Challenge to any and all members

[Risacher]

My avatar or whatever the little picture there is called these days, is one of these done using sunlight through the window, so don't let anyone tell you you need even a flash to get this done! Here it is bigger, sure you can see the background a tiny bit if you turn up the brightness...

[Shinnen]

Hi,
Thanks for the link. Just to make sure I have the concept right here. The initial shot(s) are to find the conditions under which one gets a black screen. My camera only goes to F8, so I used an ND filter at 1/250 to darken it. Would a shorter exposure time also do the trick? The umbrella flash combo it to highlight the profile? Why a flash? Why not just a light?
That should do for starters.
Thanks,
....... john

[Risacher]

You could use a light, you need it to be direct and fairly bright so that you don't end up lightening the background. Shortening the exposure time will increase the amount of light you'll need to illuminate your subject. Use a low ISO value along with your F8 and ND. Basically the aperture controls the black background, while the shutter speed controls the light on your subject (ie: flash, flashlight, streak of sunshine, etc.) The only real reason to use a flash and umbrella is to give more control over the entire situation, which also makes it easier to do.

Play around, and if you can't get it to work out in the sunshine, do it at night!

[Shinnen]

Thanks Risacher,
I will give those a try, and post the results.
... john

[Shinnen]

Thanks Risacher,
I will give those a try, and post the results.
... john

Hi,
Here's my first attempt. (My beautiful grand-daughter is my model.) I jury-rigged my ring flash (with an extension) so that I could place it anywhere in the room. I see that my picture does not have the nice skin colour as yours. Is that because of the flash? I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have for improvement.
Thanks,
...... john

[Iguanasan]

That's a good entry into the challenge... I'm going to have to do one of these.

The skin tones are likely a factor of white balance. I'm not sure of the technical portions of your set up but if you are photographing in RAW format and using Lightroom as many people do then you can use the white balance slider and adjust a little further down towards the warmer side of things (yellow). You should find that helps.

[Shinnen]

No, the raw and the jpg have the same colour. Oddly, one of the pictures, just before this one, showed good skin tones, but it was a full side-face exposure. The other odd thing is that changing the saturation did absolutely nothing. Maybe something to do with reflection? Could the ND filter have changed something?
Thanks,
.... john

[Risacher]

I agree it looks like the wrong white balance. What Iguanasan was saying about the RAW is if you have the RAW you can change the white balance to whatever you like with a photo editing software, such as Lightroom. My guess is you need to set it to flash. If the previous photo has good white balance but not this one, it is probably because the camera is set for automatic white balance, and it happened to get it wrong for some reason.

It's a really good start though! If all fails for getting the colour you want, converting to black and white hides every white balance issue.

[Shinnen]

Hi Risacher,
"Play around, and if you can't get it to work out in the sunshine, do it at night!" Right, well, that has turned out to be an entirely different kettle of fish. I have an odd issue with doing it at night; and that is that my flash refuses to fire, unless there is some light. I've never tried shooting in complete darkness before. Is this normal behaviour for digital cameras? I'm using a Lumix FZ150.
Thanks,
...... john

[Marko]

There should a control somewhere in your camera menu to boss the flash around. (Some common choices in other cameras are Always fire, never fire, fire automatically.)