Heya... recently, I avoid shooting on white in my studio, because I feel like the results are either too blown out or muddy looking.

My customers are always wanting traditional soft white look, especially for newborns.
I can just aim two flashes at the backdrop, but then the detail in the chiffon I have draped over the white paper gets lost.
But when I aim the lights away, and meter for the face of the subject, the curtians often look muddy and dark in the background, and often with un-even spill lights. Ugh.

Erg!!

I know I must sound like an idiot to those who are total studio gods, but I feel like I'm losing my mind here.

Help?

meter from an 18% gray card - $10, or purchase a light meter $100+... and shoot in RAW to protect your shadows and highlights from being clipped.... or just shoot film and don't worry about it! ;-)

If you're going to use chiffon or drapes in front (for texture?) try putting them a few feet in front of the backdrop & positioning the strobes behind them (between the drapes & the drop) and use barn doors (or posterboard, lol) to keep the light from spilling over.

right....not worrying about it is always good

If you want white detail in your backdrops you need to take your incident meter up against the backdrop and meter it for the same exposure as your subject by adjusting the output on your background lights until they match. super easy.

+1
I either do it this way (recommended) or with a spot meter.
If you use a spot meter you must have already tested your camera to determine exactly how many stops over exposed your camera will hold detail, then set your lights so the background is exactly that many stops over your subject lighting. It is never a bad idea to run this test anyways to determine exactly how much over exposed you can go.

try velvet.
the texture does something with the light that can't seem to be duplicated.

real velvet. any color. even white.

Can you post some examples?

Cheers,
Zack

Cool! I'll try it!!

Wow... I feel very exposed! Eeep! (But it's OK... I know I'm sucking at this right now!!)

Muddy:


Blown out:


I don't know:


I'm at your mercy.

To be quite honest, I'm not understanding your question due to the images you posted seem to be quite fine! But to go back to your original question...



Think of shooting your set this way...

You want to light the subject independently from your background. Split your set in half so to speak so that you are lighting your subject and that light isn't effecting the background. Then light the background so that light is effecting the light on the subject. This usually requires flagging off the light from your background lights so they are hitting the subject and having your main light close to your subject far enough away from the background for it to not be spilling onto or adding much to the background lights.

The inverse square law is something that comes into play here...



Seems easy enough right? Hahahahahaha! No way. To put it into practical use, you can take one light source, one subject, and one white background and with applying the inverse square law you can make that white background white, grey, or black based solely on the distance of the light from the background.

This usually means if you can put some distance from your subject to the background and put the light source close to the subject, light starts falling off very quickly the further it goes out from the light source.

........

Man, this is such a hard concept to type out. If I get a chance, I'll shoot some examples.

Otherwise, from looking at your photos, what the problem again?

Cheers,
Zack

Ooops. Didn't finish my post.

So... if you have lit your background separately from your subject then you can set your exposure for your subject. If there is too much light on the background you can then dial those lights down. If there isn't enough, you can add more power to the lights in the back. Note that it is good to get your base exposures when your lights are not completely dialed down or dialed to full power. This way you have some room to adjust your separate exposures.

So again... you have one exposure for your subject and you set your camera to that. Your background is lit independently from your subject and you adjust the power output on the background lights until your background is where you want it to be in the final image.

Did this help? Am I making any sense? I hope I am. I haven't had enough coffee today to tell.

Cheers,
Zack

Zach & Carrie on lighting. This is what OSP needs. WOW.

*trying to follow that*

Great post Zach!!!!

And good question Carrie! Though I agree with Zach that the "blown out" one looks good.

Zack, it made a lot of sense, even to my extremely right-sided/non-anylitical brain!

I'm thinking that one of my major problems, then, is that my shooting room may not be big enough to space the lights and the kids out away from the backdrops. With only about 13 feet of depth, and the massive roller syster I have in there taking up at least three, I'm already standing flat against the wall nearly 100% of the time!!

... and thank you for not scathing me for these pretty cruddy images!!


*curtsy*

Zack- I know what you mean but this part sounds a bit confusing. This is very difficult stuff to write down. Hope you don't mind if I try to clarify.
The closer you are to the light as you move away your distance doubles really quickly, ie 1ft, 2ft, 4ft...
If you are far away it takes a lot of space to double your distance, ie 10ft, 20ft, 40ft...
So if you place your lights really close to the subject. say 2 feet, then having the background 16 feet away will make a significant difference in light falloff. But if you have your lights 6 feet from your subject then you will need to put your background 36ft away to have the same amount of falloff as the 2ft example.

*Edit- Let me use your numbers Carrie. My studio is about the same size. One thing I do is to try not to point any of my key lights at the background. But if you have to, then if you have a softbox at 2 feet from the subject, the background can be as far as about 6 feet behind the subject so 8 feet from the light, correct? That should give you about 4 stops difference in light which should be enough.
The only problem here is that diffused light sources work a bit differently and do not perfectly follow the inverse square law because it is bouncing all over the place. In my experience, with a diffused light you will see more like a 2 1/2 or maybe 3 stop difference at that distance.

I use to shoot for a commercial photography studio and we would hardly ever use a white backdrop for a white background. What we would do is use a light grey backdrop and we would control how white it got by reducing or increasing our strobe output on the backdrop! Because the backdrop is grey it will help reduce the unwanted wrap around on the subject being photographed! I hope this helps!!

In His Image Photography

Wow, awesome tip!!! Thanks!!

Man, I know that feeling all too well! Thankfully I now have a commercial studio and I count my blessings every time I use it. However, I wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much if I hadn't had the exact problems you're having. Don't get frustrated - it's an excellent learning tool. If you can take good portraits in a cramped studio, you can do it anywhere and it only gets easier.