Last April I photographed the Fall 2012 Campaign for Luichiny Shoes here in St. Louis, MO. My friend Dan Sterkin shot and edited the video above.

We photographed at a local restaurant for about 12 hours and shot a total of 18 different sets for the campaign. For lighting I used a single Paul C Buff Ring Light Flash, nothing else! When you have to hustle and get it all done in one day, planning the lighting setups ahead of time becomes crucial. My friend, Tim Schlecht, flew out from Seattle to help me move things along and was a huge help.

Luichiny Shoes Fall 2012 Campaign Cinegraph – Thorsten Ott Photography

Our two makeup/hair stylist, Kat Hinkle and Valerie Brown, both did a superb job on set and our three models looked fantastic for each set. The three models I scouted for the shoot are Jamie Trout, Jennifer Lacayo, and Chelsea Edney. Thank you again for working so hard on a very long shoot!

Tim and I arrived on set at about 8am and unpacked and setup our gear. I always bring much more lighting than I need, just in case there are last minute changes. We brought (2) 1000 w/s monoheads, (2) Buff Einstein 640 w/s heads, the Buff Ringlight Flash and an assortment of 5′ x 8′ panels and fabrics. For the outside portion of the shoot I brought two portable battery packs, the Buff Lithium Battery and also the Broncolor 900 Battery.

The models arrived a short while later and immediately went to our makeup/hair stylist. The wardrobe was provided by Luichiny and their two wardrobe stylists.

While the models were getting makeup/hair, I discussed the shoot storyboard with Jon (Top Marketing USA) and the client. We had scouted the restaurant 3 weeks earlier and had arrived at a solid 18 different locations, 3 outside and 15 inside.

In late September I will shoot the Spring 2013 Campaign for Luichiny!

Below are 6 of my favorite images from the shoot:

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

Weekend Roadtrip from Steelville to Sullivan via Route 66 from Thorsten Ott on Vimeo.

Two weekends ago I took a weekend roadtrip out to Maramec Springs Park, just outside of Steelville, Missouri. I wanted to test out the GoPro HD2 new underwater housing and also the timelapse photography mode.

The new underwater housing is indeed waterproof and the focusing issue has now been solved with the “flat lens”.

The timelapse mode also works very well, although I dislike the menu functions via the two buttons. It has probably taken me about two weeks to get used to the menu functions and the LCD is just tiny.

From what I hear, everyone that owns a GoPro HD2 is anxiously awaiting the new ProTune Cineform firmware update that will give us not only 24p, but more importantly, we get 35Mbps. This is over 2x better than the 15Mbps the camera shoots in. Additionally, the firmware will greatly reduce the “over-sharpened look” that is a bit annoying when shooting HD video. The still images look great, but video is too over-processed for my tastes. For post-production and color grading the new firmware, to arrive sometime this summer, will be very exciting.

Steelville, is known as the “floating capital of Missouri”, about 90 miles from St. Louis, and boasts three crystal clear rivers to kayak and canoe. After a long day on the river, I recommend Missouri Hick BBQ, great food and six different BBQ sauces right on the table.

For a scenic drive back, be sure to take Historic Route 66 via Cuba to Sullivan.

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

UPDATE: I previously forgot I had a behind-the-scene video of the shoot, so here it is!

Last year, I photographed Madina Vadache’s Spring 2011 Collection. The week before the lookbook and editorial fashion shoot, we all met and had a production meeting. We discussed which model we would like to use as well as the shoot location and the overall look for the catalog or lookbook images.

Madina also needed a editorial fashion images for the “splash page” of her new website. For the editorial images, we decided to use the lobby area of her condo building. The lookbook setting would be a corner of her design studio, a modern looking window with white blinds.

Read on to see the lighting diagrams and final images from the shoot.

