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My cheap light stands.

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If you post a photo here and are looking for a critique, you should be prepared for honest criticism even if it hurts. It will only help to make us better photographers.

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zdrchango
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Post by zdrchango »

Observation: photographic lighting is elusive and expensive
Hypothesis: if I build them (cheap), they will come
Experimental design: build multilevel and variable light sources from stuff from a home store and use them to photograph gorgeous dolls in various erotic positions
Control: Phoebe in a sexy pose
Variables: light sources (2 or 4), light wattages (40 or 60), shutter speeds (slow or fast)
Results: tabulated and published (see :
http://dollforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=24083
Conclusions:it works and anyone (almost) can do it

Cost: $23
Look on Belshanar's face when he finally figures it out: priceless
Passion is a virtue [url=http://www.dollalbum.com/gallery/zees_place]Z's Place home of Danielle, Lindsey, & Sunni[/url]

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mytime
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Light equipment for enlighting doll photo's?

Post by mytime »

Hi All,

I'am not satisfied about my lighting equipment which exists now of a 150 W halogen lamp, it works but I would like to have more, its a limiting factor in my photo's due to this I use often day light in photo's of my dolls.
And I'am bit a noob if it comes to light equipment.


Below a PDF I bumped on when reading about it on the internet:

http://www.wide-format-printers.org/con ... ghting.pdf

This stuff is about bogen strobe soft boxes which are triggered by the photo camera.
It seems to me interesting, or is this not the right way to work with light on model / doll photography?

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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femdoll
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Post by femdoll »

Before you enter the more difficult and definitely more expensive studio lightning..... read about flash techniques on http://strobist.blogspot.com/ . Those guys are awesome, and show you that you can do a lot with 'normal' flashes, even the cheaper once.

Try manual flash exposure also. Meaning, putting your camera on 'M', and experiment with the flash, especially with bouncing techniques.
Gives you an idea of 'manual' ligthning, which you need with studio gear.

Studio flashes are manual, no TTL. that means you have to 'dial in' the right numbers. Secondly, you'll have to dive into 'multiple flash/lightning', meaning hooking up multiple flashes to your system.

That mostly brings you to the new world of 'triggers' and 'remotes'. You put a transceiver of the trigger set on your camera (as it was a flash), and put the receivers under your flash (can be cheap once!! Because it doesn't need TTL). Walla! Your ready for the studio hehe (and on the beginning of the road to find the optimum settings....

Serieusly... just experiment a bit with flashes, bouncing, and perhaps 'off camera' flashes (connected with offshoe cable). Buy a cheap umbrella (Blokker has some nice white once), but perhaps a couple of tripods. They are not that expensive at places here in Holland at Fotokonijn. For 100 bucks you have already a nice starting kit.

I building up my equipment also rightnow, but I'm not going into the real studio flashes yet. To expensive and for my 'semi-pro' photojobs, unnecessary right now (have to know also what I really need then!! Is a shitload of material to choose from).
I have 2 flash tripods (Manfrotto Nano) with manfrotto lite-tite connectors), some umbrellas, some reflection screens, yeah and 2 580EXII canon flashes, those are NOT cheap, but so fcking great to use!! :P

For triggers I use those cheap ebay triggers, not those 'bad' once, but the CTR-301 -> read strobist site, they tested them. Awesome triggers, still work while standing a good 40 meters away.
Only 'problem', you can only use shutterspeeds up till your max 'flash-sync' of your camera... in my case 1/250 on my 1D and 1/200 on my 5DmkII. Go faster, and you'll end up with 'black bars' in your picture.
(difficult to explain this on, but believe me, you'll see 'half black pictures' ... :lol:

Owwww... don't forget 'normal' lightning. I bought a 'daylight' lamp (also at Fotokonijn)
this one
Image
it's cheap, it's a piece of junk (literally fell apart during a film shooting!!), but it works (just ducktaped the hell out of it, and it works beeeeeautifully now!! ). but it gives 'daylight' light, meaning of range of 5000K (blue-ish light zone, go lower, like lightbulbs, and everything goes 'yellow', mostly THE problem with indoor photography).
Only thing I need is a 'background screen', but since I'm video filming also rightnow (Canon 5DmkII!!!), i'm ending up buying lot's of stuff I need for filming (bigger videohead, buying stuff for sound, for focus aid (external LCD), etc, etc..... )...
I still want to buy such 'mobile' background screen, basically just two tripod stand and a role of paper.... for me it has to be put together fast, and detach very fast, so I can create a 'small' studio on the spot....

