Self Portrait idea - not sure about lighting.

[jeeper]

OK, so I'm still kinda new at off camera flash...

I have this idea... I want to do a self portrait of me sitting in a chair reading a book.

There will be a (white) wall 3 feet to my left, and another one 3 feet behind me. There is a small lamp in that corner. I was thinking of having that on (so I can "see the book"), but have the ambient exposure low enough that it will be fairly muted. Just enough that you can tell there is a light there without lighting the wall up too much. (The wall on the left won't be visible.)

My idea was to have a book/magazine open, with a flash (580EX II) hidden behind it and pointing at it. The idea is to light my face by bouncing the flash off of the pages. I want to avoid lighting the wall with the flash though. I guess I could move away from the wall some - say 5 or 6 feet.


What I'm not sure about is how fast the light will fall off being bounced off of the pages... Oh, I will also have some other ambient light in front of me to illuminate the book cover enough that you can tell what it is, but maybe a stop or so under exposed.

This will be B&W (T-Max 100), so I'm not worried about trying to WB mixed light sources.


I'm probably making this a much bigger deal than it is, lol. I just don't have much experience with stuff like this, so it's all kind of alien to me.


I guess what I'm asking is-

1) Does it sound like an interesting self portrait?

2) How can I get the flash exposure to light my face without lighting the wall behind me?



#2 I would normally solve by not having a wall behind me, but I kinda wanted to include the lamp, so there is some light source for me to read the book by.

[KenJulio]

i dont have the answer or solution, but what I learned from David Hobby at his half day workshop is to work on one light at a time and not all at the same time.

[jeeper]

I forgot to add in my post - my back-up plan is to bracket like crazy. LOL

I'm not too worried about the ambient lights, I can control them easy enough just by stopping down.

My main worry is finding the perfect balance on the flash to light me but not the background.


I mean, I'm pretty sure I know what I need to do, but since I've never really done it before I guess I'm just looking for some confirmation...

How many stops do you typically lose by bouncing? I would think no more than 2......?

Just trying not to shoot half a roll of film for one shot, lol.

[jeeper]

Well, I shot it. Hopefully it doesn't suck, lol.

My settings were 1/3 second, f/11, 50mm, second curtain sync - for ambient. That should have given me 1 to 1 1/2 stops underexposure on the ambient light.

By my calculations, 1/64-1/32 flash power *should* have been right - so I bracketed by 5 stops starting at 1/128 going up (in 1 stop increments) to 1/8, then back down to 1/128 (in case I had a stupid facial expression or something on the first shots). Out of 10 frames, hopefully one of them is good... [edit - only 9 frames. Only shot one at 1/8, then back down again.]


Like I said, bracketing like crazy, lol. I'll be getting a flash meter (Sekonic L-358), along with a bunch of other goodies soon, so hopefully this stuff will be easier then...

Right now, I'm mainly just relying on a guide number chart - which seems to work out OK for the most part.

[TxTowman]

I look forward to the results!

[jeeper]

I'll finish off the roll & develop it by the end of the week, but I might not have time to scan it till Monday...

[jeeper]

Well, I'm scanning now... The middle one (1/8 power) was the only one I could get a usable scan of...

The negs look good, with lots of detail even on the 1/128 power ones, but I can't get a decent scan of them for the life of me, lol. I mean, I can even read small details of the magazine cover on the neg...

Even on the densest one (the one I scanned), I had to adjust the curves a lot more than I wanted to. I had to bring up the ambient more than I wanted to just to get a little shadow detail...

Short of doing a multi-scan HDR type thing, I think it was the best I could do. I don't think I'll be doing that tonight though. I'll probably reshoot it at some point with a more elaborate set-up anyway.

I'm glad that it pretty much work how I had planned it, but I'm disappointed that I'm having such a hard time getting a good scan.

I have more to scan, but I'll probably have it up in an hour or two.

[Rick4003]

Sorry, I had to...

[jeeper]

LOL, working on it now (took a break to go open a bottle of wine, lol).

Decided not to scan the rest of the roll because it's still a little curled...

[jeeper]

OK, here it is:


09281101 by J E, on Flickr


I don't really think it's 'perfect', but I guess it's not bad. I had to do more than my usual amount of dodging & burning...


Technical issues aside (seems a little soft to me), how do you like it? Good enough (concept) to warrant a more thought out reshoot?


edit
The flash is in my lap, a couple inches away from the magazine.

Hmm... The white background seems to make it look much darker to me...

[jeeper]

What pisses me off is that on the negatives, everything that is completely black on that ^^^ still has detail. I mean, you can see it without even using a loupe or anything (even on the shot where the flash power was 4 stops less)...

I had to dodge the **** out of the magazine just to get the girl's face to look right. (I didn't dodge the back cover at all (I guess maybe I should have), but there's a lot of detail there too on the neg.)

[iCe]

I think that you have photography figured out. Anyone that can get that result with film these days has got a lot of skill with the camera.

Shoot it again if your not happy with it.

[SergeiR]

Barring dodge & burn - shadow on the wall is uncalled for. Light source in magazine is too spreaded (and hitting biceps). Also your hair completely lost details.. And no details, even subtle one left in shadows on the table. And no visible light source for light on the upper left corner of the frame.

Not exactly getting need of lighting up hairy leg levitating in the air either ;)

So:

control light in magazine better.
lean a bit away from the wall so light from lap gets chance to pass through
light table a bit
figure out what you want to do with leg(s)

[jeeper]

Thanks, Michael. I was happy that I was able to mostly get what I going for on the first attempt.

I'm considering this more-or-less a test run.



Sergei, there is shadow detail (lots, actually) in the areas you mentioned on the negative, but I was unable to get a good scan of it. If this were 'better' I would do multiple scans of varying exposures to do a sort of one frame HDR. I didn't think it was worth the effort for this particular shot though.

Now that you mention the light spread from the magazine ... I had a thought. I guess I wouldn't necessarily have to bounce the flash off of the magazine. I could have it pointing at me instead, which would also make more room for any kind of modifier I might need to use.


I'll try this again later and keep your tips in mind. This shot was kind of just to see if I could do it (I was still hoping that it would turn out good though, obviously. )

[SergeiR]

Light spread - it bounces back and spills around too much. Easiest normal way is to hide it in magazine.

Hoever it depends on what you trying to do. If you like to do enlightement impression is one thing. If you trying to imply that scene is lit with light in corner, but provide enough details elsewhere - its other. Then your setup is initially wrong.

As of details in scan - unless you overexposed scene greatly - there is none, i can tell you that right away. Negative B&W holds shadows much worse than digital. Unless you got some serious skill in processing that is. But even then its kinda not there. Lights - different story.

Then again - u can download trial version of Vuescan and try different pulls of course.

Also, ideally - your face, as it is portrait, after all, got to be lighter a bit, imho.. :) Try to scan with different brightness - for shadows and for highlights, and glue shot together in PP.