This lighting setup is something I have been thinking about a lot, but never gotten to try it for real. I really like the quality of light when it comes to reflected light you can find in the shadows outside near building. The sun, reflecting down light via big windows, can be very nice. And I would love to be able to recreate that light in the studio any time of the year.

But it was not that simple, and I am not even close to getting it right. Yet.

I wrote a long blog post on my Swedish blog, but I don’t have the energy to translate all the steps that I tried to get things right. If you want, you can see more photos and maybe understand some of it (via some translator, or just look at the pictures). Here it is: My Swedish blog post on indirect lighting.

To keep it a lot shorter (than the Swedish blog post), I started with a light from behind, a Profoto D1 250 Air with a Magnum reflector. Pointing it at a very large Chimera reflector frame with silver fabric, I had the idea that this would be enough to get a lot of light reflected back into the face of my model.

It wasn’t.

But I liked the rim light from behind, and kept that light on (it would maybe have been smarter to turn that off and continue to try to get it right with just one light, but no). Next time I will.

Instead I added a second light, and placed it very near the large reflector so I could easily see how the effect would be (also avoiding the problems with the light hitting my model’s hair and sides, being a lot stronger than the reflected light).

I put the light low, and bounced it on the reflector so the light would come from above, almost. Using a Zoom reflector, I could adjust the light beam to get the effect I wanted. The only restrictions were that I could not have it at a distance, but had to make do with it being quite near the model.

My goal was to learn a way to use indirect light in an easy way, but I didn’t really achieve that, but I learned a lot trying to. Maybe the best way would be to use an even harder light, a Fresnel or something like that?

But I like the light I got, it has soft transitions from light to dark but with a quick falloff in some way. And experimenting with ideas like this is something I a lot less than I should, it is a very learning experience in many ways. And frustrating.

And then I have to keep shooting with my new Nikon D800, even outside paid assignments, just to learn it better. It is a lot like my older D700, but also different in many ways. Just coping with the smaller margins for error in focus when you check an image in 100% is hard get over.

Hope this wasn’t to short and rushed, the post that is. If you have any questions, please let me know. Or suggestions on how to make it better.

After a week with my new Nikon D800, I thought I might share some of the things I have noticed and some thoughts on this fantastic piece of equipment. But all is not only positive, even if I really like to have modern technology in my hands again.

I have been using my D700 almost every day for a couple of years now, so getting used to something new is not done overnight. When I upgraded my camera last time, it was from a D2X with DX-sensor to the FX-sensor in the D700.

A big step for me, not to mention the bigger display and everything else that felt so much more modern at that time. This time, it feels more like very much more of the same, but in a good way, mostly.

Big, really really big files

Going from 12MP to 36MP is quite a leap, I love the detail that a photo can contain, but I’m not really in love what the large files do with my work flow. My computers might not be the most modern right now, but they have enough RAM and both have SSD disks for programs and system.

But, a NEF file with so many pixels takes a lot of time to render in 100% for Lightroom 4, and that has now become a very narrow bottle neck in my production. I am used to import all the files into LR, quickly sort out the bad photos (to check focus proprely, I need full size previews) and then get to work on the ones that are left. It used to be done quite quickly, but not now.

And the disk space will fill up more than three times faster, and my strategy to use a lot of 4GB Compact Flash cards does not feel so smart anymore.

Less margin for sharpness

With my D700, I used to check the photos at 100%, just to be sure that focus were exactly where I wanted it. And it usually did, but the number of almost-sharp-shots with the D800 is a bit annoying. There are so much more detail that can show that focus it exactly right on. At 50%, it is more acceptable. And I guess I must get used to zoom in less than before.

I have only used the D800 on a couple of jobs last week, with a 50mm, a 85mm, a 24-70 and the 14-24. It might be luck, but my D700 has always been sharp with all my lenses, but with the D800 I think I need to calibrate the AF so it works better. Almost in focus is not so fun.

Much better, a little different, and more

You might think that I am not happy with this new camera, but that is not the case. I think a bit of my frustration comes from having to learn to use this camera. When I took it from the box, it felt very familiar, but getting used to the differences will take some time. But overall everything feels mostly good.

After all, it is a modern camera, and the files it produces are really great. The dynamic range and all that makes it very easy to manipulate the photos without breaking them. So far, it has been hard to blow out details or loose them in dark shadows.

The few changes of the controls feels very good, getting a Bracketing button is really great and the menu feels easy to learn and navigate. The talk about the different colours that the display shows might just be something to get used to.

