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Beauty Shoot with Trin

Lesson 8 from: Setting Up a Home Studio

John Cornicello

Beauty Shoot with Trin

Lesson 8 from: Setting Up a Home Studio

John Cornicello

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Lesson Info

8. Beauty Shoot with Trin

Next Lesson: Q&A

Lesson Info

Beauty Shoot with Trin

Yeah, we're going to start out with a little different set up here. We got some of it set up during the lunch break. Folks had asked about the big umbrella that was in the shot behind me. That's on the creative life site. So that's ah, west cut seven foot wait parabolic and we actually have that set up here in in this room so you can see the size of it here. I don't know if the cameras even have a wide enough angle to get this hole in here. So trends going to be our model again this afternoon? She's doing some makeup right now, we're heaven or do our own makeup. Uh, because a lot of times, you don't have a make up artist to come in, and while we're setting up, though, I'm gonna have laredo here sit in and we're going get things set up pretty close to what we need for trin and see how this goes so we've gone back to the strobes again. We got the power pack plugged in. I've switched to a longer lens here got the seventy two, two hundred on now on playing with this light here was a center...

in the umbrella on we need a fillet from underneath here. So I'm taking that that board again. It's, just three pieces of foam core, and I just put it onto here, and we've got here before we do that. We got this little boom arm here that we attached to this stand up, so it doesn't spend too much well where to get it into place. So just kind of kind of lean it on this barstool here on, clamp it in the place, and hopefully this will kick some light up underneath when they even breathe, grew closer here, that works, you see, like that's, hard to tell in here. Normally, it is the model if they could see the light reflecting hereand bouncing up, but we've got to we've got all the studio lights on around here for the video, so it might be hard to tell, but it is a warmer lights. I'm definitely tell okay it's picking up the orange around here and you know we went to an orange paper background here instead of the white so how would you know we're set up here lorraine just moved this way slightly on the set but you're almost under the umbrella there under the way let's just see what this looks like that's great chin out just a little bit that's it way over exposed so one eighty if it's seven point one so we could probably go down baby to f eleven here focus on uh on that coming up on the screen now. Okay uh so I'm gonna look at it on the back camera here so this is set up more of a beauty light sometimes you do with beauty dish, but I wanted to show you with a different umbrella system here I'm gonna bring the light even a little more forward of lori set upon a boom arm here and I got the the diving or running weight set upon this understand down here and if you can catch in here so just keeps it from tipping over when you've got an arm out boom arm out you know, the way to the system is out there and you can feel like it's gonna tip so the umbrella is actually hitting the top of the ceiling, but being we're in tight with the longer lens here you know, we're not getting any of this in the shot on say we're at f eleven here and with the pack let's see where the pakis set um four hundred watt seconds going into that umbrella, and I've got it dialed down a stop so it's about two hundred watt seconds really into that umbrella so you can see two hundred watt seconds. We're still getting f eleven in here, so we don't really need super high power pack raised eyes look great. Um, I don't know if you can see on the on the monitors when that comes up there's a lot you could really see your blue eyes that the virus is constricted a bit so that we can see the iris is in the eyes, which I really like the way I've also set this other late here with the grid spot on it to see if we can get a little more sparkle in the eye. It might be too harsh, he's going to turn it on for one, get it aimed into the I and this is where I was talking about getting to catch lights earlier let's see what happens here beautiful on that really fills in the face even more, bring it even. A little more on access with camera I don't want to create shadows with this I just want to add a little sparkle in her eye one teo and go so um that's the basic setup here when sharon's ready with their makeup will bring her out so um we're gonna bring ken over going ask some questions about what the setup is here I mean a lot of it we set up during lunch for time reasons but I'm happy to talk about what we got going on here sure so um somebody had asked if it's possible I don't know toward to show what it looks like with the reflector and without definitely yeah let's do that so ready hold on that was your one weapon and then I'm gonna take out the sparkly like to so here it comes with the reflector on now just drop it down on the floor whatever back and focus on so we'll see a lot more shadow on the face in there that's on the screen it's quite dramatic you'll agree right? Thank yu sure on here you know we just added a boom arm onto here they're they're available from a variety