Rangefinder Magazine
September 2006

Glamour Lighting for Digital Capture by Claude J. Jodoin
Working With Miss Michigan USA

I used one Westcott 6x6-foot Silver/White Scrim Jim reflector on the white side (right) as a main light on an overcast day. I created the sunny look with an AlienBees 800 at full power, about 10 feet in the air, triggered wirelessly, striking Crystal’s back, going over her head, and bouncing off the reflector as a main light. The back of her coat is intentionally overexposed to maintain a sunny feeling in the shot. I used a Canon EOS-1D Mark II because I needed a 1/250-second flash sync speed at ISO 100, to keep the ambient fill light at about one stop less than the main light (according to the Analyze Mode of the meter). I metered toward the scrim as shown in Setup 1. The aperture was set to f/6.3 on a 70–200mm lens with a 1.4X tele-converter. The resultant focal length was 245mm, yielding about the same perspective as a 320mm on a full frame 35mm camera.

This shot was even simpler. I just used available light and had my assistant hold the same 6x6-foot reflector, silver side up, at 45° towards the sky as Crystal walked towards me. The bluish ambient skylight was warmed up nicely with the help of the Expo Disc. (Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 1/640 at f/2.8, zoom setting of 155mm, ISO 100)

Dr. Irving Gardner was once quoted as stating: “You can’t make what you can’t measure because you don’t know when you have it made.” This philosophy applies to lighting and exposure. For all of my digital image capture, I measure light with a calibrated incident meter (visit www.claudejodoin.com to find out how get 1/10-stop accuracy) and use an Expo Disc to neutralize color shifts from any main light source. My camera writes either JPEG or RAW formats to the card (or both), and I use whatever is appropriate for the assignment. I still discipline myself to nail everything in the camera as though my life depended on a perfect picture each time.

These images were taken using the “glamour wedge,” with the flash aimed down to fill the 31/2 x 6-foot, 11/3-stop diffuser (as shown in the setup photo at right). Below, a silver reflector of the same dimensions kicked up the fill at about 60% of the intensity of the diffused main light. A150-watt Cameron 800 Metal Halide light (sold by Booth in Ontario, Canada) was added later in the shoot. It has a 5200K daylight balance and serves as a very bright focusing light that causes the model’s eyes to show more color. A problem with large scrims is that they dim the effect of modeling lights, making it slower to focus and creating large black holes in the middle of the eyes. This is an important consideration for people photography in general, but especially for model headshots, where the eyes must be shown at their best. The Canon EOS 5D camera was set to 1/125 at f/5.6, which is the “sweet spot” for the 70– 200mm zoom lens. This first image (immediate right) was zoomed to 200mm, while the image at the far right was zoomed to125mm. The background was rendered a pastel blue by a light blue gel on an AlienBees 400 fired through a cucoloris, as shown. It was turned off for several other shots (not shown) to render the background beige to match the coat.

I meter everything ahead of time and can usually nail the look I’m after on the first shot. This level of consistency saves a huge amount of time later in the workflow, even for RAW shooting. I always try to use as few lights as possible to do the job. This saves time and energy, allowing me to interact with my subject.

I have used every type of light modifier imaginable in my career, including some strange homemade ones. Like many working photographers today, I prefer the predictable control characteristics of planar sources of illumination for architectural, commercial and portrait work.

Planar simply means any light that emanates from a flat surface. This includes white walls, ceilings, softboxes, soft strips, and most importantly, a portable, versatile system of scrims and reflectors. With these simple tools, a photographer can maintain easy, precise control while creating a variety of looks for any subject, indoors or out. Irrespective of brand or price, all planar light sources have identical falloff characteristics. Mastering the theory behind them means you can easily repeat a new technique whenever you create one. With scrims, you can use flash, sun, window light, tungsten, metal halide, and the latest low-power/ high-output daylight fluorescent bulbs, such as those in Westcott’s Spiderlite series, as primary light energy sources. The scrims then act as secondary sources with lots of available controls.

This image was made using twin Westcott strip lights aimed behind Crystal at my studio’s white wall (the same ones shown on page 116) at about a 30° angle. Together they read f/8.0.3 on the meter laid flat against the wall and pointed back to the camera. A piece of 9x9-foot white seamless paper was laid on the ground and lit by bouncing a White Lightning X-series 3200 (Big Bertha) monolight off my studio’s 16-foot white ceiling. An X-series 2400 was pulled back 4 feet behind the Westcott 8x8 foot (X-large) Scrim Jim. The main light was fitted with a 11/3-stop diffuser. This created a giant window about 20 feet from the subject. I stood right in front of it with my camera when I made the exposure (ISO 200, 108mm, f/7.1). On the digital meter, her face had read f/5.6.7, meaning that the f/8.0.3 reading on the white background wall was exactly 0.6 stops more light than the subject, a good practice for clean high key (my video gets into great detail on this). I like this kind of easy frontal lighting for high key because the illumination angle of incidence increases towards the edges of the face and body, causing the edges to get progressively darker and providing contrast against the pure white (RGB 255) background.

