I just got some studio lights and boy is there a learning curve with them. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm shooting deep black dogs. Had more go into the trash bin than keepers, but here are some of my first ever studio light shots. I'm going to be doing some more shots this weekend and playing with some strobist setups. Any advice on using studio lights/umbrellas/soft boxes/setup would be warmly and greatly appreciated.

Cleo (CH. Ebon's Jewel of T'Nile) - age 7+ years, mother of Lily. I'm very happy with this one. I love doing black on black with dark dogs, but usually I do a lot of manipulation in PS. All the adjustments on these were done in Lightroom only.



Lily (Ebon's The Black Dahlia) - age 2 years. Lily looked directly up at the lights, so it started out very flashy before my pp. Had trouble focusing with the dark dogs on dark background, and it looks like I missed Lily's eyes and focused on her nose.

Julie,
black on black is one of my favorites. As for focusing, do your strobes have modeling lights? If they do, make sure you keep them on and you should have plenty of light for focusing.

For these types of shoots, I place the strobes on either side at approximately 45 degrees to the subject(s) and adjust them down (one or the other) if I want to create a shadow on one side. If not, I keep them both on full.

Because of the angle, the dogs tend to look at what I use to attract their attention and not at the strobes. I mount them high (at least 7 feet) and bounce them off of silver umbrellas. That will bring up the coats on black dogs.

These look pretty good. Fact is, you'll have to PP them to bring up the dogs and then bring down the backdrop. Here's one I did recently.



Once you bring the subject up in PP, you can just burn in the background.

Jim

First thing shooting with any studio lights is don't depend on the camera's metering. Get an inexpensive meter like sekonic 358 and your shots will start to get better. White balance is more important with balack on black so do a custom white balance. I use an expodisc but many people just use an 18% grey card. Another thing is if you can get a hair light or a light on the background for a little more seperation. that will help also.

Tom

Julie, I like the way you have your main light placed. I would also use a hair light to get seperation from the background. If you have a boom, or can rig it up from the ceiling or just really high on the stand, that will make all the difference

When I do studio stuff (my goal) is to use the least amount of work in PS I can. With the amount of control you have, it is usually attainable. With women though I do a bunch of skin/wrinkle work and I do tend to burn the edges on almost all of them.

When I use strobes, I shoot manually. I'll meter the strobes with an incident flash meter and then set the aperture and shutter speed manually. If I'm at 10 feet from the subject and in a normal room, it's F8 @ 1/200 and ISO 200. I use a radio trigger which allows the 1/200 shutter speed synch.

Although I've been using these strobes for 5 years now both in the studio and on location, the settings haven't changed in any of the situations I've set up unless I wanted to shoot at a different aperture -- i.e. opened up to throw the background OOF for example, I power down the strobes appropriately until the flash meter gives me the right aperture.

Experiment with different lighting ratios to get the effect you prefer. There is no single right answer in lighting. It's a matter of knowing what you want and using the lights to get it. The nice thing about having your own dogs to experiment on is that you get to see the effects with live subjects. And the dogs get to become great models!

Most of all, have fun with it. Use two strobes at the same level. Vary the ratios. Try it with one. Set it up high or set it up low and see what it produces. Keep a notebook of what you try so you can recreate it any time you want.

As for white balance, I've never had any problem leaving it at Auto. I shoot RAW and balance in post-processing to 6500K. I've never had a problem with white balance.

Good luck,

Jim

I don't think you *can* shoot anything but manually with strobes, can you? I mean, you could, but, nothing would turn out. I have a sekonic meter, but, have to admit to not using it very often. I pretty much know what settings I am going to be at depending on my light settings. It has been a lot of trial and error though

And like Jim says, there are a million answers on HOW to set up your lights, but, it all just depends on what you want the end product to look like. All depends on your subject too.

Hey Julie,

I concur with the others. Black on black is one of my favorite things to do. It is also quite difficult. This is a shot I took of Mahkayla that I did for her 2nd birthday (poor girl). While the composition may be a bit depressing for cosmic reasons (or fun, depending on your perspective), this was quite a difficult shot to pull off. Not only was I shooting black on black, but I had to make sure I did not over-expose the reflecting hat on her head.

Proper light placement was quite difficult as I recall. In this shot, I believe that I used 4 different lights. 1 bounced, 1 placed about 8 feet away, about 3 feet above her pointing down (main power) and two other fill flashes to illuminate her face.

i really like that 2nd shot! great danes have such gorgeous heads!!

i set my lights also at about 45 degrees & bounce off umbrellas. i shoot way too many bulldogs, so usually have to worry about blowing out the whites on them & also exposing for the dark brindles! haven't dont much black on black, but those shots are very nice!!

liz

Thank you guys so much. I'm going to be doing some more practice shooting this weekend. Have any of you done any of the "strobist" lighting with Speedlites instead of the regular strobe lights. I've got a 580EX II coming in today, along with some brackets for my stands, and I'm going to try this type of lighting, too, slaving my 430EX bounced into an umbrella. Want to give myself a lot of options. I also have a boom light, which I'm going to try this weekend.

Since you have a boom, I would leave your main light set as it is and put a fill/hairlight on the boom and direct it toward the off side to give the other side of the face seperation and definition from the background. In my minds eye, this would really highlight the headpiece nicely.

I would have it high overhead as more of a hairlight and not pointing at all toward the the background. You may have to put a flag on the side toward the camera though

My minds eye is often wrong though