Travelite 750

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Portraits with Canon 5D MrkIII

This past weekend I tried a simple lighting set up with my daughter Sofia prior to shooting some head shots of Lucca, a cute young actor.

The lighting set up was basically a main light. Paul C Buff Einstain E 640 with an Octabox and a grid on it to better direct the light. The strobe was placed overhead at 45deg angle. Lucca (the model) was holding a small gold and sliver reflector on his lap to bounce light back into his face as a fill. The other light source was a rim/hair light. This was a Travelite 750 fitted with a 10″ reflector and a 40deg grid to avoid light spill and lens flare. The pictures were done with a Canon 5D MrkIII and a Canon 70-200 ef 2.8 IS L set at f8.

Below it’s a simple diagram of the lighting set up for this two portraits.

Lucca Lighting set up

 

Sofia's Make up

Lucca-Monti

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Photo of the day. Portraits inside of a picture frame.

Nothing new that hasn’t been done before but always fun to try. In a effort to organize my garage I stumbled into this frame and decided to use it for some fun portrait session.

The set up was not complicate it at all just a backdrop and a picture frame that I hung with a wire to the necessary eight. The light source was a Travelite 750 with a Photoflex 36″x48″  softbox place to camera left and a White reflector to the right to fill in the shadows. The Camera was a Canon 7D and the lens a Canon EfS 10-22 set a the 10mm end (to make it more cartoon looking, since I wasn’t going for the glamour look) set the lens at f 5.6. Iso was 100  speed 250 and custom white balance. The flash was triggered with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and a Flex TT5.

The one thing I would recommend to make the post work simpler is to try to keep the frame as square as possible to the camera’s sensor plane to avoid to much distortions, specially working with such wide angle lens. Once in Photoshop I corrected the perspective to make the frame square before I did anything else. once the frame was square enough I made a selection of the subject put it on it’s on layer, created a new background  and added a drop shadow the the bottom right side of the frame.

Thanks for looking and as always do not hesitate to comment or ask any questions, I do appreciate both.

Regards

Alex

 

Click on image to see larger.

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Newborn. Baby girl Pictures.

I just finished doing a shoot for a newborn baby girl. The session went great since the little one literately slept like a baby.

The set up was quite simple, I used a photography posing table to set the basket with the baby, that made it easy for moving and positioning. The lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 one with a 11″ reflector set with a 30Deg grid  for the background and the other one with a larger Photoflex softbox that was placed very close to the baby on camera’s right. On the left side of the camera as a fill light I used a Canon 580EXII with a 2×2 Lastolite softbox . All lights were triggered with Pocket Wizards Flex TT5 and a Pocket Wizard mini TT1 with the AC3 controller on the camera as the master. The camera was a Canon 7D and the two lenses for this shoot were a Canon Ef 100 macro F2.8 and as Canon Ef 24-70 f2.8L. I used the 100 macro 90% of the time for the session. I set it at  f5.6 since I was looking for a rather shallower DOP.

For the post work I used Adobe Bridge to organize and tag the files with colors and stars. From there I migrated the raw files to ACR to do some  adjustments and then open in Photoshop CS5 to do the last part. Here I did a few different styles in terms of post work from color, to black and white, duo tones and playing with vibrance  and saturation tools.

Thanks for looking.

I welcome questions and suggestions.

Alex Elias

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Still photography and feathering the light

My 3 Yr old son decided to yank this flower from the plant ( along with 12 other of it’s kind ) Since he go every flower with had there I wanted to at least have a picture of one before it die.

The backdrop I used was a piece of burlap that I thought it was going to work well. After a few shots I realized I did not liked the backdrop at all and started to pull it back to make it darker due to light fall off. Next thing you know I run out of space and I was able to still see the burlap pretty clearly.   After a few tries I figured that pulling the light farther away did help the background but the flower went darker in the same relation, so I went back to the original light position, added a black back drop and changed the angle of the light and that did the trick. Basically the light was not aiming directly at the flower, it was position in a way were the light traveled in front of the flower from right to left therefore feathering the light  it created a beautiful wrapping light that brought the flower back to life and added some depth and contrast.

Equipment Used.

Canon 7D with Canon Es 24-70 2.8L the camera was set at ISO 200 F5.6 I used one travelite 750 with a 36″x48″ Photoflex soft box (I did not need such a large box for this but it was up on the stand already) the light was triggered via Pocket wizard.

