Lighting wide angle portrait shot

I find that when taking wide angle shots in portrait, positioning the strobes can be a bit awkward. I use two 8inch ULCS arms on each side. The strobe arm is OK on one side, but on the other side it's considerably shorter. Any tips?

HI

Basically the rule i tend to use with this subject is, Light it as you like it.

when i portrait the camera i often tend leave one arm as it was positioned as the normal 9-3 oclock. and set the other so it would give say a 12-3 oclock position.

I hope your following me, However, Its all a matter of personal taste and subject matter

If you dealing with Divers as most of my work is with divers, i adjust the light to suit, as its the face that requires some specific attention here so the lights are adjusted to reduce shadow created by the mask.

If i'm dealing with the reef in portrait fashion, I'll often just leave the strobe set as they were for landscape..

A good subject for discussion, there is simply no hard rule. its all to taste.

"Paint your subject with light and be creative with your paints"

Regards

Craig

examples below

this above shot has been done as a portrait the strobes where simply just left in their normal positions as per landscape and the whole lot rotated

Now we are dealing with mulitple subjects here, so the strobes where adjusted to suit as the divers face is also as important as the Frogfish in this shot

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the advice! I don't 100% understand your description, but in your first example, is the left strobe at 9 o'clock and the right strobe at 3 o'clock? If you do that, with your housing setup, would I be correct to say that one strobe will be nearer to the camera because the arm has 'further' to go? If so is there any way around this apart from say a pivot tray?

Craig,

I must say that the second image you posted is about as good as I have seen. Real nice photo. I would be interested in learning more info as to lens, strobe power settings, camera settings, as much as you will tell me.

Edit: I read the metadata of the photo so now I know the camera settings.

Thanks,

TomC

Hi Marcus & Tom

firstly to answer you question Marcus

hope you find this picture drawing informative, I use many variations of these positions to obtain just what i want.

Tom thanks for you comment, I'll post up how a little later, as i'm due to shoot off out.

I just wish i'd shot it at about F11 to give a little more DOF, my wife's face is a little soft, but that just add's to the picture as well as your eye goes to the frogfish firstly then onto the face.

speak soon

craig

Hi Tom,

Ok i'm back at the Desk

The Configuration for that second shot was this

Nikon D70 , Nikon 18-70DX AF-S with +4 Dio and Dual Sb-105 running in Manual

the strobes would have been placed as follows as this would be my normal method

the 12 oclock strobe would have been placed lighting downward onto the frog fish. more than likely set to 1/16 power as the aperture was quite wide.

The other strobe was angled to light my wife's face whilst trying to reduce mask shadows and as she was a distance back from the Frogfish that strobe would have been set to 1/4 power pushed well forward to avoid over lighting the frogfish.

As i said above, it's just a matter of taste with lighting, there is no right or wrong way just an opinion.

When dealing with portraits involving divers you need to pay great attention to there position in the shot. Try and get them as near or the same distance as your subject matter so they get the same amount of light cast and look in perspective.

You can adjust the output of light from your strobes to suit what your looking for, but you must have a well set scene to start with. AND SHOOT MANUAL

My normal configuration of strobe arms would be 1x 8" section with this mounted via 2x balls 1.camera 1x strobe. if I need a little more adjustment i'll use 1x8" 1x4" and the balls.

Just too add one more note, You will find when shooting WIDE and CLOSE you will need to pull the strobes in towards the camera a little so to avoid a cast shadow in the centre of your shot.

Hope some of my opinions have helped you guys out, if you have any more questions please ask away if you would like to see some more images then please visit www.aquimaging.co.uk gallery section.

Regards

Craig

Thanks Craig, great explanation.

Great posts Craig, thanks

Thanks Craig. V. informative/ nice diagrams.

Hi Guys

If you will permit me i'd like to show you just a few more sample images of wide portrait work and strobe usage.

Not the greatest images i might add but this was the first time i took the D70 into the water.

I'll try and explain my mind set with each image for those that require explanation.

