Need help on lighting setup for headshots

[Foxx]

Hey guys,

The company I'm working for has asked me to do basic headshots for some of our employees tomorrow. They asked me because I'm the guy who's always carrying the camera around -- but I have no studio lighting experience and no equipment. :thumbdown:

However I do have a friend who will be letting me borrow his equipment. It is BASIC. I have access to a strobe(and stand), softbox, and a speedlite flash. I will be doing shots in our office. We have all flourescent lighting and most of the walls are off-white. I've been looking up some basic setups and it seems like this one which suggests using a wall corner as a fill would work best.

Can anyone suggest alternatives? What would work best in this situation? These shots don't have to be professional, I just want them to look decent and have very limited resources available to me.

Help??

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Hey guys,

The company I'm working for has asked me to do basic headshots for some of our employees tomorrow. They asked me because I'm the guy who's always carrying the camera around -- but I have no studio lighting experience and no equipment. :thumbdown:

However I do have a friend who will be letting me borrow his equipment. It is BASIC. I have access to a strobe(and stand), softbox, and a speedlite flash. I will be doing shots in our office. We have all flourescent lighting and most of the walls are off-white. I've been looking up some basic setups and it seems like this one which suggests using a wall corner as a fill would work best.

Can anyone suggest alternatives? What would work best in this situation? These shots don't have to be professional, I just want them to look decent and have very limited resources available to me.

Help??

Good luck!

 

[Foxx]

Thanks

 

[o hey tyler]

I was in your situation a little while ago. If you have a bit of space, here's what I'd do...

Set your subject between 5-10 feet from a wall. In my case, I used a brick wall. I shot at 85mm, f/2.8 (on a full frame camera, so 50mm might work better on a crop body). I had a monolight with a shoot through umbrella high and to the left of the subject in the shots I took. It was about 45deg from center, and the subject's body was facing it, but they turned their head towards the camera. I also had a secondary light that added rim light/texture to the hair. But the secondary light isn't really necessary if you can get good wrap with the softbox, however if you do have the ability to use a second speedlight... I'd use it.

I always suggest shooting at the longest focal length you can, but anything above 50mm should work fine. If you don't have a busy background (like I did with the bricks) you can shoot on a steeper aperture, like f/8 or so since you don't have to worry about background control. Get there a little bit early, bring an assistant if you can, and just set up the lights and get an acceptable exposure. After that, you can just fire off shots pretty quickly when the employees are ready.

You can see on this one how the hair/rim light is a bit more pronounced, and it will give you an idea of what the photo would look like w/o that light.

And this photo was taken with the same lighting setup, but the subject was pretty much square to the camera

 

[Foxx]

@o hey tyler

I only have this one strobe, can I use it the same way you use the monolight? And what about the fluorescent lighting, will I have color temp difference to worry about in PP? Also, I can use the speedlite in conjunction with the strobe -- which one should I use as the key light, or does it matter? I will have a chance to practice with the equipment tonight(in a different setting however)...

 

[o hey tyler]

@o hey tyler

I only have this one strobe, can I use it the same way you use the monolight? And what about the fluorescent lighting, will I have color temp difference to worry about in PP? Also, I can use the speedlite in conjunction with the strobe -- which one should I use as the key light, or does it matter? I will have a chance to practice with the equipment tonight(in a different setting however)...

Do you know exactly what you have for equipment? If you could list off models and whatnot, that would be helpful. If the strobe you speak of is just a consistent power model, meaning you need to move it closer or farther away to adjust the intensity of the light, that changes things a bit. If it's a monolight and has a variable power, you'll have a bit more freedom IMO.

To deal with the incidental light in the office I would do two things:

A. Shoot at the sync speed of your camera. Probably 1/200, or 1/250 depending on the model.

B. Turn all the lights off around the subject in the area you are shooting.

I would most likely use the strobe as the main light with the softbox. I am assuming they're meant to work together. It probably has a sync cable that can plug into the flash port on the side of your camera (depending if your camera has it). If you have a wireless trigger, or CLS/Canon's Wireless flash capability, that would work too to trigger the speedlight.

 

[Foxx]

I have wireless capability on my t1i. The strobe is an einstein 640 so it looks like I'll have variable control. The flash is a speedlite 430. I'll play around with all of the stuff tonight and get for a feel for it, I'm sure i'm psyching myself out way more than I have to. Thanks for the tips!

 

[kundalini]

With two lights and three modifiers, you could do something like this.

The reflector can be anything that will reflect the light. You can make the snoot out of a rolled-up cereal box and some duct tape.

 

[Mach0]

Do you know exactly what you have for equipment? If you could list off models and whatnot, that would be helpful. If the strobe you speak of is just a consistent power model, meaning you need to move it closer or farther away to adjust the intensity of the light, that changes things a bit. If it's a monolight and has a variable power, you'll have a bit more freedom IMO.

To deal with the incidental light in the office I would do two things:

A. Shoot at the sync speed of your camera. Probably 1/200, or 1/250 depending on the model.

B. Turn all the lights off around the subject in the area you are shooting.

I would most likely use the strobe as the main light with the softbox. I am assuming they're meant to work together. It probably has a sync cable that can plug into the flash port on the side of your camera (depending if your camera has it). If you have a wireless trigger, or CLS/Canon's Wireless flash capability, that would work too to trigger the speedlight.

+1

I have wireless capability on my t1i. The strobe is an einstein 640 so it looks like I'll have variable control. The flash is a speedlite 430. I'll play around with all of the stuff tonight and get for a feel for it, I'm sure i'm psyching myself out way more than I have to. Thanks for the tips!

You have plenty of stuff. Not the most but enough to get the job done.

With two lights and three modifiers, you could do something like this.

The reflector can be anything that will reflect the light. You can make the snoot out of a rolled-up cereal box and some duct tape.

Good advice.



OP you've gotten some solid advice. All I can say is good luck!