Reply To: Lights

[ebi]

Who regularly shoots at f/18?

When you want to shoot with a lot of power so that you get some light on the background, but not a lot of depth. Take a look at the following link:

http://www.greglotus.com/story/s/beauty/

Most of the closer portrait images are shot with a very small but powerful light source. Typically, 2 Profoto 7A 2400 w/s packs, a bi-tube head with an extra small softbox, at a high angle. So it’s a soft light with very minimal spread. Sometimes it’s further back for more spread, but you get the general idea that if you keep the subject off the background, you can add just a little highlight to the background while still making it look like it’s not a million miles away. It’s still recognizable as something. You can have varying degrees of gray, all the way to black by just moving your subject further away from the white background. moving your light to follow (it’s typically on a roller) and adjusting power. Of course for this, you are going to need a pretty decent sized studio.