Constant Light Portraits
I love people,
I love photography,
I love portraiture of all types,
I do not love the guessing game that is flash photography when dealing with the controlled but fluid environment that portraiture should be.
Moments grabbed with flash can be powerful and seemingly perfectly timed, but in reality, unless the subject is wotking with the photographer knowingly, holding a pose, the process can be one of luck or manipulation.
The problem is, you get a good look, a perfect moment and you have to guess what that look will be like the split second you take the shot or worse still, you don’t get the shot if your light is recharging (rare but it happens). Even if recharging is not an issue, multiple flash fires can be intense. Unfriendly even.
Control is theoretically easy, but not for every shot, every time.
Another small point, but possibly significnt, is the look. Flash lighting can be perfect, boringly perfect. Lots of depth, guaranteed frozen movement, sharp, contrasty and white balanced.
Shot with a single flash and some reflected fill, this image owes its softness not so much to the modifier (26” double soft), but more to post processing. Flash gives you tons of depth, movment freezing assurance and clarity, but softness comes more from modifier size and post processing.
Not a small issue, although this is sometimes a benefit also, is subject awareness of the process. A good model with set themselves between each exposure, following the shutter sound and flash fire.
A first timer however, may react quite the other way and may find the whole thing very invasive.
The answer may be continuous light.
The new “faux” Oliphant grey Jonah leather-look fabric (colour number 4), “tanned” up. The f1.8 aperture on a 45mm still provides sharpness on the eye, but softens all else making the background texture only a gentle suggestion. The Neewer SL-60 pushed through a 42” shoot-through brolly at only 30% looks very natural and the background lighting was a known commodity pre-shot.
Constant light would allow me to see before I shoot, to use the silent shutter, which also gives me the option of hand held high res images (50 or 80mp). This really doesn’t make much difference……until it does.
Finally, and this is a biggie, constant lighting allows for video to be captured or even for the same lighting set-ups to be used at different times, for different purposes, using the same formulas.
So, from the perspective of a sitter, no flash, no camera noise, just conversation and connection. For the shooter, what you see is what you get, more connection to the process and and more control. May be a thing.
Actually a focus miss due to subject movement, but the animation conveyed adds more than technical perfection. It is all about the eyes sharp and clean, or is it.
The main issue with constant lights is in the name.
To be powerful enough to provide clean and powerful light, giving equally clean and colourful exposures at “safe” smaller apertures, the light has to strong. Strong light can be uncomfortable.
This relatively low quality image is a lift from some 1080 video (2mp). The point is though, Daisy the dog is not keen on flash, but ignored the large modified constant light. Conversely, the same light through my 26” double baffle was too bright and needed to be too close for softness.
To shoot with subdued constant light means higher ISO’s and/or wider apertures. Not ideal for quality? My MFT cameras and lenses may give me enough room. With f1.8 performing similarly to f2.8 on a full frame I can have a Mark Mann style shallow depth, which is intriguing, as well as keeping other quality issues under control. It may even introduce “a quality” in and of itself.
The two constant light images above (not the video lift), were taken at f1.8, 1/60-80th, ISO 200 at 35% power. Meg said it was not uncomfortable and the flash “popping” was gone. Silent shutter closes the loop, taking away all process sounds, except the quiet hum of the Neewer light.
There is also the possibility I can control light spill better.
My two kits are plenty for the two jobs they are designed for.
For stills, I have potentially* 7x GN 60 flash units, which in MFT format are 2 stops more powerful thanks to the DOF advantage, so it’s like having 7x Godox AD200’s for a full frame. I have a ton of mods for these, a few of which are not constant light compatible, but most are.
For video, I have probably 400w output total from a wide range of COB and LED lights. For these, I have a couple of dedicated mods, most of the flash ones can work and they often (in my kit), provide more even and open light. Something I struggle with on the “square” flash units. This is not really enough to promise good quality stills if used conventionally. F4 to f8 and ISO 100-200 need a lot of light. F1.8 to 2.8 on the other hand is quite do-able.
*5 from one system, 2 from another, but slave firing is possible.