Editorial Fashion Black Dress – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Editorial Fashion Wedding Dress – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Editorial Fashion Wedding Dress 2 – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Editorial Fashion Orange Couture Dress – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

The lighting diagrams are listed below:

Fill & Backlight Umbrella Fashion Lighting Diagram

Key & Fill Umbrella Fashion Lighting Diagram

Shoot-Through Umbrella Fashion Lighting Diagram

Lookbook/Catalog Fashion Couture Dress 1 – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Lookbook/Catalog Fashion Couture Dress 2 – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Lookbook/Catalog Fashion Couture Dress 3 – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Lookbook/Catalog Fashion Couture Dress 4 – Thorsten Ott Fashion Photography St. Louis

Tim and I had to work pretty fast on the editorial images. We used a basic architectural lighting technique, bouncing umbrellas off of white surfaces. For the Key Light on the model, we slid the mono-head all the way forward on the shaft, giving us a soft spotlight effect. The 3 editorial images took about 1 hour to light and photograph.

White Satin Umbrella Setup – Thorsten Ott Photography St. Louis

For the lookbook images we used the 5′ x 8′ White Satin Panel/22″ Beauty Dish setup. We added a black cloth to the lower half of the panel to reduce glare from the wood floor tiles.

Beauty Dish/Satin Panel Catalog Lighting Diagram

Simple lighting and zero Photoshop post production for lighting fixes.

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

How to use the umbrella for editorial high-fashion photography. The umbrella is not dead and this fashion lighting tutorial is the proof. I also demonstrate how to use a beauty dish/satin panel setup for beautiful lookbook fashion lighting.

Last year, Tim and I photographed Madina Vadache’s Spring 2011 Collection. For the rest of the article, complete with lighting diagrams and the final images, please visit http://www.zeroplusplus.com/editorial-and-lookbook-fashion/

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

Thorsten Ott Photography - One Light Soft Portrait Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight or speedlight.

My first experience with bounce lighting was during an editorial fashion shoot in Los Angeles around 1990. I was assisting a great Dutch fashion photographer, I noticed that he used very little lighting gear. A fast Nikkor 58mm f/1.2 and several Nikon F4 bodies, one body for cross-processing color negative film, one for B&W Polapan, and one for color Polaroids to judge exposure and lighting. We simply bounced several Vivitar 285 speedlights off the walls, never missing cocktails for happy hour. Looking back now, I learned a great deal from him, basic people lighting skills and how to pose models quickly.

The One Light Soft Portrait Lighting setup I used for all the images in this article is below.

Thorsten Ott Photography - One Light Soft Portrait Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight or speedlight.

In the larger LA fashion studios, we also used One Light Soft Portrait Lighting, only this time we implemented 2 large 4′ x 8′ sheets of foamcore setup in a V-Bank arrangement. A single barebulb flashhead was bounced into the V-Bank. If we needed a still softer light quality, we would cover the front of the V-Bank with a large sheet of Rip-Stop Nylon. The V-Bank lighting setup is not just for portraits and headshots, large studios use it for fashion catalogs and editorial studio fashion daily.

Thorsten Ott Photography - Soft One Light Editorial Fashion Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight.

When assisting on car photography sets, the car photographer bounced his 20 strobeheads onto the cyclorama ceiling and walls. Since cars have shiny paint and are reflective like mirrors, we light what the car “sees”….and not the car. In other words, the car is like a mirror. We don’t light the mirror, instead we light what is reflected into the mirror. Sometimes we see cars photographed with a huge overhead 20′ x 40′ softbox. Technically speaking, this is not a true softbox,  just a very evenly lit ceiling!

Thorsten Ott Photography - One Light Soft Portrait Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight or speedlight.

Thorsten Ott Photography - One Light Soft Portrait Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight or speedlight.

Thorsten Ott Photography - One Light Soft Portrait Lighting with V-Bank and single monolight or speedlight.