Another good thing, I think, will be that my D700 can be used as backup with the same usability, and it will probably not feel old the same way my D2X did after using the D700 with its bigger display and FX-sensor.

To sum it up, this will be great, as soon as I have learned to use it properly.

But I wish they could have given me some focus points closer to the edges of the frame, I would really have liked that. I think I had it in my D2X before.

I often use light from behind to act as rim light in my studio portraits, and might even call that light hair light if it lights the hair. But that is not entirely correct, I think. “Real” hair light should be focused on the hair more, from higher up.

This portrait, or headshot, I took of a woman wanting a good profile picture for her CV and online services such as LinkedIn is a good example of how a hair light can make the ordinary lighting look a little bit more glamourous.

Lighting diagram for hair light portrait

The lighting itself is nothing special, I use this variant of a clam shell setup all the time for studio portrait, for the simple reason that it works very well. Here is another portrait of a blonde with rim lights from left and right, but no hair light.

Main light is a large 5-foot softbox Octa with a Profoto D1 250 Air inside, I always use that light modifier without the outer diffuser for a good combination of big soft light and a little more contrast than normal.

Simple DIY reflector for fill and catchlights

Under the Octa I placed a white sheet of foamcore on an arm, just to add a little fill from below. But, using white instead of silver, just gave me the fill, but no bright catchlights in her eyes. I like catchlights, but sometimes a large silver reflector can flatten the light and contrast in the portrait too much. That’s why I tried with a white reflector. But without the sparkle in her eyes, something was missing.

The simple solution was to put a small sheet of silver coloured metal on the white reflector for a good combination of soft fill and something that could add catchlights with its reflections.

If I would have only done headshots in this session, I think I would have brought the reflector closer to her face for more precise control, but she also wanted half-length portraits. That is why the reflector is so far away.

Modify your reflector for more control

Placing the reflector in this kind of clam shell-ish setups can be tricky sometimes, some say that the lower catchlight should not be visible inside the pupil, just on the iris, but that is a matter of taste.

Personally, I think it depends on the picture, sometimes it works, and sometimes it looks awful. But getting it to reflect in the right place can also mean that the other parts of a face recieves too much reflections, like with a large silver reflector.

Sometimes I experiment with placing the reflector close and cover some parts of it with black fabric. That way I can get fill and catchlights, but also add more contrast under the chin, for example. If it is a guy and he wears a white shirt, there is not much you can do as the shirt will often reflect light in under the chin.

The hair light

And finally, as this is a two-light setup, I guess I must write a line or two about light number two, the hair light. It comes from behind the model, high up camera right, and is a Profoto D1 as well, but with a gridded Zoom reflector.

The grid is a standard 20 degrees grid, and it narrows the light beam so it only lights the hair from behind and above. Some of the light spills onto her shoulder, but I think that looks good. It separates her a bit more from the background.

For people with medium blonde or darker hair, getting the lighting right is not much of a problem, but for really blonde hair, blowing out the highlights and removing all details is easily done as this angle bounces the light so it almost can look like an aura. But, just lower the light output and it will be fine, or add a ND-filter.

I should use this kind of hair light more, I think it looks good even if it feels a tiny bit like classic American portraits of stars from the eighties. But without the crazy backgrounds they liked to use back then.

Until yesterday, I had this 3-way head on my tripod for the camera. I bought it many years ago, together with the tripod, and didn’t think to much about the pros and cons of different heads. I just bought something that felt good.

But lately, I have been more and more frustrated with the space a 3-way head takes up in my equipment bag, it doesn’t fit in really well with a the long and thin light stands, reflector panels and other stuff that I pack.

So, in my continuing quest for a smarter way to bring a portable studio to different places, I bought a ball head. It might not be lighter, but it hasn’t got any parts that stick out and makes the packing of equipment something you swear at.

A small investment, and I don’t know why I haven’t done it sooner, but very rewarding in many ways. The old 3-way head can retire onto my huge studio stand that I probably never will bring anywhere. It might exist a better head to mount on that stand, but until then, this works just great.

This was actually part two in my shrinking campaign, the big first step I took was to buy two large umbrellas which have provided me with a simple way of lighting small groups as well as individual portraits on location without bringing too much equipment. Next phase will be to add a few really compact lighting stands to the list, you can never have too many stands with you on-location. And using big stands just for holding a reflector or a sheet of black fabric is overkill.

And maybe a smaller camera bag, because if you have a large bag, it is easy to fill it with stuff you probably won’t use, but you have to carry it nonetheless.

This is a group photo I shot for a magazine cover I did on location last year. The assignment was to get photos from an animal hospital but with focus on the father leaving the control over the company to the daughter (but they wanted the sitting guy in the picture as well).

