23.03.10
How to photograph in harsh lighting conditions
Background to the shoot
The temptation when asked to write about shooting pictures is to go for the glamorous and the easy to achieve. This month I decided to shoot a picture under the hardest conditions of a less-than-glamorous subject. Going back through my diaries, I remembered I once had to shoot a plasterer at work in a dark room while he was working. Picture the scene: the walls are dull, the ceiling is dull, the subject is covered in brown spots and there is plenty of light brown dust in the air. Never one to shirk a challenge (even a self–set one), I contacted Carl Dillon, who has done plenty of work at my house, to see if he was up for a bit of ‘modelling’.He was just about to start on a ceiling about three miles from my home, so I gathered some gear together and set off to do the shoot. The boot of my car already contained my Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit and I put two camera bags in as well. The first one was my standard kit bag and the other had my shiny new Canon EOS 7D along with 28mm f1.8, 50mm f1.8 and 85mm f1.8 prime lenses and a Litepanel Micro that Photography Monthly had sent me to play around with.
The shoot
There was no time for planning on this job. I arrived at the bungalow to find Carl and his colleague (also called Carl) starting to mix up a bucket of plaster. The room had a big bay window but it was a January day with grey skies and snow on the ground, so there wasn’t much light to play with. Even though I was shooting as a test for Photography Monthly, I behaved as if it were any other job, and started with some evenly lit ‘safe’ images. I was talking to the two Carls while they were working, and they confirmed what I vaguely knew — that there would be some opportunities for setting up portrait pictures between the bursts of action where Carl would be putting the plaster onto the freshly boarded ceiling and then smoothing it out in stages before it started to set. Luckily for me, plaster sets more slowly on cold, damp days and so we had a reasonable amount of time to get the right shots.Having played with the Litepanel for a couple of hours the previous day, I knew it wouldn’t provide enough light for the wider shots, but I was equally sure that it would be very useful for some really tight portraits using my very ancient Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens on my new Canon EOS 7D. Apart from these tight shots, I decided to go for some dramatic silhouettes and some wider shots using the Elinchrom set up in the garden outside the bay window. These different images require very different treatments but they all have one thing in common — you can get inspiration from nature and from the builder’s site lighting. The shallow depth of field shot using the fast lens and the Litepanel was influenced by the way the available light was reflected off a small mirror. The silhouette was inspired by the way Carl had his work light set up and the portrait with the shadows was suggested by the way the light would have come through the bay on a nicer day.
The silhouette
- The idea behind deliberate silhouettes is an easy one — you light the wall behind the subject and then try to stop any bounced or other light hitting their front, leaving them as a dark shape in front of a properly lit background.
- Work out the composition so that you can hide the light source. In this case it is directly behind the subject, but you can often fire flash units through doorways or windows to get the same effect.
- Cut the power down so that you aren’t struggling with too much light. The Elinchrom Ranger Quadra in this shot was set at 25 watts/seconds which is its minimum power setting when using the main socket. Even then, the aperture is f11 on 200 ISO.
- Use a high shutter speed to cut out any unwanted ambient light. At f11 on 200 ISO, I would have needed a shutter speed of several seconds to make a difference, so the actual exposure at 1/125 of a second was free from any stray ambient.
- Be prepared to give the silhouette a little bit of help with shadow and black point controls if you are shooting digitally. It’s amazing how easily a very small amount of flash bouncing around a room can ruin the effect.
- I shot this using RAW and then increased the black point to 12 in Adobe Camera RAW.
- Check the camera’s LCD screen to see where the fall of the light is. The shape of the pool of light can make or break this technique.
