Hi guys! I am brand new to photography and have posted before with some lighting questions, but I've since reevaluated my decision and have a few more questions. I am very drawn to the lighting common in many beauty and fashion images (I've heard photographers refer to it as "hard/soft" I believe?). The image is bright, and shadows are much more intense than with a softbox, but still soft enough for beauty work. After much research and speaking with several photographers, I've realized the best way to accomplish this seems to be with a beauty dish. I have included several images of the lighting that I am referring to and would love to accomplish (NONE OF THESE ARE MY WORK). I currently have a Canon Rebel T5i, a 42" 5 in 1 reflector, as well as a tripod, and a white backdrop. I am also purchasing a 50mm lens soon (I will eventually get Canon's 100mm Macro, but the 50 will have to work for now). Anyhow, I was considering purchasing an Alien Bee B400 strobe to go with my beauty dish. I've seen a photographer I admire use it, and the result was stunning. Also, this particular strobe seems to be one of the more affordable ones on the market. Again, I am just getting started, but find myself drawn to extreme glamour images with dramatic light. I am also a makeup artist, so I will be photographing my own work and want it to look the best. However, I don't have thousands to spend on lighting at the moment. Does this setup sound good? Any other suggestions to accomplish this sort of thing are very much appreciated! Thank you very much!
For what you're describing a beauty dish will definitely get you the look you want, but it does take some fiddling to get everything just right (angle and distance and power). I used a beauty dish for all but 2 shots on my beauty page here: http://www.senniakyle.com/latest/ They were all done with either an Einstein in the old style Buff beauty dish, or an Elinchrom in a Mola Setti. Hope this helps.
Oh and for what it's worth, you can definitely use a 50mm lens to do beauty portraits, but you will have some distortion of the face. I'd recommend trying to use something that's more like 85mm or longer, if possible. But if a 50 is what you have, you can still do good stuff with it. Just be aware of the distortion is all.
You are absolutely amazing! Is it okay if i send you a direct message with a few more questions?
Of course one can use a 50mm lens for beauty work. The distortion you mention is not caused by the lens. It is caused by being too close in. An 85mm lens, being a lens with a narrower angle of view, forces you to step back, so you do not cropp the subject very excessively. However, if you were to take off the 85mm and replace it with a 50mm lens, without moving in close again, which is always tempting, the perspective, or as you call it distortion, would be identical. Not similar, not very similar, identical. The word distortion is misleading. It actually refers to the lens being imperfect, so the shape of the subject is not perfcetly defined by the lens, resulting in most cases in an image where straight lines/edges. geometric shapes especially near the edge of the picture are not reproduced as straight, acurate geometric shapes. However in this case the term was used to mean perspective. This is only effected by the distance between the camera and the subject. In this example using a 50mm lens from a little over 50% further back than is normal would produce a very similar result to an 85mm lens. You will get more in focus at the same aperture, compared with an 85mm lens, so use a wider aperture to compensate. Also you will be using fewer photo sites (pixels) so you will have less fine quality, if you crop the picture to the cropping an 85 would have provided. But if your camera has a good number of photo sites (highish mega pixels count) then assuming you are not makeing a massive print then the quality will be perfectly fine.
Agreed, and probably I should have worded it differently, but for someone just starting out in photography in general and beauty photography in particular I was trying not to get too technical about it. But yes, you're right.
Hey man, only to be armenta photo was taken so !. I hope it helps you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtIkhvNH1X0
I think a beauty dish and an Alien Bee 400 is certainly a good enough basis for what you're looking for. You will probably find yourself wanting other lights to really fill out the look you're going for, rim, hair, and fill lighting, BUT just get the dish and the strobe and get going and see how much you can do with it before you get more involved. See how much variety (or consistency, for that matter), you can get with a simple setup.
Beauty dishes are not an easy light to work with, they're sort of testy in their placement (distance to subject mainly), so take time with it and really get comfortable.
You did your research, now go play!
If you look in the eyes of all the subjects you can see that there is a catch light from the bottom. I'm guessing they have a large reflecter or even another light that is kicking the light back up to fill in the shadows. You might coincided using one along with the Alian B when you try to get this lighting look.
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