Rangefinder Magazine
March 2006

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Digital Lighting for Perfect Images Claude Jodoin
 

The evolution of lighting in portrait photography has been an interesting one to research, observe and practice in my 28-year career. One becomes a professional photographer upon accepting a check for taking, creating and delivering “pretty pictures.” This act forever changes one’s expensive teenage hobby into a serious endeavor with negative monetary consequences for poor performance. The key factor here is responsibility.

Now that all labs are “doing digital,” digital capture and output is normal, rather than exceptional (which it was just a few short years ago). We early adopters, who have been doing it for 20 years, learned a lot the hard way and have much good advice to offer. We owe it to those who haven’t been so fortunate (or unfortunate in some cases) to let them in on our hard-earned secrets. That way, we can feel like we have contributed something to our industry and our craft.

Digital lighting involves more than digital displays; it’s about source control, quality light modifiers, calibrated instruments and repeatable technique for one’s own artistic look. All this comes before any Photoshop work.

Modern digital SLR cameras have replaced both 35mm and medium format for most of the work being done in wedding and portrait studios. I have been saying this for a while, but now I can print it: All digital SLR cameras today are better than the photographer. In other words, we photographers are running out of things to complain about in terms of the performance of our digital cameras. We also have the added benefit of about four stops greater light sensitivity, for a given working depth of field, relative to medium format film. Even veteran wedding photographers, such as Monte Zucker, can enjoy newfound creativity in the world of tripodless shooting, non-square composition, fast and sharp zoom lenses, and high ISOs.

So what’s left to fix? In the age of Shutter/Aperture/ Program modes, Autoexposure and Auto White Balance (what I refer to as “Automatically Wrong Balance”), it’s easy to get away from the craft of photography and to “fix it later in Photoshop.” Digital capture notwithstanding, photography is still all about the light.

For the first time in photographic history, thanks to LCD displays (which my first Kodak DSLR didn’t even have), photographers get to see the color first, not the labs. Because of this, we must now be conscious of color and lighting as never before. Since the labs used to control both color and density from our negatives, we have been spoiled by our own ignorance and sloppiness for over 35 years. Those days are gone. When the digital transition came along, the transparency film shooters got it first (thank goodness I was one of those, too). But that doesn’t change the problem at hand—we now have more ways than ever to mess up our color. There are enough choices and variables to make everyone wish for the return of the good old days of Kodak VPS. However, fear not because I’m here to help you sort through this mess, by fighting the inherent complexity with simplicity.

I’m a firm believer in “git ’er done” when you click the shutter, and then enhancing images in Photoshop for greater profit or for the creation of new products, or both. Fixing exposure and color balance in Photoshop is a losing proposition in terms of both time and effort. Lost time equals lost money and, more importantly, loss of family time (or party time, if you are single). Exposure and color balance are things that should be done right up front, but you need the correctly calibrated tools and the right techniques. It doesn’t matter if you shoot RAW or JPEG, the front-end issue is the same.

It’s hard to believe, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of Paul C. Buff’s innovative White Lightning Ultra monolight flash units, made right here in the U.S. At a time when everyone else was making expensive 1950s technology—single power pack/multiple head units, with crude, full-stop power reductions— Paul made some clever and useful design decisions that surpassed even the exceptional and expensive French Balcar Monobloc units of the day (from which, I believe, he derived many of his improvements).

Dubbed the “Giant Killer,” the Ultra caused a revolution (and captured a large market share) as it reduced the cost and significantly increased the capabilities of photographers. How? By providing us with a stepless, variable slider control, which provided the ability to attenuate the studio flash’s power output by up to five stops. Finally it was possible to match flash output precisely to those Minolta Digital Flash Meters that had been around for about 10 years! Besides the variable power, the modeling lights had standard household sockets, and were easy to replace. By using twin “half moon” Xenon flashtubes around the base of a standard BBA 250-watt bulb, Paul Buff achieved a very smooth polar pattern with the standard reflector. His modeling light to flashtube accuracy was second to none. What you saw was what you got.

Using an extremely large scrim behind the camera with a large reflector on the table in front of the model, allows for very soft lighting and shallow depth of field and also illluminates the background. The hair on the model’s right is lit by a strip light at the same intensity of the main light, f/5.6. Another silver scrim standing upright gives us a very subtle edge light on the model’s left arm. This type of lighting is great for headshots without retouching, and allows for posing and crop variations without the worry of exposure variance common in more traditional glamour lighting techniques. Other than slight post-process warming, the image is direct from the camera with no other modifications.

Now that our industry is dominated by variable powered monolights and digital flash meters, there¡¦s no excuse to ignore their capabilities. Digital capture clearly shows the advantages of �¤/�°�¯-stop accuracy, a repeatability in the studio. Companies like F.J. Westcott, with their wide selection of high-quality light modifier products and backgrounds, allow us to create better images, faster than ever, which allows us to make out bank deposit slips more quickly as well. As Martha Stewart says: ¡§That¡¦s a good thing.¡¨

Don’t miss Claude’s Digital Lighting program at the WPPI 2006 Convention on Monday, April 10, at 7:30–9:30 p.m. in BALLY’s Platinum Room. His program is entitled, “Digital Lighting for Perfect Images.” Claude promises to overload your brain with lots of brand new, useful information and pretty pictures.