Portrait Lighting Lesson 3: 45 Degree Lighting

So we've gone over some good starter lighting equipment and talked about how to set it all up. So today let's go over how to use it finally. This will include camera/light source layout, camera settings (setting exposure), and a touch about posing.

The 45 degree lighting is an easy setup lighting pattern that will produce professional results with your one little strobe flash and a shoot-through umbrella.

Before we start talking about the lighting pattern, let's talk about the effects of light in general. If you want the softest light possible (aka no harsh shadows), this will be done with 2 things. The first is the type of light modifier being used (in this case a shoot-through umbrella). The second is the distance of the light source from the subject. When I first started studying lighting, a fellow photographer and great mentor to me, Mark Warren, was describing how he was sitting in a restaurant underneath a hanging table light. He was just messing around and noticed that the closer his hand got to the light, the softer the shadow that was cast on the table tended to become. As his hand got further from the light and closer to the table, the outline of his hand became more defined (aka a harsher shadow).

Having harsh shadows is not necessarily a bad thing. Some peoples personality and appearance work better with harsh shadows cast on them. For example, a very cut muscular male can often get away with much harsher shadows then say an average female model. For our purposes, we are going to try to keep the lighting as soft as possible.

Although we want to keep our shadows soft, we don't want to get rid of them entirely. The light to shadow transition on your model's face is coincidently called "modeling." If the light is coming at your subject from straight on (say on top of your camera), you'll find that the lighting is very flat and has a lack of modeling. This is why snapshot photos you see on most peoples Facebook and Myspace pages have a very flat and non-flattering effect. To remedy this, we move the light source off of the camera axis to the left or right. 45 degrees in particular is an angle that creates very nice modeling and tends to thin your subject (I don't know many people who don't want to look at least a little thinner).

To do this, when you position your flash and shoot-through umbrella, you'll want to place it as close as possible to your model so that it is just outside the frame of the camera. (See Diagram 1)



Once we have our umbrella setup 45 degrees to the camera lens axis, you're ready to fire some test shots to determine the proper exposure. For starters, you need to understand that the role of shutter speed is seemingly quite different when you introduce a flash to your photography.

The shutter speed in previous lessons has been used to freeze or blur your subject. Now that you introduced the flash, the shutter speed doesn't serve the same purpose. The flash ends up acting like shutter speed in that because it happens so quick, it freezes your subject in place, even at lower shutter speeds or if the subject was moving. So what then do I use the shutter speed for? Well oddly sounding enough, the shutter speed is used to control the amount of ambient lighting that plays a part in your photo. You need to start by determining the maximum shutter speed that your camera can sync with. If you set it any higher than this number, you'll notice a black line introduced probably near the bottom of the photo. This is due to the shutter not being able to keep up with the speed of the flash. The Canon EOS 50D has a max sync speed of 1/250th of a second. SO!!! The faster the shutter speed (up to the max sync) the less ambient light is introduced to the camera. For example in the photo of the girl in the stables, you'll notice in the background, the ambient light of the sun. The faster the shutter speed, the less prominent the sun is. Let's say I slowed the shutter speed down to say 1/30th of a second . . . the background area in that photo may be blown out, and you may lose all the detail in the greenery. The sun is very strong, however, it's not always the only ambient light in a photo. Sometimes the ambient may be a man made light in a parking garage or essentially any light that you can't directly control. Sometimes with these lights, due to the fact that they're much dimmer than the sun, at your cameras max sync speed, you may not even see it in the photos because the flash completely overpowered it. Let's say the light pattern it cast on your subject or the background is desired to be kept in the photo. In this case you may want to set a slower shutter speed like 1/30th of second mentioned before to re-introduce that ambient light as part of your photo. Ok, I know that was tough to get through, but hopefully you have a good idea about shutter speed and it's ability to control ambient light.

That leaves 3 more things to control the exposure of the flash on your subject (well 4, but I'm not going into ISO at the moment). Those three things are the power setting on your flash unit, the distance of the light source from the subject, and aperture.

