Use of flash (June MCM)
5-minute Portraits.
Kit
Panasonic GX8 + 25mm F1.4 (50mm 25mm equivalent)
2 x Roto light Aeos 2
The Plan
The sun was too strong to fully utilize the Aeos 2s in direct light, so I chose a location that was in shade and utilized HSS, around 1/1000s is the sweet spot, to give the biggest difference between ambient and flash. This was important as there was a second block behind the shooting acting as a huge reflector. Flash was opted so that I did not need extra batteries and did not have to think about the power of the lights over the 9-hour day.
The main challenge was making the whole session as quick as possible when creating the images that I wanted. I was aiming for around 5 minutes to get what I needed as people had a lot of other things to do. To do that aim I did not want to play with the flash setting worse than I was happy with the. To achieve this the easier way was to maintain the light-to-subject distance, meaning that I would not need to adjust or re-meter.
I opted to have the lights just above head height was angled down, due to the closeness it could give a little less exposure to the subject's feel. At the beginning of each day, I set up the light as I wanted and used a flash meter to choose an Aperture and ISO combination. During the day I did tweak the Aperture as needed looking at the camera’s histogram.
Each flash was put on a different group so that I could fire one or both lights for each shot.
Class copy lighting 45 degrees on both sides
Lights a little pasted 180 so that it leaves a void in the middle. (Not a full dual rim light that I wish I tried)
All about the angles
Referring to the angle away from the camera, using the subject(s) as the center point, I rotated the light to quickly adjust the lighting. It created a variety of effects. All images edited angles are approximate for reference
Single light camera right at 45 degrees.
both lights at a bit less than 45 cosplays in a triangle so as not to block light
Personal Feedback
Looking at the images I took I was happy with the effects but....
1) relied on copy (2x 45 degree) a lot of loot mush as it gives a flat look. and need to consider the use of paramount (0 degrees) to give a shadow under the noise.
2) Lowering the saturation on colours using a too-high percentage where not as easy to edit but it worked on things like cyberpunk.
Camera Left 45 Degrees and camera Right around 180 Degrees
No IG
Camera left around 90 and camera Right 200
3) Very the number of light used to gain more looks. Only a few were one-light shots and maybe add a neo as it is more hideable.
4) I need to look at the choice of backgrounds, most work well and are definitely more interesting than the location but some don't add to the finished image
5) Most separation between subject and background to make background replacement easier.
Lights about 200 degrees on each side
Class copy lighting 45 degrees on both sides
