Shooting it: Portraits in Cherry Blossoms / 桜でポートレート

Intro

A portrait photoshoot in the Japanese Cherry Blossoms, one of my favorite times in the year in Japan! Here it’s all with one light, check out the lighting setups below! Next month in Tokyo I will be doing some really big seminars for compact strobes, if anyone is around there feel free to join to the PHOTONEXT event!

今年の桜もあっという間に終わりました！桜の時期で撮ったポートレート写真とそのライティング解説アップです！すべての写真は1灯のみ使用です！今年の6月に東京のビッグサイトで大きなセミナーしますよ！毎年のフォトネクストというイベントで6月2日&3日話すので、ぜひ見に来てください！

Gear

Camera for this shot is Canon 5DM2! And the lens I’m using is Canon 135mm F/2 USM! 

My strobes are   Nissin MG8000 and for the past few months I’ve been a hard Nissin user, since the MG8000 never overheats during photoshoot, no matter how much I shoot at high power settings, and believe me I do it a lot!

FlashBenderXL Pro is the small strip box I’m using as main light! It’s a relatively small light source but it is making really nice light, and is vary handy to have it on location, because it takes almost no time to fold it, and get it ready to use! I often use it as rim light! 

My triggers are Cactus V6, recently I switched to them from Pocket Wizard, and that was a great decision to make! Using them I can control the flash power of my manual flashes without the need to go and even touch them! 

ND-16 Filter to be able to get long exposure in daytime

機材

カメラは Canon 5DM2 です！このセットで使ってたレンズは  Canon 135mm F/2 USM, です！

ストロボはNissin MG8000 です！マシンガンストロボはパワーが必要なときにとても大事です！ストロボも結構フル発光で使うことが多いので、純正のストロボだったらオーバーヒートして、しばらく使えなくなることがあります！MG8000は一切暑くなることがないので、撮影に集中できます！

FlashBenderXL Pro はメインライトについてる小さいソフトボックスです！コンパクトで、光は比較的に硬いですけど、使い方によってただストロボだけ使うよりはすごくいい光を作っています！

ラジオスレーブはCactus V6です！たった一つのどんなストロボでも、カメラについてるラジオスレーブで、すべてのストロボのパワーを調整できるトリガーです！もうすぐ日本でも発売します！

ND-16 フィルター、それで昼間にロングシャッターできます

Setting shot

Lighting

For this shot one of the first thing was to get my shutter speed to the sync speed, so I could use my strobes! For this I have used a ND-8 filter, and I was then at 1/200! Even though I had to go back a bit with my aperture and I was shooting at F/2.5! I’m using my favorite 135mm F/2 lens, and shooting with Canon 5DM2! My lighting modifier is the ROGUE Flash BenderXL size, which is a really handy on location modifier! I’m also using a battery pack since I feel more comfortable when the charge time of the strobes don’t limit my! The strobe I’m using is the Nissin MG8000, my main lighting source!

ライティング

このポートレート撮影は1灯でやっています！ストロボはNissin MG8000で、バッテリーパックも使っています！その日はかなり明るかったため、まず考えてたことはどうやってシャッタースピードをシンクロスピードまで落とすか！今回はND-8フィルターを使っています！それにしても、絞りは結局F/2.5で撮っています！カメラはCanon 5DM2で、レンズは大好きな135mmのF/2レンズです！アクセサリーとしてはROGUEのFlashBenderXLです！

Final Results

Here are some of of the final images from that day, Model is Yuzuki Megumi, who is really brave to follow me in any locations!  

In the end

Now, I am preparing a series of new articles on some general topics, let me know which one of them you want to see first, so I get it ready earlier! Also other ideas are welcome too! Here are some of them: Portraits at night / Lens article (I guess 135/2) / Portraits in the rain / Use of gels / Using backlight / One light setups / Shoots with just one umbrella / General shooting portraits / Can cheap lenses make good photos / Swing the camera shots / Using snoots / Shaped bokeh / … or any other idea welcome, post it in the comments, and I will see if I am able to write about it! Also stay tuned for my new blog section starting soon called “Strobist Diary” There I will talk about many of my off-camera flash techniques from basic things to some advanced stuff! 

Comments

comments