Shooting indoors, in the evening, with lamp light is my least favorite lighting situation. I recently was at such a shoot, and I had to decide to use flash or to try to soften things up a bit. Any hard light (light bulbs, sun) can be softened with a diffuser, and the larger the surface area of the diffuser, the softer the light will be. We ended up grabbing a simple white sheet and stapled it to the ceiling, creating a giant diffuser. I used no artificial flash and shot at about 1/50 1.4 for the entire shoot.
This is a good trick to know, if you only have hard light and want soft shadows, find a creative way to diffuse the light!
If you notice, there are no hard shadows in the image. This is the result of a large, close light source. (The colors in the full size images are much better!)
Two words: Bril. Liant.
Beautiful! That goes for the subject too!
its a rough life I have…let me tell you!
So, you put up a sheet and that was it? No flash or other light source?
thats right….just a sheet over the fan lights!
Know what else I have used before that works just the same, but lets even more light through? Take a dust ruffle and hang it in the same fashion. They tend to have thiner fabric than white sheets. That is unless your sheets have a very low thread count.
interesting….
Plastic heavy construction tarps also works well; similar to the clear diffusers. Attach by using painter’s blue tape; won’t leave a sticky residue or leave holes in ceiling.
How is white balance done for a shot like this? White or gray card? In camera (the tungsten setting)? In post-processing?
WB was set actually on another white sheet below the light and then shot in Custom WB. Even though I was shooting in RAW, its better to do this so you dont have that extra step in post processing, not a big deal when working with RAW, but I always like to get it right in camera.