Here's a quick drawing of a ONE-light studio flash setup that Collins demo'd. It gives a butterfly lighting effect, so it's good for women, and is fairly soft, not showing a "lot" of texture. It gives a beautiful under-the-chin catchlight in the lower eyeball, which adds a lot of dimensionality to a portrait or headshot. SOME of the light is allowed to spill over the top, front edge of the top panel. This is often called "clamshell" lighting, due to the way the main light and reflector are placed so,so close, and are almost "hinged" att the back, and the camera peers right thru the opening.
The light coming over the top panel's front edge can be softened with a snap-on diffuser, or a honeycomb grid, or whatever is needed. This light will not go through the panel; it can be used to light the top of the hair, and some of it will likely hit the background's top area. With studio flash, it doesn't take a lot of power to light the hair with "raw", undiffused light, so a 35 degree grid or Speedotron brand mylar snap-on diffuser is a good idea.
The majority of the light from the 50- to 65-degree parabolic reflector (think Speedotron 11.5 inch parabolic reflector) will go through the top panel's white fabric and be diffused, soft light. The bottom panel will also catch some of the light, and reflect it, upwardly.
A partner and I used this on our first-ever for-pay shoot in the mid 1980's,and the results were a series of lovely headshots of a young model,seated on a posing stool, as shown. We had only one studio flash, a Sunpak MS-4000 monolight (400 Watt-seconds). This required 2 panels,2 white fabrics, two stands, a boomstand and arm, and 4 of the positioning clamps I showed above. The key is how the lights and reflectors are positioned. My sketch is not good enough to do this setup justice; this is why Amolitor's "don't be a recipe follower" advice from last week makes sense. MY DRAWING is not very good, but it's "fundamentally" accurate, but in "real life" this setup would def. need modifying and fine-tuning depending on several factors.
