Taking photos like Insomnia does...

[john luke]

If members wish to take pictures of ‘bar girls’ may I suggest the following.  This is very basic and deliberately so.

 

1. Unless the location is very well lit, it will be necessary to use flash.  You can alter the power or intensity of your flash and need to make sure that it is not too bright as to burn out the lady’s face but bright enough to illuminate.

 

2. Use as wide an aperture as possible.

 

3. If you are able to do so set the focus point on your camera on one of the girl’ s eyes.

 

4. Try to have the background a distance behind the lady.  This will allow the background to be a little out of focus and concentrate attention on the lady.  It is a good idea also if the background is slightly darker than the foreground.  Also be careful to what is in the background, eg litter bin overflowing.

 

5. I am not addressing post processing here as it can be a subject in itself.

 

6. A little preparation with and by the girl (model) will help.  Make sure that her hair is combed and does not have isolated hairs on her face, particularly over her eyes.  Make up needs to be applied properly and evenly.  If not you will have shiny and dull patches on her facial skin.

 

The above is very basic and intentionally so but I hope it will assist.  

 

 

Photograph OK but background distracting.

Edited September 11, 2018 by john luke

[john luke]

Wide aperture used here and the background (chap with walking crutch is out of focus). The shot is far from perfect but had the chap been in focus it could detract from the whole picture. Candid shot so no control over the background.

 

Foreground and background out of focus so one can concentrate on the girls.  Would of course have been better without the drink carton.

 

Background close to girls and not separated from them.

 

Not in a bar but background out of focus and separated from subject.

Edited September 11, 2018 by john luke

[Billyboy294]

Post deleted.

 

Edited September 12, 2018 by Billyboy294

[baggy67]

On 07/05/2018 at 17:31, noknmai said:

Wrong.

Lightroom is called Lightroom for a reason.

In the film days you'd go into a darkroom to process photos and to get the best out of a negative. In digital you sit in the light and use Lightroom to get the best out of a digital negative.

Lightroom is extremely powerful with batch processing of multiple images which is how the Insomnia Photo guy will be working. Shoot RAW, set WB to about 5500k, up the whites, down the blacks, bring up the shadows and add vibrance. Then simply sync it across all the pics.

Use a Photoshop filter (set up as a batch action) like Imagenomic Portraiture to soften the skin tones and in no time at all you have a 100 or so pics ready to post. No way he would muck around post processing each image in Photoshop.

As far as camera technique goes, I'd guess a full frame or high end crop sensor camera (Canon 7D mk 2 for example) shoot low shutter speed, low aperture and high ISO with an off camera speedlight with a Stofen or Gary Fong type diffuser. Easy stuff.

Reading this thread I think this guy has got it spot on.Settings are probably f2.8 at 1/60th 800 iso on a Canon 5d Mark III with a 24-70 lens and the Gary Fong lightsphere,although I'm no psychic.Once you have it all dialled in, just go around the club shooting.Presets and syncing in Lightroom are your friend with this sort of job.

[Thailand555]

On 9/12/2018 at 19:34, baggy67 said:

Reading this thread I think this guy has got it spot on.Settings are probably f2.8 at 1/60th 800 iso on a Canon 5d Mark III with a 24-70 lens and the Gary Fong lightsphere,although I'm no psychic.Once you have it all dialled in, just go around the club shooting.Presets and syncing in Lightroom are your friend with this sort of job.

Pretty much this. The only thing I wouldn't waste my money on is  the Gary Dong Lightosphere. It's about as useful as a cheap piece of tupperware

[hioctane]

Pretty much this. The only thing I wouldn't waste my money on is  the Gary Dong Lightosphere. It's about as useful as a cheap piece of tupperware

Agreed. I can't believe I wasted money on that thing!

Sent from my View XL using Tapatalk

[Big G]

On 11/09/2018 at 11:56, john luke said:

If members wish to take pictures of ‘bar girls’ may I suggest the following.  This is very basic and deliberately so.

 

1. Unless the location is very well lit, it will be necessary to use flash.  You can alter the power or intensity of your flash and need to make sure that it is not too bright as to burn out the lady’s face but bright enough to illuminate.

 

2. Use as wide an aperture as possible.

 

3. If you are able to do so set the focus point on your camera on one of the girl’ s eyes.

 

4. Try to have the background a distance behind the lady.  This will allow the background to be a little out of focus and concentrate attention on the lady.  It is a good idea also if the background is slightly darker than the foreground.  Also be careful to what is in the background, eg litter bin overflowing.

 

5. I am not addressing post processing here as it can be a subject in itself.

 

6. A little preparation with and by the girl (model) will help.  Make sure that her hair is combed and does not have isolated hairs on her face, particularly over her eyes.  Make up needs to be applied properly and evenly.  If not you will have shiny and dull patches on her facial skin.

 

The above is very basic and intentionally so but I hope it will assist.  

 

 

Photograph OK but background distracting.

1

Try to bounce the flash off the ceiling or wall (if white) to avoid direct harsh flash and shadows from the subject, if you have to 2 flashes use one behind the model to add some light to the foreground and remove shadows, also something like or similar to a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce flash diffuser will soften the light on your main flash.

G

[jmukh]

The first step for me was learning how to get subject / background separation using something like 50mm 1.8. I kept shooting friends until I got good enough at doing this (manually) that the shots were better than shooting in auto mode, and everyone wanted those shots as their profile photos (this is a good sign; girls are much more critical of their profile photos than you are going to be with your photography criticism). Once that started happening regularly, I let myself get the 85mm 1.8 since I was confident I'd be using it (turns out, I love shooting portraits, and it's a great lens for street portraits as well). 

A huge part of this was learning some of the things that the camera itself can do, and how to do them. Modern cameras are something straight out of Star Trek, so figuring out what eye autofocus is, why you want to assign it to a custom button, and how to use the focus magnifier to manually focus on an eye when the auto is missing consistently, etc is as important as upgrading from the kit lens.

That's where I am now. The next step (which I'm still figuring out) is Lightroom, and developing the patience / structure to actually sit down and organize photos for processing after a trip. Unfortunately, I'm guilty of shooting a couple of thousand photos on even short trips, and then never organizing them later. I get away with it because the jpgs straight out of the camera look pretty good now, but do a semi-pro looking job for a nightclub / bar shot, I'd really need to up my post-processing game. Since this is just a hobby for me, I'm not sure if I will. 

I know next to nothing about lighting. Is this the kind of thing where it'd be worthwhile to grab something like a constantly-on dimmable / adjustable ring light and experiment with it next time I'm doing  hotel room shots?

[Atlas]

27 minutes ago, jmukh said:

I know next to nothing about lighting. Is this the kind of thing where it'd be worthwhile to grab something like a constantly-on dimmable / adjustable ring light and experiment with it next time I'm doing  hotel room shots?

Yes and No....

Unless you plan on dragging such a setup around then no... A good quality flash or 2 with some remote triggers are far more efficient. I have yet to find a decent substitute for flash in most situations including the middle of the day at the beach !