Hospitals are not very well known for their nice lighting, and the same goes for animal hospitals. Everything is almost white or a shade of light orange, I guess it might have a calming effect or something like that.

As it was late a winter day, and no natural light left anywhere, I brought my Profoto AcuteB 600R with me. I did not know beforehand if we were going to shoot the group photo outside the hospital or indoors. Sooner or later guess I will buy a BatPac, just to be able to use my Profoto D1s, but until then, the AcuteB works fine.

For the article in the magazine, I just shot with the available light inside the hospital, but for the cover shot I thought it would be better to give their skin tones a small chance of looking good.

Because this was a group shot, I felt I needed to use at least f/5.6 so everyone in the group would be sharp in the picture. Usually I prefer to blur the background a little more, but they were renovating large areas of the hospital, so we had to make do with a small spot where we could have their DT-scanner as background.

If I would have turned a little to the left or right, there would mostly be hammers, or ladder or paint buckets or stuff wrapped in plastic. Not so fun on a cover.

With a shutter speed of 1/60s (and aperture 5.6), quite a lot of the ambient light inside coming from the fluorescent lamps became a part of the lighting.

With a relatively tight shot as this, it worked out well, but looking at the behind the scenes photo at the start of this post, or even the uncropped version, there are large colour shifts from side to side. I guess I could have solved that with the help of a little gel, but I think that it adds to the picture a bit, not having it too sterile.

When I am on assignments like this, I like to travel light. Usually I work with available light for this kind of photos, but it helps to be able to control the light a bit. But this was before I bought two Profoto Umbrella XL (they would have been perfect to light a small group photo like this), so I just packed my large 5-foot softbox Octa.

One thing that I have to remember the next time I do a cover shot like this is to go even closer. The magazines I work with usually wants either a lot of stuff around the people in the photo, or a very tight portrait. The ones in-between mostly gets cropped, a with a 12MP file from a D700, cropping quickly leads to a too small image.

But, as soon as I get my D800, that will not be a problem. I hope.

I have been looking for a really heavy studio stand for my camera a very long time now, and finally I got the one I wanted through an ad. It is a behemoth (I have never had the opportunity to use that word on my blog until now) and it weighs a ton (almost).

A Swedish studio camera stand called Szabad, with three wheels you can lock and a counterweight inside the stand that makes it easy to move the arm up and down. I was lucky to finally find the right ad, and I got it at a unbelievable low price.

It is originally made for medium-, and large format cameras, so my D700 (and maybe soon the D800) will feel safe and secure looking down from it. Earlier I have used a normal Manfrotto stand for my camera, but even if I tape it to the floor, it might move a little during a shoot. This one will not move at all.

Just being able to photograph products with a camera that is really fixed will same me many hours in Lightroom and Photoshop not having to adjust for minor movement between frames. And the possibilities to take photos from different angles without having to balance on a ladder is a big plus. Or shoot straight down (until now I used my ordinary stand for that, but even with a counter weight, it became hard to do).

But my luck didn’t end there, the seller also had an old Manfrotto stand with a giraffe boom which I can turn and tilt the studio light at the top with a wheel and a crank at the bottom of the boom. Very handy. I don’t have to take it down just to turn it a bit, pull it up again and take a test picture to see if it points in the right direction.

It is easy to make a wish list that can be very long when working with photography, “If I only had this or that, I would be able to get the photos I want”. These are two of the things I have been wanting for a long time, and getting them both used at a really nice price makes me even happier.

I try not to focus too much on studio equipment, it can be a very costly affair if I would follow the urge to buy more and more stuff. Especially if I would buy everything new, but much of the studio equipment I use, I have bought second hand. These stands are probably more than twenty years old, but works the same way as new stands.

But I think one of the key factors not to make the investments in studio equipment a black hole is to stick to one system that works together. Almost everything I own is either Nikon, Manfrotto, Chimera or Profoto. And they all work very well together.

It is when you start mixing a lot of different systems it might get expensive, because you need two or three of the same thing. Just to fit with the different brands.

Now I “only” need to upgrade my D700 to a D800, and replace my last Profoto Compacts with Profoto D1. After that, I will be satisfied for a long time.

But I still make my wish list longer with different thing, but those will have to wait, I need some time to try out all the new possibilities first.

I do a lot of portraits for articles in different magazines, mostly nothing fancy. But I get to meet interesting people and go to interesting places. And very often, I try really hard to make the photos stand out, and not just fill the blank spaces on the pages.