It should be noted that with most flash units the higher the power setting, the longer the flash takes to recycle after each burst, and subsequently the quicker the battery drains. With that said, assuming you don't need full power to try to overpower the sun, let's start with 1/4 or 1/2 power on your flash.

After setting the power, you can then move the flash unit closer or further from your subject to adjust the exposure, but remember if you want the softest light possible from your light source, it should be just outside the cameras frame. With that said, let's leave it as we have it to keep the soft light. Just don't forget that this is an option for controlling exposure.

Lastly, we have aperture. The larger the hole, the more light that gets in. Thus if you fire your test shot on say F/5.6, and it is underexposed, you'll need to increase the size of the aperture hole to increase the amount of light that reaches the sensor. Perhaps try F/4.5 or F/4.0. Great! You have the exposure nailed (hopefully).

Let's throw one more monkey wrench in the mix. Let's say you want to keep alot of the background in focus. For example an on-location photo-shoot often means the background is an important part of the photo. As per previous lessons, if you want to keep more in focus, you'll want a smaller aperture. So let's just say we'll set our aperture to F/8. Well now we have a problem because the subject is really underexposed again. No worries, just adjust 1 of the other factors. Either move the flash closer if possible, increase the power of the flash, or that thing I sorta didn't mention before...increase the ISO. You can do any combination of the three. This in turn allows you to keep creative control over the blur of the background. If you want to blur the background, say for example if you put a sheet up behind your photo as I have done in the self-portraits, simply use a larger aperture and adjust the other available settings accordingly. I did this because the sheet has wrinkles in it. By blurring the background, I eliminate this problem.

When you're all setup and nailed your exposure with a few test shots, you'll want to pose the subject as described below for the purposes of this lesson. When you focus on your subject, it is VITAL that you get the closest eye in sharp focus. I tend to have trouble with this from time to time, but regardless...GET THE EYES SHARP. I can't stress this enough. Use selective focusing zones on your camera if you know how. If you don't, it would be wise to take a peak into your instruction manual to see how this is done.

This lesson isn't greatly focused on posing, but to get you started, you'll want your subject to stand up straight with there shoulders parallel to the umbrella (see diagram 1). Next have them look directly at the umbrella that there shoulders are already lined up with. You're going to want them to look at the camera obviously (or perhaps not, depending on what you're going for), but you don't want there head to be fully facing the camera. Have them turn there head slightly towards the camera so that from the photographers viewpoint, the nose isn't protruding through the edge of their far cheek. Hopefully that makes sense, lol. Next, have the subject keep there head where you just positioned it but have there eyes move so that they're now looking at the camera. If it looks like the colorful part of the eye surrounding the pupil is to close to the corner (you don't see much or any white on the side of the eye closest to you), you may need to have them turn there head a bit more towards the camera. If done correctly, you'll have a very nice modeling effect from the combination of light source placement and pose.

To demonstrate the 45 degree lighting pattern, I took it upon myself to shoot some self-portraits in my kitchen earlier this week. I am also including 1 on-location photo from a shoot I did two weeks ago. In addition, I've included a few setup shots. The setup shot's however differ slightly from the setup you're currently doing. Instead of a shoot-through umbrella, I used my Photek Softliter. It's sort of a combination of umbrella and softbox. Don't worry about this though because the concept is exactly the same. The only difference is that my shadows may be a bit softer than the ones you'll produce with your umbrella. The other difference is that you may notice a softbox right beside my camera. I have this set a few stops darker than the umbrella (key light). This gives the result of lightening the shadow area of the subject just a tad. This is by no means necessary, and the only reason I did it was because I've just been meaning to try it.

Setup Shot - In the photo viewed from behind the tripod, you'll notice you don't see the key light. This is because the view is blocked by the cabinet. Again, don't worry about not having a fill light. it is completely unnecessary.




The finished product...





Happy shooting everybody! This has been 45 degree lighting "From The Ground Up!"