of places they're ones that are made just to hold reflectors this is just a really old when looking at this this may be as old as some of that other old equipment is a old mole richardson movie set piece but they well let's leave that offer now we'll start trained without that uh also just put this black here in case there's any lake from the windows I don't think there is with some sometimes on this beauty thing I mean just black and everything so the light is just concentrated on the face I can't even imagine going to a black background on this to really make your pump out of it but what trends red hair and I think we're gonna go with the orange for this one so questions yeah a question from smarty pants do the what seconds that you're referring to translate to one quarter power when half power settings on a stroll uh not really but yes and no um if the pack is eight hundred and I then I've gone down to four hundred staff power two hundred be quarter power uh but but they're not starting out of the same power level that the camera flashes you can get off eleven the same way here but it's a concentrated light you know it's not gonna light up the background pointed a camera flesh into this umbrella it may just fill into the spokes of the umbrella if you can look up in here see this light is reaching almost almost to the end here maybe it's falling off just drive here I wouldn't be able to do that with a single camera flesh and after maybe four six camera flashes in here to really fill the size of delaware can usually do it with strobe head alright we have six more questions yes okay so question from km cleared twenty three who is cathy from new brunswick says anything from canada or new jersey good question because you're a jersey boy uh any suggestions for how you could create the same lighting effect on a budget? This is almost a budget piece because this umbrella is about a hundred bucks a beauty dish you could do this with utmost beauty dishes are two hundred three hundred dollars so this is almost the budget version um I can also do this one of those strip lights just overhead would be nice but even the strip banks are two to three hundred dollars so I mean this looks elaborate but in reality this is probably one of the cheaper ways of doing this. Um so yeah the the umbrellas one hundred dollars I've seen him on sale for for less and one strobe head it could be an alien b l e a p also makes the same size umbrellas in the same price range so uh this is probably two hundred for that for nailing behead one hundred three three hundred three fifty and then some homemade stuff so you're in a five four, five hundred dollars range here where you can find a you know a four by six soft box may cost that alone without the lights in it so cool. This is punching this is the budget this's the budget ok, cool. Uh, question from if you could just say again from c shown walder what that big umbrella is this is west caught seven foot parabolic white make make a white with the black backing that's this one, they make a white shoot through and they make us matt silver one um so this is this the one I have is the white one great. Yeah, trends back there. Think she's about ready to come out here so we could take laurie off the spot here, break that. So another quick question from moto's if you didn't have that umbrella, is the ceiling that different? Yeah, because the ceilings flat this here. I'm hoping to catch some light from the front of the umbrella into the face here. Um, I could do this as a clamshell type thing with two soft boxes of soft bucks up above and below, I can probably even do it with the regular umbrella. The regular brother is a little smaller and will show more of the ribs in the eye. But I think this this here just gets this broad overall light that's gonna be able to fill the reflector to pop up into you so let's, do one shot really quick here with train just the way it is, um just slide over this way. Just for hair. There's a spot there on let's. Get you framed in here. That's looks beautiful. Where I want to focus on that. I want two and three, and we're done on this. We're going to see these heavy shadows, there's, not a whole lot of light in the eye. And then we're gonna add this reflector down here again. I'll see how what a difference that makes again. This is just a home made. Well, just clamp it on to here you go better for one to them. Hopefully it's. Not a good angle that it's gonna pick up some of this late and kick it back, not changing exposure at all. You just did to that bottom light. And here goes another one, and you should see a totally different look on there, see if it comes up. Uh, so I don't know if you saw the first one now. So that's thiss beauty light is just a different way of doing a beauty light. And again, we have this other light here with the grid on it. We talked about grids earlier. Uh, pop this off. So here, uh, the grid when it's straight on let's, like through, but it cuts off, like to the side, so you can see how that cuts off this one is a twenty degree grid on we're gonna pop that in there and and this is just a guy give just a little extra sparkle to the eye so I'm gonna but the modeling laid onto a mitt and I don't turn the modeling laid off because it builds up a lot of heat in there that can't be too good for