Two Flashes Self Portrait.

After reading strobist's post on two flash portrait, I also want to try out. Again, my usual way of doing something new is put myself as the model. He never complains and he never need any payment. Ok, not no payment, just a can of beer would enough to ask him to pose for me. LOL

What was strobist said was simple: a flash with a shoot through umbrella as a "control fill", and another flash as the main light.

Shooting at indoor, with shutter speed more at 1/250s kills all the ambient. In fact, I did this shot in my room where the ambient is the tungsten light. Bad light, right ? By killing the ambient and fill the room with the controllable flash light would free me from colour problem.

Like what strobist did in his post, I set up almost the same set up as his: an F42 with shoot through umbrella about 1 feet below the lens axis. Now the problem comes: how do I "set" the ambient ? I have no light meter !

Read through strobist post again: he mentioned the fill should be 2 stops lower than the main light on the face. So, I use my grey card as my manual light meter, set my flash to level 1/4, and took a test shot:


And my setting is 1/250s, f/2.8, ISO 400. So, this is the "ambient" reading. In order to drop this "ambient" two stops, I close my aperture to f/5.6 and ISO to 200, same flash level at 1/4 = about 2 stops lar, and I got this:


Dark, right ? Yeah, it's about 2 stops down. Ok, I have my "ambient" and I tested my main light. Off my F42 with umbrella, set up another F42 on camera left, high, with my DIY grid, level at 1/2 (if I recall), camera same setting at 1/250s, f/5.6, ISO 200 and test shot :


Well, this is the "head floating" pic as strobist talk about. LOL. The light is pretty ok, right ? So, I turn on my F42 with umbrella, re-pose myself a bit and take a shot with two flashes, and walla, I got my own self-portrait as shown in the first pic of this post.

Easy right ? Everyone can do also. :D