I am going to go through the Lighting 101 over on Strobist.com over this break. Through my Advanced photography class I am starting to get a better handle on light. I think I am ready to dive into this whole off camera strobe idea. I just need to get a few cables and I should be good to go.
For those of you who haven't checked out Strobist.com yet, you really need to.
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Here are the photos that I promised from the two studio setups that we had.
Standard Portrait Setup Photo
This setup has the main on the right side of the scene (from the photographers perspective).
High Key Setup Photo
This setup had the main light on the left from the photographers perspective.
Last night we discussed the zone system developed by Ansel Adams.
My understanding of the zone system is this:
The zone system deals with the tonality of the subject matter based upon the amount of reflected light. So whenever we use our TTL (through the lens) meter we are in essence using the zone system of tonality. Where this really comes into play is the fact that your TTL meter wants to make every 18% gray so no matter what you focus on, your camera will try to make it 18% gray. This is where we get into trouble and where the zone system can help us out. There are 10 zones in the zone system. O - IX designated by Roman numerals. Some key zones to remember are:
IX - Pure White, there will be no texture here
VII - White with some texture, imagine snow in the shade, it will still be white but you can make out the texture of the snow
VI - This is the zone where caucasion skin tones are
V - This is 18% gray
O - Pure Black, there will be no texture here.
One thing to note here is that every zone is exactly 1 stop apart from the previous zone. So this means that Zone VI is one stop or twice as much light as Zone V. So this will help us when taking a picture of a person. If we want there skin to be the right tone and the TTL meter gives us a reading of F8 at 125 we know that we need to open up one stop more to get the correct exposure. So we could do F5.6 at 125 or F8 at 60.
The resources that we were giving to help us understand the zone system better are:
http://www.zone2tone.co.uk
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/zone_system.shtml
http://www.creativephotography.org/education/guides/aaguide/zonesys.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_system
http://www.srphotography.co.uk/srpzone.html
http://www.normankoren.com/digital_tonality.html
Last night we went over our test and our umbrella project. I did well on the test and I think I did well on the umbrella project.
We also started going into the setup of studio lights. We went through 2 styles of setup: standard portrait and a high key setup.
Standard Portrait Setup
The aperture settings here are just good starting points. You can adjust them as you need to achieve the desired affect.
High Key Setup
The purpose of a high key setup is to achieve an ethereal look. You normally want your subject in white. This setup will give you a pure white background with good detail on the subject. An example of use for this is mother and baby pictures. 
I will post some sample shots from both of these setups in the next couple of days.
