DIY – Creating a black photo background, camera settings and all
Monday, January 12th, 2009 | Author: admin
Sometimes you come across photos that have a perfect black background and you wonder how they achieved it, you wonder what they used for a backdrop or if they used photoshop…etc
Its actually very simple to create:
Here’s a diagram of the shot:
I placed Noah in a basket on the corner of the Bed and positioned the flashes opposite of each other with snoots* to minimize light spill over.
Now look at the settings used on the camera:
1/60 sec at f / 22 at 35 mm
Dual Flashes set at manual 1/2 power zoomed in and snooted* triggered with eBay remotes.
The reason everything is black id because I’m shooting at f/22 which decrases the amount of light that gets to the sensor, the flashes are the only light sources without them the image would be 100% black.
Read what a snoot is here: Strobist Blog… The master at Lighting
BTW all room lights were ON in the room, they were just overpowered by the flashes.
Cheers!
Read older Posts:
Great site! I’m definitely going to try out your diy gels.
Why 1/60 sec for the baby picture? I’d guess that 1/250 sec wouldn’t change the picture and it removes possible camera movement unsharpness. 1/250 should be closer to your max flash sync speed…
At f/22 I needed a bit more shutter open time… You can play with the Aperture/Shutter and get similar results. Those settings worked in that particular case.
Thanks
Can you get a similar effect if you only have one flash?
Yes, one flash would be enough. It would be a little trickier to position and be able to illuminate the whole area. But it can be done.
The photo looks nice, but the camera settings are rather weird. With f/22 you are losing quite a bit of sharpness. And while a small aperture will reduce the ambient it will also reduce the amount of strobe light you are getting.
For strobe-only lighting the typical approach would be to start with an open aperture and the fastest shutter speed (e.g. 1/800 for TTLs and compacts or 1/160-1/250 for strobes and SLR) then start closing the aperture if there is still too much ambient light.
Yes Marco, you can have many other settings that would have the same outcome. Those were just the settings for that particular example. I could have lowered my flash power to 1/4 and lowered my fstop to f/16 and probably gotten the same results. Thanks for bringing that point up.