Basic question on hair/rim lighting equipment & technique

I could use some recommendations on how to mount some speedlites (Nikon here) to achieve hairlighting and rim lighting for 1-4 people in front of a dark backdrop in a small home studio.

I recently did my annual 'holiday photoshoot' of family members at Thanksgiving, in front of a black backdrop. Three shoot-thru umbrellas in front, but nothing from the back. And as you can imagine, depending on the lightness of the color of people's hair and clothing, I had either good or terrible separation of subject and backdrop. I've got some extra equipment I could have thrown in, but not the proper knowledge of how to use it correctly (and efficiently, as I was under time pressure getting set up).

What I have:

3 Pocket Wizard FlexTT5's on three Nikon strobes (SB800, SB900, SB910).

1 Pocket Wizard MiniTT1 on camera (D800e) with AC3 controller.

Shoot through umbrellas on Impact light stands. 36 and 42 inch umbrellas.

10x12 backdrop.

Garage to work in with limited space. 7 foot ceiling, about 3-4 foot separation between subjects and backdrop, and shooting up to 85mm on FX I'm backed up about as far as I can go.

2 more Nikon strobes - SB-24 and SB-26. No PW's for them. The SB-26 has a slave mode, and I bought a small optical trigger for the SB-24.

1 boom stand that I need to weight somehow before trusting another strobe to it. Learned the hard way there. No barndoors. Have a couple small snoots and a couple small grids, none of which I think are going to work when I get more than 1 or 2 subjects to shoot.

Looks like I need to light from the back and sides as I don't have room to shoot over the top of the backdrop. I suppose I can use that boom light stand, but then I run out of stands. Or only use two lights in front instead of three. If I simply use all lights at 45 degree angles, I can at least fit things somewhere and I could trigger the 4th flash optically from the other 3. But I'm sure open to suggestions for specific equipment and techniques to do the separation lighting right.

The zoom feature of a hot-shoe flash makes it work nicely as a hair or accent light for a single subject. If the light is still covering too large an area you can also grid or snoot them. You may also have to flag the light to prevent lens flare.

What hot-shoe flash units are not good for is hair lights for a group, for that you want a strip light overhead and behind the subjects, and it should be gridded and/or flagged to control where the light hits the subjects and to prevent lens flare. There are some strip lights softboxes available for hot-shoe flash but I don't know how well they well work.

One thing to be very careful of when using a hair light is that your are not lighting the nose. This is a drawback of using a hot-shoe flash for a hair light - you can't tell if the light is hitting the nose until you take a test shot. You can have the same problem using a hot-shoe flash for an accent light.

A guy could just set a fluorescent tube behind them, or a couple of table/desk lamps, if they can be balanced with your flash...

I really don't think I have the room to mount a light overhead. I need the backdrop to go clear up to the ceiling, and even then I have some issues at times framing well and not showing the top seam of the backdrops.

I'm guessing with more than one subject, and only using speedlites, that I'll really need to use at least two lists, one mounted on each side. Wish I could get a striplight in there as it sounds perfect for what I need to accomplish. And if not too expensive, I'm willing to spend more money on proper lighting, including eventually going away from speedlites. Kind of hard to justify spending much though, as I only do a studio type of setup a couple of times a year, sometimes at other people's houses. Space is always an issue.

Should I go with a pair of speedlites (better than nothing), any recommendations for stands, barn doors, and placement? I do have some gift certificates from B&H burning a hole in my pocket.

The Gamilight Stripbox works from a Speedlight more or less as you would expect. But you would need to flag at least the 'near-camera edge'. Use something lightweight, like black 2mm corex.

If overhead is impossible then high side lighting would give some separation.

If ceiling is white, sometime I just bounce two flash units from the behind the group, making sure that nothing spills on the nose as mentioned above.

First, a black backdrop is pretty sinister for a holiday portrait.

When I need a bit of separation, I either light the background or shoot a light (hidden by the subject's bodies) directly into their backs. Here's some location work just using a couple of speedlights:

We had done various background colors over the past few years, and I thought we'd try black. Of course some people showed up wearing black, and so for a few shots I threw a white background cloth over the top of the black one and tried that.

Here's one of the black shots:



The backdrop was only about 3-4 feet behind the subjects. No room (I think) to stick a speedlite back there.

I like the concept of bouncing a flash off the ceiling and down from the back. It's conceivable I could have mounted some reflectors up there and carefully aimed speedlites to get some rim lighting that way.

