In this episode of The Breakdown, I'll
show you how using a grid can affect
your portraits in the studio.
Welcome back to The Breakdown, I'm Miguel
Quiles, and I'm in the studio today, and
I want to show you my portrait lighting
setup using just a single light with a grid
Now a lot of times people ask me... am
I using a light with a grid? What is the
purpose of the grid and rather than talk
about it I'm going to show you what is
actually happening to the image when you
use a grid.
Alright so let me break down this setup
here for you using a single light here
which is ofte seen in my Breakdown
videos. I'm using the indra 500
from Phoenix, and I have it paired up
with a Phottix beauty dish. Now I really
love using the beauty dish whenever I'm
photographing somebody that has really
great skin which as you've seen my other
videos on photographing Noely, and
she has great skin, so in scenarios like
that where you're photographing somebody
with excellent skin, using a beauty dish
really helps to bring out the texture
and the detail in their skin. So using a
beauty dish will help to achieve that,
but what we're going to do is we're
actually going to put a grid on that
beauty dish, because it's going to narrow
the light and it's going to give a
different quality of light in this
particular image, so I'm going to take a
shot first without the grid, and then I'm
going to put the grid on there, take
another shot with it. Now this particular
grid comes included with the beauty dish.
I tried to look in the manuals to see
what the degree of the grid is and
unfortunately I couldn't find it but if
I had to guess I would say it's probably
a 30 or 40 degree grid, so if you're
using a beauty dish and you're trying to
figure out what the particular degree of
grid it is, somewhere in that 30 to 40
degree ballpark. So anyway beauty dish,
one light, we will take a shot with and
without the grid. We will see what that
looks like, and before that let me go
ahead and break down the rest of the set up
so you know everything else as far as
camera lens
and background. Alright, so for the camera
I'm using the sony a7 II, which is a
full-frame mirrorless camera. I have it
paired with one of my favorite lenses
which is the sony 70-200 2.8 g-master
lens. It is an insanely sharp lens
beautiful quality of optics in this lens
I'm using the Odin II trigger which
pairs up with the Phottix Indra 500 and
they're able to communicate. The India
actually has the Odin communicator built
in so you actually don't have to have
anything connected to it in order to
make it flash which is pretty useful.
I'll come into the frame here, I'm using
a reflector, and it's actually a silver
reflector and I have that on a table, so
this table is made by Photogenic I love
this because it can be used for the
model to actually pose on the table as
well, we may or may not use it for this
particular tutorial in the shoot but it
is a really handy item to have
Oftentimes what it ends up doing is just
holding my reflector, so silver reflector
for balance which is going to give a
little bit of bounce into the shadows.
It's going to reflect some light into the
shadows, and soften them just a touch,
because the beauty dish does create a
little bit of dark shadows, a little bit
of contrastiness in the photo, we're
gonna try to alleviate some of that with
the reflector. As far as the background
this is a grunge collapsible background
from Savage, really nice, really
high-class looking texture to it, which
is one of the reasons why I love using
it, and yeah that's it, and of course Noely
who is awesome and so we're going to
go ahead, and we're going to take a
couple of shots here, and just to break
down the setup or break down the
settings I'm shooting at f 2.8 1:5000th
of a second ISO 160 and
you're probably wondering, so I'm
shooting with a strobe. Again I'm using
high-speed sync for this particular shot
and the reason why I'm doing that is, I
want to be able to shoot an f 2.8 so in
order to shoot at 2.8 I have to have a
shutter speed that basically kills off
the ambient
light in the room. So what I'll always
end up doing is, I'll take a photograph
at these settings with just the ambient
light so that I can see that there is
nothing affecting the actual exposure,
and then I'll go ahead and turn on my
strobe and I'll take shots from there, so
let's go ahead and take a quick test.
Here I'm going to turn off my strobe and
hopefully we should get a completely
dark image, here, perfect, so at these
settings you can see that the ambient
light that's in the room is not actually
affecting the exposure, so at this point
we can turn on our Odin II transmitter,
and now we're ready to take some photos.
Alright, so to get this thing started
I'm going to go ahead and take a shot and I
want to show you what it looks like.
Without the grid to begin with and I'm
actually going to build up this shot, so
what we're going to do is, I'm going to take
the reflector out, and I'm just going to
have this beauty dish bare. We'll take
this off, I'm going to take this
reflector off and so we're going to go
ahead and take some images here, and I'm
just going to add different layers to
this shot. So we're going to add the
reflector and then we're going to add
the grid, and that way you guys can see
the progression so Noely what I need you
to do is don't move, pick up this is
going to be like the most flattering
portrait right, it's just a basic test
shot, so we'll try one here, and my light
is set at half power right now, and so
let's take our first shot. This is just
with the beauty dish, so you're going to
see that it's pretty, pretty, bright on
her face. Actually we'll go ahead, and
we'll add the reflector. Take the same
shot once again.
OK, there we go, and then we'll go ahead
and we'll add this grid now. It does cut
down the exposure, does cut down the
exposure just a touch, which you'll see
here in this shot keeping the same
settings there we go.
So, if you look at these shots you'll
notice that just the beauty dish alonel
- it does kind of make it look really
bright on her face, the shadows under her
nose, and under her chin is really dark.
We add the reflector, and it kind of
softens some of those shadows there,
it add's a really nice little catch light
to her eye as well, but overall the image
looks like it is overexposed, and it
actually is overexposed on her face, and
parts of her jewelry which is okay, and
then once you add the grid, now you
actually have a shot that is nicely
exposed, and it's nicely sharp and in focus.
So we're going to go ahead, now that you
guys have the setup, and you see how this
looks. We'll go ahead and we'll keep
shooting some shots.
Alright so we took a couple of shots and
I was evaluating the photos, and I really
feel like it would do a lot better if we
actually had some movement in her hair,
she has fantastic hair, so i want to be
able to add a little bit of wind into
the hair to give a little bit of a nice
movement to it.
Shooting a f 2.8, it's part of the
reason why I do this, is because I want to
get really nice fall off where the eyes
are nice and in focus, but the hair kind
of starts to blur away, and part of the
magic of being able to do that is to get
the hair kind of moving around in the
frame. So I have a fan that's here off
camera, I'm going to go ahead and turn
this thing on, I'm going to put it at low power
and actually before I do that, it's very
important that you know that anytime
you're using a fan to shoot portraits in
the studio, you want to make sure that
the fan is not blowing directly into
their eyes. I have had times where I've
used fans in the studio with different
people and their eyes start to water
because the fan is blowing a lot of wind
into their eyes. So you want to make sure
that you give people a break.
They get cold very easy as well because
they're going to have the fan blowing on
them for extended periods of time, so
make sure that you keep that in mind
anytime that you use a fan. So, I'm gonna
put it at low power
there we go now that we have our fan
going, let's go ahead and take some shots
here, perfect, hold that, very nice, perfect
excellent
again
great
Chin down just a touch, there you go, hold that
perfect
Alright, so there you have it folks using
one light with a beauty dish and a grid
to shoot portraits in the studio. Hope
you guys found that interesting and
useful. If you did make sure that you
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Thank you so much for watching, and I
will see you in the next episode of
The breakdown.. Bye everybody!