the equipment so there we go this way gonna be great and let's see what comes up here how different it is from the last shot hopefully we'll see it just a little more sparkle in the eye and I could probably even stopped down a half stop some now at f thirteen here on I'm gonna back out a little bit with zoom lens here and get a little more train that looks beautiful I gotta change my focus spot and now I want you just playing there you can play with your hair you could just do funny expression just have a great time that's great and we'll just play supermodel now get this this great supermodel fears if you want that's great now but it all so we'll just have just take your hair up and let it fall back down again do all of it I wanted to get it off your shoulders for a second and then come back they're on guys to me that's great now I want you to turn your feed out to one side or the other and I want you straight on and then turn back from your your waste into me and shane out toward me beautiful on a little bit of a smile here now that's a fake smile come on you know you go there you go. You could see a chin up a little bit though beautiful I want to see the lies right into lines chin up to still hear more we were talking about before turtle it out a little bit and the word of the day there that's great so we got that great smile going there, turtle there you go saying, hey, you know your supermodel that's okay? They can't hear you but you're not you're not on the microphone, so they miss the snort? Yeah way anyway, so there's a couple of shots with this lighting setup do have some possible questions about this and we'll keep going with maybe change some other things around whips yes, jin's john questions I like this question from earlier from digital zen jeremy athens from georgia says are from athens. Do you ever use a cookie to throw pattern shadows on the backdrop backdrop? And do you prefer colored paper or jelling a white backdrop? And I just had a fabulous visual how you cutting, helping category they'll tatter sales patter souls way took a sheet of phone core and went at it with a hunting knife just to cut a cuckold cookies short for kucha loris which is a pattern that could throw between the light and the background. Ah lot of these lights in here are too soft to cast the shadow pattern possibly with with william the grid spot might help were just that a bear tube but I haven't done a lot of work with cookies as for backgrounds here we're going with the orange paper uh I don't think we'll be able to gel the background here because there's so much light bouncing around the room from this big umbrella if we went to a smaller a smaller box you may be the beauty dish over her and brought her maybe ten feet from the background so the background was let's separately I can throw some color gels on there and do that in the smaller studio I think the gels are harder to use. Cool thank you. And a guitar goddess our friend guitar goddess in new york what is your reflector from again? It's three pieces of foam core. Um these two are full size that from an art supply stores so that'll probably about two dollars each for the size this one's cut down smaller and then I just crinkled up aluminum foil, spread it back out double stick tape to it uh let's see if we can see the back of it there it's just kind of folded over the edge and there's this tape holding it uh because another thing we can do with this here for a slightly different late let's just clamp it in the middle and well this trend of the holy sides up so it really kicks more late in there so let's see what happens with that so what do you do one with lay them down first and just told the same position bring them up and see if their way pop up a difference between those I'm expected to may may give a little different in late in the bottom of the eyes so again it's just foam core or just corrugated plastic that they make signs out of our gator foam there well various things that's cheap lightweight easy to work with and if they break you could just make another one all right another question from kathy who was from new brunswick, canada canada sorry not jersey uh why did you set the light up over why did you set up the light over your subject as opposed to the left or the right? Uh this is more of a typical beauty set up just this flat light from overhead if you if you watch some of the previous things we did like matthew jordan smith we did it with the beauty dish and it's just one light overhead and it just gives us soft, even glow over the whole face where we did from light from the sides, we tend to get no shadow sideways here. We're just going for a little shadow under the nose. They call it a butterfly shadows suppose leads the shape of a butterfly uh, typical glamour butterfly lighting toe like a woman from overhead like this. Um, dave esko is wondering why crinkled foil david london to give it a little bit of a matte finish? I'm afraid with just straight silver it made blowback highlights onto her face that we don't want the crinkle just diffuses it a little bit but still keeps it right and we talked about this a little bit earlier, but sandra ed six hundred is asking to the color of the walls matter in a small studio and specifically the room that I'm planning to use has dark green walls, and that