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Hi I'm Karl Taylor, this is our lovely
model Sophie and today I'm going to show you some really simple portrait lighting
set-up, actually I'm going to show you one portrait lighting set-up but I'm going to
do it with some really basic equipment. Okay admittedly you need some studio
lights or at least some speedlites but we often get a lot of emails from people
saying to us "Oh you get fantastic images, you've got all these lovely great photos
but you know you're using all this expensive equipment to capture these shots".
Well actually we can still capture great
shots on some really basic equipment. So I'm using an Olympus OM-D camera, one of
these little crossover cameras. It's got its 14 - 42mm, I think it's the lens that
comes with it, I'm just using it in manual mode, I've got a flash trigger on
here to trigger the lights.
Then for my lighting I've got a Broncolor 75
octabox here just to put a little bit of a gradient glow on my grey paper
background. This softbox retails at about £135, which is about $210, $215.
Remember these soft boxes they don't have to go on Broncolor
lights, you can put them on speedlites you can put them on other brands of
studio lights as well but they're fantastically built softboxes. My main
light source is coming from an octabox 150. This is a lovely big light, great big
soft diffuser, that retails at about £175, which is about $230, $240,
somewhere around there. So if you had just two lights you're going to be able
to do this set-up. Two lights with these softboxes any camera doesn't really
matter. I'm going to shoot this on this Olympus OM-D and then I'm going to take
a shot on my Canon 5D and I'm going to take the shot with just a standard 50mm
lens, you know this is a 50mm 1.8 lens, and we should be able to get a
great result. So obviously we're using a very attractive model here but you can
do this sort of portraiture with anyone. The only other thing we're going to use
is a simple piece of white foam board, white card, to bounce a little bit of
light into the shadow side of our model and that's it. So you really will be able
to see how easy it is to get great shots even with a two
light set-up.
Okay if I can get you to hold that please Fab. So Fabian is just
holding that reflector in just for a little bit of fill. I'm just going to get
into position here and I'm just getting Sophie just to turn her head directly
towards camera. Just look straight at a lens for me Sophie, that's it lovely
and I've already taken my meter reading so I know what my exposure needs to be.
Just going to zoom that in a little bit there on Sophie, now wait for that focus
that's beautiful Sophie, thank you that's good. And again, let me reframe. Okay so
that's on that camera, let's switch over to the Canon. I'm shooting this at ISO
100 at f6.3 and shutter speed doesn't matter as long as I'm
within the flash sync speed so in this case I'm one sixtieth of a second.
Just going to go up a little bit higher with this one. Just turn your head round
towards me a little bit, that's it, good fantastic keep that there for me darling.
That's great and again. Lovely. I'm just going to go in a little
bit closer on a couple of those because of our lens. That's it, good, beautiful.
That's it, and we should have some fantastic portraits with a really simple light set-up.
Hope you enjoyed that, we'll see you next time, thanks very much.
So in this first result you can see I've shot slightly wider and just so that we
can see the softbox on the background and you can see clearly the effect it's
having that lovely gradient of light that is adding. And then the main softbox
giving that beautiful flattering light on our model and this was shot with
the 50mm 1.8 lens.
Then I moved in a little bit closer for a better crop on
the model, a better framing on the subject. Very simple, very easy to achieve,
just done with the two softbox lighting set-up.
Then on the Olympus OM-D camera, much less expensive camera,
another great result, so just proving that it's not always about the gear.
This is a much less expensive camera, using it's standard lens, and again you can see
it's the lighting that is key. Then we move in a little bit closer for a better
crop with the Olympus camera.
Beautiful result again, so not about the gear it's
about knowledge of photography and understanding lighting.
For more great photography tips visit our website NOW at KarlTaylorEducation.com