Derrel & Kundalini and any others lol

[mwcfarms]

View attachment 3184Hey guys ok so going back to yesterday's topic. Here is the grey. Same sort of light set up. I have this mottled grey denim material I through up and its quite dark so I got this wicked rich hot pink/magenta. Not exactly what I would want for a boy but hey it was in comparison to yesterdays pretty in pink lol.


kerricgreynpink by Deanna D Chambers, on Flickr

 

[mwcfarms]

Ok downstairs on my calibrated monitor my sons skin tone looks good. On the laptop here in the sunroom it looks off.

 

[Big Mike]

I'd say you're getting a lot less bounce back...and that's what you wanted from the darker background, isn't it?

 

[mwcfarms]

Yup it is, was just wondering about his skin tone. Again Im on my calibrated monitor and it looks good. Yes tonnes less wrap. I think it all came down to the white bouncing too much from the seamless and that I am so close.

 

[Derrel]

Yes, the fleshtones look very acceptable, very realistic to me. His hair color looks believable as well. His right eye (camera left eye), however, looks unnaturally blue when I look at the Original size on Flickr. And yes...by using a gray backdrop with a gel fired at it, one achieves a darker, more-saturated color than with a white background--all things being equal. AND, with the gray background, there is less light reflected back toward the subject, and that holds true at each and every power level. At the end of the day yesterday, I read that you were using the Alien Bee 400 + gel as the background light, and an SB 600 as the hairlight...my experience with white backgrounds is that it takes almost "no light" to get a gelled color with a 200 to 400 watt-second studio flash fired onto a white seamless, and that for gel-coloring, speedlights or very low watt-second studio flash, like 12.5 watt-seconds to 25 watt-seconds, can actually be quite enough when the background screen is white.

I took the liberty of messing around with Selective Color, to change the background color to one that would coordinate more harmoniously with his brown hair and brown sweater. If you look closely, you can see that there *is* a small amount of blowback visible around the perimeter of his head, which shows when the selective color change is applied pretty heavily, as it was here.

Selective Color> Magentas> Cyan +65 units, Magenta Minus 100 units, Yellow + 100 units, Black Minus 2 units.

Selective Color>Yellows> Cyan Minus 100 units, Magenta +97 units, Yellow Minus 37 units, Black +1. I messed with the Yellows here to make his skin just a slight bit more rosy and youthful-looking.

 

[mwcfarms]

Thanks I love that edit. I can see the blowback for sure on this. So when doing something like that I just might be well enough to flag it. Not sure how i would accomplish it in such a small area but it gives me something to work on. Love the different color background whic works so much better. I used the pink just for comparison sakes.

For some reason in Lightroom the iris brush has been giving me grief lately. Some eyes its changing the color of, turning them purple, really changing hue and what not. I didnt notice it until you pointed it out. Thanks. I know lightroom is the lazy mans way of doing it haha.

 

[kundalini]

Just saw this. I think this is a much better photo than the other you had. Light is much better controlled. If you don't like this color, try a different colored gel. I also agree with Derrel about using the Nikon flash to color the background, should be plenty to do the job.

Although I don't think the background color goes well with the wardrobe, the color itself is nice. Real men can wear pink or any variation there of.

 

[Big Mike]

Thanks I love that edit. I can see the blowback for sure on this. So when doing something like that I just might be well enough to flag it. Not sure how i would accomplish it in such a small area but it gives me something to work on. Love the different color background whic works so much better. I used the pink just for comparison sakes.

Keep in mind that, the easiest way to avoid bounce-back wrap, is still to move the subject farther away from the backdrop. (easier said than done in a small space), but remember that light falls of at an inverse square to the distance. So if he's two feet away, and you move him to 4 feet, that's twice as far, and it will mean 1/4 the amount of light coming from the background. If he's two feet away and you move him to 6 feet away, that's three times as far, and thus 9 times less light coming from behind.

 

[Derrel]

I was indirectly suggesting that the Nikon speedlight could be used as the background light with the gel fitted to it; thanks to Kundalini for coming right out and stating it better and more plainly than I did--use the SB600 for the background light + gel combo.

Big Mike's comment about the inverse square law is very appropriate--one of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of colored light that reflects and hits the back of the head and neck/shoulders area of the subjects is to move the subject farther away from the background. A second thought is that WHITE reflects around 99 percent of the light that hits it, while gray reflects something like 12 to 20 percent of the light that hits it...one does not have to be a genius to see that in cramped, small-studio type situations, simply swapping out a white background for a gray background immediately, and dramatically, reduces the amount of reflected light that blows back at each and every flash power level.

 

[mwcfarms]

For sure which was part of the initial thread question which lead to your comment of the being part of the cause of the wrap/blowback. I have the background set up to its max width atm of 12 or 13' and didn't want to dismantle it if I could help it. I have 30 feet the other way breaking it down and just using the 5' seamless which would be fine for single persons for sure. I know I know pink isn't the best but it was to see the difference compared to the intial white. The family of angles is something I am still working on. I am going through these excercises in the Light Science book but still suck at geometry lol. I truly appreciate all your input guys. These aren't excuses at all just wanted to duplicate most of the original settings and change just the backdrop and see what I got. More to come this weekend and we will see if I can totally eliminate the wrap. Lol Derrel, if Im being a dumbass you can always say it lol I am truly sometimes amazed at the little things I forget and then give myself a facepalm. I promise to never take offense. I can dish it and take it.

 

[Big Mike]

The family of angles is something I am still working on. I am going through these excercises in the Light Science book but still suck at geometry lol

I told you...come up and take my class; Using Light, Principles and Practices.

 

[mwcfarms]

IIRC, I emailed the school and asked no one replied back when we talked about this awhile ago. I actually forgot all about this. Let me know next time your having one, maybe shoot me a contact number and I can call directly. I am coming up the 19th any chance you got one then lol.

 

[Big Mike]

I just started that class last night (runs for 6 Thursdays)....but I know that won't work for you. We don't have a new one planned, but if we get enough interest it will run, so it may run again in May or June.
I finished a DSLR class last week and had at least three students from that class interested in the lighting class.

I'd think that the next one will probably go back to running on three Saturdays because we are getting interest from several people who live out of town..but certainly mention that to whomever you talk to (Noak or Krister).

The toll free number is +1 (877) 545-CPLC