct
in addition to off the reflector. (That's the first, very dark, shadow,
not the second, larger, lighter, softer-edged one.)

Aside from the strictly technical, I like her expression and head
position. The contrast of the relatively formal pose and relatively
careful lighting does contrast somewhat strangely with the amount of
dinner visible :-).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi David - thanks for the reply!

I noticed after I posted that the sharp shadow was there, seems that
the flash was definitely providing some direct light, just a few
degrees it seems, now I look at the setup. There are two lights in
here eyes too.

Is it coming out underexposed because of the white background? I had
the camera set to matrix metering centered on her face so I thought it
would be ok, but it seems not. There was no real ambient light, so
should I just increase the flash ev up a little, maybe 1/3 or 2/3
stop? (She's asleep now, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow

DeanB wrote:

Is it coming out underexposed because of the white background? I had
the camera set to matrix metering centered on her face so I thought it
would be ok, but it seems not. There was no real ambient light, so
should I just increase the flash ev up a little, maybe 1/3 or 2/3
stop? (She's asleep now, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow


I know "little" of this, but I don't see how a camera
can "meter" for flash light, which doesn't exist
until you hit the shutter

BugBear

(who had a Pentax LX film camera that actually did meter
*during* exposure, but it couldn't do flash that way)

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:00:21 +0000, bugbear wrote:

I know "little" of this, but I don't see how a camera
can "meter" for flash light, which doesn't exist
until you hit the shutter

From the SB-800's manual:

Monitor Preflashes
Just before the flash fires, the SB-800 fires a series of
imperceptible preflashes that are detected by the camera’s
TTL Multi-Sensor and analyzed for brightness and contrast

• i-TTL mode
This is a TTL auto flash mode in the Nikon Creative Lighting System.
Monitor Preflashes are fired at all times. The subject is correctly
exposed by the light from the flash lighting and the exposure is less
affected by the ambient light (p. 37).


For the OP's picture, if more ambient light was used the
under-chin shadows would have been lightened. But that would be
difficult as 1/60 sec, f/4 was used for the exposure. Brighter room
lighting or an additional flash could help, and possibly by also
reducing the SB-800's output level.


(who had a Pentax LX film camera that actually did meter
*during* exposure, but it couldn't do flash that way)

It would be nice if metering could be done off the sensor as it
was done off the film, as the preflashes can present problems, but I
think that the occurrences of such problems are pretty rare.

On Mar 23, 8:06 am, ASAAR wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:00:21 +0000, bugbear wrote:
I know "little" of this, but I don't see how a camera
can "meter" for flash light, which doesn't exist
until you hit the shutter

From the SB-800's manual:

Monitor Preflashes
Just before the flash fires, the SB-800 fires a series of
imperceptible preflashes that are detected by the camera's
TTL Multi-Sensor and analyzed for brightness and contrast
· i-TTL mode
This is a TTL auto flash mode in the Nikon Creative Lighting System.
Monitor Preflashes are fired at all times. The subject is correctly
exposed by the light from the flash lighting and the exposure is less
affected by the ambient light (p. 37).

For the OP's picture, if more ambient light was used the
under-chin shadows would have been lightened. But that would be
difficult as 1/60 sec, f/4 was used for the exposure. Brighter room
lighting or an additional flash could help, and possibly by also
reducing the SB-800's output level.

(who had a Pentax LX film camera that actually did meter
*during* exposure, but it couldn't do flash that way)

It would be nice if metering could be done off the sensor as it
was done off the film, as the preflashes can present problems, but I
think that the occurrences of such problems are pretty rare.

Ok thanks for that, I will look at increasing the ambient. (Sleeping
moms hate bright lights in the living room though, so it will be
tricky).

Any comments on the under-exposure? Is it the white background? The
dark hair?

DeanB wrote:

Hi David - thanks for the reply!

I noticed after I posted that the sharp shadow was there, seems that
the flash was definitely providing some direct light, just a few
degrees it seems, now I look at the setup. There are two lights in
here eyes too.

True, that's another useful clue (and they're quite small).

Is it coming out underexposed because of the white background? I had
the camera set to matrix metering centered on her face so I thought it
would be ok, but it seems not. There was no real ambient light, so
should I just increase the flash ev up a little, maybe 1/3 or 2/3
stop? (She's asleep now, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow

I find iTTL remarkably disappointing. It doesn't come *close* to what
my N90+SB28 could do for exposure accuracy. Perhaps a lot of that is
simply due to the differences between color negative and digital; the
color neg can tolerate lots of overexposure, whereas the digital is more
like slide film and blows out the highlights fairly easily, and iTTL has
to take account of that. Its reputation is that its better than Canon's
system; and if neither of the top DSLR makers, each of which brought out
a new flash system to handle digital, can get it to work as well as the
old one did with film, it's almost certainly because it's *hard* :-).

Basically, you have to fine-tune exposures manually by reference to the
histogram, or adjust later (your particular photo is well within range
to be adjusted later to look perfect for overall exposure, I think,
though I haven't actually tried to do so).

ASAAR wrote:

It would be nice if metering could be done off the sensor as it
was done off the film, as the preflashes can present problems, but I
think that the occurrences of such problems are pretty rare.

One of our cats reacts fast enough to *always* have her eyes closed when
I use the preflashes; I've had to resort to manual exposure to get
decent pictures of her.

It seems to work with some people, too. I guess they find it convenient
to get a clear signal when it's time to blink :-).

Zed Pobre wrote:
bugbear wrote:
I know "little" of this, but I don't see how a camera
can "meter" for flash light, which doesn't exist
until you hit the shutter

Not true, actually. Modern flashes flash at least twice, though the
intervals are so short that most eyes can't perceive it. The first
("pre-flash") is used for metering.

It's certainly obvious to me!

When I'm using full CLS with multiple flashes, it feels like the
sequence of pre-flashes goes on a LONG time (you get flashes from the
master, then flashes from the first slave group, then flashes from the
master, then flashes from the second slave group...). It's really only
a small fraction of a second, but I can certainly see it.

On 23 Mar 2007 08:00:44 -0700, DeanB wrote:

For the OP's picture, if more ambient light was used the
under-chin shadows would have been lightened. But that would be
difficult as 1/60 sec, f/4 was used for the exposure. Brighter room
lighting or an additional flash could help, and possibly by also
reducing the SB-800's output level.

. . .


Ok thanks for that, I will look at increasing the ambient. (Sleeping
moms hate bright lights in the living room though, so it will be tricky).

Any comments on the under-exposure? Is it the white background?
The dark hair?

The background should be moved further into the background, which
could help by reducing the shadows and making it darker, if that's
what you want. It will also soften the background's vertical
pattern if it can be nudged out of the DOF. The shadows below the
face could probably be reduced by moving the camera much further
away from the subject. Normally you'd step further back and use a
greater focal length, but lacking that you could just step back
anyway as far as the bounce flash allows (which should be a
considerable amount given the SB-800's output and several more
available stops to increase the ISO) and you might have enough
resolution to crop and make a good print. Even if cropping would
use too little of the sensor's pixels, it would still show you the
results that you'd get if you used a longer lens. As for the hair,
maybe mom has something for her hair that can be applied that will
allow it to glisten or show some highlights? Or get somebody to
hold a focused flashlight to see if it will produce some hair
highlights. It might help, but I don't think that you'd want to dye
your daughter's hair a lighter shade. She's adorable enough as is
that I'd happily hug her in spite of the well distributed food. g