In all of these shots the Nikkor 18-70DX was used.

the above shot, you will see that my wife is actually quite some distance back from the reef and the anthias that she is looking at. This is problem in itself for lighting.

My lighting came from 1x strobe at the 12 oclock position giving cast downlighting onto the reef section of the image.

The other strobe was based at 3 oclock as per the image drawing above in this post. the power output of this strobe was increased due to the distance that light had to reach and return. It was then again pushed forward as much as i could allow to keep it out of image and angled almost directly at Her Face to remove mask shadow and bring back colour.

Strobes in this shot were now pulled into the 9 & 3 oclock positions very tight into the camera and power adjusted. The right strobe obviously reduced because the coral in the frame was the close subject matter. the left strobe did the work on the divers face.

This shot was a little different that the others, both strobes were now moved over to the left hand side due to the angle of the divers face, if one had been allowed to come in from the right it would have cast horrible mask shadows.

So both were used on the left, say a 10 & 11 oclock position. one being place higher than the other angled onto the clownfish, the other, cast from slightly above and out to the right to get light in to that mask.

Ok final image. Not at all happy with this one due to MASK FOG in a new mask that my wife is wearing but the lighting example is good.

The subject matters here are at totally different angles and were treated the following way.

Portrait - 1 strobe was used to deal with the coral lighting from the almost 12 oclock position as you can see the shadow cast under it, the other strobe would have been over in the 4 -5 oclock position pushed well forward to avoid as much stray light on that coral.

My wife's face is actually angled downward which creates a large shadow in that mask. so the second strobe needs to cast light at a slightly upward angle.

Hope this has been again of some use to those that require the knowledge

Happy shooting

Craig

Craig,

Thanks for the info, I appreciate your wiliness to share your expertise. Your creative use of the strobe positions and power settings help me help me very much, as I have a tendency to leave the strobes on the same plane and just adjust power settings.

I was wondering how your wife’s face was highlighted and yet the Frog Fish was exposed just right, now I know. I was also wondering if this was a crop of a horizontal photo and now I see from your diagrams that it was a vertical shot and how the strobes were positioned.

From the lens info and strobe power settings; am I correct to assume that you were positioned as close as possible to the Frog Fish and still achieve focus lock, at the widest zoom of the lens?

I like your wife’s mask and how she positioned her head so as not to have any flash reflection of the strobe. You guys have must have worked together before. My wife and I need more practice and a Frog Fish on a perch with room behind it for the model, a little blue water in the scene will also be appreciated.

Great scene and great shot. Congrats.

TomC

Craig,

Back to the frog fish photo. Do you remember if you had 8+4 arms on that shot? Seems almost necessary to reach over frog fish with second strobe to light the face.

TomC

Hi Tom

Its always good to have a wonderful model. My wife can actually read my mind, she tends to know exactly what i'm looking for in an image.

we always have a chat prior to the dive "argument" on what i'm looking for.

At first its also very good to try and get some knowledge into there head on just how flash works and that infact its very dumb and it only knows to ouput at a given setting and it cant turn corners or bend.

A good example I often give is, if she can see my flash guns then the light will enter her mask, if she cant then she must reposition herself accordingly.

I've already obtained the optimum postion for the shot, so i cant move, but she can and her head can.

Tom i actually just used a 8" section with 2 balls on that shot, it was at 46mm according to my RAW , hence the DOF is quite shallow.

You would actually be quite suprised what you can do with just a simple arm rig, it was made easier due to the fact the her face is roughly on the same plane as the frogfish.

If you think about strobe arms they dont just actually go up and down, they can swing out and around at 180o as well.

you can push a strobe through a 16" distance from front to back. As i was using 46mm this narrows the field of view dowm quite a lot dont forget the 1.5x crop on top of that so even if i pushed one strobe well well forward you still wouldn't see it in the frame.

see drawing again below

The reason it was shot at 46mm was due to the fact the i couldn't get myself any closer to the frogfish without doing damage to the reef.

Obviously when shooting 10.5 or 12mm you have limited use of pushing the strobes forward due them ending up in the frame

Happy shooting

Craig