If we light a white surface, ceiling or wall very evenly, with one or multiple speedlights or monoheads, we are in effect creating a very large and diffused lighting modifier. I personally prefer the light quality of a 10′ x 8′ white wall over the largest $$$$$ softbox any day. For one thing, I can move the flashhead closer or further away from the wall and quickly control the light spill and diffusion quality.

Placing the flashhead 2 feet from the wall I have a smaller diffused light. Place the flashhead 10 feet away and I have a huge and very even diffused light source. With a 5′ octabox, this may not be so easy in smaller spaces, not to mention the extra setup time and expense. Bounced light looks very natural, a softbox not properly feathered looks like very artificial light to me…IMHO

I CAN make a softbox look absolutely stunning with a couple of simple tricks, it only took me 10 years to figure that out, LOL….a future article.

For the experienced and novice photographer, I suggest that you at least try out my One Light Soft Portrait Lighting technique. Chances are you already own a speedlight or monohead. Your house already has the V-Bank built in by design…the 4 corners of a room! If you want a serious headstart into 50 great people lighting techniques, including much more detailed information for the V-Bank and how I use it for fashion catalog work, I suggest my “Creative Lighting for People Photography” Video Tutorial DVD.

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

In order to shoot for myself, Thorsten Ott Photography, I needed a long break from writing for the Zeroplusplus Photography Tutorials Blog. July of 2011, I decided that I wanted to focus more on editorial people and product photography while photographing on location. A typical article with lighting diagrams can take me anywhere from 4-6 hours to write, yes, I am a slowpoke. Constant urgent email interruptions certainly don’t help…before I know it, the day is almost over

Over the last 9 months my new shooting style dictated different lighting gear, techniques and methods, and camera gear. I always welcome change and the new opportunities in St. Louis have allowed me to photograph pretty much what I want. I still fly to Seattle every few months but most of my new work is in the Midwest.

I shoot more video, both in the form of cinegraphs and regular video. The cinegraph is an amazingly simple technique to add some life to a clients boring homepage or landing page. HD video on today’s DSLR’s is so simple to shoot and edit. The Sandy Bridge Intel processors make editing and rendering a snap, even on a laptop. Editing software on Mac and PC imports most HD video formats with ease.

Nikon D7000 w/ Letus Hawk VF and MB-D10 Battery Grip & Pocket Wizard Flex TT5/AC3 Wireless Remotes

My images now appear primarily on client websites rather than in print. Lets face it, the web is the most effective way to sell today. Shooting images for online catalogs allows the retailer to reach a much greater audience. The UPS driver delivers items to your business, why not give UPS a package to ship out?

Seattle shoots were primarily indoors or studio, St. Louis shoots are much more on location, both indoors and outdoors. My Seattle lighting gear was better suited for studio work, the St. Louis lighting gear is designed to travel well, is lightweight, and has full wireless remote capability directly from the camera. Furthermore, my new lighting setup has portable AC power that only weighs 5lbs per light, for all day shooting.

Thorsten Ott Photography has been busy and I will write a few new articles next week. I recently shot 2 large ad campaigns, one two weeks ago and one last month. I can only post images from the job two weeks ago.

Last months fashion shoe shoot article will have to wait until the client posts the Fall 2012 Campaign on their website, later this May. For a special treat, my good friend and videographer/editor, Dan Sterkin, shot a behind-the-scenes video of all the chaos on the 15-hour shoot.

And we also have a couple of headshot and portrait articles on the way. Again, simple lighting that you can do with just 1-2 speedlights or monoheads.

In with the new and out with the old!

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

Classic One Light Portraiture with Monohead and Ripstop Nylon Diffusion Panel

The image above, is one of my first jobs in St. Louis after relocating from Seattle. The Clayton School District needed to update the images of the ViBravo String Ensemble sectional coaches for their new website. For this shoot, I decided to use a dark background to compliment the formal concert wardrobe. Scheduling all four sectional coaches to be available the same day added to the pressure I had a little more than one hour to setup, shoot 4 people, and pack before the room would be used for another rehearsal. To top it off, the final images had to be ready the next day for the web designer as the ViBravo String Ensemble would begin touring in Chicago two days later.

