in this episode of The Breakdown I'm
going to show you guys a new setup that
I'm using for shooting beauty portraits
in the studio. I'm going to do it with an
a9, and it's going to be a lot of fun, so
let's check it out!
Welcome back to The Breakdown
my name is Miguel Quiles.
I'm a Sony artisan of imagery
and I'm here today with the
awesome actress / model / just overall
cool person
Julie Dawson. And we're in the studio
today and I'm going to show you guys how I
shoot some portraits using a modified
setup of a setup that I did with Kat.
So if you remember in my video that I did
with Kat in the studio we did one light
overhead bouncing off of a white
seamless to bounce back and light our
model but I want to show you guys a
little bit of a variation a little bit
more of a just a better version in my
opinion of that same setup, and so let's
go ahead, and let's breakdown exactly
how I shoot this shot as far as the
lighting, the camera's, let's just get
right into it. Alright so before we get
started here let's go ahead and let's
talk about the camera that I'm using for
this shoot I have the new Sony a9 this
was just recently released and it is a
really fantastic camera, 24 megapixels,
shoots at 20 frames per second, so it's
really great for shooting wildlife or
shooting sports. For anybody out there
that shoots weddings, really fantastic
camera, where you're able to capture
everything, the bouquet toss, and bride's
walking down the aisle and you can
capture all of that at 20 frames per
second. We're using it in a much
different way we're not going to shoot
20 frames per second in the studio but I
want to show you guys that it is a
really fantastic camera for doing studio
work as well. So we have the a9 I've
actually paired it up with the 50mm
1.8 lens from Sony this is a
really fantastic lens, that I think is
kind of a, almost like a lens that a lot
of people don't know about, they would
much rather go to like a 50 1.8 or 55 1.8
or 50 1.4 but this 50 mm 1.8 at
its price point is a really fantastic
lens very sharp and perfectly at home
with this Sony a9 camera. I'm going to
be using my Profoto air remotes to
light this, or to trigger my lights, as far
as the lights go I'm using a Profoto D2
and I have that with a Profoto 1x6
softbox, and it's actually a strip box
and so if you look at this setup here.
Let's talk about how this lighting is
actually working, and what's happening. So
first and foremost let's talk about
basically the idea of this. The idea is
that there's not going to be a light
actually hitting the model, what's going
to happen is you're going to have the
light behind the background and behind
the model. And the amount of power that's
coming out is basically hitting this big
white sweep which if you have a white
wall or really anything that's a white
surface it will work perfectly fine. If
it's a like base surface or gray, or some
other color you don't want to do that.
Which is why I use the scene most paper
because the wall behind this is not a
perfect shade of white. So what I'm doing
is I'm actually going to bounce the
light that's coming from behind her off
of this white wall or this white
seamless, and all of this light is going
to be reflected back to light her from
the front so it's a really kind of a
counterintuitive type of setup, because a
lot of people would just go ahead and
put the lights behind them and it gives
a different look to it. This almost looks
like it's too light because you get a
great hair light, which is coming from
the light being behind the model, but you
of course also light them from the front
because the lights are bouncing off the
seamless. What we're also doing to kind
of shape and create our catch lights is
I'm using a silver reflector as well now.
I have it sitting on a table a lot of
people have been asking in my videos
what I use as far as holding the
reflectors, you can use anything you can
use any reflector, you can use any stand
I have a rolling stand, because I feel
like it's much easier to move around.
However if you have Apple boxes you can
use that, back in the day I would even
use like little lunch trays, like little
breakfast tables, and I would just slap
the reflector on that so it doesn't have
to be anything super fancy but it
definitely does help if you have a
proper reflector holder as far as the
background we're using a canvas
background that's made by Savage and
it's a really beautiful background these
are all painted backdrops have a really
beautiful texture to it, they have some
natural wrinkles that are in it as well
but it's totally
okay because they're canvas and that's
what they do. So that's what we're
working with here as far as our lighting
the d2 with one strip bank, bounced off
of this white wall.
lights are from the front... super easy.
Our settings I'm going to go ahead and
turn on the camera here, and we're going
to be shooting these at f9 1/160th
of a second, ISO 100, and so that's going
to be our camera settings. As far as how
I arrived at those settings, I basically
first set my camera up to where it
negates the ambient light in the room,
and so even though I'm lit and I look
like I'm pretty lit right now, at these
settings you're actually not going to
see if you don't have the flash on,
you're not going to see anything it's
just going to be a black screen. So
that's how I know that f9 will work fine.
It's overpowering the light that's in
this room, and then I turn on my flash,
and then that's the only light that's
actually lighting my subject. So you want
to make sure that when you're trying to
figure out what your camera settings are,
that you figure out first what settings
are going to negate the ambient light in
your studio. Once you have that, whether
it's f9, f11 whatever it might be, from
there you could turn on your flash you
would dial the power up on your flash,
or dial it down, to basically get you the
correct exposure. So with that being said
let's go ahead and let's start shooting.
All right everybody so there you have it
a really simple one light setup to use
in the studio. Hopefully you guys enjoyed
it. If you have any questions about this
setup make sure that you leave it in the
comment section below. I always read the
comments and I tried my best to be able
to reply back to them, so contribute to
the conversation. If you have any
feedback as well in terms of what you
liked about the video, or what you didn't
like make sure you leave that in the
comment section as well. So anyway with
that being said make sure that you
follow us on Instagram Julia's on
Instagram her handle is in the
description, but it's at Julie Dawson
with an underscore at the end. Also make
sure that you follow me on Instagram as
well which is at Miguel Quiles jr and
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Anyway with that being said thank you so
much for watching The Breakdown, I will
see you guys in the next episode
Take care everybody.