PaulSeward.com

This post came out of a slightly ranty comment I left on Colins blog this morning. (Sorry Colin, I didn’t sleep much last week, so have been decafinated for 5 days now! Remember kids – NTMPG – No Tea Makes Paul Grumpy!)

I reacted to the phrase “(I’m going to) wait until I have some more light sources” – light sources are easy to come by, and interesting light can be cheap to prepare, so in my world, waiting until you can buy a new flashgun is no excuse!

I’m aware though that not everyone thinks like me, so this post is an attempt to show my thought processes when lighting a subject using whatever-I-have-to-hand.

Step by step photos, explanations, and setup shots after the jump…

Camera settings: <dslr geek bit>The camera (Nikon D80) was on a tripod set to Aperture Priority (AP) mode, ISO 100, set to f/5.6, pre-focussed (then auto focus turned off) and white balance was set to “tungsten” (although auto would probably have done a reasonable job) AP mode means that the camera picks the shutter speed (and some of these exposures were a over second!) so to prevent camera shake, I set the self timer.</dslr geek bit>

The settings above sound really detailed, but if you can turn your flash off, and set the self timer – you can get shots like these with a compact camera!

If you don’t have a tripod, use a pile of books or something!

Post Processing: Deliberately minimal post processing this time round. All I’ve done is resize the images and apply a little sharpening (I was using my wooly lens – the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor kit lens). I applied the same level of sharpening to each image to keep things simple.

Stage 1 – No effort, just the lighting in my front room/workshop

With no background, and no interesting lighting, this is an *ugly* shot. Ok, so that’s a little harsh, it’s just a bit bland and you can see my curtains.

The setup shots later on show you just how untidy the room is (and also feature my curtains and the bonus old-lady-lampshade!) You can also see a Vivitar 283 on a stand in the background of most of them. I love my 283s (with DIY variable power mod and cost-me-nothing gel holders) but today – I’m not using them at all!

No budget all the way today baby!

Stage 2 - Lets find a nicer background!

I rummaged around and found a piece of uninteresting cardboard, and propped it up against a cardboard box to use as a background. It’s just greyish brown cardboard, but the important thing is that it’s nicer than the curtains! This is a slightly better shot, but still not all that exciting. It could probably be improved by tweaking the exposure, but that’s not what we’re here for!

Stage 3 - First attempt at shaping the light.

The ceiling light throws light everywhere, and that tends to wash out shadows a bit. I wanted to create a bit of contrast, so I created a “snoot” to narrow the light beam down a bit. You can see in the setup shot how much tighter the spot of light is.

I say snoot, it’s not really anything fancy, just a couple of sheets of newspaper rolled into a tube and secured to the overhead light fitting with a rubber band. (Edit: All my lights are energy saving bulbs which don’t put out a lot of heat – be careful doing this with tungsten bulbs, and don’t use paper with halogen fittings! If you smell burning, stop!)

Things are looking a little more dramatic now – we’re getting somewhere!

Stage 4 – Add some highlights

The overhead light is a bit limiting, I can’t move it, and it’s difficult to do much more than snoot it. I want interesting, so it’s time for a second lightsource – a torch! (This one is my kitchen torch – the light bulb has gone in my oven! I should fix that!)

The self timer on the camera gives me a chance to run around behind the backdrop and shine the second torch at the back of the figures head. This gives an interesting light around the top of his head, but I’m still a bit limited. It’s also leaking light onto the background and showing up its “boring cardboard” nature.

There’s no setup shot for this step because I forgot to take one. Just look at the setup shot for Stage 3, and imagine me standing behind the cardboard box shining a torch at the model.

Stage 5 – A complete change of tactic. Side light.

Overhead lighting has it’s place, but it’s too limiting for today, so it’s a complete change of tactics.

I’ve turned off the main room light (it’s on in the setup shot so you can see the room), and am lighting the subject from the side with the same torch I used for stage 4.

Torch light is a bit uneven, the reflector in the torch tends to create odd shapes and hotspots in strange places (shine a torch at a wall to see what I mean) – so we need to soften it up a little and diffuse the light. For this, I got a carrier bag and shone the torch through the bottom of it. Now, we’re back to one light source, but it’s a more flexible one than the overhead light.

Stage 6 – A bit of side fill

The shadows in stage 5 were a bit deep, and needed filling in. So I built a reflector! You can spend *loads* of money on commercial reflectors – or you can spend next to nothing!

Anything white, silver, or light coloured will reflect light, so I ripped a bit of paper out of my printer. Problem is, printer paper doesn’t stand up on its own. A bottle, a chopstick, and a couple of clothes pegs later – and I’ve got a reflector camera left, bouncing light from the torch back in to fill the shadows!

Stage 7 – A darker background.

The background in stage 6 is a bit light. The light from the torch is spilling onto it and lighting it unevenly. Yuck! I need something to block the light from the torch and keep it off the background.

So I pull a box file off my shelf, and stand it up so that it casts a shadow onto the background. I’m told this is called a “gobo” by photographers, but being from a theater lighting background, that makes me shudder! (Gobos are small pieces of perforated metal which fit into a lantern, between the lamp and the optics, a bit like the slide in a slide projector! – The word you want is “flag”)

Bingo! Much darker background, no change in the subjects lighting.

Stage 8 – Background separation

He’s got a black spot in the middle of his head in step 7, and he almost disappears into the background at that point. I’m sure we can fix that!

So I grab a second torch (my emergency maglite from the car), and run around the back again like I did back in stage 4! (Just like stage 4, I forgot to take a setup shot again! Doh!)

By carefully aiming the torch so it only just glances the top of his head, I gain a little separation. and lift his head out of the shadows. Nice! I could have stopped here, but I wanted to try one more trick, hell I’m going for “interesting” not “competently executed” :-)

Stage 9 - Background patterns

I want to throw some patterned light onto that background. So I grab a half pint glass from the kitchen (it’s one of those ones with “windows” on the side, I’m sure they’ve got a specific name but I can’t think of it!) and shine the torch through it. Ooh! Pretty! This brings up the light levels on the background (meaning his head doesn’t disappear anymore) and it also makes it a little more interesting than a plain black background.

So – there you go. A walk through of the shot, which shows you how I try to think about light, and my “don’t spend any money, use more rubber bands and clothes pegs!” attitude. I think I came up with an interesting result.

If you liked the write up, or want to share any other hints and tips for “no budget” lighting, hit the comments!

If you’ve got a compact digital camera, and want to have a go at shooting something using similar techniques, I’d love to see the results!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Photos.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.