Improvised Test Shoot with Lut
Last Saturday my wife was out on a hen party and my parents kidnapped my kids, so I unexpectedly ended up home alone. Since I received some new studio lighting equipment last week, I couldn’t resist setting up a quick improvised test shoot. I asked on Twitter if anyone wanted to pose for me and Lut, the wife of fellow photographer Kristof, volunteered. Thanks Lut for being so stunning and patient.
We started out with a Hensel Expert Pro 500 monobloc with a 150 cm octabox to camera left as the main light. A second Hensel monobloc with a softbox was placed on the opposite side. This second light performs two duties: adding light to the brick wall and taking care of some separation by spilling some light on Lut and the couch.
Here the main light is the Hensel monobloc with a beautydish. A Sunbounce micro-mini below and a pro to camera left, are used as fill light. A second Hensel monobloc with a softbox was placed on the opposite side to get a tiny bit of hair light.
For the last image, we replaced the softbox on the light behind Lut by a standard reflector and a grid. It was pointed to the floor behind Lut to create a streak of light.
I’ll talk about the how and why of the Hensel gear soon, but first I want to do some more testing. I also shot 3 rolls of film on the Hasselblad, if anything decent comes out of it, I’ll post that once I get the films developped.
Nice stuff Bert. I really like the light in the 3rd pic ( the square one). Color looks good but I don’t really fancy the BW. I find that the BW is too weak and without character ( I’m talking about the tones and not the portrait as such) but I guess you will be able to show me some good looking BW once the Hassy rolls come back
Cheers
Wil
Thx Wil, Since I’m shooting film I always get the feeling that digital BW isn’t really cutting it
I’m really curious how the film will turn out because it’s the first time I shot the Hasselblad with flash.
Interesting light setups and results. Really like the third image wich I find very strong in light setup, composition and off course the nice pose and expression of Lut.
I’m curious to see the sequel with the hasselblad
I’m particularly fond of the right pic in the first duo image: lines, light & the model’s expression. Both of you, well done!
thx guys
Hi Bert,
I love the soft pictures very well.
My favorite is the last, color version.
Great.
BTW.
I’m really interesting in the studio light gear issues – because I would buy a quality set but my budget is very limited and I have to make a clever decision.
I would like to use it as main portrait light and I was thinking on the portable units as Elinchrome.
Some month ago you bought a Ranger RX and you wrote a short test – but so far – deep silence…
Do you have a bad experience?
Have a nice light!
Found your blog whilst flickr-surfing. I find this to be one of the FEW times that I stumble upon something GREAT. For the entire day, I kept your blog up on my iphone and would steal moments and try to read a whole page. It is similar to being engrossed in a novel and not being able to put it down – reading while cooking, on the potty, ect…
Your work is amazingly inspiring and your knowledge (and the fact that you SHARE IT) is tremendous. I am bookmarking you and will continue to work my way through your blog – hoping to gain some more insight on OCF (as I am a studio junkie) and hoping you will continue to inspire me to be a better photographer.
Much thanks,
Katie
Tres portrait d’entreprise je trouve. ce n’est pas ce que je préfére. question de gout.
@Miklos: Thx, I had a lot of fun with the Ranger, it’s certainly a very good piece of equipment and I had only good experiences with it. When I decided to equip the studio with some studio lights, I did a lot more research on studio equipment and ended up with Hensel because they seem to fit my kind of work best. I will write more about it soon and probably do a series of videos for LIME about studio equipment.
@Katie: Welcome to my blog, I hope I can give you many more hours of reading.
@Glen: I appreciate your input, I’m still working on my style for studio portraiture so any criticism is welcome.
[...] already seen the digital shots of my improvised test shoot with Lut. The main goal of this shoot was to test my new lights and modifiers. For that kind of stuff, the [...]