Playing with some new photo gear - NEW 'tutorials'

[Catlady711]

As promised: an explanation, in pictures, about how you know when you need a reflector and what things look like with and without one.

Since Pooky is my most laid back cat, AND happen to be sleeping in the spot I wanted to use, he became my volunteer for today's lesson. ROFL

To be fair to those of you with simple Point & Shoot cameras, I shot all these pix with my Canon S3IS point and shoot set on P (program) mode. I did NOT do ANY processing at all, these are all straight from the camera, only downsized for posting.

(please forgive me, these are about as 'snapshot' as they come for me! lol I had VERY little time to do these today)

Anyway today's lighting outside was HEAVY overcast so lighting was very dim despite how it might look in the pix. The window on the right is my North facing picture window (North windows usually have the best lighting anyways)

Ok, ready??? Here we go.....

Here's a (lousy) pix of my livingroom and Pooky's favorite blanket so you can get an idea of what the lighting looked like overall.



Here's a close up portrait of him in that same location, same lighting, WITHOUT using any reflectors.

Notice the dark shadows across his face? This tells me I need more light there so I can see his pretty eyes. I don't want to turn on the pop up flash (more on that in a bit) so I need to do something to get more light to the shadow area.



Here's a set up with the silver reflector in the same place as I had it in the shot in the opening post of this thread. You can see how it adds more light to the shadows even this far away.


And here's the close up portrait with that same set up.


Hmmmm. Better but not quite what I want, and not the same as last weeks shot. Why? The lighting outside was brighter before, and it was a different time of day when I shot that very first one at the top of the thread. Light changes a bit all the time and I have to notice that and make changes sometimes.

So what do we do now???

We move the reflector that's what we do.

Here I moved it (proped it up with my other reflector actually with Sassy supervising) so it's reflecting light from underneath a bit more.


Here's what that set up will give me.


Much better. If I'd had more time I could have bent or moved the reflector around to get a pix that looks very close to the one at the top of this thread, but I simply did not have time. You get the idea though. No flash, natural look, no red eye, no super dark shadows hiding details in his face, and a nice catchlight (glint) in his eyes.

In this pix you can see the brightest area is actually under his chin which tells me I should have tilted the reflector just a bit more upwards. A reflector works on the same angles that you have if you were using a mirror to shine light onto a wall, or for a signal, only using silver with some texture (wrinkles) in it makes a nicer light.


On to the pop up flash in the next post.