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Lighting tips and tricks

No matter how great your camera might be, it is how you apply your skills that makes the difference between an OK shot and a great shot. Here you can talk technical, talk creative, share your techniques, lighting, and digital editing. This is where we can all help each other to take better photos.
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Balvennie
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Lighting tips and tricks

Post by Balvennie »

Apologies if this has already been covered, but I couldn't find it easily so I'm assuming if it's been covered it was a while ago (and my comments might be different anyway).

So, lighting - if only a camera could truly and easily capture what we see with our eyes, right? I've tried so many cameras over the years - cheap and expensive - and I am well aware of how difficult it is to get them to do what we want. Usually that's because of available light and how the camera interprets it, whether we knowledgeably set the ISO, White Balance, F-stop, metering, tone and so on, or simply point-and-click. So this is what I've learned, to avoid the camera producing something somewhat different to what the human eye sees...

Firstly, the best lighting conditions for photographing dolls, mannequins, and even real people, is natural daylight (yes I mean outdoors), slightly overcast/hazy sunshine, when the sun is either ¼ or ¾ of its way across the sky. This will achieve a good overall light at a good angle and without glare, and the camera will read natural light correctly. It should also be not windy or even breezy, as little is as infuriating as constantly having to pull wig hairs off the subject's face.

Ideally you will shoot with the sun somewhere behind you (but not directly - you don't want to see your own shadow on your subject), but if that isn't possible, try using reflectors to bounce some of the daylight back onto your subject. You can make these easily if you can't or don't want to buy them - simply stick white paper to a large (3ft x 2ft or bigger) piece of stiff card for a diffused reflector, and stick some aluminium foil to a large piece of card for a mirror-like reflector. Art and craft stores often sell reflective metallic paper, so you could even experiment with gold to create a "sunset beach" atmosphere. Prop up these reflector boards close to your subject, but not in-shot, and experiment with the angle to get the light just right. If the sun is very bright and you can't use a shaded area, you could use the diffusers to create shade. Different people have different priorities when photographing models (alive and otherwise). For myself, the eyes are always most important, so I (often painstakingly) try to get the light reflected onto them as nicely as possible.

Okay, not everyone can or wants to do their photographing outside, and of course conditions like those mentioned are not always available. So the alternative is to take photos inside, but this is where the camera most often takes on a mind of its own. Again, natural daylight is best, so a position near but not in front of a big window, perhaps with one or two diffusers to bounce light onto the subject, would be ideal. If daylight through a window isn't possible, we have to start getting creative.

If you can afford it, I'd recommend studio lighting. You can buy fairly cheap kits from photo stores and on Ebay, but you do tend to get what you pay for, and the better ones require a lot of learning and experimenting. As far as flash is concerned, I strongly recommend not using it unless you can bounce it (i.e. not directly at the subject) or diffuse it (either with a diffuser, or you can use thick tracing paper over the flash). If you don't use flash then you will have to deal with whatever light is available, as well as what your camera can do. Available light, if windows aren't in the equation (or it's night time), will most likely be artificial room lighting, and these days it could be halogen, tungsten, LED or fluorescent, each of which has its own colour. If your camera allows you to change its white balance (how it interprets the colour of available light), experiment with which one works best in your situation, rather than relying on the camera in "auto" mode. You can change your light bulbs to daylight bulbs for not much money, and this will help produce more natural tones. One problem cameras often have is not knowing what is black and what is white in a scene without these two extremes. The presence of an area of black and and area of white, e.g. A4 pieces of paper, or perhaps cushions, will help the camera understand what they are, which will make everything in-between more obvious.

If you crack the lighting problem but your photos come out blurry due to longer exposures and/or hand movement, invest in a tripod (cheap ones will work just fine for smaller, lighter cameras) and use the self-timer to avoid camera shake. You can also take the ISO rating higher (the higher the number, the better in lower light), but anything over 1600 will probably result in graininess in the photos. If this is the case, try a larger image size and reduce it down on your computer to hide the grain.

Arriving at a good, naturally-lit photo can take a lot of experimenting and trial and error. The good thing is that with digital cameras, you can take as many as you like! When I photograph my mannequins, I usually take several hundred photos to arrive at around 15-20 really good ones.

Okay, I think that's enough for now. Please feel free to ask questions, especially if I've missed anything off or not gone into enough detail with anything (more than likely!).

Adrian
http://www.mannequinmakeovers.com/ - sexy, beautiful and highly realistic mannequins better than new.


Aussie70
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Re: Lighting tips and tricks

Post by Aussie70 »

Thanks so much for all the great tips and taking the time to share all this. Much appreciated.
:D

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