--
Craig
www.cjcphoto.net

Have you thought of using a gray or even white background? This would automatically give you separation between the subject's hair and the background. Simple and easy.

I've got, and used, white, gray, light blue, dark gray and black backgrounds. I don't particularly want to use the same color year after year. This was the first year I've had black, and I wanted to try it. And all those who weren't wearing black seemed to appreciate it. For the two that showed up in black outfits, I tossed the white backdrop over the black one for their shots. And I still would have liked some rim lighting on them.

The question is how to achieve rim light for separation, with minimal equipment in limited space, not what background to use.

Honestly, youre going to have to get creative. Youre looking for professional studio results from a small, home studio setup. You admit youre looking for a cheap & easy solution, but the fact is its not that easy. Youre limited on space, equipment, cash, etc., so getting the same results pros do isn't going to be easy. Shooting more than one person makes it that much tougher too. Your best bet is a strip light in some form or another. Whether that's dropping the cash on a new stand, strobe or speedlight, softbox, etc., or coming up with something on your own, its what you need.

DuaneV said:

Honestly, youre going to have to get creative. Youre looking for professional studio results from a small, home studio setup. You admit youre looking for a cheap & easy solution, but the fact is its not that easy. Youre limited on space, equipment, cash, etc., so getting the same results pros do isn't going to be easy. Shooting more than one person makes it that much tougher too. Your best bet is a strip light in some form or another. Whether that's dropping the cash on a new stand, strobe or speedlight, softbox, etc., or coming up with something on your own, its what you need.

Click to expand...

I'm not opposed to spending money on this. I've been thinking about redoing the whole setup with Paul Buff Einsteins. I actually have plenty of cash - it's just hard to justify spending much given the low frequency of usage. But I can do virtually nothing about the space limitations I have.

I like the idea of a stripbox, but can't understand how to actually put one into play. Can you point to any examples that show one in use in a situation with a 7 ft ceiling for instance?

In the past I've just gridded a speedlite and mounted it off to one side on a simple stand. But that tends to only work for a single head shot, and I have groups up to 5 people.

The ceiling bounce idea is intriguing me more than any other suggestion right now.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

DuaneV said:

Honestly, youre going to have to get creative. Youre looking for professional studio results from a small, home studio setup. You admit youre looking for a cheap & easy solution, but the fact is its not that easy. Youre limited on space, equipment, cash, etc., so getting the same results pros do isn't going to be easy. Shooting more than one person makes it that much tougher too. Your best bet is a strip light in some form or another. Whether that's dropping the cash on a new stand, strobe or speedlight, softbox, etc., or coming up with something on your own, its what you need.

Click to expand...

I'm not opposed to spending money on this. I've been thinking about redoing the whole setup with Paul Buff Einsteins. I actually have plenty of cash - it's just hard to justify spending much given the low frequency of usage. But I can do virtually nothing about the space limitations I have.

I like the idea of a stripbox, but can't understand how to actually put one into play. Can you point to any examples that show one in use in a situation with a 7 ft ceiling for instance?

In the past I've just gridded a speedlite and mounted it off to one side on a simple stand. But that tends to only work for a single head shot, and I have groups up to 5 people.

The ceiling bounce idea is intriguing me more than any other suggestion right now.

--
Craig
www.cjcphoto.net

Click to expand...

With a 7' ceiling its going to be tough. The only way you could use one in THAT low of a height is if everyone was sitting every time. If that's the case, boom it out over them as high as possible on an adequate stand. Ive never shot with one on the floor, but Ive heard of it being done. I cant say what the results would look like vs. one over head.

The ONLY way to get separation between your subject and the background (ESPECIALLY in that small a space) is going to be with a rim light whether its snooted speedlights, strobes with barn doors, softboxes, speedlight, etc. You could ALSO try putting a speedlight aimed at the background behind the person either snooted, zoomed, etc. That's how I did this shot just the other day because I didn't want a bright rimlight as I wanted the image "darker" and not rimmed with a bright halo affect. Its a medium gray muslin, model is 5' from the background with a speedlight on a stand in between them aimed directly at the background. 24" softbox camera right, 45 degrees from the model, slightly overhead aimed down. 8'x4' silver reflector camera left.

If you don't have much room, try bouncing the flash off a light-colored ceiling or white flat (duct-tape a white foam board up) for hair light.