It was a very fun experience, partly because I just love doing portrait work and interacting with people, and also because I had to improvise on my own.
Firstly, we didn't have a lot of space. How much space did we have? Well, we shot the photographs in a small class-room like environment filled with computers in rows. That put me in a bad position because I couldn't light my subjects with lights positioned far away to get an even spread of light. I couldn't move the subjects much because, well, there wasn't exactly much space to move about.
Secondly, this was a voluntary shoot, and I had no budget. I had to borrow another flash and ebay radio-trigger. Many thanks to Ziteng and Sam Wu respectively for the 2 pieces of equipment. Also, I don't own a backdrop system, and I don't own any backdrops, so I borrowed one 1 x 1.5m black cardboard sheet from the school's art room as the background. That was clamped to two notice-board-ish stands, also borrowed from the school.
However, what I did have was manpower. Since this was a club (and since I am mentoring the club), I was able to get almost every one of the senior members involved. I had someone hold the reflector, I had someone manage attire and pose, someone to call out the 'next in line' names, and someone to manage moving my background light about (to suit heights). Thanks guys!
With the very small space, I lit the subject with a 430EXII @ 1/4 power, 24mm into a shoot-through umbrella, positioned high at about 1m from the subject. For the background light, I velcroed a blue-plastic filter (I found it on my dad's old flash back from 1988) onto my 580EXII, and used masking tape to mount on a blue dome for my lightsphere. Set my 580EXII to 1/2 power and 105mm, and I was good to go. Set my camera with 70-200 to 1/80 to 1/100, f/5.6, ISO 200, and shot all photos that way.
Light Diagram for SWAT (Saints Wiz Animation Team) photos:
Setup shot for SWAT photos in our impromptu studio:
The results I got left me quite amazed while 'chimping' on my LCD screen. I would've done a lot better if I had a third flash for the hair-light, but beggars can't be choosers. I also didn't have another cardboard sheet for a flag, so light from my brolly flash spilled onto the background on the left. To counter that, I post-processed some vignetting in Adobe Lightroom2.
After that, I had some time to kill, and my old teacher wanted me to shoot him. I tried side-lighting him with my 580EXII at the same settings sans blue filter (the light diagram is slightly wrong with the color). Results didn't look too bad.
Overall, it was a good experience. Next time, I'll come ready with 3 flash units, and hopefully with a bigger space. Oh, and I'll shoot tethered to the master computer too-- saves lots of time with the uploading and stuff.
Cheers,
Zexun
