"I shot this with a Nikon D800, and an 85mm f/1.4G. EXIF was 1/200, f/1.8, ISO50. The shot was lit with two lights. One 5' octa on camera right, and one 60x90CM Softbox on camera left behind the subject. Both of these softboxes had LumoPro LP160 lights in them. Here's a lighting diagram:
I shot this using the Brenizer method. This particular shot was only 13 images, but the result was 217 Megapixels. There was no way to shoot all the frames without getting lights in the shot, so I took the initial images of Shan (The Model) as well as the background of the right side of the shot, and when I started shooting the left side of the shot, I asked her to jump up move the light out of the way.
The post: I processed the first image in Lightroom 5 to look more or less the way I want, and then duplicated that edit over all the rest of the shots. I exported that out of Lightroom and then got Photoshop to stitch it all together. I just redid the stitch without blending the layers so that you could see more or less how it was put together. Have a look:
Obviously those layers were all blended properly so that they work nicely together. Once it was cropped properly and I had filled in all the blanks, I flattened it and then it was just a regular edit from there. That involved me removing the cars from the background, retouching, dodging/burning, contrast and color adjustments, etc. - Ett Venter
stupid question maybe, but how are you shooting ISO50 on the D800, doesn't it bottom out at ISO100?
Not a stupid question :) Not asking would be stupid :P
The D800 goes down to ISO 100, and then it does Lo 0.3, Lo 0.7, and Lo 1. Those are ISO 80, 64, and 50 respectively. Ambient light was pretty high when I shot this, and I wanted to avoid slapping an ND filter on the lens because the only ND filter I had with me was the LightCraft Workshop Fader ND MK II, which I personally don't really like all that much. So ISO 50 was JUST enough to cut out the ambient as much as I wanted it to.
This is very nice lighting and a beautiful model. The low camera angle works well in this situation. However, that blurry band in the foreground is disturbing. It looks like a gopher's eye view. I think you could get away with a little more cropping at the bottom, at least the really dark part.