was sandra I don't I don't think the dark walls start green is going to affect you that much as long as you keep the lights in pretty close here, you know way saw on the earlier shots today, I think the lights were about thirty inches away from when we did troy shot the lights were probably even closer than that for trends of head shot so there's there's and the lightest directional from the soft boxes so it's pretty much comes onto the model and that's it there's by the time the light bounces off the model hits that wall and comes back you know it's gonna be ten stops starker and it's not going to show up in there okay runar hansen is wondering do you recommend painting there in black of its small to eliminate spill? I haven't considered that I don't know if I've ever been in a black studio I've seen some that are medium gray but most of the studio's I've worked in throughout my life white actually but they're a little bit larger than this but then again if you're you're lighting in clothes you know if you got an umbrella and you have the umbrella here you know seven feet away from her it's going to kick light all over the place I mean I'm usually pretty laid back person about use this is that what umbrellas I'm really not a fan of I know people who do absolutely beautiful work with umbrellas shoot through and reflective but it's just it's just not my style especially in a small studio because if you do shoot through umbrella the light's coming through and bouncing around it's also reflecting off the umbrella hitting the wall so there I can see possibly being concerned with reflections off the walls and the like but it would've soft box you have that control the lights going in one direction even this big umbrella there's no light going through it so it's all coming straight down and hidden this reflector and in I don't think the walls are affecting us here I don't think we're going to pick up anything from that orange we can if we want take a white board and put it behind her and another shot just to see if the color looks any different uh laurie if you actually you want to do that there's I know you probably can't get it up because the computer maybe over here even grab a blackboard big blackboard this one it here yeah somewhere flight stands full of slips and just come turn it around you don't want to see that radio during their hold a little fire suits so now we've got just the black background I want you in three and I will see it come up on the screen there I mean it's hard to measure here the color may be a little different maybe a little cooler so there may be some orange kicking back from there but we have to measure that later but this is just another other possible look so go ahead and play supermodel again there's move around give me attitude play with the hair stare me down little squint in the eyes it's quicker yeah there you go that's great yeah look after the side they're beautiful great so we'll have those two compares a little hair going out sideways on this side just straighten that out there you do one more. Okay, lori, step out now so that the orange and look you see so I got the exact same shot there with with both and we could look at those later and compare them so more questions? Sure. All right. Uh, there was a question from smarty pants. If the seven foot umbrella is multifunctional, so and what in what other ways could you use it? Yeah, we can use it as a large phil we're gonna do a group shot later where will use a large umbrella as phil? Um it can be shoot through for a full length if not the weight. This white umbrella, the other weight that's a shoot through could be like a big big octa bank, but again a kiss light in all directions. There's another reason why you want to have a lens hood if you're working with umbrellas because it can hit some way into the lens but I think there could be multi functional it's so it's a little specialized jim air q star sixty five janica from utah so far we've been talking about working with adults what kinds of changes would be made and lens choice lights, etcetera when working with young children had hired someone else, yeah now I don't do a lot of work with children um you saw the props and stuff around here it's not a childproof place but for kids I would go with a big a big light like this and just go for big soft don't try to get dramatic with lights uh don't bring the lights and you know I'm always saying getting closer getting closer with the kids you want to bring it back so it's um or even you get the farther back the lightest of more even it is across the scene because kids move around I definitely go strove over the hot lights over the continuous just because of this shutter speeds you know when we're continuous light even with lights in that's as close as they were we're down to a fortieth of a second that's not gonna work with kids you know they're moving it's just a blur so I really go with strobes and a big big white light the door knocked a bank or the photo tech saw flight is the big one sixty inch kids you just want to come down to their level lens choice is probably not that much different you know you still want to be about four to six feet from them and then picked the lens that fills the frame you want at that distance right? Thank your specific questions about the kids