"School of Portraiture" - Lesson 07 - Introduction to Gels

[Colin Southern]

Won't be posting. Too busy taking notes and trying out your techniques. Learning so much in such a short time. Thank you for your brilliant series of seminars which are full of in-depth, complex technical information and yet are so lucid and easy to comprehend. It really should go against the grain for an Ozzie 'to dip his lid' to a gent from the Land of the Long White Cloud. "But in your case I does it willingly and with as much grace as I can. After all, it is only photography we are talking about and not the really serious stuff like cricket! " Thank you for an excellent series from which I personally have learned so much.
ucci

Thanks Ken,

Although keep in mind that we haven't forgiven the Aussies for the under-arm bowling incident yet!

I was in the Air Force at the time, and we had a RAAF aircraft land at the base ... so of course we marshalled them in with cricket bats instead of the usual paddles! And when the crew got out, they bowled a tennis ball at us ...

... underarm of course!

[pono]

Don't let your gels touch the flash itself. It will burn holes in them.

[OCB]

Hi, all! Another beginner here, but I've just finished reading through all the lessons and can now feel my head bulging with the information. Now I just need to find some willing weather and models and I can get started with the posting.

I've been interested in photography to some extent for quite a long time, but never really got round to putting the theory into practice with my succession of point and squeeze cameras. I had a little bit of experience almost a decade ago with my dad's old Canon EOS 500 (no D!), but was a poor student at the time so it got shelved largely due to the cost of film!

Last Christmas we bought a new P&S camera (Nikon Coolpix somethingorother) to replace my old Casio Exilim which had acquired a small scratch on the lens. Unfortunately, the Nikon turned out to be less P&S and more PoS with massive delays between pressing the button and the shutter going and with abysmal low light performance. This drove me to looking into getting a DSLR and starting to Do It Properly.

Based on the recommendations of one of my friends, and already having some Canon bits from my dad's SLR, I bought an EOS 350D from ebay. Sadly, the 28-200mm lens from the 500 is a Sigma and has some issues with the more modern camera (no or possibly dodgy autofocus, no aperture control - stuck on F4), so I've bought a cheap second hand kit lens (28-80, I think) for normal use. I also have 2 flashes (a small one and a big one!).

Finally, one of my friends also has an EOS 500 which he doesn't use, however he also has a load of bits to go with it, so I temporarily have another kit lens (28-90), a zoom tele lens (28-300, I think - something to 300 anyway) and a fisheye thing that screws onto the end of one of the lenses!

My current priorities are to get bigger memory cards (probably an 8GB - just got a 1GB at the moment) and a spare battery or two, but these are just so I can shoot longer rather than shoot better. From reading this course, I think I'd like to add a reflector, possibly gels and a shoot-through umbrella... Oh, and a remote trigger for the flash(es). And finally a grey card! (can you tell this list is growing?)

I've not had the camera very long yet, so I've not taken any carefully posed portraits - lots of quick snaps, getting the feel for different options, but I did go to an air show the weekend after I got it. I won't post the pics here (completely the wrong forum, but here's a link), but I will say that I found it useful for getting the hang of using the camera and finding out what the longer lenses can do. It's very different to portrait photography, I think, but hopefully the experience will help a bit.

I know I've said a lot here, and all of it without posting any actual portraits for critique, however I shall endevour to fix that this evening, if the model is willing! Looking forward to learning!

--------

Oh, and rather than start a new post... A couple of questions.

I'm thinking that the two most daunting parts of this (apart from convincing a model to take part) are the lighting and posing the model. As I said, I don't (yet) have a reflector, but I was considering using the camera's built in flash to trigger the big flash set off to the side. I haven't got the remote trigger yet, but they're pretty cheap (like, £5 for the flash activated ones). So, a layout something like:

with a 2m gap between the backdrop and the model, then another 5m between the model and the photographer. Does this look reasonable? She can worry about posing herself for now...

I've got the impression I'll be best off using the longer lens (-300mm) for this and standing further back if necessary. In daylight, light level shouldn't be a problem and being further away will reduce distortion. Is that sensible?

Regarding clothing, I've gathered that it's best to avoid very light clothing - especially if it's lighter than the model's skin. Are bright colours also best avoided for the same reason - they draw the eye - or are they OK because they add interest?

