Portrait Lighting - Light Metering

I came across a YouTube video when searching for tutorials, or information on how to use a LIGHT METER to help with portrait studio lighting.

The video below does just that !

Portrait Lighting information

I've recently signed up to a studio Portrait Lighting course, and the next few blogs will serve as my quick notes each week.

Flickr Group discussing online Lighting Diagram Creator:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qhphotography/3546392515/

Lighting Diagram Creator
http://www.lightingdiagrams.com/Creator

Portrait Lighting - Broad

20110614 – Broad lighting

During this session, we threw together the setup as shown above.

This three light setup consists of:

1. The first light is a key light.
   Usually this is the strongest light and this light sets the lighting of the scene.
   We used a medium softbox camera-right, set at half power.
   
2. The second light is called a fill light.
   This light helps fill the shadows that the main light casts.
   This was behind the subject, camera-left.
   
3. The last light is called a backlight (because it comes from the back), and is used to create a contour and separation.
   It is common to use a snoot or a gridspot on the backlight to avoid a spill.
   We actually just used a flash-head from high up, with some small directional cone...(unsure of name).
   

An interesting webpage to read might be:
http://www.diyphotography.net/3-point-lighting-technique

A great video on YouTube is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH84-pA7p-c

The video discusses:

1. Rembrant – signified by triangular highlight on models cheek, light is 45 degrees off centre, infront of the model, camera left
   
2. Butterfly – signified by the butterfly shaped shadow under the models nose, glamorous in appearance, the light is 90 degrees off centre high up pointing downwards
   
3. Edge – this is very dramatic, light is the same height as the model, at 0 degrees to centre (same plane as the model)

20110529 Rob and Sophie Oakes

20110529 Rob and Sophie Oakes

I had the pleasure of attending the beautiful wedding of Rob and Sophie on 29 May 2011 at Wincham Hall.

My pictures from the gorgeous day are now on Photobox for you to enjoy.

Don't forget, you can buy these pictures from Photobox also.

A quick update - Rob and Sophie even used my images for their thank you card, that put a giant smile on my face.

25 Photoshop shortcuts

Photoshop keyboard shorts to make life easier.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/tools/awesome-keyboard-shortcuts-photoshop/

"shortcuts its like peanut butter for nerds"

1. Drag-Zoom
Command/Ctrl + Space + Click and Drag Left or Right. Fastest way to zoom in and out with one keyboard shortcut (only in CS5 and only with GPU enabled).

2. HUD Color Picker
Alt + Shift + Right Click (Win) or Control + Option + Cmd + Click (Mac). Gorgeous color picker with a color wheel (only in CS5 and only with GPU enabled). Preferences are under General tab.

3. Bird’s Eye View
Hold Down H + Click, Reposition View and Let Go of the Mouse to Zoom Back). Works great with large images, when you need to work closely. Fast way to fit the image to screen and then zoom back into another area with the previous zoom ratio quickly.

4. Brush Size & Hardness
Ctrl + Alt + Right Click (Win) or Control + Option + Click (Mac). Drag your mouse to right/left to change the size and up/down to change the hardness. It only works with CS5 in both directions. In CS4 only the size change works. You can change the color of the brush preview under Preferences/Cursors. You also need GPU turned on under the Performance tab to be able to see the brush preview.

5. Draw Straight Lines
Hold Down Shift. Works with nearly every drawing tool.

6. Move
Hold Down Command/Ctrl. Fastest way to move something quickly and then switch back to the previous tool.

7. Pan (Shift + Space) and Zoom Simultaneously in all Documents
Shift + Ctrl + Space (Win) or Shift + Command + Space (Mac). Best way to compare or work on more than images at the same time.

8. Hide Panels
Hit Tab. You can always show them again by pressing Tab once more, or just simply hover over the edges to show the panels and toolbar temporarily.

9. Full Screen Preview of Files From Mini-Bridge
Space and Then Arrow Keys. It works the same way as in Bridge. Make sure that you deselect the images in MiniBridge or collapse the panel when you continue working in Photoshop.

10. Text Size
Command/Ctrl + Shift + . or , you can use it for selected text. It won’t work by only selecting the text layer.

11. All Caps for Text
Command/Ctrl + Shift + K. Quick way to switch between lowercase and uppercase text. Make sure you type without Caps lock to be able to use this.

12. Tracking and Kerning
Alt/Option + Left and Right Arrow Keys. Useful way to make equalize the distance between characters. If you select a word, a line or a whole paragraph then you change the Tracking. If you click between two characters you change the Kerning.

13. Leading
Alt/Option + Up and Down Arrow Keys. Quickly change the distance between selected lines.

14. Baseline Shift
Alt/Option + Shift + Up and Down Arrow Keys. Easy way to use one text layer but have different positions for the text.

15. Fill
Command/Ctrl + Backspace – Foreground Color, Alt/Option + Backspace – Background Color, Shift + Backspace – Fill Options. Great way to fill color into selections or change the color of text and vector shape layers.

16. Reset Any Dialog Box
Alt/Option + Click on Cancel. Instead of canceling a dialog box and returning to it try Reset and save time and effort.

17. Changing Opacity and Fill Opacity
Numeric Keys, Shift + Numeric Keys. This will change the opacity and fill of the selected layer (or even more than one layer at the same time in CS5) and it will change opacity and fill of the tool if you select a drawing tool.

