Today is #anythingcanhappenday on the Blog. It’s also National Francis Day. You probably didn’t know that my middle name is Francis, which was also my Dad’s middle name. At its root, the name means ‘Frenchman’ or “free man” and is the anglicized version derived from the Latin Franciscus. Possibly one of the most popular names from the 1500s, some feel that the name Francis has stood the test of time and history. That said, I don’t know any people named Francis but my wife has a co-worker named Françoise.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.” ―
For me, determining proper exposure in the studio is done the same way as when I’m shooting outdoors with natural light—by using a handheld light meter. In my case it’s a Gossen Luna-Star F2* that has severed me over many years. (It was introduced in 1990.) Studio flash users are almost always going to need some kind of light meter that reads flash like the Luna Star F2 that also conveniently reads daylight too. If you’re shooting with available light or continuous light sources, you can easily get by with the reflected light meter that’s built into your camera.
Measuring Studio Light
When pointed at a subject, light meters, in camera or hand held, are calibrated to provide a more-or-less accurate exposure while measuring light reflectivity somewhere around 18% grey. With hand held meters, their exact value of measurement varies with some meters measuring 12% (the most common) and others at 14% reflectivity.
An incident meter works by reading the intensity of the light falling onto the subject, as opposed to the light reflected off of the subject like a reflective meter does. In most cases, the aperture a flash meter provides when used in incident mode will be close enough for your first test shots.
Before a or subject arrives for a photo session I always make a few test shots to determine the final exposure. Sometimes I’ll use an assistant or my wife Mary as a stand-in. When I used to shoot in my friend Jack Dean’s studio, we used his mannequin “Anna.” That way when the subject arrives you can concentrate on working with them to produce the kind of pose and expression you want.
You might want to take the time to look at the test shot’s histogram because sometimes the image on the camera’s LCD screen is to bright, too dim or maybe too contrasty. Then you can refine the exposure though additional test shots until you have an exposure that you like. If you are not familiar with the histogram function of your digital SLR, take some time to read your camera’s User’s Guide about how it work or you can check out my post about Histograms. While the example features cars, that same approach will work for people photography too. Knowing how to interpret histogram readings will help improve the exposures all of your images—flash or not
How I made this portrait: I once photographed the aspiring and now wildly successful model, Ashley Hannah in my home studio using a Panasonic Lumix GH4. The lens used was a Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 at 45mm. The exposure, measured by a Gossen Luna Star F2, was 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. The RAW file was retouched in Imagenomic’s Portraiture and tweaked in Vivenza then Color Efex .
*The Gossen Luna-Star F2 was succeeded by newer models from Gossen, such as the Gossen Lunasix F and later the Gossen Digisix 2, which have more modern features like digital displays and updated software.
Note for my Patreon Subscribers. After looking at all of the images I made in this series with Ashley Hanna, I realized I could produce a Bonus post in one of my uncensored Password Protected posts using some other images of her. If you are interested in seeing some of the other photographs from this session in that kind of a post, click CONTACT and let me know. If you are not currently a Patreon subscriber—it’s surprisingly inexpensive—details on how to sign up can be found here.