Softbox Studio Lighting

[RCJPhotography]

Hello there.

I am new here and new to studio photographic lighting. I have learnt photography by myself for the last two years without any guidance and learnt manual mode at the beginning of 2013. I have now decided to take my photography to the next level after shooting with friends, family and so forth and getting positive feedback. I am looking to do a photo shoot for my friends child, however sometimes shooting indoors can be hard work due to unflattering shadows, backgrounds, lighting and you get the idea so I invested in a studio kit which included two backgrounds, background support, two soft boxes, with two strobe lights for them and a honeycomb. I have just tried out the kit for the first time this afternoon and just cannot seem to get rid of this shadow above, I have tried everything, I have moved the soft boxers closer, made them taller, smaller, put them further away, made the background smaller, moving location, shooting closer, shooting further away and I have even tried using one harsh light (just the strobe without soft box) and a soft box but nothing is working. Does anyone have any idea what is happening and what I can do to fix this and prevent this happening in the future?
Thank you in advance

 

[Derrel]

Shutter speed is too fast....you need to shoot AT, or below, the camera's "synch speed", so, try 1/160 second, or 1/125 second and that issue will clear up. I see by EXIF that you shot at 1/250 second with your Sony A390...that camera's flash synchronization speed is slower than 1/250...

 

[RCJPhotography]

Ok thank you very much. I did actually try this out as well, and it did clear it up only problem was it was far too bright despite being in a dark room so didn't get the effect I wanted, I even tried turning the actual strobe lights down too, not sure how to fix that. I also had an issue shooting in a smaller aperture as well. Thank you for your reply

 

[Derrel]

I looked it up on-line. The A390's synch speed limit is 1/160 second. SO,you need to be at 1/160 or slower, like 1/125 or 1/100,etc.You used f/3.2, which is a pretty wide aperture...with electronic flash, the shutter timing is not usually all that important, but the lens aperture *is* important. To expose less, and darken the picture, you need to go to smaller apertures, like say f/5.6 or f/6.3 or f/7.1 or f/8.

 

[RCJPhotography]

Ok thank you very much I appreciate your help

 

[RCJPhotography]

Just to update you that I no longer have issues with the shadow! thanks again for your help

 

[julianliu]

Interesting, I thought out of sync will created shadow at the bottom, this is the first time I see it at the top. Is the shadow camera related ?

 

[KmH]

It is one of the 2 shutter curtains in your camera blocking part of the camera's image sensor.

The front/first shutter curtain moves from in front of the image sensor (opens the shutter) to start an exposure. The rear/second shutter curtain moves in front of the image sensor (closing the shutter) to stop the exposure.

The flash photography x-sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that has both shutter curtains fully open during an exposure.
At shutter speeds faster than the camera's x-sync speed the 2 shutter curtains form a slit. The faster the shutter speed, the narrower the slit becomes.
The photo you posted shows how narrow the slit is at 1/250 on your camera, a bit more than 1/2 the short side of the image sensor.

From the photo you posted we can tell if it was the front or rear curtain that was blocking part of the image sensor.

If you could see inside your camera when the shutter opens you would see that the camera lens projects the image onto the image sensor upside down.
The top of your photo is at the bottom of the image sensor.
You would also see that the shutter curtains move from the top of your camera to the bottom of the camera, so they don't have to fight gravity to make an exposure.
In between each exposure, both shutter curtains have to reset by moving back up to the top of the shutter opening.

So for the photo you posted, when the shutter was tripped the front curtain started down, and before it was fully open the rear curtain also started down.
The flash was set to sync to that point in the process when the front curtain was fully open (front curtain sync) and when that point was reached the rear curtain was already partly closed but blocking a bit less than half the shutter opening.

Most DSLR cameras are set by default to sync to the front shutter curtain, but also have an option to sync to the rear curtain instead.
If your camera had been set to rear curtain flash sync, the flash would have fired in the instant just before the rear curtain would have started closing and the 'shadow' would have been cause by the front curtain blocking a bit more than 1/2 of the lower part of the photo you posted.

This will help:

 

[KmH]

Interesting, I thought out of sync will created shadow at the bottom, this is the first time I see it at the top. Is the shadow camera related ?

It can be either with a DSLR because the flash can be set to sync with either of the 2 shutter curtains.

A key is remembering that the lens projects the image onto the image sensor upside down.

 

[RCJPhotography]

Thank you everyone for your input and information, it is appreciated. I have fixed this problem. I just avoid going for an aperture size that is too low which is fine really with a plain background. Thank you everyone

 

[hirejn]

I would highly recommend learning about flash exposure to get the look you want. TTL is all over the place, and if you're doing manual flash without an incident meter, you're just guessing. Also, if you need to quickly make adjustments without understanding how it works, you're still guessing and wasting people's time.