Sometimes I can control the time and place for the photo shoot, a little bit at least, but most of the times, I will have to make do with what I get, the where and when. For this assignment, the magazine needed some portraits of Malin on a short notice, and the only time we both were free was in the middle of rush hour one dark winter night in Stockholm, just after sunset.

Instead of thinking too much of how I would like to set this up, I just brought my D700, a 50 mm lens and a SB-800 flash.

Thinking back on that night, I could have done so many other things, but it is very freeing sometimes to keep it simple.

Setting the aperture to f/2.8 and reduce the power a bit on the SB-800, I could get a little bit of the little available light left to mix with the on-camera flash (the photo above has a little help from a store and its spotlights), but mostly I left it to the iTTL to make the exposures correct.

I use on-camera flash very little, but it has it’s charm in a way, I think. It makes the pictures look very real, because you have seen so many like these. Old photo albums are full of portraits lit like this.

Of course, I could have done so much more, but on a windy night, cold and dark, past dinner time, it felt good not to complicate things. Besides, she didn’t have much time, and keeping someone just because your light setup on a street corner doesn’t work as well as you thought is not the funniest thing in the world.

I wasn’t unhappy with the resulting portraits I delivered, I just felt that I could have done something more advanced (even if I didn’t really have the time).

But when I saw the article and how they had used one of the portraits I sent, it looked like it should, in some way. There is an interview and there is a portrait of her in front of a door to a subway station. Nothing fancy, as I said, and many times I think that makes for the best portraits.

I can’t count how many times I have delivered portraits that looks great, if maybe a little artistic and staged, together with the more ordinary ones, and my clients almost always uses the ordinary ones. I don’t know exactly why, maybe because the feel more real, maybe? Or they might fit in better in the layout?

What is the lesson to me this time? I think it is that sometimes it is better not to complicate things too much, especially when there is not much time. Better to focus on contact and choosing the right spot. Even if it forces you to use on-camera flash and take really ordinary photos.

Last week as was in Bologna, Italy, on an assignment for The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA). My job was to cover the announcement of the winner, photograph and deliver press photos from the book fair and generally supply my client with photos from different events during my two days in the city for their image bank.

As this was the tenth anniversary of the prize, some of the earlier recipients were at the fair to celebrate. During a hectic schedule I managed to take a couple of minutes with each of them, to get good up-to date portraits my client can use.

The woman in the first photo is from the Banco del Libro (2007), a non-profit institution headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela. We didn’t speak much, I just guided her to a glass door facing north with a lot of light coming in indirectly. Maybe the easiest way to get a natural portrait.

Next was the japanese illustrator Ryôji Arai, he had a translator with him for interviews, but we managed to get good portraits just using gestures and talking to each other without understanding the words. A bit like in the movie Ghost Dog, and it worked great. He won the prize in 2005 together with Philip Pullman, but unfortunately he wasn’t there.

Kitty Crowther is one of the winners since I started working for ALMA, I have taken a lot of beautiful portraits of her when she visited Sweden 2010 for the award ceremony. I took her portrait inside of the halls, with her back at the windows high up and facing a large white wall that worked as some kind of reflector. Not the window light I got near the door, but worked just fine.

Lygia Bojunga won the award in 2004 and has a face that really liked the light from that glass door. There is something I like a lot in portraits where all the features are chiseled out so you really can see the texture of the skin, wrinkles and all.

I wish I had found the spot near that glass door before I got to take Katherine Paterson’s portrait, but this turned out good anyway. We just found a spot inside the fair and I had her turning away from the window light a bit. The black and white version is good, but the mixed light and a very red carpet made the colour version pretty hardo to get right.

The Tamer Institute had one of their representatives at the fair, and here she is. They recieved the award the first year I worked as ALMA’s photographer in 2009.

Sonya Hartnett’s portrait was taken in the same hall as Kitty’s and Katherine’s, but in some way the light didn’t really work out as I had planned. I think it would have been a lot better if I could have taken it near that fantastic door, but I found that later.

All the previous winners were interviewed on video during one of the days, and I stayed close so I could ask them for a few more minutes. They have all a busy schedule during the fair, so I didn’t want to take too much of their time. But for this last one, I should have tried another location just to get it really right.

But, that is the problem with natural light, a location that has perfect light before lunch can be the worst place an hour later. But I knew that already, just forgot it at a bad moment.

A nice city by the way, Bologna, even if I had very little time to actually see more of the place than I did last year. Hopefully I will return in 2013 when Sweden also will have a big exhibition at the fair, maybe the will need a photographer?

