Model shoot with Mokihana + behind the scenes

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f8 ISO100 24-70mm L at 25mm

Amazingly, I found out there's actually people who read this blog?!?! You people have WAY too much time on your hands. ;-)

But thank you, I do appreciate the feedback. I've been mostly writing this for reference for myself when I need to remember how a particular shot was done. I'll try to make it interesting for you. No guarantees though.

This past Sunday I had a shoot on Oahu with Mokihana, whom I met through Model Mayhem.
We decided on two looks - a casual outfit and a "Tomb Raider" style look.


Our prop department:
2 Glock 17s (airsoft versions imported from Japan)
2 Beretta M92s (airsoft versions imported from Japan)
*I'm a lot of fun going through customs ;-)
Leg holsters
Shoulder holsters
Gloves


Strobist lighting gear:
2 SB 26 strobes
3 Pocket Wizards
2 Bogen lightstands
2 Westcott shoot thru umbrellas
1 Westcott silver umbrella
1 Photoflex Q39 Softbox
1 Shashin Denki Kogyo (SD) Softbox
Ball Bungees
Roscoe gel samples
1 grid - homemade from black straws, Frosted Flakes cereal box and a lotta gaffer's tape (which came in handy later on during the shoot)


Amazingly, all that lighting gear fits into this Slik tripod case:




Back light with CTO gel:


The two softboxes side by side. Photoflex is on the right.
The larger SD softbox folds like an umbrella. Picked it up in Japan.


Because the SD softbox mounts on the lightstand like an umbrella, the SB26 sits too high if seated in the coldshoe mount. Ball bungies to the rescue!


Mounting the SD softbox:


For the Tomb Raider image at our first location, we wanted to give the impression that she was in a cave. The rock wall nearby(seen in the shot with the two side by side softboxes) served as a backdrop . Had Mokihana position herself about 15-20 feet away from the wall, and setup the camera so that we weren't shooting directly into the wall.

We took a shot on program which gave us 1/100 at f8 ISO 100.
Set the shutter speed to 1/250, the max sync speed of our Canon 1DmkII, which dropped the ambient light down.
Setup the SD softbox and SB-26 1/2 power with 1/4 CTO gel about 8-10 feet in front of the model.

The Photoflex softbox went behind her, SB-26 1/2 power with a CTO gel.

Results:

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f8 ISO100 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 95mm

For the casual look, Mokihana had a red outfit, so I wanted to find some greenery to work with. Walking through the parking structure near this wall, I found a narrow strip of foliage with some light coming from overhead.

The sky was pretty overcast, and we probably could have gotten by with a reflector to get some standard portraits, but I wanted to go for a sunset style shot (in photographer-speak, that means "I forgot to pack my reflectors")

This is with the same lighting as the Tomb Raider style shots, with the SD softbox as the main light, SB26 1/2 power with 1/4 CTO. The only difference was the back light. I first tried it with the Photoflex softbox and SB26 1/2 power with CTO but wasn't getting the highlight we wanted.

Took off the softbox, and the highlights were good, but now the rear flash was flaring into the camera (the rear flash was set pretty close to the model - just out of the frame to the right). So to remedy that, I put the black straw cereal box grid on that light and we ended up with this:

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f2.8 ISO400 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 140mm

That's actually a little more overexposed than I usually like, but both the model and I agreed that we liked this look better.

I'm still going over the other shots that we took that day. More to come later.

If you found any of this interesting at all, let me know by leaving a comment, and I'll try to remember to do more behind the scenes stuff on my next shoot.

More from Tokyo shoot

Because of airline restrictions, I wasn't able to bring a lot of lighting gear to Japan, and I wasn't sure what would be available to us in terms of lighting at the studio we rented until I got there. So I brought along my Strobist lighting kit consisting of 2 Canon 550ex strobes, a couple of umbrellas, stands, and my RadioPopper triggers (I really love those!)

To emulate a ringflash look, I setup one lightstand with two strobes firing through shoot-thru umbrellas, mounted one above the other in a clamshell style lighting setup. Both strobes were set on manual at about 1/8th power, and I positioned my camera between the two umbrellas. Image shot with a Canon 5D and 85mm 1.8 lens.



This one was done with the two shoot-thru umbrellas again, this time each strobe was mounted on its own stand. The lights were setup on either side of the model, slightly behind her, and aimed directly at each other. This served to both light the background and rim light the model.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the model IS wearing clothes. It's the way she is posed that hides the bikini she is wearing. So it's kind of an implied nude, without being an implied nude.

Off-Camera Lighting

Ever since I started visiting Strobist to learn more about lighting, I've been trying to make it a habit of experimenting with what I've learned every chance I get.  This past Friday I had the chance to do a shot I've always wanted to try - backlighting the couple at the altar.

Usually with Canon strobes, you need to have line of sight to your slave flash in order for it to fire.  In the past I had used the ST-E2 transmitter on top of the camera to trigger the slave flash.  This was pretty much hit or miss whenever the slave flash was behind something - a door, a model, Darth Vader, etc.  

Someone suggested I use 2 strobes - a slave off camera, and one on the camera as a master trigger.  The flash on-camera can be set to just triggering the slave, but not firing itself.  Apparently this allows for better range/reliability than just using the ST-E2 transmitter.

For this shot I had my assistant put the flash on the altar positioning it so that the head of the flash came right between the couple's faces.  I then fired off several shots until we got this one.  One of the things to watch out for is to make sure you don't see the flash head in the viewfinder when you take  the shot.  Since the flash is firing back toward you, if your camera sensor sees the direct flash, it will seriously underexpose the shot and you won't get the cool backlighting effect.