please help with portrait lighting

[Nigel Robertson]

I am normally a semi professional landscape photographer. As we have now

a new baby, I am interested, naturally enough about portraits.

All previous attempts have been very amateurish.

I have seen some very impressive photos with a model sitting in from of
a candle lit cake. This provided very soft and warm lighting. A great
result.

I am after any ideas for either home made lighting or tips as above (the

cake idea) to really improve my portraits. I am intending to buy a cokin

694 P diffusor filter as an addition to my filter range. Is this a good
choice, or are there better ideas?

Thanks in advance

Nigel Robertson

[keltic...@my-deja.com]

Nigel,

I do not know about the lighting you have available but the old trick
about using a large window to one side, and a large reflector on the
other side does work well, and is inexpensive.

In the studio, I use a large softbox above the model, with a large
lastolite reflector throwing light back into the face from below. The
addition of a reflector to both sides of the face will give a soft
lighting effect, and with the addition of a neutral colour of
background, this will throw the subject forward in the shot.

I try and shoot around F8 and use my trusty 85mm Pentax lens on my 35mm.

Scott

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Michael Muir-Browne]

How do you make sure that you get eye lights?

cheers

Michael
<keltic...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8chh1h$3pm$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

[Peter Madeley]

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000 12:50:03 +0100, "Michael Muir-Browne"
<mic...@camerawork.f9.co.uk> wrote:

>How do you make sure that you get eye lights?

Lower the light until the catchlight just goes into the black part of
the eye. I must admit I tend to put the softbox/brolly directly at the
top left corner of the camera (on a tripod), if I am after soft
lighting. Then I can raise/lower the camera angle without having to
change the lighting setup. I find I get a small amount of modelling
shadow, without the lighting becoming too flat, which can be a problem
when using directly overhead lighting and surrounding the subject with
fill reflectors. The best advice for portrait lighting was when
someone told me to "look for the light" rather than worry about where
the stands were positioned or how high the heads were. If it looks
good to the eye it will look good on film. There are plenty of
websites/books which talk about broad/narrow/split/butterfly lighting
styles, although the easist to follow is a book called Light Science &
Magic but I don't recall the authors.
Hope this helps
Peter