MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,172
I hosted a studio portrait workshop at my house for my photography club yesterday. It was exhausting. I gave a 2.5 hour overview of studio lighting on Friday night and then had shooters come over for 1 hour rotations on Saturday. I had to instruct, move and balance lights, help shoot, entertain models, and troubleshoot technical problems. It was fun, but tiring.
The camera count, as I remember it was 2 Nikon D200, 1 Nikon D40, 2 Canon 20D, 1 Canon 40D, 1 Canon 1DM2, 1 Canon 5D, 1 Canon Rebel XTi, and 2 Sony A100.
I shot tethered to a computer with a 30" monitor, which was great for models to see how they looked and for shooters to see how the light looked. It worked well for my 1DM2, but I couldn't get it to work properly for anything else. The software, DSLR Remote Pro, only works for Canon cameras. It relies on the Canon drivers, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was having problems from having so many different camera drivers on my machine.
I learned that Sony's flash mount isn't backwards compatible with old ISO shoe type flashes. It's easy to adapt with a hot shoe adapter, but one of the Sony shooters didn't have one. I have three ways of firing the flashes, but none worked for that shooter. I couldn't hard wire them because they didn't have a PC-Sync connector (which all the Canon's but the Rebel had and none of the Nikon's had). I couldn't use my remote trigger because it only connects via an ISO hot shoe (which all the Nikon's and Canon's had). I couldn't even slave them off of the on-camera flash on the A100 because it didn't have a manual mode that I could find. That meant that it always fired a pre-flash to gauge the light levels and the pre-flash trigger the strobes. So if you shoot Sony/Minolta and your camera doesn't have a PC-Sync connector, you'll probably want to buy a hot shoe adapter before you try using studio lights.
Our basic setup was to use an octagonal softbox for a main light, a rectangular softbox for fill light. We sometimes used a rectangular softbox for a hair light, but my boom arm setup isn't very good, so I couldn't get it high enough for taller subjects.
For backgrounds, we used white paper and black paper. The black paper was much more popular (although I prefer white). We often colored the paper with gels on a background light and also played with grids to selectively light the backgrounds. We also did a few shots with grids on lights directly behind the subject for rim lighting.
Shooters varied from newbies that didn't know how to set their shutter speed and aperture in manual mode to a couple of pros with other specialties (one sports, one commercial & stock) trying to learn more about portrait work. The models were varied and included a professional male model, Mrs. Montgomery County, a neighbor kid, friends and spouses of the shooters, and other shooters doing dual duty.
I had originally intended to share the models with the shooters, but I was so busy that I found very little time to do any shooting. It's amazing how quickly an hour goes by when you need to spend time getting the model positioned, the lights adjusted, the photographer set up, etc.
It was fun, but I don't know that I'll do something with that many people again any time soon. We did the shoot in our family room, which basically tore up the downstairs of the house (with gear, moved furniture, etc). I think I'm going to become a fair weather studio shooter and just stick to the garage for future shoots. Even with that, I'll probably just stick to having a handful of other shooters more carefully chosen by me rather than having an open club signup.
Here are a handful of shots from the event:
The camera count, as I remember it was 2 Nikon D200, 1 Nikon D40, 2 Canon 20D, 1 Canon 40D, 1 Canon 1DM2, 1 Canon 5D, 1 Canon Rebel XTi, and 2 Sony A100.
I shot tethered to a computer with a 30" monitor, which was great for models to see how they looked and for shooters to see how the light looked. It worked well for my 1DM2, but I couldn't get it to work properly for anything else. The software, DSLR Remote Pro, only works for Canon cameras. It relies on the Canon drivers, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was having problems from having so many different camera drivers on my machine.
I learned that Sony's flash mount isn't backwards compatible with old ISO shoe type flashes. It's easy to adapt with a hot shoe adapter, but one of the Sony shooters didn't have one. I have three ways of firing the flashes, but none worked for that shooter. I couldn't hard wire them because they didn't have a PC-Sync connector (which all the Canon's but the Rebel had and none of the Nikon's had). I couldn't use my remote trigger because it only connects via an ISO hot shoe (which all the Nikon's and Canon's had). I couldn't even slave them off of the on-camera flash on the A100 because it didn't have a manual mode that I could find. That meant that it always fired a pre-flash to gauge the light levels and the pre-flash trigger the strobes. So if you shoot Sony/Minolta and your camera doesn't have a PC-Sync connector, you'll probably want to buy a hot shoe adapter before you try using studio lights.
Our basic setup was to use an octagonal softbox for a main light, a rectangular softbox for fill light. We sometimes used a rectangular softbox for a hair light, but my boom arm setup isn't very good, so I couldn't get it high enough for taller subjects.
For backgrounds, we used white paper and black paper. The black paper was much more popular (although I prefer white). We often colored the paper with gels on a background light and also played with grids to selectively light the backgrounds. We also did a few shots with grids on lights directly behind the subject for rim lighting.
Shooters varied from newbies that didn't know how to set their shutter speed and aperture in manual mode to a couple of pros with other specialties (one sports, one commercial & stock) trying to learn more about portrait work. The models were varied and included a professional male model, Mrs. Montgomery County, a neighbor kid, friends and spouses of the shooters, and other shooters doing dual duty.
I had originally intended to share the models with the shooters, but I was so busy that I found very little time to do any shooting. It's amazing how quickly an hour goes by when you need to spend time getting the model positioned, the lights adjusted, the photographer set up, etc.
It was fun, but I don't know that I'll do something with that many people again any time soon. We did the shoot in our family room, which basically tore up the downstairs of the house (with gear, moved furniture, etc). I think I'm going to become a fair weather studio shooter and just stick to the garage for future shoots. Even with that, I'll probably just stick to having a handful of other shooters more carefully chosen by me rather than having an open club signup.
Here are a handful of shots from the event:
