Frank Miller style lighting?

I'd think the easiest way to do the lit sides is simply that, have a light source on each side. Maybe back a little to help keep them off the front.

I think I might have to have a quick play with recreating this

 

Definitely looks like the side lighting is using barndoors or something else to narrow the "spill". Kevin looks like there are two spots in front of him (from the dual reflections in his eyes), but whether they were very faint (fill light strength) or whether the film was digitally tweaked and darkened afterwards is hard to say.

Assuming no post-production light adjustments -- Hartigan's shot looks like tight-focused brightest light probably set to his side-rear (girl side), and a less strong light set at some angle to his side-front (there's a bit of eye reflection spot in the left eye). No reflections in the eyes makes me think there's no frontal light at all, although there might be a reflector panel of some kind (if not white, then a pale grey) to open up the shadows just a bit (and not produce any eye reflections).

Marv looks like a definite overhead light source, set towards his rear, and again those side spots. If there's a reflective sheet set up, it's set high too, to open up the facial plane shadows, but the underchin and low neck shaded by the coat are still dark.

You can use dark poster board taped to a reflector bowl as barn doors, foamcore board as reflector sheets (finely crumple up a piece of aluminum foil and then spread it over the reflector panel for a low-level, more diffuse reflection). I think the clothing too, emphasizes the side lighting, whether Marv's fabric, Kevin's strong pattern on his collar (wonder if that was digitally enhanced too, although you could get really strong reflections by painting over pattern lines with bleach and using a small UV bulb component in the lighting), and the sharp lines of Hartigan's collar.

I also do remember from seeing a film about silent films, that to light up just the eye area, it was a light or lights set up high just above eye level (for the reflections), but with blinkers or blinders around the source to limit the area lit by the light(s). Again, lightweight dark posterboard might be worth a try, as it can be cut into a wide "collar" around the light source.

Sorry I can't give you any really professional feedback, but it was fun analyzing the pictures! I agree, the Sin City film was not only SO close to the comics, but fascinating visually itself.

 

For Kevin's picture, I've got to agree; it looks like two equally strong side lights that have been flagged so that no light spills over to the front of his face. To light his eyes, it looks like he has another extremely stopped down and spotted light just to give him a stop or so difference between the black of his cheeks and the light of his eyes. And then, potentially a back light to separate his collar and shoulders from the background.

Hartigan looks more like a traditionally 3 point lighting system, with the key being on the left and possibly flagged. The fill side is more diffused, and it looks like any light that reaches the front of his face is from the fill side. And then I believe there is a backlight to give that edge around his shoulders and collar.

To try and get this lighting with dolls, you would need some tiny tiny lights. Like, stop motion size, made for mini sets. I've set up some similar lighting sets, but with full size lights, although only in production classes; I haven't taken a complete cinematography course. Unfortunately I've never been able to set up anything that complex for dolls, though, because my equipment is basically a desk lamp. With better lights, some flags, and maybe some reflectors I believe you could achieve the same look. And then of course, Sin City was digitized extensively so you can also tweak the contrast once you have the basic setup photographed.

 

You take your gorgeous pictures with just table lamps? Wow.

Well, you don't have to necessarily tape them to the light source - if you're using table lamps, you can make the equivalent out of any kind of arrangement that goes alongside and over the lamp. Try two pieces of black posterboard taped or stapled at the top and anchored onto the table by tape or books or something. Or two pieces of black posterboard (or foamcoreboard or cardboard - you can put black or colored wrapping paper inside for effects) for the sides and thinner posterboard to span the top, if you do a more rectangular arrangement.

If the light "leaks out" too high or on the sides, smaller pieces of thin posterboard taped to the main pieces, over the front of the top or bottom of the arch you've made, or folded a bit inward at the sides, should do the trick.

Lol, you want to know juryrigging, for a human shoot one time with a lot of side-lighting, the front light's bulb blew, and I used a helper holding a flashlight aimed at the face to provide just the right amount of fill light and highlights in the eyes! I was surprised myself that it worked!

 

Nope. Just highlights your genius!

You're using incandescent bulbs, right? Might I ask what the Kelvin temp is? I've been using screw-in fluorescent bulbs, but so far have had to do with 4500K instead of a true daylight balance of 5000 or 5500K. The next temp ones I've been able to find are 6500K, which have a bluish cast that has to be compensated for.

 

Well, that's the great circle of -- studying? I admire your strong but not overburnt bright areas and rich shadows. Sin City is definitely a tutorial (I've also seen the very strong side lights used in some artsy horror films, with no front fill or a colored front fill). And personally, I think color movies of the fifties are great for observing to-be-avoided over-lighting. I know it was a function of the film used at the time, but not only was the whole area lit up like high noon, but they had tons of reflector and fill light on the fronts of the actors too.

Thanks for the links. I do need to up my wattage since I want to start using better diffusion screens. Is that your diffusion screen on top in your setup picture? Nice!

And to keep on the topic -- yup, yup, gonna try a light setup like that for some gallery pix. Bruce Willis' craggy self is inspiring.....

 

Not at all! Holy COW woman you're a genius. That's... that's like being able to paint classical portraits with food coloring and cotton swabs..
Sheer awesome.

 

LOL! All my "official portrait" shots of my dolls are done in front of my shower curtain. Luckily it's pretty.

I definitely will be coming back to this and learning more, I need to challenge myself and work harder on my photography. I do way too many closeup headshots! I really admire your photography (and the work of so many others here!).

 

frank miller style,
as far as i know is simply 2 lamps.
[im talking about the art now...translated into photography]

1.Their never on one line,
one lamp is always higer/lower more backwards/forwards then the other.
2.one a bit brighter or even a lot then the other.
3.a very high contrast

Now contrast is something you probably have to set in your camera,
as some other settings.
I'm not sure what camera you use, and if you know where/how to set these.

People often forget the camera settings,
the saturation and contrast settings are ,
because these days we have photoshop.
But i 1.am to lazy for photoshop 2.want my pictures to be as i want them when i take them 3.find that my camera does a nicer job then photoshop.

Also a thing they probably used is different color lights.
And there you do have a problem with color photography.

And thats why b/w photography can be so attractive.
Different color lights [if you have a proper camera] give different effects.
I myself love to use red XB
but my father is a color light therapist so i had the luxury of testing different colors...

Hope this kinda helped you on your quest

 

It's pretty much a very classic lighting technique called "Zangenlicht" in german and I have no freaking Idea, what that could be in english sorry. But it could be clamshell lighting or sandwich lighting (though I am not exactly sure)
Well, anyway. what you do, essentially is to take two equally strong, very hard lightsources and put them on either side of your subject. In classical portraiture those lights are often socalled striplights (long, narrow softboxes), but in Sin City it looks VERY much like two hard spots from each side and very slightly behind the model. The "hilight" on the face of Kevin for example is probably two round lightsources, a whole lot weaker, than the spots in his face from slightly up above.

In the picture of hartigan, the two lightsources look a little softer, but still, the same lighting sceme, he just turned a little towards one light, so we have a little more of a seperation lighting going on, but the basic lighting concept is the same.

You have to play with the distance of your lightsources (farther away=harder light, closer in= softer light),the height and exact position a little bit, but it's not that hard. If you have small lightsorces, that give of a nice hard light, you'll be half way there. The hard lights give you a nice, high contrast, especially, if they are somewhat close up and the rest is just a little fiddling with the contrast in your camera/in postprocessing.

I think I am going to do some photos like that later! Then I'll take a setup shot for you

 

I fear, that this effect is mostly postprocessing. I'll go and watch the blueray in hopes of seeing more of it. But an approach would be probably the old trick of incidence angle equals angle of reflection, so if you can get the angle of light, camera and subject just right, you will get a glare of the glasses, but that will still light your subject ... hmmm, interesting idea ... I'll deffinitely try that! You dont necessarily have to use a lightsource as your reflection. If you use, say a white sheet of paper and light that at an angle, so that the light, that reflects off of it does not hit your subject, it will not mess too much with your lightingsetup and then you only need to put the paper in your family of angles, where reflection happens on the glasses and you should be pretty much there

 

For the lighting, there's always Strobist - http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/02/welcome-to-strobist.html
You can be surprised, what one can achieve with cheap flashguns and some creativity.

 

That is cool effect! I think if you had shown shot 2 first we'd have been able to wonder how you did that, then pull away and show us shot one as two. Great idea might have to try my hand at this.

 

What you have there is Gorgeous, I must say.
If you're still looking for that hot bright edge on an otherwise shadowy figure... I know next to nothing about photography, but I do know a bit about lighting a figure. What you've described in this thread looks like what we call Rim Lighting in my art classes. To get it, you need a light source to the side of (or above), and somewhat behind the subject. The light source is often harsh, bright, and undiffused. The core shadows are kept deep and dramatic by a general lack of any other lights. I now want to try to fiddle around with this myself and see if I can't find a way to show what I'm trying to say...

 

I use strong powerful mini flashlights.

One that you can adjust from flood (soft light) to beam (hard direct light.)

Hard light gives stronger shadows. The direct beam on a small flashlight could be aimed at one feature you want to highlight such as the glasses or eyes. Or make a half shadows "Film Noir" face. Room should be low light to show higher contrast with lit areas.

If you can adjust the iris on camera keep it closed down. You want camera to shoot crisp blacks and whites. Not shades of grey.

 

Maybe move the lights closer or find something a little less opaque than your shower curtain to diffuse the lights with (parchment paper?)?

Alternately a third light behind the subject, farther behind, angled more to point at the subject's back, considerably weaker than the two keys and not diffused might help create a backlit halo effect.

 

Good luck mau....

 

The trick to this sort of Film Noir/Hollywood in the 40's lighting is, well, the lights. Heh. Just when you think...you've got enough, you don't. You need: fill, key, kicker, backlight, scrims, more kicker and perhaps a softbox. Although....really, you don't need the softbox for what you're wanting to achieve here, MMM. You're looking for hard and harsh. The nice thing about this sort of lighting IS the harsh factor - you no longer need to concern yourself with diffusing light or avoiding strange shadows - you WANT harsh-edged shadows and a strange nose shadow is not going to be off-putting with this lighting.

One thing to remember is that a drawing is not a photograph - duh, I know you know this - but what I mean is that in a sketch, the artist gets to play lighting god in ways that we can never replicate with photography. Removing shadows and recasting falling light can be done in Photoshop but not in-camera.

Black and white is also the only choice in Film Noir lighting. It's what gives it that oomph.

You're getting super close. More lights!!!

 

Actually I wasn't thinking of backlighting the subject, but rather using a fill for the back edge of the head. (There is a word for this but my brain is failing me) The light wouldn't go directly behind the subject, but off to one side slightly, more so than the keys, and farther back too, and it would pick up where the key left off to add ooph to the slice look. But then I'm from the school of thought that you need at least three lights for studio lighting anything, so if you want to keep lights to a minimum than chucking the difusers is the way to go.

 

I find this discussion really interesting as I like playing around with lighting etc...but I'm wondering if what you're really shooting for (heehee) isn't so much the lighting trick, but exposure.

The lighting seems pretty straight forward - 2 extreme key light sources on either side, no diffusing, bouncing etc. Just Bam! Bam! on either side. So I'd set up those, maybe a bit behind so they just creep around the sides of your subject.

Then this is where you really fool the camera. Grab a desk light you can hold easily and hold it in front of your subject full blast so the subject is completely lit up. Set the exposure on your camera for that bright subject, keep holding the exposure, move the light away and then take the shot. The camera will only see the exteme highlights since you exposed for the brightest areas and you'll get that extreme contrast. The face may even be completely black. If that's too harsh, then you could place another fill in the room, set it back a ways or diffuse it, just enough to bring out the eyes...to get that glint in the eye like an eye light would do.

I played around shooting Ava this way and this is what I came up with to help illustrate. Here's the color original and after I converted it to b&w.





Can't wait to see what you come up with, sounds really cool!

 

To get a slash of light for the letterbox look all you have to do is turn your barn doors sideways and close them 9/10ths of the way. Or if that's not working you could take some black posterboard (assuming her that your lights don't get too hot) and cut yourself a gobo.

 

Wow, lovin' that effect on that photo - Smokin'! Sorry for the pun, but he's yeah, this style definitely works for him!

Last night I was talking to my co-worker about this exact thing - that band of light across the eyes...
If you don't want to fidget with lighting to get that, you can do this trick in
Photoshop and control the extent of it by making a lasso selection around the eyes at the
angle you want. Feather it (depending on how extreme you want it), copy and paste it on a new layer
and then play with that layer. Go up and down on levels or even the blending options in the layer pallette
can get cool effects.

Here's Ava again with a more conservative approach to this trick added:



This step really adds that final dimension to the the style, I agree.
Dodging the highlights of the eyes can bring them out as well.
Using Photoshop for this stuff is nice - you have the leeway with this style since it's
so graphic and you can actually get away with a lot of after-effects. That band across the
eyes could really be pushed to the limits if you wanted. I remember Bela Lugosi from
"Dracula" in particular. Loved that!

 

Hahaaa! Yes I was thinking of that shot exactly!! Love Bela .

And agreed that it would be fun to actually produce that lighting just cos that stuff is
fun! Can't wait to see how it all turns out, and you know you're going to go for the
shutters....doooo it!

 

Photo fail XD

I had a go at the two Kevin styles. As I only have one flash, I used the "set a long exposure and run around in the dark firing flash manually" method to get more sources with limited success.



The reflection on the glasses is a little tricky - this was lit by putting a laptop screen in front of her, firing manual flash on each side of her. I need more reflection on the glasses but how to do that without lighting her up too? I guess I could cheat for example by mirrored glasses or concave glass. A steeper angle of reflection would probably help too.

 

The blue reflection in the glasses is because the laptop was on the login screen XD I did put a white display in for more attempts but they came out worse.

Light directions... imagine looking top down with her in the middle of a clock and the camera at 6, the flashes would be at roughly 10 and 2.

 

OMG, classic ScaryShinyGlasses
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScaryShinyGlasses

Great shot, especially in B&W.

 

Here's one straight out of camera and resized, no other processing.



The previous one I was going for a strong light on side of face look and adjusted it to enhance that. This one was too light in front to do that easily.

 

I'm trying to think the best way to replicate this one using lights, all I can think of is making fake blinds to put across the lights, like strips of black card or something. I might have to give it a try and see what comes out.

I'm lucky enough to have my doll photo set up right next to a large window with blinds, so at certain times of the day I can get that effect coming in naturally. It's certainly been fun to experiment with:





These two shots I had the dolls lying on the ground, so the light patterns fell differently across their faces.

 

Actually the last and second last shots were taken about ten minutes apart from each other. The light in my house is always diffused by the lace curtains we have, but I can't remember why they came out differently. I do remember it wasn't overcast though. I would assume it was because he is white skin, so I have to use different settings so that he doesn't blow out.

 

I love the lighting on your works!

 

MMM - Have you seen this? I was browsing tuts on devART earlier looking for something and saw this in the mix, and thought of this thread, so I thought I'd share. I have no idea if it will help or not, but I figured I'd show ya.

 

Very 1940's chic!

Be still my Gene Tierney loving heart!

Oh and the link? It's to this page

 

I think that turned out wonderfully! That first shot is completely breathtaking she looks so real. I think you've nailed it!

 

I find this thread very fascinating but also overwhelming O_O I LOVE everything about Film Noir as it is right up my alley and I would love to take pics as such but I lack in space, I mean seriously I take all of my pics on my work table with my art lamp and a small ott lite. Do I need to invest in lots of lights and such to get this effect? maybe I should take a photography class?

Any suggestions would be great. I just want to know enough to get by and take some really nice moody pics.

 

Well that is good to know! I did see that pic of your space and I was like O_O I'm glad I'm not the only one I will try this set up this weekend as I am really excited as you really inspire me so I think I will sit down and read about my WB also cos I usually just have it set on auto...lol

I do have a question though, what is a "snoot" O_O also, is it better on the floor or the table or does it even matter? my table is so small and has all of my materials on it I would have to clear it off, course my cats are on the floor and nosy as all heck and likes to be in the pics

Thanks so much for your help, it's much appreciated

 

Oh ok, thanks! this is still all very new to me and I appreciate your help ^_^ OMG! that is too funny, I also hang my backdrop from my table top as well as my shooting on the floor cos my table is my working table.