Using the panels now for 20 years, I am still pleasantly surprised each time of how good the light quality looks. I did a quick lightmeter reading on the subject and background…shot an image…and I was ready to go. My initial concern was that I might have a large glaring white reflection on the viola from the diffusion panel, fortunately this did not occur, just a nice and clean highlight on the edges of the viola. The RAW file has plenty of room in the shadow and highlight details…just perfect dynamic range

One Light Portrait Setup and Diagram for Monolights and Speedlights

The monolight is about 4 feet from the Ripstop Nylon Panel, just filing the 5 foot width of the frame. The Ripstop Nylon Panel is about 8 feet from the subject for an even lighting pattern…head to waist on subject. This is one of the many reasons to use a light meter, the meter is accurate to 1/10th of a stop and will let you know exactly where the light fall-off is. The same thing applies to the background brightness. By metering the light falling on the black fabric I knew that I had a bit of separation between the subjects dark concert formal dress and the background. There is nothing worse than having a head and hands floating in black space!

Try the one light portrait setup for your next portrait shoot. The lighting gear cost is minimal and works very well for the Strobist Speedlight photographer. I would suggest using one of the more powerful Nikon SB800/900 or Canon’s equivalent. Or use two smaller speedlights in sync. For monolights, I recommend something in the 200 – 400 w/s range at minimum. My exposure data is F/8 @ 1/250 sec although F/5.6 would have been more than enough depth-of-field. I don’t want the background fabric texture in focus, just the subject!!

My camera gear consisted of a Nikon D7ooo with a fast FX (full-frame) 50mm prime lens which is a perfect 75mm portrait lens on Nikon’s DX format bodies.

One Light Portrait Lighting Diagram for Monolights and Speedlights w/Ripstop Nylon Panel

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

Fall is my favorite season, especially along the numerous trout rivers we have in Missouri. Earlier this week I took two days off and to photograph and trout fish in the Headwaters of the Current River located in Montauk State Park.

Monday I fished and quickly caught my limit of 4 rainbow trout, about a pound each. The four fish became dinner Monday evening along with a delicious fresh watercress salad.

Tuesday morning, just after sunrise, I spotted the three images below. I setup the panorama rig and shot the 35MP – 55MP stitches with a Nikon D7000 and 35mm lens.

Montauk State Park - Headwaters of the Current River Fall, 2011

Montauk State Park - Lagoon behind Current River, Fall 2011

Montauk State Park - Small tributary steam, Fall 2011

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

Pay close attention to how Emily uses diffused lighting ratios and depth-of-field and focuses the lens on the subject, while blurring out the foreground and background. Try this technique for your next senior portrait or outdoor editorial portrait session….it is not just for fashion anymore!

This time we see Emily using a Mola Softlight Dish instead of a beauty dish for overpowering Sunlight with diffused flash. And from what I can tell, Emily is still using an Alien Bee monolight and Vagabond battery pack. While a beauty dish can offer a similar diffused flash light quality, the wavy curves and distinctive shape of the Mola dish lends a softer light quality. For those photographers already using a beauty dish, I suggest diffusing your dish further with a sheet of ripstop nylon. Just drape it over your beauty dish and secure it with a few $.49 clamps from the local HomeDepot. You may find white ripstop nylon at your local fabric store for about $8 per sq/yd…it’s very inexpensive folks!

Overpowering Sunlight with diffused flash video example below.

I used one of my large 5′ x 8′ white ripstop nylon panels to further diffuse the 22′ beauty dish. The diffused flash to daylight lighting ratio is about 1:2, the Sunlight is about 1 stop brighter than the diffused flash exposure. No retouching for lighting at all!

