dav.d photography tips » Studio Lighting

Behind the Scenes of a Salt Flats Photo Shoot

dav.d — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:56:53 +0000

Finally! Here is an example of a lighting setup I used with 3 studio lights on location. I am using Alien Bees for my lights with an Alien Bee’s Vagabond battery pack for portable power. I am use the CyberSync transmitter and receivers. These are Alien Bee 800s which are fairly powerful. But lately I have been craving more power so I can truly overpower the sun. Maybe White Lightings would be cool. But if I had the money for it I might someday get the Elinchrom Quadra RX.

But for now this set up works pretty well. I was able to get about 150 shots with 3 lights on one battery before the battery started to show signs of weakness. That is when I came in and used just one Alien Bee on the battery and I used 2 Nikon SB-800s attached to the CyberSync receivers. And that worked pretty well for the rest of the shoot. So in about 3 hours we got about 250+ shots. Not to bad. It is expensive? Not as expensive as a ProPhoto or all Elinchrom setup. So it will work for most people who want to have some power.

Alien Bees Studio Lighting on the Utah Salt Flats

I am using a boom arm with a c-stand so I can get light in front of and above the subject without the light poll being in my way. I am also using ankle weights to weight down the light stands so they don’t fall over. I don’t want to lose a flash head to wind.

Lighting Set Up for Food Photography

dav.d — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:04:05 +0000

Hooray! My first behind the scenes of a lighting set up. I have been working on taking one photograph a day at least for an entire year. Today I really had a hunger for some frosted sugar cookies and I ended up getting some donuts as well. So when you have some really yummy and beautifully decorated food you might as well photograph it right? Thats what I thought.

So here is my lighting set up – I am using a Nikon SB-800 on a Manfrotto light stand. I am using the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System) to trigger the speedlight remotely. It is shooting through a 24″ Lastolite Ezybox softbox. I often use this lighting set up when photographing people and it works for photographing most anything. I have a reflector on the other side of the donuts to fill in the shadows cast on the food.

Food looks best when it is brightly lit and it looks best when lit from the side or from behind.

Behind the scenes of food photography

The next two photos show off the difference of the shadows with and without the reflector. This would also work with people. I love to have dramatic lighting where the light come from one side or the other – but sometimes that is too much drama and you can put a second light on the opposite site OR you can use a reflector. And reflectors are a lot cheaper.

Donut light with softbox and reflector

Softbox only - no reflector