hitting the street with the lumiquest softbox III

(UPDATE: February 2012; after I posted this I realised that some of the latter shots were a bit dark; the effect of the Softbox is visible but needed a bit more power, and it was underexposed overall. For many, many months, years in fact, I always meant to dig out the shots and lift them a bit in Photoshop but never got around to it.

So, I’ll just leave them the way they are and leave a note to myself as to why: it was very bright daylight and I wasn’t able to see the camera LCD clearly. I was gauging relative light ratios from the image but not looking at the histogram. If I had, I might have dialled in more power or opened the aperture a little.

Also, I’ve since invested in Pocketwizard Flex and Mini units which make outdoor flash triggering a breeze; Nikon CLS is very unreliable in strong daylight. Okay, on with the post.)

I got a LumiQuest Softbox III last week and wanted to put it to use straight away. Its main appeal to me is as a close in soft lighting source for portraits, useable handheld if necessary with no real awkwardness. I could use it at events to get awesome off-camera lit portraits anywhere, worlds away from the usual top-mounted flash look even when bouncing said flash off a ceiling. I could also use it as a soft fill against an umbrella key, or for moodier top lit shots, something I can’t quite do with the umbrella.

Basically, versatility and portability!

For a long time I’ve wanted to have the confidence to walk up to strangers and ask permission to shoot a portrait of them, totally for free, just because I think they look very photogenic. Missed lots of potential opportunities that way, so I decided to take the Softbox out for a walk along Putney Embankment last week. It was a sunny afternoon and I told myself the worst that could happen was people I asked said “No.” and that’s fine because there’s loads of other people to ask.

As it happens, everybody I asked said “Yes.”, but I was pretty selective, and I didn’t ask that many people in the end – the thing is I seemed to have chosen the time of day that a lot of mothers were out taking their babies and children for walks, and I didn’t want to bother them! And there were a lot of joggers out too and I thought leaping into their path with a huge camera and flash might put them off their pace.

I’d done some test shots first (since deleted, should have kept them to give you a laugh). I kept the SB-800 on 1/4 power, triggered via CLS from the D200, which was in manual at ISO 100, around f/4 on average (to give my auto-focus a bit of a chance), and whatever shutter speed got the background roughly one stop underexposed.

Getting started

The first target in my sights was a gentleman by Putney Bridge recording some footage for a film he’s making. We got chatting about what he was filming, then about cameras after I told him about the softbox. The first shot I took was to meter for the ambient light, getting the sky I wanted. I just framed up and shot, didn’t bother focussing. Then I brought the softbox up to camera left, pretty much arms length.

At this point I had a 1/4 CTO gel on the flash and was shooting Sunny. I decided he was just a bit too warm, and took it off. I also thought it looked a bit too ‘lit’, what with a lot of the background being in shadow and giving it a bit too much contrast to his face. We turned around to frame the bridge in the background and shot this next one.

Thing is, I think I should have left the gel on! Either that or switched to Cloudy white balance or warmed the Sunny one up to -2 or -3 on the camera (Nikon terminology, not sure what it’s called on Canon). It’ll make a great B&W and if I did want to warm it, it’s a simple job to apply a filter or curve in Photoshop, but I wanted to post ‘straight out the camera’ shots for this post.

I gave my portraitee a card with my contact details in case he wanted to email me for a copy later, and went for a walk along the river. The next people I approached were a couple coming my way.

I wasn’t actually sure if this shot had worked out at the time because the sunlight was so strong it was tricky to see the LCD properly, but I liked the result once I saw it on screen at home. I think it’s on the verge of being too much in shadow on the right but the detail is there, so I got away with that! I asked his girlfriend if she would like one too, or one of them together, but I’d not thought about how it would work with the comparatively small light source and two people in a portrait situation – would the drop off be too much to light both of them? It turns out by bringing it around towards me a little, closer to the axis, there’s more than enough power to light them.

I’d also had the benefit of a sliver on sunlight coming in from back right getting a bit of his hair and his neck and jawline, which I hadn’t thought of before and only noticed when I got home. In the top photo, the sun is camera left, as is the flash, so while I’m underexposing the ambient light for the background, I’m bringing his already shadowed face even more into shadow.

The next few shots were of a group of people walking together. They were foreign but I never asked from where (shamefully – I was a bit too nervous about not seeming like one of those people selling portraits on the street!), so I explained to them that I just wanted to practice and it was totally for free – I took an unlit shot again, both for checking the background and for reference later.

Again with the cold skin tones! I think I’m still in Sunny at this point. I like it but it’s a bit underlit on his face – I was bringing the light into the shot and then backing it out till just out of frame. I think this is an example of not aiming it properly at his face.

With the girls I tried lowering the position of the light a little, rather than it being just above eye level. The effect is more noticeable in the left hand shot, but for me with these what’s really not working is the lack of a back light or fill, which is because I’d positioned them totally in shadow as you can see from the first shot of the man.

That was because I’d been wanting to make sure the D200 pop-up flash was triggering the infra-red sensor on the SB-800, as opposed to any creative reasons! When I was testing on myself I was in direct sunlight and there were a lot of mis-fires. It works a lot better in shadow. You can see the full extent of what the softbox is throwing at them, but it’s taught me to remember considering the sun as fill when positioning a portrait like this.

My next subjects had absolutely no say whatsoever in whether I shot them:

Clockwise from top left – no flash; flash high camera left (creeping into frame actually); flash further out of frame by a few inches (too far, really); flash closer but coming from under the arm. I like the last shot – obviously it’s too close and too far under the arm, but varying the position of the softbox definitely produces different enough results. With someone else holding it if you don’t have a stand with you, you could definitely make some strikingly different looks with this one light. I might even ask them to hold it themselves and see what I get.

My last willing ‘volunteer’ was a young woman reading in Bishops Park on the other side of Putney Bridge. At this point the wind was blowing enough to whip her hair around her face but we got one good shot that wasn’t too crazy!

I think it’s a little underexposed overall – I should have opened up the aperture if possible, or slowed the shutter and brought the light a little closer, but as before it was impossible to see the LCD at the time. Lifting the levels in Photoshop will work great for it. The fill from the sun on the right of her face works though!

All done!

And that was the end of the day for me – I walked back and didn’t see anyone else that looked like they might be up for it, and the closer I got to home the more the confidence to ask slipped away from me anyway, but I was pleased with what I learnt.

The shots I got varied a fair bit in level of exposure, because the real trick, it turns out, is getting the position of the handheld softbox right – as I was keeping the settings of the camera and flash power pretty much the same, the biggest control over the power of the light against the ambient comes from how close the light is to the subject.

I also noticed I wasn’t getting much variety in composition and frame size as I’m limited to an arm’s length from everyone and only have one hand left for holding the heavy camera and lens – need to build those forearms up! If I had the flash and softbox on a lightweight stand or someone else was holding it I’d have much more flexibility, but that’s for another day.

Lessons learned:

1) Get the warmth of the light right – either a gel or warm up the overall image in the camera

2) Make sure I’m directing the light at their face correctly

3) Bear in mind the position of the sun as a fill or backlight

4) Stay in the daylight to avoid too contrasty a look with heavy shadows on one side

And now I’ve done it once, there shouldn’t be anything stopping me going out and doing it again next time there’s a good weather day for it!