These are two separate location setups the Test Shoot with Mark Baylin and the First Shoot with Deng. For each I was using the Deardorff 8x10 Field Camera and a portable battery pack system for lighting, an Elinchrom Ranger pack and a Profoto B1.

The battery pack lighting systems was used as the 8x10 generally needs a bit more light than digital capture and I was not sure if I needed to match the intensity for he sun or overpower it. These lights are quite powerful and they also allowed me to use a soft box to soften the light.

The second location with, the subject Deng, was the same location from the Gear & First Shoot: MA Major Study post. Like the location scout I photographed Deng in the early light, the light is softer and easily balanced with the flash’s power.

I use an ambient incident light meter, spot meter and flash meter to get initial readings. I meter with the spot meter for the areas that I would like darkest detail and put that in Zone III and gauge the rest of the exposure and flash power on that. I set the flash to one stop over the ambient exposure for the Deng shoot. However, I was using the aperture to try and darken or lighten the background something I should have used the shutter speed for. This is because the shutter controls the ambient exposure and the aperture controls the flash to a large degree.

Citations

Baylin, M. (2019) Mark Test Shoot and Deng First Shoot August 2019. Unpublished.