a well... .lot's of stuff to buy and look into

Try to read that strobist site. Lot's of info about flash technology and how to use light. I love those guys because they step 'outside the box', don't use flashes or lightning techniques because everybody does that, but they just look into what THEY need not what others say you need. (so skip my story , go find it out yourself hehe)

Ow,... second tip... sure lightning is the key, but.... try also photo editing techniques. Try shooting in RAW, and edit the picture in RAW edit programs (usually you get that with the camera, CAnon has Digital Photo Professional, which is an awesome tool!!)
What RAW does, is not compress it to JPEG rightaway, and leave all the camera software settings 'open', like whitebalance, like sharpness, like some colorsettings. It does show you the setting the camera was on, like whitebalance 'daylight' or some brightness/contrast settings the camera would use, but... you can change that!!
Most 'hefty' setting is the whitebalance. You take a picture indoors at night, you'll end up with yellow pictures. In RAW editor you can say ok, I don't want yellow, I know the wall is white, tell the program the wall should be white, and it changes the whole color setting, mostly dramatically showing the room 'cool' and 'white' all of a sudden.

Software editing mostly determines the 'atmosphere' you like in your picture. It's not for nothing that most model work is mostly 'Photoshop'. Sure the initial lightning has to be good, the picture has to be sharp, but almost else is 'Photoshop-able'... (even DOF effect and so on... not as 'good' as real lens DOF but....).

Just go out and read mate.... lots' of info out there.... I've seen lots' of Youtube movies about studio lightning, veryveryvery usefull!!
http://strobist.blogspot.com/ is a good place to start though....

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Post by mytime »

Hi Femdoll,
(difficult to explain this on, but believe me, you'll see 'half black pictures' ...
I have had those with my SLR (Pentax K1000)..., I know what you mean.

I agree on you, I need to experiment with this stuff and also with RAW.
There is a program that is called DXO http://www.dxo.com which seems to do the job.
Konijn (in English, Rabbit lol) is indeed a great shop here for photo gear...
Any way the photo's are too dull lightened at the moment, while the camera (a D90) IMO should be able to capture much better photos if I get the lighting better.

Blokker umbrella's :lol:, however these will probably work, and do their job better than that 150 W too yellow halogen lamp.

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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mytime
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Post by mytime »

Femdoll,

Would like to know one thing, you've great equipment and knowledge, but I did never see a doll photo of you.
Nothing bad intended, but with all your knowledge you should be able to create great doll photo's...
Do you have not yet dolls or do you not photograph them?

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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femdoll
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Post by femdoll »

The first.... I don't have a doll... :P Yeah a 'screaming' mannequin, but not a real doll like you have....
I'll try to put some of the mannequin, if you like...

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mytime
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Post by mytime »

Hi Femdoll,

Yep try it.
With your light equipment and photogear, you should be able to make nice photo's of the mannequin!
Put them on the november contest eventually.
The theme is glamour, IMO a very good theme for a photo contest!

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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mytime
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Post by mytime »

Femdoll,

I readed here some interesting stuff too about white backgrounds, very nice!

http://www.zarias.com/?p=71

Regarding asking you for a photo with the equipment was due to that I wanted to see if you get a studio like photo, not the yellowish things I create.
The mannequin or doll does not matter for that.
But I understand that creating good photo's with this kind of yellow hallogen lighting is not possible unless if I shoot in raw and correct them or if I set the light balance way off to blue-ish.

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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Post by femdoll »

Nah, it's not that black 'n white.... Good link btw, very good!! Thnx!

Try search your camera manual for 'manual whitebalance', your camera has that. You can 'recalibrate' your camera for color. Your wall isn't yellow after all, it's getting that illusion because of the yellowish lightning you use. You can correct that in the camera with 'manual whitebalance'.