When I use flash, I prefer the precision and repeatability of monolights with fast recycle times, such as the AlienBees 400 and 800 units. Running those at 1/8 or 1/4 power for apertures around f/5.6 (for zooms), lets the camera capture images as fast as a model can move. This eliminates underexposed images caused by slow recycling flash heads. Since the noise maps of modern digital cameras are not visible in a print between ISO 100–400, I usually increase that instead of flash power to maintain the highest shooting speed for a given target lens aperture.

By using scrims instead of softboxes, the primary light source can be moved closer or further from the diffusion surface to change the effective size of the (secondary) diffused illumination source. This can change how sharply or softly features are rendered in the image via the varying shadow edge transfer characteristic.

This image was made with only one light (a Big Bertha X- 3200) bouncing straight up off the angled ceiling and positioned about 4 feet from the model’s head as I stood on a ladder. The black circle in the image was added in Photoshop CS2 for greater impact. The 5D was fitted with a 24–70mm zoom set to 40mm and exposed at 1/125 at f/7.1 at ISO 200.	This image used the same basic setup as shown on page 116. The only difference is that the red gel was removed from the Alien Bees 400 background light, a 40-degree grid was added and the light was moved to the model’s right side (camera left) and hidden by the main light 8x8- foot Scrim Jim. Exposure was 1/125 at f/7.1 with the EOS 5D at ISO 200; the lens was zoomed to 185mm.

Also, this varies the size and intensity of the catchlights in the eyes (specular characteristic). Of course, along with this “variable size” control of diffusion scrims, we can still vary their distance and angle to and from the subject just like we would with a softbox. One of the main benefits, however, is the ability to feather and angle the primary light energy source to fire past the diffuser, into other scrims, and thus creating many other secondary illumination sources from the same flash head. Once you have established your illuminance ratios, you can power the main light energy (primary) source up and down to match a target f-stop, and all the other secondary lights come with it

automatically at the same ratio. Traditionally, glamour lighting has been done with the main light placed directly over the subject, aimed down to create a butterfly shadow pattern under the nose. This is not a “corrective” way to light a face. It is used to emphasize faces that have a symmetrical structure, such as rare creatures we call professional models. Hollywood movie stars were lit with tungsten spotlights on 8x10 blackand- white film by George Hurrell and others until the 1950s, when color films and 16- to 20-inch parabolic flash sources changed everything.

This image was done with just one light, the X-2400 firing though the 8x8-foot Scrim Jim, and the 11/3-stop diffuser was about 3½ feet from the diffusion surface, as you can see from the overhead fisheye view. In Setup 5, that it created a nice big circular main light. The 3½ x 6- foot Silver Scrim Jim filled the shadow side nicely while the overhead 42x42-inch Silver Scrim Jim kicked in a very subtle back separation to the hair and shoulder. (Canon EOS 5D, 70–200mm lens at 115mm, 1/60 at f/7.1, ISO 200)

This image was created using the same basic setup shown on this page. The 8x8-foot Scrim Jim and 11/3-stop diffuser were moved forward, away from the background. I then added the twin strip rim lights with grids, metered at about f/5.6 with the dome aimed toward one of the strip lights. The power of the second light was adjusted to match the first. I moved a 9x9 black paper background on a 2x4-inch roll around wood frame fired another Alien Bees 400 through a Rosco Red gel. The incident meter was placed on the black paper surface and the power adjusted to read f/5.6.7 (translated to f/7.1 in camera, the same as the main light). The image was made on an EOS 5D and 70–200mm lens at ISO 200; exposed for 1/125 at f/7.1; lens zoomed to 130mm.

Today’s typical glamour headshots are done on digital cameras in color with soft flash sources of various sizes, so the butterfly pattern is not as obvious as it was in the days of small main lights. Today, it mostly refers to the 12 o’clock catchlight created by the larger sources of illumination. By using one or more silver or white reflectors below, we create a second catchlight at the 6 o’clock position. This type of lighting is very useful for model headshots. This central placement allows for facial and body movements left to right, from full face to 2/3 view, creating a modified butterfly pattern, while working on various expressions that define the subject’s personality. Varying the size of the source changes the shadow edge transfer characteristic to help shape the nose and cheekbone characteristics. This gives us very little corrective control as compared to other classic lighting patterns and positions, so, as a rule (which can be broken), we should reserve this mostly for photogenic subjects, like this month’s featured model, Crystal Hayes, Miss Michigan USA 2005.

Primarily, I meter towards the main light at the exact position of the face (sometimes I refer to it as a “cheek meter”). This determines my camera setting. Then I meter all the other lights and reflectors around the subject’s face and body relative to my fixed camera setting. It’s simple and fast.

Claude Jodoin is one of Rangefinder magazine’s technical editors. He has been involved in digital imaging since 1986 and has not used film since 1999. Reach him at: claudej1@aol.com.