FireTog Blog: Tiara: January 2012- Part 1

Following on from the behind the scenes images that were posted last weekend, this is the first set from that shoot. The concept was a cream/white sweater and the beach, again keeping it pretty simple. We were aiming for a romantic feel with a mixture of editorial and portrait poses and composition.

200mm 1/500sec at f/2.8, ISO 50

For a technical description of the shoot and more pics, expand the post below.

Afroditi did a great job on the make-up as you can see in the close up head shot above.
Assistant - Jonathan Sousa.

In terms of technical info, these were shot at around 11am - noon, so the light was pretty harsh. The ambient reading was in the range of ISO 100, 1/125 and between F11-F16. I positioned Tiara so that the sun was behind her and most of the time slightly off to the side. Shooting with the sun directly behind creates a lot of reflection on the water and prevents the Cyan colors from showing to their fullest. Therefore best results were obtained when the sun position is behind and to the side. Having the sun behind gives a natural hair and rim light, so that all that is needed is one light source on the opposite side of the model to act as the key light.

Einstein (640ws) strobe was used as the key light and powered by the mini vagabond and triggered by a pocket wizard mini and adjustments to the power settings were made from camera via the AC3 zone controller. Attached to the Einstein was the Paul Buff 64" Parabolic Reflector (PLM). This is the "Extreme" version of the PLM and is the most reflective PLM that Paul Buff makes. When combined with the 640ws Einstein there is more than enough output to over power the sun. The amount of power needed depends on the distance between the model and the light source. With a distance to about 6-8 feet the Einstein was running at 3 stops below full power with recycle times under 1 second. Toward the end of the shoot when Tiara was in the water (images coming in Part 2) the distance from Tiara and the strobe was probably 30-40 feet away, setting the Einstein to full power was causing her to be slightly over-exposed, so for that shot a setting of 1/2 power was used, which I think was recycling under 2 seconds.

A 2 stop ND filter was used and the ISO for the most part was set to 50. When Combined with a shutter speed of 1/500 sec this enabled me to get my aperture down to F2.8. I used the 24-105mm IS L (F4) and the 70-200 IS L vii (F2.8) lens on a Canon 1D mk iv. All focal lengthes are quoted as actual and do not take into account the x1.3 crop factor of the body.