Recently I bought two Profoto Umbrella XL (silver) with the optional Front Diffuser, they are really big and gives a soft light (of course, as they are quite big light sources) but with contrast. Maybe not the light modifier I would use primarily for portraits in the studio (I have tried it, and it is ok, but not great), my 5-foot softbox Octa is still more my choice there, but for assignments on locations they are very good. And they are easy to carry, and easy to set up.

I was hired to take publicity photos from an event a client of mine had which included a prize ceremony and they needed good photos of the winners. That included single portraits of the winners as well as group photos in different sizes.

What made me very glad was that with just two umbrellas (big ones, but still just umbrellas) I could use the exact same lighting setup as well as light settings and exposure to get good portraits and good group shots.

Simplest two-umbrella lighting setup

Here they are, in all their glory. I put two Profoto D1 250 Air with their respective Umbrella XL and put the Front Diffusers on. As high up as I could with the low ceiling, just to get a small shadow under the nose.

Two lights almost on-axis with the camera

Instead of having the two lights at 45 degree angle, I opted for a more frontal lighting, mostly because I wanted to avoid getting shadows in the group photo from the different people. If they don’t stand on a very straight line, that can be a problem otherwise, and I tend to miss that when I check the photos in the camera.

Why I didn’t place the with just a small opening for the camera and faced straight at the wall, I don’t know. Maybe that would have worked well too.

Shadows and background

But this angle worked good as well, all the people in this medium sized group photo are evenly lit, and they don’t cast shadows onto each other. The group is placed about one meter from the green wall, so there is a little, and very soft, shadow on it.

In this smaller group photo, the shadows on the wall are more visible, but that is not actually from the people but the large checks, so with a ordinary group shot there might still look normal. Even if I think it is ok with shadows, it looks a bit more natural and not like a cut out picture.

If I had more space, I could have used a third light and aimed it at the background to create a gradient and made the group stand out more, but I didn’t, and I think this worked well too. It all blends in a good way, just pure luck that the colour on the checks matched the colour on the wall in the hotel’s conference room.

The conference room we used as a studio was very large by my standards, but I think this setup can work well in smaller rooms too. It doesn’t take too much space, and with all the light coming from almost the same direction, I could put a group against a wall and it would still look good. I think.

My main idea with buying the two large umbrellas was to be able to travel without a massive amount of bags. For this assignment I could fit everything into two bags, not counting the camera bag. I think I can trim it down to the large Kata Palms-2 but for this job I brought a third monobloc, but with just two, it might fit.

I have a lot of assignments where my clients wants individual portraits and then, when I am already there, why not do a group photo as well. With a simple setup that can be used without moving anything or changing the light setting for both smaller to medium sized groups as well as portraits, it can be very useful.

All in all, I think it took less than ten minutes to set this photo shoot up, and even shorter to pack it back down. And did I mention that I didn’t need to adjust it while the group stood there waiting? Always a stressful moment to fix things with people waiting, especially for group shots where people tend to lose focus and interest pretty quick.

Feet are nothing I think adds value or interest to photos, if you don’t sell shoes, so I usually crop group shots higher. Mostly because I think it looks better, but also for the simple reason that clients tend to use tighter cropped photos more often than zoomed-out ones.

But, with a lighting setup like this, there might be good to add a reflector under each umbrella to lighten the lower part of the picture. If you would want full-body shots, the falloff made the legs and floor a bit dark.

This is something for the checklist. I try to remember it, but forget it too often. The thing is really simple, you should always take a couple of really unsharp, out of focus, and generally fuzzy photos when you are hired to photograph on location, for example at your clients office.

I don’t know why I figured out this so late in my career, but the photo above with absolutely no focus in it whatsoever is very, very useful for most of my clients. They can use it as a background, toned down behind some text in a layout, or crop it and fill out some empty space on their web site or in their annual report.

All it takes is just a switch to manual focus, overexpose it a bit and you will produce bonus photos you can include in every delivery without a lot of work. You can either send it together with the photos they ordered, or send it later as a gift if you need to have an excuse when asking for more work.

It takes a little more work to get unsharp background that are useful for compositions (like these business portraits on fake backgrounds I have been doing for a couple of clients), but having something from your clients office beats trying to find a generic stock background.

A photo with no focus is best done in the camera, I think. You can achieve a similar effect using Photoshop and Lens Blur (or some other blur tool), but it is even faster to switch off auto-focus and compose it as unsharp. The photo above is not optimal, try getting bigger areas with no details in the photo (I think stock agencies call that copy space, where you can put text), and the image will be even more useful.

Just a tip, and for me to remember.