Shallow depth of field
Shooting with fast lenses means you need less light and can achieve interesting effects using ultra-shallow depth of field. You often see photographers using 50mm f1.2 or 85mm f1.2 lenses to get the right look, but you can get close to it using much cheaper lenses. The available light reading before the Litepanel was slipped into the hot shoe for this shot at 400 ISO was 1/60 of a second at f1.8 but with the addition of the light jumped to 1/640. The panel had reasonably fresh NiCd batteries which gives you an idea of the amount of light these panels put out. The panel is very small and easy to hand-hold, which is what I did next, holding it to my left and even closer to the subject. This is a very good way of shooting creative and interesting pictures very quickly. I used a Canon EOS 7D and a cheap Canon EF 50mm f1.8 for these shots.This was my first day playing with the Litepanel. I found it to be an interesting piece of kit that deserves more time.
Natural shadows
One of the most effective ways to use light is to recreate the effect that nature might have provided. On a summer’s day, late in the morning, the sunshine would have given a pattern of shadows much like this. On a winter’s day with almost no natural light you can control things a lot better. This shot was done using an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra and an Elinchrom Skyport trigger with the flash set up in the garden outside the window. If I were working alone I might have had to use a chain or some rope to stop the kit being stolen, but the second Carl (the guy mixing the plaster and cleaning up) wanted to slip outside for a cigarette, so he was given the job of holding the light stand and acting as ‘security’. I imagined that the ‘sunlight’ was coming from just over the rooftop of the bungalow opposite, so I lined up the flash head with no umbrella or soft box so that it was coming from that angle. In effect, the flash head was about eight feet from the ground, angled in through the window on half power (200 watts/second).
I had originally intended this as a portrait and shot several frames of Carl sitting on his bench, but then added several frames where he was smoothing the plaster around the light fitting.
The Idea
The idea here is to create a look that mimics natural light. Angles, colour temperatures and power all help to give the right look.
Once the kit is in place and the flash-to-subject distance is stable, you can play around with composition and poses.
There is no ambient light featuring in these pictures, so the flash is the single light source — remember, there
is only one sun in the sky!
Kit used
- Lowepro Stealth 650AW bag
- Two Canon EOS 5D MkII bodies
- Canon EOS 7D
- 50mm lens f1.8L
- Canon 16-35 f2.8L
- Eight 8GB SanDisk CompactFlash cards in a Think Tank Pixel Pocket Rocket wallet
Lighting kit
- A LowePro Stealth 650AW bag with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit consisting of a pack, two A heads, spare cables, a spare battery and plenty of Skyport triggers and receivers.
- A Sekonic L-328 flash meter
- Three Manfrotto lighting stands
- SanDisk FireWire 800 UDMA card reader
- Two LaCie 320GB Rugged
- Hard Drives
Some Pointers
Just like flash, the distance between the subject and the light source is crucial. The exposure changes as you move the light closer or further away. Remember that the difference between 1 metre and 1.4 metres is one f-stop, and the difference between one metre and two metres is a massive 2 f-stops.
The Litepanel comes with three custom-fit pieces of gel and the light straw-coloured one is great for skin tones, but remember to leave the camera on the correct white balance.
The margin for error when focusing this close is tiny. Make sure you shoot enough frames while continually re-focusing to get a good selection where the focus is right on the subject’s eyes.
Neil's Words of Wisdom:
There are many things that help make a great photograph — being a good photographer, having the right equipment, and good luck can all play a part, but there are three things that, in different proportions, are absolutely essential. Light: Possibly the most important element that can turn an ordinary photograph into a good one. You not only need the right quantity of light, but the quality and direction of the light are vital, too. Composition: Getting all the right elements in the right places. Whatever else is going on in the picture, this is the element of the total package over which you have the most control. Subject Matter: It's true that what you are photographing can very easily make the difference between good, very good and great pictures. All great photographs tell their own story, and that's just as true for a product shot of ball bearings as it is for Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary images. Sometimes light takes the lead and other times the composition is the most important. It doesn't matter if one element is dominant, but photographs where all three are well balanced and well done are guaranteed to be winners.
This feature is from the March 2010 issue
Back issues can be ordered by calling 01858 438840 or by sending an email to photographymonthly@subscription.co.uk
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