18. Invert Colors of Selected Layer or Layer’s Pixel Mask
Command/Ctrl + I. This is a fast way to invert visible parts of a layer if you invert the colours of the layer mask.

19. Switch to Precise Cursors for Drawing Tools
Hit Caps Lock. If you don’t want to see the edges of the brush you can switch to precise mode easily by having Caps lock on.

20. Reset Preferences
Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Win) or Command + Option + Shift (Mac) When Loading Photoshop. If you want to start with the default settings and user interface hold down these buttons while Photoshop is loading.

21. Switch Foreground/Background Colours
Press (X). Fast way to switch between the selected colour.

22. Mask View
Alt/Option + Click on a Layer Mask. Great way to clean up the mask after you save it from a selection. Using it again will switch back to normal view again.

23. Disable Mask
Shift + Click on a Layer Mask. You can quickly show the original contents of the layer with this keyboard shortcut. Using it again will enable the mask again.

24. Intersection of Selections
Alt/Option + Shift + Click With a Selection Tool Over Another Overlapping Selection. Easy way to keep only a specific part of a selection.

25. Merge All Visible Layers to a New Layer
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Win) or Command + Option + Shift + E. If you want to keep all your layers but you also need to merge them together to be able to use something you can convert them all into one Smart object or use this keyboard shortcut to make a duplicate merged layer.

Bonus (Easter-Egg) Keyboard Shortcut
Alt/Option + Click on Panel options under the options of Layers panel.

Know your Base (or Native) ISO

All credit for the article below goes to Bob Andersson (moderator on CameraLabs.com forum)
Link: http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4503

---

Hi folks, 

Ever wondered what the "Base ISO" (or "Native ISO") of your camera is? No? Neither had I until today. If the question doesn't make sense then it may help if I describe how ISO is changed by the camera's electronics. This description will, no doubt, have the experts in the field gnashing their teeth in horror but I hope I have represented the essentials correctly.
 

Each of the pixels on a camera is a little photo-sensor which frees electrons as photons of light are absorbed. The process isn't anywhere near 100% efficient but the number of electrons freed is proportional to the number of photons seen and those electrons are stored at each pixel until they are read out by more electronics and an analogue to digital converter converts the resultant voltage into a number, usually with 12 or 14 bit resolution. The trick is to realise that the sensitivity/efficiency of the photo-sensor doesn't change when you change the ISO number. What does change is the amount of amplification given to the voltage from the photo-sensor which then goes to the A/D (analogue to digital) converter. 

With that in mind it is obvious that, for a given light intensity on the sensor, regardless of the ISO number you dial in, the individual pixels will always take the same time get to a "full well" state, that is a state where they can't store any more electrons. Of course the resultant signal can't be properly used if you dial in a high ISO number because the subsequent voltage amplification will either clip the analogue signal or the resultant digital number will hit the 12 or 14 bit maximum (blown highlights). 

So how does this help define "native ISO"? Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a proper definition so how about this? A sensor's native ISO is the same as the ISO number of a camera film which, when exposed to the same light intensity, reaches full saturation in the same time as the digital sensor reaches "full-well".
By "full saturation" I mean that the photosensitive chemicals in the film have all been activated by incoming photons. A pretty sloppy definition, no doubt, but I hope it will do for the job in hand. 

The reason why native ISO matters is that when you take a photograph at this ISO number the highlights will, if the picture is correctly exposed, have just resulted in an almost full-well number of electrons at each relevant pixel. This means that the statistical noise is lowest and the noise introduced by the read electronics is low in proportion to the signal. If you dial in a higher ISO than the native ISO the amplifiers have to work with an input signal which may, for really high ISO numbers, be much less than full-well (less photons equals less electrons) and so the underlying noise will be higher in proportion to the signal. 

"So what," you yawn.

We all know that using high ISO numbers results in more sensor noise.
More surprising, perhaps, is that using an ISO number below the native ISO number also degrades the image.


The reason is that you are effectively telling the camera to blow the highlights as the brightest elements of the picture will get to full-well before the exposure is over. It gets worse because the amplifiers are now set to a lower than optimal gain meaning that, as I understand it, shadow detail can also be lost into the noise threshold of the electronics. 

In case you think this is academic have a look at this diagram for the Canon EOS 1Ds MkII, where halving the ISO number from 100 to 50 results in a S/N ratio equivalent to working at ISO 800! 

 
Courtesy of The Luminous Landscape

Nikon D300 owners must also be well aware of this as the manual warns that setting ISO numbers below 200 will also degrade the image. The lesson seems clear that if you need to use an ISO number below your camera's native ISO then you should actually invest in one or more ND (neutral density) filters. 

One final thought concerns why so many cameras have an ISO setting of 100 or 200 as their lowest standard ISO number. Looking at this table it would seem that, to take the case of the Nikon D300, the native ISO of the sensor is actually about 140. That gives every reason for Nikon to warn against using ISO 100 but why have a lowest recommended ISO of 200? I have no idea.
 

Bob. 

Edit: Thread title changed to reflect use of "Base ISO" as well as "Native ISO"

Nick Bithell - Yorkshire Reception

email me for the originals, or order from PhotoBox