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Old 13th January 2019, 21:01   #1
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Default Studio shoot

Had an enjoyable day in the studio learning some new lighting techniques and putting the theory into practice as well

CC9J6004-Edit by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
CC9J5993-Edit by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
CC9J5992-Edit-2 by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
CC9J6038 by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
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Old 14th January 2019, 03:58   #2
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Excellent Jeff, they look really good.
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Old 14th January 2019, 08:34   #3
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Good morning Jeff, nice photos. Did you use any skin lighting/exposure techniques to bring out the features in the portraits? Outside of a studio setting, I find it challenging sometimes get the facial features right. I will look for an example, different portrait - a garden visitor. Had I used a flash, the monkey would have legged it.

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Old 14th January 2019, 10:14   #4
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That last pic is really good, love the smiles they are giving each other. Well done
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Old 14th January 2019, 21:28   #5
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Good morning Jeff, nice photos. Did you use any skin lighting/exposure techniques to bring out the features in the portraits? Outside of a studio setting, I find it challenging sometimes get the facial features right. I will look for an example, different portrait - a garden visitor. Had I used a flash, the monkey would have legged it.

Hi Phil,

The workshop I was doing was using various different lighting setups to achieve different looks.
This involved anything from one studio head to three or more, different modifiers such as shoot through umbrellas, Soft boxes, snoots , beauty dishes etc.
Different backdrops and how to turn grey backdrops into pure white, black or colours using different lighting, positioning of subject relevant to backdrop etc.

We were experimenting between soft or hard lighting to removing shadows or exaggerating shadow details.

The photos I posted here were all taken using three studio lights (600watt Bowens).
Our main light was in a 100cm round soft box in front and slightly left of the subject and positioned about 7ft angled down so the centre was in line with the model(s) face.
It had a grid on the front which stops light spill.
This studio head was to provide the lighting of the subject and was aided by a reflector opposite to fill in shadows. The head was set to about half power.

There are two lights behind and to the left and right of the subject.
These were rectangular shaped and were at roughly the height of the subject and angled toward the subjects back.
They were set at a low power (less than quarter output) and their purpose was solely to rim light the back of the subject so that their black hair/clothing etc was separated from the black background.

The shots were taken in manual with the camera set to the Studio Head max sync speed of 1/125 of a second. Iso was set to its lowest setting (iso 50 on my body) and aperture set to 7.1.
The camera had a wireless trigger on the hotshoe to enable firing of the studio heads.

I processed the images in Lightroom for most of the editing. Cropping slightly and adjusting exposure, highlights and black levels. I used the iris enhance tool for the pupils and the brush tool and de saturate on the whites of the eye. A little use of the brush tool and teeth whitening was used where needed.
Final Lightroom adjustment was to sharpen the images using masking so only the edges were sharpened. Then the images were exported from Lightroom into Photoshop to use the clone stamp tool and content aware to remove any dust, fluff, stray hair etc from the images.
Hope that gives some ideas as to how the shoot was done and post production afterwards

A couple more shots from yesterday.

CC9J5997-Edit by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr

CC9J6037 by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr

CC9J6000 by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
CC9J5979-Edit by Jeff Cranwell, on Flickr
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Old 14th January 2019, 21:41   #6
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Sorry Phil, forgot to answer your question about your wildlife shot.

From the distance you took the shot from I don't think a flash would have been of any use anyhow.

For me I would suggest shooting in manual wide open and setting a fairly quick shutter speed for quick moving subjects.
I would set the focus to single point expansion and on servo tracking.

Also try and get the subject as large in shot as you can so you don't need to crop massively in post production, as it only throws away megapixels/detail.

Set the iso to auto so you can concentrate on your aperture and shutter and let the camera set the iso to make sure you get correct exposure.

With the focus point try and get it over the eye nearest you of the subject you are shooting or at the very least the centre of the head.

Thats pretty much how I shoot the Puddy Tats and should work well with the monkeys
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Old 14th January 2019, 21:45   #7
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That last pic is really good, love the smiles they are giving each other. Well done
Many thanks
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Old 15th January 2019, 05:17   #8
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Sorry Phil, forgot to answer your question about your wildlife shot.

From the distance you took the shot from I don't think a flash would have been of any use anyhow.

For me I would suggest shooting in manual wide open and setting a fairly quick shutter speed for quick moving subjects.
I would set the focus to single point expansion and on servo tracking.

Also try and get the subject as large in shot as you can so you don't need to crop massively in post production, as it only throws away megapixels/detail.

Set the iso to auto so you can concentrate on your aperture and shutter and let the camera set the iso to make sure you get correct exposure.

With the focus point try and get it over the eye nearest you of the subject you are shooting or at the very least the centre of the head.

Thats pretty much how I shoot the Puddy Tats and should work well with the monkeys
Good morning Jeff, how was your night on the boat?

Thanks for the tip about the focus point over the eye. One problem I had with that was the issue of the lens focusing on a blade of grass in front of the lion’s eye. In essence the eye was slightly out of focus and blade was crisp and sharp.



The other point when photographing locals here, I have to be careful not to lighten the skin too much post edit to bring out the facial features. One local said, “that’s not me, I am black, not white.....”
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Old 15th January 2019, 05:31   #9
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Good morning Jeff, how was your night on the boat?

Thanks for the tip about the focus point over the eye. One problem I had with that was the issue of the lens focusing on a blade of grass in front of the lion’s eye. In essence the eye was slightly out of focus and blade was crisp and sharp.



The other point when photographing locals here, I have to be careful not to lighten the skin too much post edit to bring out the facial features. One local said, “that’s not me, I am black, not white.....”
Morning Phil,

I fell asleep early and now awake
Very peaceful on board as there is no wind and the water is calm
I’m in the process of deciding whether to get up and put the kettle on or turn over and get another hours shut eye

P.s, If your camera has the setting put it to single spot focus which should allow you to fine tune your focusing.
In your lion image (although on my phone the focusing looks fine) you could have moved the focus on to the lions other eye without the grass in front of the camera was struggling to nail the focus .
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Old 15th January 2019, 07:05   #10
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Morning Phil,

I fell asleep early and now awake
Very peaceful on board as there is no wind and the water is calm
I’m in the process of deciding whether to get up and put the kettle on or turn over and get another hours shut eye

P.s, If your camera has the setting put it to single spot focus which should allow you to fine tune your focusing.
In your lion image (although on my phone the focusing looks fine) you could have moved the focus on to the lions other eye without the grass in front if the camera was struggling to nail the focus .
It won't do you any harm to get out of the fast lane and chill

Thank you sir! Single point focus - I will check that out. Oh the vet came yesterday Jeff and diagnosed Coptic Mange for both dogs. He gave them an injection to kill the parasite and he also gave both dogs another injection to relieve the itching. He said it will take about a week to settle the scratching and he has asked for another house visit in one month to reassess. We have taken over the feeding of the dogs from my BIL. He has servants and they were not feeding the dogs properly. We are now trying to educate them about what goes into a nutritious meal for a dog.
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