Project Pheebs..

So i recently found the courage to explore beyond street photography and bought myself a Canon Speedlite 430 EX II for indoor portraits and subject shooting. Living in a place like Canada has it's share of disadvantages during winter, where there is absolutely nothing but snow to take pictures of.

So Desiree Leaman (Pheebs) came up to me, a few weeks back, asking to take a few professional head-shots of her indoor. I agreed (obviously!) and decided to experiment two forms of lighting:

Use two identical table lamps, as constant light sources, to light my subject (seen to the right)
Use the external Speedlite flash to bounce light off the ceiling or walls on the side

I'm luckily blessed with an apartment with white walls for background but i had a makeshift black background if necessary (black shower curtain).

Pheebs wanted to shoot in 4 different attires:

Professional (Student)
Professional (Business)
Indian attire
Disney shenanigan

For my camera set up, i opted for the 'plastic fantastic' [50 mm f1.8] with the flash mounted right on top of the camera.

I did not power the flash on for the first few shots to get a feel for what the lamps were capable of doing, lighting wise. The picture seen below shows how under-exposed the shot was. It looks grainy, due to high ISO values.

By the 7th or 8th shot i managed to settle on the perfect setting for the rest of the shoot.

Shutter speed : 1/320
Aperture : f4
Flash power : 1/8 (H Sync)
ISO : 800

What followed was exactly what i was looking for from this shoot.

Below are some of the unedited results... enjoy..

I wasn't happy with the first result so i turned the flash on at 1/32 power. Tried the same pose and we were finally getting somewhere.

Using Format