This is the end result

This picture was with the original set up.

And this two images show the light in relation to the flower.

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Indoor family pictures.

Last week’s  family shoot went out very nice nicely. Everyone was ready and very willing to make this work, specially the 6-year-old that  turned out to be a star. She sure had a blast modeling and working the camera. She tried a few different looks and also did her own make up, which by the way I think she did pretty good for 6 years of age; For sure better than I would have done.

The equipment I took with me for the shoot was my Canon 7D and although I took about 5 lenses the Canon EF 24-70 2.8 L was the one that I used all the time. Lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 triggered via pocket wizards Mini and Flex and I fitted the lights with one 48×60 photoflex Softbox for the main, and an umbrella using the bouncing side as a fill. I shot everything at F9.0 and a few at F11 for good depth of field and ISO set at 200. The one thing I must confess is that I left the white balance on auto, I forgot to lock it and now I’ll have to spend a bit of extra time in CS5 with the color correction.

Overall it was a great day and I enjoyed the session a lot.

 

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Picture of the day. Self family portrait.

I Just did some family portraits with a different look. (CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE LARGER) Taking the pictures for the final image was not too involved (aside from the lack of cooperation from my 3 yr son)  In this series of shots I used one main light to camera right  ( Travelite 750 with a 36″x 48″ Photoflex soft box) on the opposite side (camera left next to the kids) I went with a 48″ x 60″ withe reflector to bounce light and fill in the shadows. I set the camera ( Canon 7D with a EF 24-70 2.8L ) at ISO 100 F9.0 and triggered the strobe with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and a Flex TT5. Later in the shoot I introduced a Canon 580 EXII without diffusion as a hair light to create some separation that was also triggered with a Flex TT5. I set that flash to manual and used a Pocket Wizard AC3 to control the output of that flash.

The overall steps are not to complicated. I used 2 pieces of withe foam core from the arts supply for $5 each. On one I cut a 13″x16″ hole  in the center and the other one was left intact. I First took the pictures of the kids inside the frame and then I took mine holding the board without the cut off. The rest was done in Photoshop using layers.

Thanks for looking

Alex Elias

My family

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Outdoor Portraits.

Recently I went to visit my family and the place where they live features a great outdoor fireplace. Focal points like this make up for a great backdrop so I took my lights and shoot some pictures.

The camera was a Canon 7D outfited with a Canon EF 24-70 2.8L I used a Travelite 750 with a 36×48 Photoflex softbox to the right of the  people as the main light source, as a fill light I used a second Travelite 750 fitted with a shoot through umbrella to the left of the camera, the lights were triggered by a Pocket Wizard Mini and 2 Flex TT5. The ratio between the lights was about 1:3.

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Kids portraits with Canon 7D and Calumet 750 with Photoflex large soft box.

After a few months of not posting, here I am. Recently I got some new lighting equipment (Culumet Travelite 750 made by Bowen) along with a large softbox (Photoflex 3′ x 4′  )

While testing the lights, my daughter decided to join and not long after my son did too. The set up was quite simple. One light Travelite 750 at about 1/4 power with the Photoflex 3’x4′ soft box to camera right and a large white bounce reflector to camera left. I did not bother with rim, background or hair lights on this shot since it was meant to be a test shot only. The setting on the camera ( Canon 7D ) was speed 250th the lens ( Canon EF 24-70mm F.28L ) was set at F9 and the white balance was fixed at 6400K with a white balance shift to +3 green.  The flash was triggered with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and a Pocket Wizard Flex TT5.

I’ve been running some test with the Travelite’s to determine their color temperature. The bulbs are the clear ones and are rated @ 6100K +/- 300k I’ve done some test shots with the camera set from 5600K to 6400K.  I think that setting the camera anywhere from 5800K to 6100K gives me a decent result with except that I noticed a bit of a magenta cast on light flesh tones and that was the reason I set the +3 green on the shots here. Next time I’ll try a custom white balance and see if that proves to be more effective.

So far my overall felling about the lights is great. The recycle times are fast  and the flash output it’s pretty consistent. On the other hand the lights are rather large to be taken all over town but I can live with that. The modeling lamp is a 250W this much power is good to see the effects of the light placement. The unit also has a tracking feature that makes the modeling lamp adjust it’s power according to the power setting of the flash therefore when using multiple strobes at different power settings one can easily see where and how the shadows a placed.

Thanks for looking and feel free to ask me any questions.

Alex Elias