I'm aware rules are there to be broken, but I think it's good to know the rules so you know when and /why/ you're breaking them!

[Donald]

Laurence

All i say at this point (because I'm no portraitist), is a very warm welcome to CiC. Great to have you joining up.

There are portraitists on here, including Colin of course, who developed this series of lessons, who will, I am sure, be along shortly to give you a sensible response to your question.

[Dave Humphries]

with a 2m gap between the backdrop and the model, then another 5m between the model and the photographer.

I'm no portraitist either Laurence, but the ratio of camera to model to background distance sounds wrong, I'd start with the model half way between you and background, hence a shorter lens will do. It also depends how much model you are photographing; full length or head 'n' shoulders.

Colin will no doubt be here soon, but in the meantime, welcome to the CiC forums from me too,

[Colin Southern]

Don't let your gels touch the flash itself. It will burn holes in them.

Hi Shane,

They're fine on battery powered flashes (because they invariably have a plastic diffuser in front of the actual tube), but with studio strobes I attach the gels to the internal diffuser in the softbox so it's well away from the tube for this very reason (although it's 300W modeling lights that produce the heat).

[Colin Southern]

Hi Laurence,

I think you're basicaly on the right track; I would tweak some of the numbers a little though. In terms of the focal length (remembering that you're using a crop-factor camera that will (effectively) multiply the focal length by 1.6) - then anything in the 140mm range will be fine.

With focal length chosen, that'll dictate how close you are to the model (for whatever your chosen composition is) - so if you're shooting outside - and you want maximum background blur - then once you have your camera to subject distance, get the subject to background distance as big as possible. Having just said that though, I think you'll learn 100x more after trying some of these things for yourself rather than just reading through my long-winded explanations here! Keep in mind too that the correct aperture also plays a big part (I have a feeling that the first 28 shots here might be the kind of shots you're after?)

In terms of lighting - lighting is EVERYTHING! The system you're describing can work, but the devil is in the detail -- so at a minimum, we need to know more about the type of "big" flash that you have (diffusers also play a big part). Possibly reflectors would be a good thing to master first.

With regards to remote triggers, be careful - many will trigger a Canon flash only ONCE - then the flash has to be powered off/on for it to fire it a 2nd time (due to the way the electronics work) -- so something to checkout first.

Hope this helps

[OCB]

Dave, Donald, thanks for the welcome! I shall play around with distances, see what seems to get good results. Decide whether it looks better to be able to make out the background at all!

Colin, thanks for the reply! I think you're right, I need to have a go at it and find out what layout produces what results. Hopefully I'll have a chance before the weekend, but I'll definitely report back once I've got something to show! Yes, the sort of pictures you're showing there what I'm aiming for. Thanks for the warning with the triggers too, I'll have to look into some kind of inbetween level setup. Maybe get a cable instead, and build extensions as required! Won't be quite as convenient, but it'll be a lot cheaper and probably more reliable than a flash triggered one, and I can always upgrade later. I'd build it from scratch myself, but I'm not sure I could make something that'd fit the hotshoe properly.

You suggest 140mm - given the lenses I have, that means using the tele, which I think is a 70-300, but presumably (apart from weight) there's not a lot of difference between a 28-90 at 80mm and a 70-300 at 80mm?

One random question - what sort of success rate do you find you get with portrait photography? I'm expecting a relatively low number - the air show I went to, I managed something like 30 photos I liked out of 450 or so I took, and of course as a beginner I don't expect to have the same success rate as you, but it would be nice to know what sort of proportion to aim for! And to some extent, how many shots I should be expecting to take to get a few good ones.

[Colin Southern]

Colin, thanks for the reply! I think you're right, I need to have a go at it and find out what layout produces what results.

It's the only way to really learn. I've bought lots of books on bodybuilding, but reading them didn't make my muscles any bigger!

Hopefully I'll have a chance before the weekend, but I'll definitely report back once I've got something to show!

Show time - excellent

Thanks for the warning with the triggers too, I'll have to look into some kind of inbetween level setup. Maybe get a cable instead, and build extensions as required! Won't be quite as convenient, but it'll be a lot cheaper and probably more reliable than a flash triggered one, and I can always upgrade later. I'd build it from scratch myself, but I'm not sure I could make something that'd fit the hotshoe properly.

