Portraits in the Living Room

[deluco]

This is a series taken last night of my youngest son's family. The background is a Wescott collapsable muslin but it's on a metal frame that pulls it tight. You can't even tell that it's muslin because it shows no wrinkles. Main is a Lumedyne at 50 w.s. thru a Wescott Halo. Fill is a Lumedyne into an umbrella next to the camera, same side as main. Hair light is a Vivitar 285 on a light stand, set to manual at lowest power setting...1/16th I believe. Background is lit with a Morris wide angle flash with built in optical slave. I fire the main and fill with radio slave, but you can do this with camera strobes and umbrellas if you pump up the iso to 400. I'm doing a portrait workshop in March at camera club and will be doing this with less than $100.00 in equipment (not including strobes). Sort of a "Poor Man's Lighting" setup.

[deluco]

My son with significant other only.* He sat on a phone book to bring him up a bit higher. The background light didn't go off but I liked these expressions best of them all. I don't care for the merge of his sweater with the background on the left but will adjust for printing.

[deluco]

Last one, I promise. Mother and daughter. Test shot taken before I started the group. Cute...

[Paul Shields]

Jim, these are all very good and perfectly lit. I like nbr 1 particularly - the diamond shape of the pose and the fact you've captured all of the subjects looking at you, and all looking quite relaxed! i usually end up with at least one blinking or yawning or something... :P

[deluco]

Originally Posted by Paul

Jim, these are all very good and perfectly lit. I like nbr 1 particularly - the diamond shape of the pose and the fact you've captured all of the subjects looking at you, and all looking quite relaxed! i usually end up with at least one blinking or yawning or something... :P

Actually, that's a construction using two images. The best expression of the baby was in this base image, but I had to take the mask of Cameron (center, standing) from another image, as he was goofing on me with his eyes in this image. I LOVE DIGITAL. If this wasn't digital, I would have had to settle for another image, or paid the lab to do it. I took about ten and still had to do a construction because of the baby.

[dc2]

Jim it might be poor mans lighting set up but theres nothing cheap looking about it .
Thanks for sharing this interesting post

[deluco]

Originally Posted by dc2

Jim it might be poor mans lighting set up but theres nothing cheap looking about it .
Thanks for sharing this interesting post

Thank you both for the kind words. Actually THIS setup is not poor man's, but I will be recreating this in March with poor man's lighting. Will probably pump it up to 400 ISO (this one is 100 ISO) so that I can get at least 5.6 at half power with my camera strobe into an umbrella.

I just found out that the Vivitar 285 has been discontinued. Bummer. The good news is that the Sunpak 383 also has manual settings down to 1/16th power, also 120 guide number, and it's cheaper than the 285 at $80.00 mail order.

[J Holmes]

Jim,
Very nice indeed. Would you be willing to post a shot of your setup?

[mikej]

They are all nice, except for one thing that detracts from the overall image. That's the white underneath the dark wrap or what ever that is she is wearing. It's the white that is below it that is really detracting. If the dark over part had covered all the way down, the white wouldn't be that bad at all.

Mike

[deluco]

Originally Posted by Mike Jordan

They are all nice, except for one thing that detracts from the overall image.* That's the white underneath the dark wrap or what ever that is she is wearing.* It's the white that is below it that is really detracting. If the dark over part had covered all the way down, the white wouldn't be that bad at all.*

Mike

I agree