I would like to point out that Emily’s success is not just about overpowering Sunlight with diffused flash and great lighting ratios. Obviously there is much more going on in her images such as styling and posing and location research. Emily has a concept and theme for each fashion story she shoots. She uses camera technique and composes her images to tell a story and photographs the wardrobe well. Fashion shoots include wardrobe and makeup/hair stylists and models. When I shoot fashion, the entire shoot theme is discussed beforehand so everyone is on the same page. In each case I email location scouting images and/or Google Maps links to the entire crew and models.

For Strobist portrait lighting using speedlights I have a different suggestion for overpowering Sunlight with diffused flash lighting ratios. The easiest and least expensive solution for creating a soft diffused flash light quality is by constructing a 3′ x 3′ PVC frame and attaching a white 3′ x 3′ ripstop nylon fabric to the PVC panel. I prefer the heavier 1 3/4 inch PVC over the 3/4 inch PVC as the heavier PVC does not flex in a mild breeze. PVC is about $3 for 10 feet and the corner joints run about $1.50 each.

I use 2″ elastic cloth bands in the corners to quickly secure the fabric to the panel. A sewing machine is required to sew the elastic fabric bands to the ripstop nylon. Don’t have a sewing machine?…….use Craigslist to find an affordable seamstress….simple as that.

ADDITIONAL TIP: The Strobist speedlight photographer may need to use 2 speedlights for diffused flash lighting ratios when overpowering Sunlight with the white ripstop nylon fabric. This applies to a fill flash lighting ratio….and may not completely overpower the Sunlight. It really depends on the brightness of the Sunlight, your flash power,  AND whether you are photographing full length or just 3/4. My experience from Brooks Institute photo school 20 years ago, the Vivitar 285 did have enough power for a 3/4 headshot using a 3′ x 3′ ripstop nylon panel with a panel distance of 4 feet to subject. As I recall, this worked quite well with my 4×5 film camera and ISO 100 sheet film with an F/stop probably around F/5.6 or F/8…..which is plenty for headshots and portraits on a digital camera with full-frame or DX sensors.

The diffusion panels can be attached side-by-side and used as massive softboxes. Below is a series of images I created with 3 panels and one 600w/s monolight. While I own 4 monolights, I primarily shoot with 1-2 lights 90% of the time.

One may certainly purchase pre-made diffusion frames/panels from Larson Lighting for several hundred dollars each…..or you can build your own for about $30 and a few hours of your time. There are many ways to construct the diffusion panels on the internet and there are just as many different suggestions for diffusion fabric. Walmart shower curtain material for $1.99 just looks like &#$% and may even cause you to have very ugly highlights in the eyes as several photographers have noticed. Spend $5 more and you get the real thing that lighting companies use.

Overpowering Sunlight with Diffused Flash is an easy technique to master with a bit of practice. I suggest that the photographer create a test of different lighting ratios. I might begin withe a 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 ratio of daylight to diffused flash. One of the lighting ratios will look just right to your eyes. Now you have a lighting formula that you can repeat over and over again.

20 years ago I made 5 panels that are 5′ x 8′ each, complete with fabric for about $200 and one Saturday afternoon. The first set of diffusion panels I later sold to a very well known portrait photographer, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, after assisting him one day. He just loved the diffused light quality and decided to use the fabric in his NYC studio.

I still have and use the diffusion panels for many of my commercial shoots today. Many…..many… professional fashion and portrait studios still use fabric panels because of the fantastic natural light quality they produce. Just because we don’t always see diffusion panels in YouTube lighting videos does not mean panels do not exist. I learned real lighting secrets by assisting great Los Angeles fashion photographers….and got paid to learn and see how they light and shoot ad campaigns.

Overpowering Sunlight with Diffused Flash is an excellent technique for giving your portfolio a fresh new look. The lighting tools are not very expensive and in most cases, we already own this lighting gear. Your only real homework is to test out the different lighting ratios and find one that works best for your shooting and visual style.

