Dramatic Light for Doll Photos

Nice! I wonder if laptop USB lamps could work, too?

 

Tom, I had a look at this light when it was brought up in another thread. It's only something like 82 lumens, so the equivalent of less than a 10W incandescent bulb. So, it's a prop, not for actual lighting. You did very well with it. What sort of exposure was that?

The rule of thumb with studio lights is that your light should be about the same size as the subject you are illuminating and be about the same distance away from your subject as the diagonal size of your light. This gives you pretty controlled shadows with relatively soft edges. So, a 30cm softbox at about 40cm is perfect for a full length shot of an action figure or a head and shoulders shot of a large doll. If you are having to move your light that far away to get the hard edges you want (small light source = hard edges), you will also get that light spill you are seeing.

If you want your source to be smaller than the face of your softbox, you can mask it off. Use black card with a hole or a slit cut in it and tape it over the front of your softbox. Or you can get cinefoil, if you want something heat resistant to put directly over your lamp holder and make something like a snoot. You will be throwing away light (because you are blocking it off), but swings and roundabouts.

You can also stop the light flooding your space by flagging it. So, place (or, often in my case, hold whilst simultaneously grasping the shutter remote) a large sheet of black card close to the light and angle it so that it blocks light from hitting the background but not the figure (I assume it's the background you are concerned about).

And you will still get mixed light effects if you use mixed temperature/colour bulbs, even if you do shoot in raw. You can only set the white balance for one of the colours, not both simultaneously. I have seen shots were the warm and cool tones have been deliberately used together, though, and it was effective. You just have to know that you are deliberately using two light temperatures in the same shot and work to use that.

ETA: An example of when I started using masks. I was experimenting with noir lighting and wanted to get a tight slash of light down either side of the figure. So, it's a softbox either side, with a black cardboard mask with a slit of about 2-3 centimetres in the middle of each, then a big, silver reflector in the centre front, to light the middle a little.

So, if you want a spot effect, you can cut a hole in a piece of black card and tape that over the front of the softbox. If you want to make it really focused, you can also then recess the hole by making a 2cm rim of black card and taping that round the edges of the hole (not sure I described that very well...).

 

An umbrella, because of its size and shape, produces a large hemisphere of diffused light. It throws it out all over the place. This is great if you have a wide area you want to light fairly evenly. However, no good for those nice, tight shadows you seem to be after. That needs something directional and, ideally, focusable. I do strongly recommend getting a cheap softbox. They are immensely versatile.

And the size isn't the field of view, but the amount of the subject you want to light. So, a 3ft softbox (for example), would be large enough to light a three quarter portrait of a real person. Something between 30cm and 60cm is about right for dolls.

That is a very high ISO but, at this size anyway, it doesn't seem problematic. I assume you are hand holding, given that shutter speed. Sticking the thing on a tripod and using a slower shutter speed and lower ISO can raise image quality. Having said that, it depends on the camera and my Canon 60D copes better with high ISOs than it does with long exposures, in terms of noise. Yours might be the same. But it can certainly happily cope with something fairly brief, like 1/60. Anyway, yours might have no problem with ISO 640, so just throwing that out there, in case you need it.

But, given the situation, you got a good shot with that, so more power to you! I would be interested to see your experiments with it. Looks as though it could be a lot of fun.

 

OK. Different cameras tolerate different things. Mine is also acceptable at ISO640, but I see no reason to use it. I am often looked at askance by my photographer friends by going to ISO400 as my default setting. But I shoot still life in dim light. They shoot landscapes or use studio flash. It's a matter of what does the job for teh situation. It also just ways of working. I like to set up on my (also Manfrotto ) tripod, go away, come back, see what it looks like and make adjustments. I find it very contemplative.

Anyway, throwing out the info on different modifiers for what it's worth. Umbrellas are like light tents; they are a bit of a one trick pony. I did start out with one. moved through almost all light modifier options, and have settled on softboxes as the best option for what I do. As you are also now looking at tight shadows, they might suit you too. Worth a go!

 

Nice photos! It's great to branch out into other areas, though. Refreshing. I do the odd landscape and architecture and some studio work, but my love is still life. I find it very satisfying.

I use a couple of different bulbs in my softboxes. If colour is important, I use two halogen household bulbs in a splitter. However, they can only be on for a few seconds before the place is filled with the smell of melting plastic. For quick shots or where colour isn't important, I have some powerful LED bulbs. LED is poor on the red area of the spectrum, which isn't a white balance problem, it's just an issue with the colour rendering of that kind of bulb. However, I have found, with careful custom white balance setting, it doesn't look too bad for most purposes. As I say, if colour were an important part of the shot (which it seldom is with my pictures), I would use the halogen bulbs.

Flash is now the most commonly used light by "proper" photographers. However, I have carefully weighed up the pros and cons of continuous light versus flash for still life and have firmly come down on the side of continuous light, not least because its WYSIWYG nature suits the contemplative approach better.

An LED panel might be a useful alternative to a softbox. Does it have a diffuser of some sort and, if so, is it effective? A softbox basically gives you a rectangle of even light, potentially the same as an LED panel. So, you could make cardboard masks for it, use grids with it. All the stuff that you can use to focus light from a softbox.

 

That sounds like a nice piece of kit. My LED bulbs have perhaps twenty bulbs in them and, without a diffusion panel on my softbox, the light is distinctly dabbled. That panel really would be a good alternative to use for a focused light. Being a cool bulb, you could rough up a black paper snoot for it and make yourself a spotlight. The possibilities!

 

This was a great thread on lighting . I learn quite a bit .

 

You never know!

 

Those are some nice, soft-edged shadows there. Looks like you're having fun!

 

Coming back to this, as I have saved an example of what I was talking about up there. @TomB, you talked about a difficulty keeping your backgrounds dark enough and controlling light spill. I mentioned flagging with black card as a possible solution. I recently took a photo and I had this problem, with the background being too bright and so distracting. So, my solution is to hold a large piece of card close to the light source, then move it about until I am happy with the way the light falls on the background. Generally, move the shadow as close as you can to your subject, without it actually starting to block the light from their face. As I generally find that the lit side of the face is too bright and needs bringing down a bit in post processing, I do tend to let the cast shadow -just- touch the lit side of the face. With this one, I liked the image with some areas of light at diagonal corners of the background, as it adds some interest and is also like the backgrounds used in the 17th-18th century portraits I am currently obsessing over. I therefore held the card at an angle. As I am holding the card (and the shutter release cable) and not looking through the viewfinder, it does take a few goes before you have found a position that does what you want. You could use your preview screen, if you have a rotatable one. I can't see the bloody thing from anything more than a foot away, so I don't even try that. Anyway, this is what it does and that is how I do it. It's a handy technique, I find.

So, pretty self explanatory. Left image is a single light, illuminating the figure and background (also with a matt silver reflector on the dark side of the face, to lighten the shadows there). Right image is with same light and reflector, in same position, but with a flag darkening the background. The darker background helps the face come forward in the image. Also adds some moodiness to it. So, there you are. Another idea for modifying light.