There are basically 2 kinds of cables - the first is called a "PC" cable that basically just fires the flash, whereas the second is called an OCSC ("Off Camera Shoe Cord") which has the advantage of transmitting ETTL information (ie it instructs the flash how bright to fire - and sends focal length info / HSS commands etc) - all based on the assumption that the flash supports all of this in the first place. The official Canon OCSC is expensive (but good), but only about 1m long -- but there are a zillion 3rd party ones that are much longer (and you could join a couple or more together).

You suggest 140mm - given the lenses I have, that means using the tele, which I think is a 70-300, but presumably (apart from weight) there's not a lot of difference between a 28-90 at 80mm and a 70-300 at 80mm?

What we're after is scene compression. So no difference in compression between an 80mm setting on either lens. There might be other differences between the lenses in terms of colour / contrast / sharpness etc, but generally these are pretty minor, and easily fixed in PP.

One random question - what sort of success rate do you find you get with portrait photography? I'm expecting a relatively low number - the air show I went to, I managed something like 30 photos I liked out of 450 or so I took, and of course as a beginner I don't expect to have the same success rate as you, but it would be nice to know what sort of proportion to aim for! And to some extent, how many shots I should be expecting to take to get a few good ones.

It's a bit of a "how long is a piece of string" question if you're trying to establish some kind of benchmark, because there are many variables - with shooting style and model experience being big ones. The images of mine that you looked at yesterday were all shot in an afternoon - and we shot something like 1200 all up. We shot something like about 28 sets (so 1200 / 28 = ? per set). Usually I'll see some light / colour / texture / composition that I think might work - invest a few shots getting the lighting right - and then shoot a "bunch". With an experienced model I would only need a few shots, but most of my models / customers aren't experienced, so more shots get taken to work out what a good look is for each of them. Add to that, the fact that if I'm shooting shallow DoF like you saw there, then invariable there are quite a few with focus or DoF issues, and a few "blinkers" thrown in for good measure. In reality, I tell the models "it doesn't matter how many bad ones we get" - I'm only concerned with the number of good ones. If I get one good shot per set then I consider my job done - in reality there are usualy 5 out of 50 that have the most potential (and it gives a bit of variety for the customer to choose from as well). Also, I don't like to over-pose the models - I try to give them as much freedom as I can - so there's also a degree of luck as well. All in all, it adds up to 4 words: "my style of shooting".

[OCB]

Well, that took longer than expected for all kinds of reasons... Just had a birthday, so that kept me busy, and convincing my model to pose for me was also a little tricky! As it was, it was a bit of a grudging session (of the "I look a mess, I've not done my hair" type), so she wasn't in a very smiling mood. That said, I've tried to get one where she looked pensive, rather than grumpy, and then not worried too much about it because the aim of the exercise is to learn what I'm doing wrong in technique and post, as much as to try and get a good shot.

I'm a Linux user, which means no Photoshop or Lightroom (well, they might work in Wine, I've not tried), so I've mostly been using DigiKam with The GIMP for final touchup.

So, without further ado, here's the series of my workflow (all are click to expand):



The first one's the image straight from the camera. I then used the "auto-level" in Digikam, which made the colours a lot more vibrant! Next, rotate and crop, I then fiddled with the levels a little more, manually this time. The last image above shows the vignette applied. I then tweaked a couple of things in GIMP:



So. The things I think need improvement... Well, first off, the lighting was a bit rubbish - the sun went in just as I went out, so that didn't help. That said, it's not too bad - she doesn't look flat, but we don't really have the highlights on the cheeks.

The other noticeable thing is that I think I was too heavy handed with the effects - the manual levels adjustment has, I think, oversaturated the colours a fair bit. It doesn't look /bad/ as such, but it looks like it's a deliberate style choice, I think. It's also washed out the stripes on her top, particularly on the (photo) left.

The vignette has made the background very dark - I know to some extent this is desirable because it draws attention to the model, but again I think I might have overdone it!

Finally, I'm not quite sure about the tilt... It's given the background a bit more energy, but I've a feeling it's changed the model from looking thoughtful to looking as if she's leaning into a gale...

What does anyone else think? :-) Thanks for any advice!

[CNelson]

I've come in late to this thread but have enjoyed it. Thank you Colin for sharing...it's all helpful.

Chuck