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Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography

I think we may have a solid Canon EOS 5D MK2 video rival on our hands with the newly released Panasonic GH2 PTool v3.62d patch by Vitaliy Kiselev and Chris Brandin. For still images the much larger Canon sensor is still clearly superior. Your donations helped make this incredible new version possible, so please keep the donation pool flowing. This update took only a couple of weeks to release…donations do help 

Reader Lars in Berlin, kindly informed me of the new patch release, and I quickly had to try it out today. Yes, everything works as promised and PTool v3.62d is completely stable on my NTSC GH2 using the 42Mbps patch for 1080/24p and 720/60p with the 14-140mm lens and Sandisk Extreme Pro 45MB/sec card. I shot for 30 minutes in 1080/24p and 720/60p, zooming in and out on the family cat and other moving targets, at all the GH2 native ISO’s of 160, 320, 640, 1250, and 2500. Shutter speeds were the standard 180 degree shutter or 1/50th and 1/125 as it is commonly referred to in cinema circles.

Lars just post this very delicious 42Mbps short film. Very well done

Here is a particular lovely video shot by mpgxsvcd using the GH2 42Mbps patch. Be sure to download the original 1080/24p file, it looks superb.

My custom gamma setting for maximum video dynamic range are the “smooth” setting with the additional -2, -2, -2, -2 in the drop down menu, GH2 folks know what I mean

OK, what is so fabulous and new with the latest PTool v3.62d patch? First off, the video quality in the shadow regions is now just stellar. My quick test demonstrated that ISO 1250 looks better than ISO 160 in the default Panasonic factory firmware. The little “blip” we saw in the first second of video in the previous 42Mbps PTool v3.61d patch is now fixed

But the big news, at least for me and other folks that make a living shooting with a GH2….the Auto Quantizer Setting. This is huge because the shadow detail is now greatly improved. I will quote mpgxsvcd because he said it best:

“It is also important to realize that the newest patch adds quantizer settings that will increase the minimum bit rate for less detailed scenes. This is critical because scenes without much movement and with lower ISOs rarely get above 10-12 mb/sec with the original firmware. Now all scenes record at the same bit rate regardless of whether the camera thinks it is necessary or not.”

Vitaliy Kiselev and Chris Brandin made numerous other improvements under the hood as outlined below:

• Improved bitrate patches
• Improved GOP patches
• Improved MJPEG size patches
• Added quantizer patches
• Added few other encoder related patches
• Few fixes, including 24L behavior

Below are the images and instructions for the updated Panasonic GH2 PTool v3.62d patch. Please refer to my original article for more detailed instructions and FAQ.

New Panasonic GH2 PTool v3.62d Auto Quantizer for 1080 and 720 video modes

Movie Related Restrictions: PAL Panasonic GH2 PTool v3.62d............ONLY

Panasonic GH2 - 42 Mbps AVCHD Compression Video Bitrate 24H

Panasonic GH2 - 32 Mbps AVCHD Compression Video Bitrate 24L

Panasonic GH2 - 42 Mbps AVCHD Compression Video Bitrate FSH/SH

Panasonic GH2 - 32 Mbps AVCHD Compression Video Bitrate FH/H

Panasonic GH2 - NEW Auto Quantizer for 1080 modes. This is where we select a bias towards shadow detail or motion detail. I always light my scenes and sets and have slow to medium motion. The 3 setting is perfect for the type of commercial work I shoot. For wedding and sports work I might change this to a 1 or 2 setting.

NEW Auto Quantizer for 720 shooting modes. Again, I use the 3 setting for the type of subject motion I normally shoot. I may shoot 720/60p and then slow it down in post to 30p or 24p….this is known as over cranking.

Panasonic GH2 PTool v3.62d patch save. By default, the PTool will not allow you to overwrite the original Panasonic Factory Firmware. Just give your patch a new number.

That is it folks!

Professional Lighting Setups for Monolights & Speedlights - Lighting Tutorials for Fashion, Portrait and Product Photography