Niko, Willis.

Yes I have access to some studio like places at my school, but nothing with strobes, only regular cinema lighting, a nice black bg, a white one and a green screen area.. which is awesome. The lighting is obviously constant and pretty yellow.. far from ideal for photography. The thing is.. if I rent flashes and go there... even if I stay 12 hours (because it's free.. anyway I doubt that I can have more than 4 hours in a row at school) The rent of the lighting would cost more unless I chose to go with single flash + tripod + umbrella.. a kit that I could buy rather cheap... but to get that awesome lighting setup (that I misused) it would cost more than renting the studio itself..

By renting the studio I give my money to a nice guy with a small business rather than the biggest camera store in town. Also, it comes with nice windows, nice view, a corner for make up, a washroom, microwave, refrigerator, wifi, tripods, stool, cubes, etc.. there's even a plant that I could use as gobo like in that video lol..

Soooo, considering that I do not own any of these 1000$ flashes, huge softboxes and all the stuff, it's better for me to rent the studio. The place I go costs 30$/hour.

Yeah, I'm not familiar at all with flash photography, but maybe Joe McNally can help with that? He has a book called Hotshoe Diaries, maybe it'll be of help with you?

Granted, he owns like 12 SB600s among other things, but there may be insights that you can use. :D

The cheapest rate is usually hourly with a two or three hour minimum. Well depending on the studio. Most give you access to basic set ups with the standard rate. Though I think jbl might of been using a school's studio? Then he probably just signed up and had an hour or so to "study".

*Don't you let that fool Niko into my house Willis. I'm not going to tell you again. He's a bad influence on you*

:^) Tell your girl I'm sure she's really a wonderful person Willis.

Ha! The second one :)

Hey JBL? What's it cost to rent a studio + strobes (if you don't mind telling us)?

Willis I guess your girlfriend gives you that "look" quite often and that's why your use to it :^)

*DON'T make me turn that computer off on you Willis! I said I need your help NOW!* or how about
*NUH UH!!! YOU DID NOT spend all night at that Deep Eddy Cabaret with all your dumb forum buddies AGAIN!!! WILLIS!!!*

JBL - I actually like the pose... but that's just me. With the background being as white as it is, you could strip it out entirely and replace it with pure white without any trouble. I'm not sure that would make the shot any better, but why not?

Yeah about the pose... This was shot at 30mm equivalent... No commercial portraits should be made at this focal length! I only made the shot because I like these crazy shots... I should have made it with my tokina 11-16 at 11mm!

I'm asking these questions because I kinda have a taste for natural shots.. that makes me tolerate the strand of hair and the shadow on her feet... But I know that I should avoid these things. I agree about the single arm.

I can't wait for my next shoot to fix all these mistakes... That's exactly how I learned to make stop motion: by making tons of mistakes and understanding them so I don't reproduce them.

The pose is not ideal. I know it's what you say you wanted but having only one arm, distorted legs, and tiny feet really doesn't make the model "shine". If this were for an advertisement it wouldn't work either since this awkward pose would distract from whatever it is that's being sold. If you insist on using this angle then at least crop out her legs at the waist.

The overexposed background is fine. The shadows between her feet shouldn't be there but that's easy to fix in PP (post processing) The one strand of hair on her face is distracting but again easy to take out in PP.

Another sample:

http://jblanteigne.googlepages.com/JBL_0286.jpg

The shot was over exposed, nothing dramatic. I still have that 100% white background, next time I'll diffuse the strobes that I use to light the background and I'll try to get more interesting results.

Some might think the angle is weird.. that's the point for this shot.

I have a few questions concerning my shot, to compare them with standards...

Is it still too over exposed? the background is over exposed but what about the model? I like it that way but what do you think?

The shadow at the feet. Is that something that I MUST avoid in my next shoots or is that kind of shadow acceptable?

Hmm I guess the skin could be soften more.. but this shot only spent about 2 minutes in PS.

I'm not sure if I like the final results, but he got some nice setup and the light on the subject is quite interesting.

You know, I've never heard of shots being called filthy, but if it's supposed to be a word for "epically awesome" then that it is.

The next time you rent strobes, get them with modeling lights. I'd also recommend getting a flash meter (buy or rent also) along with several books and work out the math of your shots first. I started using lights with film and had good luck from the beginning, but I spent hours with diagrams ahead of time.

LOL glad you thought so Kellen :^)

I guess It doesn't hurt to post it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKAD7leNOVY&feature=player_embedded

And while we're on the subject check out this video from Chase Jarvis. Pretty cool stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwzTRAfwqo8&feature=player_embedded

On second thought it's dirty word unbelievable!!!

Holy ******* **** NikoDoby, that video was the most informative 8 minutes of my life.

The SB800/900 have more power and faster recycling times against the SB600 and they can control other flashes where the SB600 can only be a wireless slave.

Niko, I had access some radio frequency thing... it was awesome.

btw, I got that dvd thing and so far I think the info is pretty basic and slow but it's some good and clear information. It's going to help me get more confident.

Also. I might be considering a flash... and as much as I know about every damn lens, I know nothing about nikon flashes... why would I want a SB-800 over an SB-600? I'm probably going with the 600.. but I'm just wondering.. and please don't go "if you don't know how the 800 is better, you don't need it" because once I start using something/learning something, I learn pretty damn fast, so I want to know if the pluses of the SB-800 would be useful to me.

+1 Strobist.

Strobist is on my daily reading list... Its really good stuff. They also have a nice community out on flickr that can help with your lighting questions.

Yeah Zak's blog is a good resource. And of course there's the strobist.

http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

Check out this shot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidhobby/4033928490/

This is the set up:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidhobby/4033175067/

Warning there's a girl in it :)

The background is just a solid gray backdrop, but by constraining the light with a grid, you get a nice soft fall off towards the edges. It makes the shot a little more interesting in my opinion, and adds a little depth.

Yo, a mate of mine showed me a tutorial video the other day by a guy called Zak Arias, dont know you maybe already heard of him. He's done a dvd of how to use flash lighting. Its really straight forward and he produces some pretty tasty images. Heres his site http://www.zackarias.com/#/client/template.xml?aaa=home&bbb=.

Peace R

Were you firing the strobes wirelessly jbl?

You know exactly what I'm talking about. I won't tolerate it at all.

Then again, you can put a warning on everything and I'll never know ;^)

jbl a snoot and grid are placed on the strobes to control and diffuse the light. A snoot can give you a very focused beam of light. I think what Willis is referring to is using a snoot or girds to light the background, not the model, and it will create a vignetting like effect behind the model.
Have you tried colored gels yet?

As for the whole warning thing:

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=760#post-11302

http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=688&page=2#post-11330

Willis the two soft boxes were used like this, one being stronger than the other:

Higher than the model and the camera, with a 45 degree angle. Both the flashes had a 45 degree angle with the model, me being in the middle of the 2 flashes most of the time. The one to my right was a bit stronger.

About the background, all my pictures ended with an almost pure white background... sometimes over exposed. I think I should have worked with a smaller aperture but I was scared of diffraction, I used f/8 most of the time.

What do you mean by a grid or snoot? You mean something else than my white background?

Ideally my kind of photography involves really complex backgrounds... aka right in the middle of the street or something.. but for this work I needed something classic.. the stereotypical studio shoot.. I mean.. I won't start to try fancy stuff until I can handle a basic setup... Damn I got some reading to do.. any suggestion? I want to do more studio shoot with 4 strobes and white/black backgrounds.. I had a lot of fun and I'd like to create some near perfect photographic situations for some scenes...

Thanks for the comments...

also niko, I don't get it.