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No comments | Permalink | PDF Strobist David Hobby has once written in his blog that he writes down the lighting setups for later reference.I decided to make some reference cards for the future use in case I run into situations where there is only so little time to do lighting setups and actual photography. In these cases, there is no time to test everything out until you get perfect exposure. As an example I can tell you what happened last weekend. My daughts are eager figure skaters and belong to figure skating club. Last weekend they had an annual figure skating show and they had a minor role in it as village kids. My wife made the costumes for them and it was time to put them on. It was about half an hour until we had to head for the skating arena. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them earlier and I really wanted to get their portraits done with the costumes on. The strobes, umbrella, lightstands and backdrop was setup in just few minutes after which I took a cheat-sheet I made earlier of similar setup. I quickly looked at the figures and entered them into my flashes and camera. I looked at the clock, I had about three minutes left to take the pictures. Quickly I asked my daughters to pose in front of the camera and because of a hurry, I didn't even remember to check the first picture whether the exposure was correct. Because the settings were exactly the same as in my previous photo shoot, there was little to worry about because the pictures turned out just great. So when can there be such a hurry or need to take pictures without trial-error possibility? Anyone who has photographed children knows these don't own as wide attention span or interest as adult models do. When there is need to constatly adjust lights and exposure, there is also a chance you might miss an expression worth a million bucks. Even worse, the kid might get totally fed up just sitting and refuse to be photographed. Try explaining a paying customer "Sorry, your kid isn't up to it" when the kid really did sit there for 30 seconds with a perfect smile while you were playing with your camera settings and flash power. There is one thing you have to take into consideration though; things like ambient light and used space must be pretty much the same as the one used when you wrote the reference card. In another words, this reference can be great if you shoot similar portraits from time to time. As a person who has studied aviation and hold a private pilot's license, I have learned a great way to make sure everything is done as should be and nothing is left undone. Before each flight, we had to go through a booklet containing a checklist. We had to check everything, I mean everything step by step even how silly or pointless it seemed. It might sound silly to check that communications are on but let me tell you from experience, that once you fly high above and wonder why no one answers my request for approach landing makes you appreciate going through things beforehand. Same idea with a camera. A cheat-sheet like a reference card of your lighting and camera setup may prevent you from forgetting something important. It really pays off to check the aperture, shutter speed and ISO to make sure they are on track if you are in a hurry. You can download wonderful Photoshop PSD templates for your lighting setup diagrams created by Kevin Kertz at http://www.diyphotography.net/lighting-diagrams Well, sometimes it pays to get a child bored with photography...  |
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