Harvey

[pschlute]

Harvey is a playful Bernese belonging to a friend of mine. I did a portrait shoot of him yesterday.

[lovelife65]

Harvey is a playful Bernese belonging to a friend of mine. I did a portrait shoot of him yesterday.

Just beautiful!!!!

[pschlute]

Just beautiful!!!!

Thank you Sharon, says Harvey !!

[Manfred M]

A nice image Peter. The left side of the image is extremely effective as the lighting provides good separation from the dark background. The right side, I find less effective because your subject and background are just too close in tone to be effective. For a human subject, a hair light would have been the obvious choice, but suspect a dog might not hold still with a flash firing.

Perhaps a bit of dodging to open up the dark areas a bit to bring out some of the texture in the fur?

[pschlute]

Perhaps a bit of dodging to open up the dark areas a bit to bring out some of the texture in the fur?

Thanks Manfred. This was the first picture I processed and as I did a few more I was concerned I was was letting the back of his head blend in too much with the background, so I have attempted to bring it out more in other pictures.

A question about shooting against a black background: For this shot I used ISO 100 1/180 (sync) and f8 with two off camera flash units in manual, softbox and reflective umbrella (at - 1 stop) at 8 and 4 o'clock position. I took test shots at varying manual power settings until the highlights ended at about 75% of the histogram range. I figured this would give me a black enough background (not grey), and I could bring up the highlights and mid tones in pp which I did. Any suggestions for a better approach to this?

I know that the more separation between subject and black background will help to stop the background becoming grey, but when setting up in someone's home this can be difficult to achieve.

[LePetomane]

Peter, that is a beautiful portrait of a beautiful dog. I'd be embarrassed to post my dog photos with all of the talent that is here. Hell, I can't even get my dogs to pose.

[Shadowman]

Nice rich colors, nicely done.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred. This was the first picture I processed and as I did a few more I was concerned I was was letting the back of his head blend in too much with the background, so I have attempted to bring it out more in other pictures.

A question about shooting against a black background: For this shot I used ISO 100 1/180 (sync) and f8 with two off camera flash units in manual, softbox and reflective umbrella (at - 1 stop) at 8 and 4 o'clock position. I took test shots at varying manual power settings until the highlights ended at about 75% of the histogram range. I figured this would give me a black enough background (not grey), and I could bring up the highlights and mid tones in pp which I did. Any suggestions for a better approach to this?

I know that the more separation between subject and black background will help to stop the background becoming grey, but when setting up in someone's home this can be difficult to achieve.

Peter - I do all of my studio flash work setup with an ambient light flash meter, so I have a system down that works well.

The problem with shooting to get a black background is that you are depending on light fall-off to ensure that the background is black, so to effectively shoot this way, you need a space that is large enough to have your subject far enough away from the background.

When I look at your image, the first thing that strikes me is that you have underexposed the shot. If I bring the image into Adobe Camera Raw and have a look, the blue areas show where you have lost all shadow detail, i.e. pure black (and these areas cannot be recovered in post).




The only time that I set my lights to provide equal output is when I am doing multiple subjects in a high key setting and I want to eliminate all shadows. Any other time, I work with lighting ratios where I use a key light and a fill light. Depending on the amount of drama I am looking for in the shot, I will go any where from a 2:1 lighting ratio to a 4:1 lighting ratio. In this situation I would likely have set the camera left light (key light) to give me a correctly exposed face and pushed in enough fill light on the camera right side to ensure that I got all the detail in the fur.

As a starting point, I would set the camera left light to meter at f/8 and would start the camera right light at a reading of f/5.6. I would then use my 1° spot metering attachment to get a reflected light reading. If you want a pure black background, then the light reading from the background should be 4-1/2 stops* higher than the exposure on your subject. In this case, you would be looking at a value of f/1.7.

I tend to have a little lighter touch when I shoot and would probably go to f/2 so that there is just a touch of texture; i.e. the background is a very dark gray. The reason I do this is that I print and want a bit of low end data. An ink jet printer outputs everything below ~15 as pure black.

I would likely not shoot this with an umbrella just because of the light spill from that type of light modifier. In situations like this, I like using an egg crate grid on my soft boxes to manage / minimize the light spill onto the background.

If the room is not deep enough to give enough light drop off, I would burn down the background in post to give me the background density I am looking for.

Doing this without a flash meter is a real pain and quite unpredictable.

I hope this helps.


* Note - just a quick explanation of the 4-1/2 stops, etc. impacting the appearance of the background.

A reflected light meter measurements are based on showing correct exposure for a middle gray / 18% gray. A reading of 4-1/2 stops higher gives a pure black background. If you have a proper exposure of the subject at f/8, then a reflected reading of f/1.7 will result in a pure black background A reading of 2 stops lower gives a pure white background; i.e the subject meters an f/8 exposure and lights on the background measure f/16.

Black in a flash environment is achieved through the inverse square law. The other variable is the colour of the background. For simplicity, let's assume a neutral coloured background to keep things simple. Given enough distance from the light source, a pure white background will appear black in the image. Use a black or dark gray background, it will come out as pure black with the lights closer to it.

All this probably sounds a bit confusing, but it actually does work this way.

[lovelife65]

Peter, that is a beautiful portrait of a beautiful dog. I'd be embarrassed to post my dog photos with all of the talent that is here. Hell, I can't even get my dogs to pose.

Oh come on! If I post my amateur snaps on here you will certainly top that! Bring em on dogs are amazing subjects! Getting them to pose...now that’s a whole nother topic.

