Using a Camera in the Studio

[David Steel]

Studio photography is a little different to general outdoor photography and it's useful to summarise the principles involved and answer a few common questions before we start taking shots for real in the studio.

In contrast to outdoor photography, studio work is mostly manual in terms of exposure setting. About the only automation that is feasible is auto-focussing assuming that your camera, if auto-focus, is able to focus easily under the lower lighting conditions offered by the modelling lights in the studio flash heads.

So, the essentials are:

• You know how to set your camera to manual exposure
• You what what your flash sync speed is with 'normal' flash guns *
• You have some means of triggering the studio flash (I'll cover this in more detail below)
• You have a lens that can give you a full-length shot of the subject (usually about 50mm focal length for film cameras or about 35mm for a digital SLR with an APS-C size sensor) and a lens that will give you a good 'head and shoulder' shot (usually about f=100mm or so for film and 70mm or so for the dSLR). Zooms are quite popular and give you a range of focal lengths so a 'standard' zoom will usually do quite well. You don't need a particularly fast lens (large aperture) since the flash intensity means that you will probably be setting your camera close to f8 for the aperture setting.
• Your camera needs have a hot shoe that can accept a battery-operated flash or a flash trigger.
• If you have a digital SLR, some experience at judging the exposure via the LCD screen will help as well as a basic understanding of what the histogram feature of the camera tells you.
  

* I used the term 'normal' flash guns since some advanced flash guns have a special mode that permits them to be used at almost any shutter speed.

Let's go through some of the procedure as a precursor to starting studio photography.

Studio flashes are very basic devices. Though many are controllable in terms of output power, very few have any degree of automated exposure unlike the flash you might use on your camera. Also, since the flash is very brief, it is impossible for the camera to measure the light level on the subject at the time of exposure and calculate an exposure for you. This is why we make manual exposures.

This is not as difficult as it might seem. We normally shoot with the camera set to ISO 100 or 200. There is little point in going higher since we are usually looking for maximum quality in our studio images. The camera is set on the normal flash sync speed for your particular make and model, or on the shutter speed just below it. On some cameras, this might be as high as 1/250s and for others as low as 1/60s - check your camera instruction manual before coming to studio session. If in doubt, ask a question here - that's why these forums exist. The shutter speed stays fixed for the studio session. If we need to adjust exposre, we either adjust the aperture on the lens or adjust the power of the studio lights. Don't forget to set your camera back to your usual shooting mode at the end of the evening so when you are outdoors next, you don't miss that 'shot of a lifetime' because your camera was set to manual exposure.

The other half of exposure setting after we have set the shutter speed is the aperture. This controls the amount of light hitting the film or sensor. We can only measure this once the lights and model have been set up and we have used our flash meter to measure an incident flash light reading. The Portrait Group has a flash meter for the group to use. Invariably, the reading tends to be around f8 though experience shows that we may wish to fine-tune this after reviewing the results on the camera (assuming that you are using a digital camera of course).

So, with the exposure sorted, we are almost ready to go. All we need now is to trigger the studio flash. This used to be done with a cable connected between the flash heads and the flash sync socket on the camera (also called a PC socket). Unfortunately, many modern consumer cameras don't have a PC socket and this has largely been replaced by the 'hot shoe' for holding a dedicated flashgun. It is possible to buy a hot shoe adaptor that goes into the hot shoe and gives you a PC socket for connecting to the studio flash but we generally try to avoid cables these days as they can be quite hazardous in a studio situation.

The modern solution to triggering studio flash is to either use a dedicated flash trigger or to use the battery flash that you might already have for your camera as long as it has a bounce or swivel head. All modern studio flash heads have sensors on them that detect another flash firing causing them to fire at the same time. These devices are called slave cells and all we need to do is to get them to see a burst of light from some other flash device and then they will fire too without the need for cables. The problem here is that the flash that triggers the studio flashes mustn't also light the scene. The big advantage of studio lights is that they are not close to the camera and therefore don't create flat lighting, hard shadows and red-eye effects. This is why we want the scene to be lit by the studio flash and not by your on-camera flashgun.

So, how do we do this? Simple - if your flash has a bounce head then you point the flash away from the subject. The studio flashes will detect the flash from this and fire themselves but your flash will not be lighting the scene.

I mentioned a dedicated flash trigger and this is the means I normally prefer. It sits in the hot shoe and fire an infra-red flash. This is enough to trigger the studio flash but, being infra-red, it doesn't affect the subject even if it is pointed directly at them. Infra-red light is, after all, invisible. These units are fairly cheap to buy now (they weren't initially) or you can make your own by putting a deep red or special IR gel over a small cheap battery flash that fits in your camera hot shoe.

Another type of trigger is the radio trigger. These are the bees knees so to speak but also an expensive option though cheaper devices have appeared on the market in recent times. Beware of ultra-cheap Far Eastern imports and these may use illegal radio frequencies or cause disturbance to other radio devices in the area - the last thing you want is a policeman demanding to see your radio transmission certificate for that particular frequency!

Once we know we can fire the flash, then we can begin. Remember to focus on the eyes - eyes have to be sharp. You might need to focus, keep the shutter half-depressed, recompose the shot and fire the shutter by pressing the button all the way.

Finally, for most studio photography you don't need a tripod. A tripod actually slows you down and gets in the way. It's fine for close-up work and still life where your subject is static and you take time to be precise but in a studio with human subjects it is more of a hindrance than a help.

[marryroy01]

hi there...

thank you very much for sharing information...i am new in photography wanted information related studio photography....