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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.
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