[pschlute]

Thanks Manfred, I will do some practice based on your suggestions.

[pschlute]

Hell, I can't even get my dogs to pose.

The secret is to have an assistant with a bagful of treats !!

Thanks for the kind comments.

[DanK]

I have no expertise either with this sort of lighting or pet photography, but I do have a couple of reactions.

I took test shots at varying manual power settings until the highlights ended at about 75% of the histogram range.

Why not adjust until the highlights are at about 95%? That would give you both the highest possible image quality and the most shadow detail to work with. You can then darken in post, globally or locally.

A reading of 4-1/2 stops higher gives a pure black background. If you have a proper exposure of the subject at f/8, then a reflected reading of f/1.7 will result in a pure black background A reading of 2 stops lower gives a pure white background;

That adds up to a total dynamic range of only 6.5 stops. The DR of the camera is presumably 12 stops or more, and the screen and a printer with coated paper should be something like 8 stops, no?

[pschlute]

Why not adjust until the highlights are at about 95%? That would give you both the highest possible image quality and the most shadow detail to work with. You can then darken in post, globally or locally.

Because my experience so far in darkening the background in Photoshop when dealing with a dog portrait is not straightforward. Because of the fur the fringes of the subject are very fine and numerous. It is impossible to isolate the subject using any of the selection tools. I can darken the background using the burn tool in "shadow" mode which will work ok with a light animal, but a black haired beast like Harvey would mean I am darkening his fur at the same time when I do the margins.

[Manfred M]

Because my experience so far in darkening the background in Photoshop when dealing with a dog portrait is not straightforward. Because of the fur the fringes of the subject are very fine and numerous. It is impossible to isolate the subject using any of the selection tools. I can darken the background using the burn tool in "shadow" mode which will work ok with a light animal, but a black haired beast like Harvey would mean I am darkening his fur at the same time when I do the margins.

If you look at my version of the image, I did use Photoshop to darken the background. In my experience I find the "Select Subject" button that is associated with the Quick Selection tool often does an adequate job for this type of work. I just invert the selection and use a curves adjustment layer to pull down the background.

[rpcrowe]

Wonder how this looks?



I placed a NIK Viveza control point on the back of the dogs head selecting most of the head and did a shadows adjust of about 50...

[pschlute]

Wonder how this looks?

Richard, you have certainly brought out more detail in the back of his head, but have dulled the brown colours and also the background is no longer black.

[Manfred M]

That adds up to a total dynamic range of only 6.5 stops. The DR of the camera is presumably 12 stops or more, and the screen and a printer with coated paper should be something like 8 stops, no?

Dan - this concept is something I got from the Frank Doorhof's book: "Mastering the Model Shoot" when dealing with reflective light readings using a light meter to setup up studio lighting. This deals with using a 1° head on a hand-held light meter which meters to middle gray / 18% gray used at the camera position and pointing at the background.

"
- Black is approximately 4.5 stops lower
- 1.1% gray is 4 stops lower
- 2.2% gray is 3 stops lower
- 4.5% gray is 2 stops lower
- 9% gray is 1 stop lower
- 18% gray is middle gray
- 36% gray is 1 stop higher
- 72% gray is 2 stops higher
- White is approximately 2.3 stops higher"

I tend to shoot against white backgrounds and find that having the background at 2-stops above the light level on the subject does give me pretty close to pure white, without blowing out. I often cut that back a bit because I don't always like the impact of the light bouncing off the background has on the edges of my model, but do find that going above 2 stops blows out the white background.

I've tried his "rule" when shooting a model against a black background and find that I still retain a bit of shadow detail when I am at 4 stops and the model is wearing black.

[pschlute]

Lots of good information in this thread, things for me to try. Manfred I don't have a light meter that will give me a 1 degree coverage ( I have a Sekonic L308S). Could I cheat by using my camera in spot meter mode, open up 4.5 stops, photograph a grey card, and eyball the histogram ?

[Manfred M]

Lots of good information in this thread, things for me to try. Manfred I don't have a light meter that will give me a 1 degree coverage ( I have a Sekonic L308S). Could I cheat by using my camera in spot meter mode, open up 4.5 stops, photograph a grey card, and eyball the histogram ?

According to the Sekonic website the 308S has a 40° reflected light mode. That might do, especially in the shooting environment in this image; the whole background looks dark.

I have "cheated" with the "blinkies" on my camera when trying for a white background and that can work, but takes more or a trial and error approach (and more time) than with the light meter. I suspect you might be able to try using the camera histogram to see if that works; it's not something I have tried myself.

I have the Sekonic L-358 and have an accessory 1° reflected head that I use.

[pschlute]

According to the Sekonic website the 308S has a 40° reflected light mode. That might do, especially in the shooting environment in this image; the whole background looks dark.

I have "cheated" with the "blinkies" on my camera when trying for a white background and that can work, but takes more or a trial and error approach (and more time) than with the light meter. I suspect you might be able to try using the camera histogram to see if that works; it's not something I have tried myself.

I have the Sekonic L-358 and have an accessory 1° reflected head that I use.

I will give both methods a try. I use a black/grey reversible Lastolite collapsible background. I am also going to remember the advice about umbrella versus softbox when using a black background. Logical really but had not occurred to me.

I am pretty new to using flash creatively. Despite being an amateur photographer for 40 years I had never understood flash use except to brighten a dark shot (on camera). Two years ago I made it my mission to learn and there is whole different world of possibilities. I love it, but like everything in life, so much to learn.