things like that can make up some answers for them a question from beer hunter is. How would the white side of the reflector compared to the foil? Oh, let's, find out trying to get the cameras so let's do one with framed again, uh, batteries out. Let me just pop in another battery. We may have to redo the tether. Yeah, good, and you can ask me a question. What we're getting tapestry michele michele in california. Would you still use the bottom reflector on heavy faces with that ad, the double chins on a heavy face? I probably won't use this lighting system at all. So if I was that, I'd probably go to the white instead of the silver. What for? For have your face. I probably goto a smaller light to the side so I could just do the short versus broad lighting system. Okay, let's, see what we got here, good over there. Done. I'm good. Here is the tether that they're good. Okay, so train let's, look here, their eyes out, eyes at me on this one, but a focus point over the eye. There's one now flip it over to the silver if you can't without moving too much it's okay, head up just a little bit don't get you back where you were there and now kick it away too much already and so there we have the three pre versions of this and another thing we can do is maybe bring this light out this way a little more and tilted in and try to get some fill from just this light so I'm gonna bring it down almost to the camera there and see what that does to a problem with this one is it kind of blocks me off from her a little bit but you still wanna make tennis contact with the model there so and this is without the reflector let's just bring in either side you choose which side you're like one of those sparkly yeah she likes sparkles that's great I love that laugh and smile so glad you're able to come in work with us today ok? So we can look at those there so I mean if this was really to show that we can use a big light modifying here a number of people asked about it I'm going first put up the photo here with with that big light behind me this is this is it you kind of get it out of your way alright awesome thank you anything else people would like to see with this set up so only the brave had said uh did I did I miss why he has the parabolic above the model did that have to do with just the space that you add or why I wanted that beauty light from above it just soft diffuse centered over the face so there's no no real shadows on the face just maybe a little bit below the nose and being so soft with the reflector here we don't even get hardly any shadow so you can see what's on the monitor there great again it was also a budget thing we could've done it with a beauty dish it would have been a harder life than this but it would've been a lot more expensive. So speaking of budget cast, cooley is wondering if you had only a hundred dollars to spend on a basic lights set up what would you recommend one hundred dollars that's it's that's pushing it because I would well if you're cameras cameras strobes air three four, five hundred themselves you may be able to get the smallest alien bees probably around to twenty for the head and I would go with one of the soft, lighter diffused umbrellas that we used earlier today and we'll use again later on the group shot those run from sixty two hundred dollars depending on the size so you're really five hundred dollars is probably more of a minimum to get something you know that you're really gonna get a lot of use out of okay thank you. Monica is asking out now if this is possible if we can see an overview of sort of the entire beauty shoot said if you could just walk us through again yeah, I don't know it's it's tough in here because we can't get the carriage back for enough to get a a really wide shot but basically we've got background paper here on like before I don't know where the tape measure went we could hear it is we can measure it out and you know how everything set up in here so, uh background to the back of trends head is four feet uh from from her nose one of those camera about sixty seven inches. Um this light from the umbrella down to her is about five feet sixty inches um, so the whole the whole space that were taking up here, if someone wants to grab hold on, just catch that. So we're using the space here that isthe twelve feet to the backup we'll pass the back of the camera so I'd be back up against the wall in a twelve foot space but we could move we could probably take two or three feet out of this by bringing the the background closer or bringing her back to background so I'd say we could probably do this in a ten foot space trip over myself knocking things down here did you want teo john shoot any more with this if there's anything people want to see complains it's about one thirty how are we on our schedule no okay so no I think we're set here unless there's something someone wants us to try really quick here well so one of the things that we would love to see people are noticing all the cool stuff uh you've got a lot of stuff you want to hear something going to some props well maybe some props or just to take a look at at sort of walk around some of the things you have whatever you want to do train why don't you take a look around and pick something that you'd like to photograph with here could be mass is gonna be instruments there's