In a sense it comes to this, you set your camera to manual whitebalance, aim on a wall, push 'set' and now the camera will change all colors so that wall will be white (and your doll will look more 'realistic' instead of overly yellow). Downside is, or can be that other color are also 'shifting', which sometimes can create unrealistic colors, green items are getting more blue, red things are getting more purple...

I'll try to shoot some stuff tomorrow....

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Post by femdoll »

okidoki..... you asked for it :P

Here's my mannequin.... bit 'bashed' (still have to 'clear' it up).

Here's an example of the effect of whitebalance:
Light: halogen lamp. Just simple setup with mannequin on a small table and a white board as background....

The left picture is 'normal' shooting, on the middle pushing the whitebalance all the way 'down', on the right, 'picking a whitebalance', a possibility within RAW program. you select a point in the image to say 'this is in origin white'. Cross give 'spot' I selected. In Photoshop I could have corrected it even more, but.... there are limits on that.... (colors are not 'correct' anymore or can be very strange)
Image

The next images are shot with flashes (2x), connected to triggers, 1 on a flash tripod and an umbrella (white inside, black outside), the second flash 'separate'.
Image

1 (hard) flash situation (no umbrella)
Image

Flash reflected in umbrella on the left, other flash from below on the right... no change in whitebalance needed!
Image

Same setup, flash reduced a little more on the left (umbrella bit higher). Fun thing here is that I used whitebalance here to make it a bit 'warmer' (yellower), and in Photoshop some tweaking (contrast / Levels / highlight-shadow). Should have used a 'small' lamp from the front to 'enlighten' the left eye a bit (bit dark now).
Image

Example of more 'depth of field', shooting close range (2.5meter) with 200mm, on F2.8. (could have created even more extreme with my 300mm, but then I had to stand outside! :lol: )
http://www.dollforum.com/modules/copper ... uin_04.jpg
Image

To bad the eyes aren't of glass, so the reflection in the eye is not always present (makes 'person' alive, that's why most photographers always use flash, even when not necessary)

So ... to answer your question... the yellow is 'removable' when using flashes.... or daylight lamps. If you want a greater 'light area', try using reflection screen or umbrella.... it's not that expensive to buy...

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Post by mytime »

Hi Femdoll,

Yup that works nicely IMO.
Just what I was thinking about flash sets and such things, they do work and are of help on improving the photo's a lot.
I need to save up some good flash units or stroboscopic lamps.

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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Post by femdoll »

You don't need expensive flashes.... since studiolightning is mostly manual, you don't need an 'fancy' TTL flash. Most used is the Nikon SB28, which are around for a nice price.
Only thing the flash needs to be able to is to 'downscale', let say to 1/64th of the full power...
For triggers, search for CTR-301P (ebay)... they are cheap to... this saves you a lot of money, but gives you a nice testing setup.... Studio lightning starts at a couple of hundert bucks.... and is not always 'better'....

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Post by mytime »

You don't need expensive flashes.... since studiolightning is mostly manual, you don't need an 'fancy' TTL flash. Most used is the Nikon SB28, which are around for a nice price.
Only thing the flash needs to be able to is to 'downscale', let say to 1/64th of the full power...
For triggers, search for CTR-301P (ebay)... they are cheap to... this saves you a lot of money, but gives you a nice testing setup.... Studio lightning starts at a couple of hundert bucks.... and is not always 'better'....
The beauty of this system is probably that one can use as much recievers of the CTR-301P as one wants, and thus that this can be expanded easy and one can save up the gear step by step, though pre owned SB24's are not expensive.
I think about the idea of using 3 recievers and 3 SB24's for the white background experiments in previous post, I can imagine this gives very beautifull photo's.
I'll certainly give it a try.

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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Post by femdoll »

Good luck mate 8) It's fun to experiment a bit with light... Think about light as the good old Dutch painters did.... :D

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Post by mytime »

Femdoll wrote
Good luck mate Cool It's fun to experiment a bit with light... Think about light as the good old Dutch painters did.... Very Happy
Yup!

Mytime & Helen & Carmen
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One dream, one mission...

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