help!

[spicychicken]

Ok, i'm going to be doing this photoshoot for my aunt tommorow. It's a reshoot, she had her friend doing it first, and he supposedly taught photography. he had all this equipment, but the pictures came out pretty bad! too much contrast and slightly out of focus.


i noticed he used lamps for a hair light, and i guess a fill light. the subject is indoors, near some windows. it's a model standing in front of a mirror.


now i know to stand at an angle for the mirror issue. i don't have any lamps because i just started, do i need them? and where can i get them right away? i have a minolta x-300 w\ detachable flash. 50mm lens, and a tripod. but thats as far as my material goes.

advice? i bitched about his pictures, now mine have to be better =o

 

[ksmattfish]

Lighting can be tough. Is this color or BW? It's hard to give exact recommendations without knowing more about the pose of the model, the windows and the light coming through, and the mirror, but here are some tips.

Use a tripod.

Take advantage of the window light as either a hair light (model's back to window), a main light (strong light through window, model's face/body angled towards window), or a fill light (less light through window, model angled towards window).

Use the mirror as a reflector for fill.

Try to get things set up so that you don't even have to use your flash, but if you need to use it for the fill (on camera) or main (off camera as far away from the fill side as you can hold it, requires flash cords or slaves).

Remember, the lighting will look much more contrasty in the photo than it will to you in real life. Use your meter to measure the darkest shadows that you want full detail and the brightest highlights you want full detail. You need to try to get these about 5 stops apart. 4 or less stops means low contrast, 6 or more means high contrast.

In the future, instead of dogging the other photographer's work, just play it off as a learning exercise for you. Then if the pics turn out lousy, well, it was just practice. If the pics turn out good, then you're a genius.