even some stuff over here in this yeah you get great mass going steampunk extra hands uh there's some other things here got these wicker balls and uh uh what you call a boa there there's hats do all sorts of things so let's just have a little fun for a few minutes here hope purple ears to go with their cannons to the rescue and then they slid a little bit so once I think they may slide apart a little bit yeah. There you go. Uh probably not anymore though they're old where there's the's ones no it's easing if you could pull it down into their just if you don't move too much they fall off but she sent into the spy through here just because it was set up that way way that's great and tilt your chin up just a little bit I just want to show that see what happens I may be getting no I'm not even getting reflection off for this in there that's great we'll find a focal point that's great display give me a big guy here you go come in closer on your family zoom in now that's great just through your eyes up into the corner beautiful there we go so anyway there's have played through the fan drop it down let me see one eye that's it veronica lake look great so anyway there's some fun things so I think we're going toe she's gotten to see your images now what do you want to take a couple more questions before we go onto lenses were few minutes. Yeah. So a question iss um are beginning lighting kits worth it or would you recommend purchasing separate pieces if the kid is expandable and you can get accessories like speed rings to put on soft boxes and different size reflectors and the like you know, start out with it um I mean the elian bees comes in kits the spx calibers that being aged cells comes and kits I mean even the speed of sound you can by buying kits the price range though goes, you know, from a couple of hundred bucks up to a couple of thousand if you plan to stick with this for a while you know, I think it's mork lust effective to start with something that's going to be able to grow that you're not just going to replace and have to get rid of resale value could be ok on the higher and stuff but on the lower and I don't know how it is for resale and that or you could start mixing. When I first started getting back into photography a few years ago, I did have a mix of speedy trial and dyna lite you know nothing's compatible with each other heads and also now over the years I've come back to one system again is it cost cost effective to start out small change later? I don't know big alan big d is wondering might be a good time to ask about going portable like moving your lights set up to home or client office. Yeah, well, almost everything we've done here is portable the stroke power pack weighs about eight pounds so that's nothing um heads are pretty light I could fit them all into a case with two or three stands two umbrellas or soft lighters my typical location, kate if I was going sometimes shoot backstage at fashion shows well, people come out and do a formal type torture to them so I'll take the background stands of fabric background to strobe heads the power pack the strobe heads would have won sixty infotech soft, lighter and one of the twelve by fifty strip lights and a camera and it's I can carry it all myself, you know there's a bag for the three or four light stands uh, rolling case for the lights and the camera bag. So everything we've done here is stuff that I've taken on location with me except from the boom arm this thing's heavy, but I worry really usable more on those type of things let me ask you one more question and then we're gonna move on to lenses which people are already asking, uh, question from j d and that's justin in or organ and we had I looked at this a little bit before but he's wondering if it would benefit be a benefit or a absolute waste to use both continuous light source and a stroke together I think they work together well, especially for the head shots. We sort of did that before where I had this the continuous lights on trend here and then to change the background to go brighter I put the strobe on that and the strobes and the fluorescent lights or similar colored temperature so you can mix them. Making strobe with tungsten lights doesn't work so well, because one is very yellow. One is very blue. You're gonna have to use a deep yellow filter, uh, our deep orange filter on the strobes or a deep blue filter on the tungsten. And they're going to cut the light way down to nothing so it's. Hard to make a mix that way. But fluorescents and strobes can be mixed.

Ratings and Reviews

C.Welsh
 

John... you are an amazing instructor! Thanks for doing what you do :) Keep up the great work.. and having fun :)

Michelle B
 

John is a walking encyclopedia of information on cameras , lenses and lighting. His mild manner makes him easy to understand. This home studio class that John has done has inspired me to set up a studio in my home. John teaches if there is a will there is a way and he shows you how. This a great class for anyone wanting to set up a home studio even in the smallest of spaces! Thank you John you are a true creative!!

Vitamin Dee
 

I love this class, but I believe it's time for an updated version. We love John and his easy, no-frills approach makes learning fun.

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