Hi All!

I have spent a bit of time over the last week trying out a new lighting set-up ( after a chat with Carl at S&L last weekend )

Basically it's two tungsten lamps at the front, 60w and 40w with tracing paper diffusers taped on and an 11w Energy saver bulb used as a back light.

I have set a custom white balance....

I'm shooting with a Fuji Finepix 9600 bridge camera on 80 asa and the smallest aperture I can get...

I'm deliberately under exposing ( where I previously over exposed to show any faults ) and using Photoshop to tweak a bit of contrast in ( auto contrast faded to about 30% )

Also using a cable release to eliminate camera shake

Please let me know what you think, is it better, do you have any better settings?

Many thanks

Looks damn good to me. I particularly like the low watt bulb in the background.

Jay H.

Not knowing that much about photography, but knowing these look very good to me, how do you use the backlight?

Carl ... Cheers

Jay. H..... Thanks, yeah I never used a back-light before, it's pretty cool

James .... Thanks and see the attached pic

Yes that is a large cardboard box used as a booth! That way I can move the lights to suit the subject.

Also notice the Book and the DVD case, I was getting light from the back-light in shot so the light sits behind and under thatsetup, will need to tweak it a bit more I think to get the light falling higher up the background...

Thanks very much for the explanation and photo. That helps me a lot!

Carl your setup is paying off fore the figures.
I think it needs some tweaks with the front light.
As you can see in some pictures there is a hard shade into the face of the figures.
There are three options.
- you put the light some inches from the object
- you use a dubble filter on the light (twice as used at the moment). maybe tracer paper
- some less light for instance 40 instead of 60....maybe because it is not on all the pictures you can use a dimmer to variable the ligth

Further i will copy your setup if you don't mind.

Marc

Hi Mark,

Both the photographs and the figures are looking really good. The picture of your setup is very useful, I'm going to try something like that too now.
Do you have any trouble with those lamps you covered with tracing paper getting hot?

cheers,

Gert-Jan

James ... a pleasure

Marc ... thanks for the input .... now using 2 X 40w front lights with double tracing paper diffusers And please feel free to copy the set-up ( it's not exactly original )

Gert-Jan ... Thank you Please do And the diffusers get hot but don't burn or discolour...


I like how this set-up is working now here is an embarrassingly large blow-up of a 1/35th Alpine figure.

You gonna get away with these pictures.
Now serious......this is gonna be a great setup.
Now the experiment with different backdrops.

Marc

Wow, Mark:

Capital, really lovely photographs. . . and thanks for giving the details on
how you are doing it, with tracing paper defusers, etc. Wow, I've got lots of
tracing paper. . . Now if I just had some decent figures to shoot.

hee hee. Beautiful photographs of fantastic work,

rickkardo